Let's Begin: Sunday#1

When I was young, Sundays were always about church. Catholic church. Always. It would be many years before I learned that there were other activities that one could do on Sundays. Of course, it didn't help that in those days, everything closed on Sundays--except for the 7-11 of course. I remember struggling with that--wondering if perhaps, as a boy, I was helping "Satan" profit somehow by buying a Slurpee on Sunday. The struggle didn't last for long on hot summer weekends, perhaps it was not really a struggle at all--perhaps I just like to remember it that way. We all do that, right?

I used to look forward to going to church, unlike the rest of my family, I think. We all would attend together up until the time when my brother and I entered our teen years, and then something happened, but I am not sure what. Well, that is not entirely true. My father started drinking more and my brother started doing drugs. THAT happened. Mom just pretended that none of that was happening. And me? I was left to go to church myself--preferring the 11am "Guitar Mass" where musician/singers played songs from Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar before I even knew that they were musicals. Truth be told, it was the music I went for at 11am more than the church service, though I did believe in God and felt that somehow I was doing the right thing by attending.

Now? Not so much.

Now I am an atheist, or a truthist, depending on how you want to look at it. I look for the "capital T" Truth, not "little t" truth, and if I don't find it in science, I settle comfortably into the mystery. It took me years to get to this place, however, and I continue to challenge anything I feel too smug about at any particular time. But back then I loved the neatness of my beliefs. I loved believing that I could clean the slate once a week by simply taking in the "body of Christ". It was almost too perfect, really. One never had to suffer too long with the consequences of one's actions, so I wonder how much one's moral development moved forward. I don't think that any church has as its goal the development of the individual, for that would fuck with its business plan to keep people dependent. No, I think that the ease of forgiveness in the church only served to minimize bad behavior--whether you cheated on your wife or merely masturbated, all was forgiven within the broad strokes of the confessional. Easy-peasy!

All except homosexuality.

Nothing the church had to offer could clean the slate of my desire for men, so in essence, I was fucked. Fucked in the "your sin is so loathsome and perverted that you might as well give in to eternal hell and give up hope for salvation" fucked. Fucked as in "you are bad to the core and this is a flaw that cannot be fixed" fucked. Fucked as in "we used to love you when we thought you were good but now we could care less about you bye bye" fucked. Fucked as in "You are broken, and we are sorry, but we have to look after ourselves now" fucked. Fucked.

So around that time, when I realized I was a homosexual and I was fucked, Sundays, as you can imagine, took a turn.

***
In my 20's right through my 40's Sundays became about work. I was in the service and entertainment industries in various capacities and weekends were when people needed service and entertainment, so to speak, so I worked. Every Sunday. Sundays turned from being about worship to being about work. A fair trade off, I suppose. Fair to whom, that is another matter entirely. But I embraced the change, as it filled my Sundays. Catering jobs, performing at Disneyland and Universal Studios, coffee shops, supermarkets--I did them all, and for a while I accepted it as the choice I made.

Nowadays, I do not work on Sundays, nor do I attend church. I no longer work at Disneyland or Universal Studios, I no longer take catering jobs. I sleep in, which for me means waking up at 630am instead of 530am. I make breakfast for myself and my boyfriend, if he is not working himself. We like to treat ourselves to bacon on Sundays. Sometimes, just sometimes, I have a mimosa with breakfast, and if not, I sometimes, just sometimes, have a sweet cocktail at 11am. I play music and sit on my patio when the mornings are warm. I wonder if this is the new "Guitar mass" for me? And then there is a whole lotta nuthin' for the rest of the day. Sometimes the boyfriend and I do nothing together, sometimes we do it apart, but in my case "nothing" means anything but work or church or catering. This is the new Sunday.

***
This series will be about Sundays now, since there is often a lot that happens in the idleness. Feel free to read this series before or after church, work, or your own 11am cocktail. It doesn't matter, because the universal thing about Sundays is that anything goes, even when anything is nothing.

Let's go.