Mom! Help! Pope Benedict XVI is hiding under my bed again!

I’m not a church-going man. Then again, I’m not a hardware-store-going man, museum-going man, sports-event-going man, IKEA-going man, or a California Pizza Kitchen-going man. Hell, I’m not much of a man at all! I’m a 38-year-old boy symbolically living in his parents’ woefully unfurnished basement trying to download episodes of Malcolm in the Middle from KaZaA with a 56k modem.

But enough about my poor self-esteem, this post is about church! I can’t pinpoint exactly why I find church so abhorrent, but it might have a lot to do with the word “church”. Too many ch’s in such a small word. It’s awfully aggressive if you ask me. I wonder if flock-strayers like me would be more amenable to church if it was called something else, like “congregation” or “Best Buy”. And the socialization! I don’t know about you, but my idea of a good time is sitting on my couch watching Six Feet Under and pondering my fragile mortality at 1am until I slip into a deep panic attack, not going to church at 10am on a Sunday! These two are inherently incompatible and would require a concerted effort in changing my whole lifestyle to accommodate which includes, as I have already mentioned, symbolically living in my parents’ unfurnished and cold midwestern basement where the only god that gets worshipped is the benevolent TRUMP!

Here’s the real reason I’m not a church-going man: I was raised Catholic. That’s strike one. The Catholic upbringing was, however, casual and not strictly enforced. We went to church during only the following occasions: 1) Easter, 2) when someone died, and 3) whenever my mom felt guilty about not going to church more often, which was always a one-and-done sort of affair. I went through all the sacraments (that’s what they’re called, right? Sacraments? It’s been a while): baptism, communion, confirmation, juggling, motorcycle repair, and pestilence. Each one felt forced, and I went through the motions because it felt like something I had to do like school or eating my vegetables or hitting James Blum in the face with my hard Playmate lunchbox when I was 9-years-old.

Real baptisms are scarier.

Baptism: I was a baby when I was baptized, which means I didn’t provide my express written consent of approval. Of course, the ceremony is as relatively harmless as waterboarding and, other than having 45 withered old relatives gaze at you while you cry, it’s a simple procedure akin to open-heart surgery. The priest merely says some words in a sing-song voice while gently trickling holy water on your head (holy water is different from regular water as it comes in 28 oz bottles instead of the usual 16.9 oz bottles and it says “Holy™ Water by Dasani®” on them). After that, someone wakes up Uncle George who fell asleep in his car in the church parking lot, and everyone visits the home of the baptized child for finger sandwiches and conversations about the football game they all missed.

Communion: I was 7 years old when I had my First Communion, which means I got to eat some bread and drink some wine. Mostly I was just excited to eat some bread and drink some wine, but here’s the rub: the bread is a blessed circle of the driest cardboard your little non-Catholic brain can imagine, and about 245 herpes-mouthed 55-year-old wine moms put their lips on that Blood of Christ goblet before you got your turn. Now, this doesn’t matter to a child who just wants to eat some bread and drink some wine. But as an adult who isn’t all-in on the Catholic thing, this seems absolutely banana-fucking bonkers. An entire building of people drinking from the same cup, and the only line of defense is a filthy cloth? No wonder everyone in Europe got the plague.

Confirmation: I don’t know what this is exactly, because by the time I was 14 years old I had completely checked out of the whole religion mentally and was starting to ask myself deep questions like “If God already knows everything and therefore knows the full trajectory of my life before I even live it, why does He really care about how I act on this Earth?” and “What if our universe is just dust on a giant’s fingernail, whose universe is just dust on his fingernail, and that universe actually has visible evidence of the barbaric crocodile gods whom they all worship while we’re here wondering why God chooses to show Himself as blobs on pieces of toast?” Anyway, with Confirmation I recall needing a sponsor (who turned out to be an equally apathetic uncle), and going on several late-night Christian retreats with the other kids. Branden Garner laughed so hard at something that he puked up his pizza during dinner. That’s the only thing I remember. Obviously the faith and peace stuff didn’t make as much of an impression.

Josh Lyman from The West Wing — a Case Against GOD?!?!?

So then what? Confirmation happened in 2001 and I haven’t looked back since. Maybe it’s because those airplanes flew into the Twin Towers and The West Wing did a very special episode that was the worst thing on TV since they showed those airplanes hitting the Twin Towers, causing me to lose faith in humanity AND God in one fell swoop. Thanks, West Wing.

I labeled myself as agnostic in college for a while because I took the coward’s way out of sitting on the fence about it. I felt so fucking cool putting that on my Facebook profile, like “LOOK AT THIS SHIT, IDIOTS.” By then I was definitely not going to church anymore unless someone died, and even then I got out of it because I was a student at college doing studious things like downloading all the Phish shows I could get my hands on and catching up on episodes of Lost. I remember during one funeral — it was probably some horribly racist great aunt — when it was time for Communion. I sat there in the pew turning red because I could tell every eye in the room was on me. Just imagine everyone in a congregation staring at you with their cold Jesus-loving eyes while the priest has fourteen young boys locked up in the basement. How was I supposed to go up and PRETEND to be all-in on the Catholic thing. Honestly, that would have been more embarrassing.

I have my own hang-ups about funerals that I can get into another time, but I’ve made a decision that, if I can help it, I’m not stepping into a church anymore for the rest of my stupid life. I suppose that was the point of all this rambling in the first place. Fuck church!

*goes to hell*