Christ is not your Commodity
I'm writing this in a mall that holds three very different parts of my past. But all of these revolved around Pharisees, scripture spewing types with a penchant for clambering up the economic ladder.
There are a few ways to draft this, but I have become a Philistine and choose to do things in the crudest sense possible. I'm no longer young, I don't have the patience for artifice or protecting the sensibilities of people whom have no hesitation to sell others down the river, for a laugh. Fuck You.
In my early 20s, I was a rabid bible thumper and like all cults, it revolved around the obsession with ideological purity and occulting personal shame. In this case, of the fact that I liked cock. In that hazy period when the Internet revolved around loud beeping electronic interlocutors, information of everything from theology, gender studies and bad resolution porn, was pouring out on screens everywhere.
The pearl clutching hypocrites, bred on some sort of tropical Victorian bodice ripper morality, were horrified that the youth of tomorrow were being fed Judith Butler and watching Christina Agulera moan around a Belle Epoch Paris Boudoir in Lingerie. Early 21st Century Globalization was this period of high-art irony. People who made millions selling bottled soda with Britney doing fellatio on a snake, sent their Methodist princesses to Sunday School, while snidely commenting on the cheap athleisure clothes of poorer parishioners.
There was this really nasty episode when I had to endure this Princess bimbo, in a university lecture theater of all places. We were talking about the Pride Movements and the rise of middle class Christian evangelism in Asia, how most societies clung to “Asian Values” while decision makers never revealed their elite prejudices. She stiffened with the erect bearing of a Brimstone Preacher, but in this case her shoulders were bare and the neckline plunged to the point where nothing was left to the imagination. She declared to the heathens thusly
“But being gay is wrong, it says so in the Bible. God says its wrong.”
I was doubly nailed, I had to pretend to be asexual to protect whatever position I had in the University evangelical mafia. At the same time, it was an open secret that I had no preference for big booby Nepobaby numbskulls. I was fucked. I stared stone faced at my cheap early generation Dell laptop, and the whine of the inefficient cooling fans, couldn't quench the blood flushed face.
The reason why I understand log cabin Republican types, two decades later in Washington DC is because its almost comically simple to spot them. And the performative aspect is doubly deadly in their shoes; you have to intellectually contort yourself like a circus acrobat and spew out loony tunes Bible theology to match whatever is in vogue with the 700 Club. Then become an inner palace Eunuch to ass wipe the unspeakable horrors of the GOP backroom and finally provide entertainment to the bored spouses.
Why do you think Truman Capote went thermonuclear on the Swans? Because he was some sort of high society faggot courtesesan for these privileged but incredibly cruel cretins.
The correlation is almost a form of causation with these types; the more they spew homophobia and racist sewage, the raunchier and more extreme they get in the bedroom (or restroom, or boardroom, or Spa or gym or I don't know at someone's funeral service). I always found it hilarious that a Chinese corporate bought up Growlr or Scruff, that all the closet case homophobes get outed for the volume of escorts, underaged prostitutes and abused women that they consumed.
I had a “Spiritual mentor” as a member of the evangelical mafia. He knew I wasn't straight and so he had that sort of jock boy disdain for who I was. But he did it in full blown Christian loving kindness. He had a side hustle for selling alkaline water filters, because it was some sort of pseudo scientific nonsense that the Divine had skewed out PH levels to a particular range. So we had to drink water that was non-acidic.
He used my parents' apartment and did a sales pitch to another friend of mine from Dentistry. The poor kid had an autoimmune problem and this “mentor” spent hours trying to convince him otherwise. Of course he didn't buy the sales spiel shit. I was so deeply embarrassed that I allowed this to happen.
After the pitch failed he distanced himself dramatically. We still ran into each other in school,and he kept up the beatific jock/saint/apostolic pretense. But after I ran into trouble, he just stayed away. Except for occasional quips on “staying true to the Word”.
A decade later, I ran into him in the financial district. He was harried and stressed, the picture of the irritated corporate attorney. I glanced his way and he grimaced. I just walked on, merrily talking into my flip phone.
There's this disturbing mix of profit, personal redemption as “get out of jail free” card, and power. Like a bunch of narcissists hogging a Bible just so that they can feel ‘extra’ holy.
