Godless

You ever watch a football game and get totally into it? Why? It's not a real battle. It's just a game somebody made up. So how can you take it seriously? Or, you ever see a movie that made your heart about jump out of your chest? Or one that made you cry? Why? It wasn't real. You ever look at a photo of food that made your mouth water? Why? You can't eat the picture. . . . . . Same thing with water towers and God. I don't have to be a believer to be serious about my religion.

Dan is my ordinary friend. Everybody should have at least one ordinary friend and Dan is as ordinary as they come. He is so ordinary that most people have to meet him six or seven times before they remember his name.

Anyway, the reason I hate communion isn't the meat-eating component. I get hungry enough, I'll eat anything. The reason I hate it is because everybody in the church except me, Jason Bock, stands up and gets in line for their little snack. I sit there alone in the pew while everybody stares at me as they file past. I sit there and burn under hellfire and damnation stare my father gives me. And I feel awful. But what choice do I have? According to Father Haynes, if a nonbeliever takes Holy Communion, he'll be damned for all eternity. Of course, being a nonbeliever damns me anyway, so I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I figure it's safer not to partake. Just in case I'm wrong about the whole God thing. So I sit and endure the stares and the pangs and twinges of Catholic guilt, knowing that I am doing the right thing if I'm right, and the right thing even if I'm wrong. Being Catholic is hard. Being ex-Catholic is even harder.

We sit on the floor in front of his oscillating fan and talk sci-fi, and I am thinking how strange this is that I should be sitting peacefully with Henry Stagg in his bedroom when only a week or so ago he punched me in the face for no reason whatsoever.

I once read a short story about some cannibals who didn't turn their victims into steaks and chops and roasts; they made them all into sausages. Because when you're eating a sausage you don't think so much about what you're eating. It's the same with communion wafers. .......... My point is, the miracle of the Holy Communion is when the priest turns these little white disks into the flesh of Jesus Christ. They call it transubstantiation. So, if you buy that, then the host the priest places on your tongue is actually a silver of Jesus meat. But they make the host as different from meat as they can, so even though communion is a form of cannibalism, nobody gets grossed out. Like with the sausages.