Divine Intervention

Tongue in cheek work about spirituality, gender, and the innocent logic of children.

I was first introduced to the goddess

by the 1990s alt rock band Dishwalla

in the passenger seat of my mother's muted gray station wagon

with my seatbelt fastened. I was nine

and firmly acquainted with the man named God

who lived in the shiny gray stone cathedral across town.

I met with him every Sunday for brunch.

He would slice off delicate spheres of his translucent skin

that melted on my clean tongue. I wondered why

if God could create anything out of nothing

he never made hot cross buns or bagels

or a fancy quiche like the one I had at Ruby Tuesday's

that time with mom in New Hampshire.

I was told he could form planets from dust and light from dark,

but all we got on Sunday were wafers made out of skin.

Since we ate God on the weekends, I knew he had

a regenerative body like a snake.

The blood from his cuts, which I wasn't allowed to taste,

was captured in ornate goblets.

Bodily fluids were a delicacy reserved for adults,

so when I picked my nose to eat the snots,

I knew it was a sin against childhood.

God was edible and God was a he,

but I'd never considered his maleness

until that day riding around town with my mother

when the voice through the stock radio

sang about wanting to know my thoughts on God,

because he would really like to meet her.

I never knew I was allowed to have thoughts on God,

I thought that was all taken care of for me

by adults and various white men who lived long ago

when humans recorded time backwards.

Because God had a son, I knew he was a sexual being

since I had a large font book at home

that explained things like where babies came from

and how it was normal I stained my bedsheets red each month,

though it didn't tell me why I should never talk about

either of these things. My parents said

it was because the other children did not know yet,

and I should not inform them,

should let them find out on their own,

just the same as I could not say

about how I knew there was no Santa Clause.

Though this wasn't another secret listed in my large font book,

I figured that God's now very obviously real penis

was something I wasn't allowed to tell other children about.

I couldn't stop thinking about it, however.

Every time the priest said 'he' 'his' him',

all I could picture was the implication of those pronouns.

Everything became a symbol of God's penis,

the long skinny pews, the oblong chapeau on the bishops

in the stained glass windows, the giant incense sticks

held with trembling fingers by the altar boys.

I was surrounded. I felt suffocated by divine genital imagery

and started skipping church on Sundays

to watch Storm in her blue leotard and red pleather belt

make common women crumble to their knees

on new episodes of American Gladiators.

My body felt unholy.

I wasn't a temple because it had no steeple

nor protruding cross to speak of.

So I tried to listen to the song.

I tried to tell my mother my thoughts on God,

how I'd really like to meet her,

but my mother only laughed. God was a 'he'

didn't I know that? Of course I did.

Everyone did. The altar boys, the priests,

the bishops, the pope, the little boys at church

who felt their own pronouns lifted up to the heavens

in every breath of the weekly sermons--

everyone was well aware of God's penis

that He was a he.

My body felt unholy.

The older I got, the less I looked like Jesus' smooth flat body,

the less I looked like the unblemished Mary,

the less I appeared familial

to God.

My body felt unholy.

No one drank my monthly blood from precious metal chalices,

no one raised it above their heads and blessed it with symbols

called words. I had to horde my blood in cotton

and wrap the cotton in toilet paper

and wrap that cotton in toilet paper

and bury the wad at the bottom of the trash can

lest any of my brothers or my father see

the mummified remains of my life blood.

My body felt unholy

and no one told me otherwise.

I went back to church once more,

when I was fourteen, for a midnight mass.

I wore a pewter cross around my neck

and Doc Martens on my feet. I was still not allowed to taste

the fermented bodily fluids of God,

but I was allowed to put some of my leftover birthday money

in the little basket that passed around from hand to hand

to buy the altar boys more incense and the bishop a new chapeau.

I let the basket pass over me

and spent those dollars on alt rock cassette tapes the next week.

Sitting on my bedroom floor,

I talked to Gwen Stefani and Courtney Love,

who sang of doll parts and spiderwebs

and of a beauty pageant I never wanted to win.

I looked at their bodies on the album artwork,

these bodies that my own mirror reflection would grow to resemble,

their voices the purest stream springing from the speakers,

I let their songs wash over me and fill the spaces

between my atoms,

the divide between my toes,

and the gap between my legs,

the place I never knew could feel so holy,

could feel so divine.

Reviews

[Suze]

YOU are devine!