“Dear Diary,” I continued, “I’ve formed an alliance more fulfilling than anything I’d ever dreamed possible. There, in that rudely constructed upstate house of worship…”
My parents had been at my Nana Minnie’s funeral. Both my parents had seen me comforted by the towheaded David Copperfield with his face like fresh-baked bread and his hair like butter, that countrified swain who’d pressed a Bible book into my hands and bade me find strength therein. Now, as they read my diary, most likely they imagined that I was enacting some tantric upstate Kama Sutra with that earnest blond prefarmer.
“Dear Diary,” I wrote, stringing my parents along, “never have I imagined this level of satisfaction….”
I wrote, “Until now my eleven-year-old heart has never truly loved another….”
My mother would be reading aloud by now. In the same elegant voice with which she did voice-overs for Bain de Soleil television commercials, she’d say, “I have at last found happiness.”
Both my parents would leer at the pages as if they were a sacred text. As if this, my humble fake diary, were the Tibetan Book of the Dead or
Seeing my words, she and my dad could only stare in disbelief.
“‘I commit my eternal love,’” my dad would continue, “‘to my supreme lord and master…’”
“Lord and master,” my mom repeats.
“‘Jesus,’” reads my dad.
My mom says, “Jesus Christ.”
DECEMBER 21, 10:34 A.M. PST
My Flirtation with the Divine
Gentle Tweeter,
Jesus Christ made the best fake boyfriend ever. Wherever my family traveled, at our homes in Trinidad or Toronto or Tunisia, the doorbell would ring, and some aboriginal delivery peon would be at our front step bearing a vast bouquet of roses from Him. Dining at Cipriani or Centrale, my dad would order me the
My father would order the
My mother would put on a serene Xanaxed mask. The buzzwords of her life were
But I’d cut her off with a “Wait!” I’d fish a PDA from the pocket of my skort and pretend to find a new message. “It’s Jesus,” I’d interrupt, making my parents wince. “He’s texting me!” Their own dinners cooling, I’d make them bide their time. If either of them said a word of protest I’d shush them as I pretended to read and respond. Without looking up, I’d squeal, loud enough for the assembled diners to overhear, “Christ loves me!” I’d frown at my little PDA screen and say, “Jesus disapproves of the dress you’re wearing, Mom. He says it’s too young for you, and it makes you look slutty….”
My parents? I’d become their worst nightmare. Instead of hoisting the ideological banner they’d so proudly bestowed upon me, instead of accepting the torch of their atheist humanism, I was scrolling through the messages on my phone, telling them, “Jesus says that tofu is evil, and all soy is of the Devil.”
My parents… in the past my parents had put their complete faith in quartz crystals and hyperbaric chambers and the I Ching, so they didn’t have a credible leg left to stand on. Throughout this dinner stalemate the waiter had remained steadfast, standing beside our table, and I now turned to him and asked, “Do you, by any chance, serve locusts and wild honey?” I asked, “Or manna?”
As the waiter opened his mouth to respond, I’d turn back to the PDA in my lap and say, “Hold on! Jesus is Tweeting.”
My father caught the waiter’s eye and said, “Perry?” To his credit, my dad knows the name of every waiter in every five-star restaurant in the world. “Perry, would you give us a moment alone?” As the waiter stepped away, my dad shot my mom a look. Almost imperceptibly his eyebrows arched and his shoulders shrugged. They were trapped. As former Scientologists and former Baha’is and former EST-holes, they could hardly question me as I merrily keyboarded my devotions to my own choice of belief system.
Resigned, my father lifted his fork and waited for my mother to follow suit.
As they each put a first bite of food into their respective mouths, I announced, “Jesus says I should publicly support the next GOP candidate for president!”
Hearing that, both my parents gasped, inhaling food and choking. Swilling wine, they were still coughing, everyone in the dining room watching them wheeze, as my dad’s phone rang. Breathless, he answered it. “A product survey?” he asked, incredulous. “About what? About the
And for that, MohawkArcher666, I thank you wholeheartedly.
DECEMBER 21, 10:37 A.M. PST
A Tiny Golden Overdose
Gentle Tweeter,
This, this is how the precious little kitten, Tigerstripe, came into my life.
Post-upstate, post-Nana, my parents and I were staying at the ever-lovely Beverly Wilshire hotel. We were eating breakfast in our suite, meaning: I was watching my parents eat. Meaning: My dad was playing his deprogramming games, withholding apricot Danishes and cheese strudels to make me renounce my torrid hookups with Jesus. In retaliation I kept my phone cradled to one ear, billing and cooing and otherwise ignoring my parents’ withering glances as I giggled. “Stop it, Jesus! Stop being such a tease!” I allowed my girlish eyes to flit across the white tablecloth, bypassing the flowers and the orange juice, and rest on my mother’s glaring expression. Pointedly, I examined her, scrutinizing her lips and neck before resting my attention on her bustline as I said, “No, they’re not! No, Jesus, she didn’t!”
My mom shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She lifted the napkin from her lap and daubed at the corners of her mouth. With elaborate Ctrl+Alt+Casualness, she looked at my father and asked, “Antonio, my love, would you pass me the sugar?”
Speaking to my fake Jesus boyfriend, just as I’d spoken to my entire fake circle of girlfriends, I laughed and said, “She’s not!” I said, “I’m sitting right here, and she’s
My father passed my mother the sugar and said, “Maddy, dear, you need to not talk on the phone at the breakfast table.”
My mother began, with the utmost Ctrl+Alt+Sadism, to spoon copious amounts of sugar into her coffee.
The phone still pasted to my head, I bulged my eyes at my dad and mouthed the words
How to rebel against parents who celebrated rebellion? If I did drugs and pulled a train of outlaw bikers and
