One of the books that my father gave me, as he patted me on the head when I left for college, was titled 1001 Thing Every College Student Should Know.
I didn’t finish reading it until I was a junior, in the midst of going off my lithium, when I tore apart my dorm room. Although things weren’t looking good, I knew since I finished that book, albeit in a frenzy, I was going to graduate.
And I did. But one piece of advice from that book I still think about is advice that an author only knows from knowing too much. It read (paraphrased): Part of the debate you will have with your advisor will be about God – you will try to convince him God exists, and he will be trying to disprove it. This is part of the process.
For the past month and a half I have been in my hometown. The last thing I read in my New Testament on my bedside before I left The City was, ““A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”
I decided to leave the Bible at home this summer. And I couldn’t even get through one chapter of Deepak Chopra during that summer retreat.
Faith is an interesting thing. It is belief in your disbelief. It is saying, I can’t explain it, so I believe. And I walk around mystified all other days of the year. I wake up and say my prayers for no reason other than some superstition. And it works, makes me happy as a bumblebee, it does.
But I think part of spirituality is being a man just as much as being a symbolic gesture. Every once in a while, I think a man deserves to just be a man, and not exclusively a man of God. Make no mistake, I am no ordinary man. But I deserve to be one every once in a while.
Maybe it had to do with my meds, but I think just as much as deep down we want to believe in God, just as deep down, we want to believe that there is no God. We don’t want everything we do to have tabs taken on like Santa Clause. We want to think nobody is watching, except two cats.
Between you and me, I am very nervous about certain things, and anytime I engaged in onanism while I was there, it was in the bathroom with the door closed, because God forbid, a cat sees me compromised. Also when I edited my second book with my editor, I refused to poop while I was at her house. And I told her this, then did the shit shuffle back to my house, more than once. We read about “Jack” having sex with a prostitute’s neon pussy in Las Vegas, but I was too ashamed to have her hear me poop at the age of 23. She was probably 70.
I think what I’m trying to say is, sometimes we are uptight, about certain things, and we don’t even know the reason why (insert God). And, I don’t think that I was any worse of a person because I took off a month from worshiping Jesus. I don’t think it was great, ya know. Like Ozzy Osbourne died and I threw out a couple hail Satan’s, but like, so what, am I going to go to Hell?
Maybe man. God gives us direction. And without it, eventually, I got sort of aimless. But the truth is, those first three weeks, I slept maybe 18 hours a day, because this little Steamboat Willy, has been running non-stop spirituality self-improvement for the past 3 years. And I was dog tired. Dog tired. The worst part is that I don’t have much to show for it besides a binder of poetry, but that is a different story.
Play: Eve 6 – Inside Out
The story is this: No matter how good you are, you’re going to want a release from all that you are holding onto – your beliefs or whatever it is. And no matter how bad you are, it eventually gets old.
I didn’t exactly stop believing in “God.” Just not Him. And just not any schizophrenic fairy stuff. Just morals for morals sake, not because I’m going to hell if I didn’t do it. And a few fuck offs to brainwashed should-be-blues.
God, I’m really meandering. Like, I needed a break from God. And here is the joke. My Mentor, referred to as Ozzy henceforth, came back with a crucifix necklace.
He’s told me so many stories. One was about how he once he once told a girl he was fucking that he was devil and it made her come like a rocket.
Like I said, I think deep down, we all want a release.
I had some better story he told me I was going to write, but in his honor, I forgot it.
Here is my story: A crucifix necklace is the highest honor a man can be given, in my opinion. And you can’t buy one. Well you can, but then you might as well think you can buy your way into heaven, and Michael Corleone proved that isn’t possible in The Godfather III.
I’ve been given three cross necklaces in my life.
One I found on the ground, and I wore it when I walked across the country, and biked west as some Jesus freak.
I lost it in Monterary. And you lose an emblem like that when you have lost an honor. Pride or Holier-Than-Thou is what occurred, and I was crucified, I’ll tell ya that for free.
The other was a Celtic cross given to me by my mother, which I was going to wear on the bike trip, but I lost right before I left. Her husband, had the same one, and gave it to me, so make what you will of that.
And now Ozzy, gave me one.
Right before he and his family returned I cleaned up and bought a few gifts, because that is what my mother did for me when I returned from camp when I was a kid. Very American.
I bought him a bottle of whiskey, even though I don’t drink.
And the irony is that I got him the gift that I thought he would want, but any man who gets you a cross, wants to believe. And any man who buys another a bottle of whiskey, wants a drink.
We want we each other have, but we were given what we’ve already got. And so, the jury is out. I put the crucifix on; it was blessed by St. Francis; and it burns – that’s not a joke. Maybe the whiskey burns for a different reason than the way it tastes nowadays. Either way, I’m sad to say, I’m happy as hell to be in disbelief again.
Ben Bonkoske 