God before religion

When I was young God was just there.

I wasn’t absolutely sure what his name was and who was the father and who was the son but I spoke to him and was in no doubt he listened.

 

I went to Sunday school of my own volition. I can’t say I learnt a great deal more than sensible advise on what surface it is best to build ones house upon, or that Jacob had a ladder that we, and apparently servicemen, were encouraged to climb, but there was something nice about singing and clapping ensemble and being a child of God.  The smartly dressed ladies smiled at me a lot. I liked that.

 

I wasn’t sure either as I grew up, whose churches I had attended. I never studied the boards outside. Jesus always came up and saved the day, so I knew we were Christain.

It smelt nice. Incense or civic hall. I didn’t mind which. Polish or dust. They all smelt safe.

 

At some point I discovered that in France I had in fact been christened Catholic.

I found that exciting. I was a signed up team member after all. Colour and statues and noble fellows waving smoking golden balls and making shapes in the the air with two bendy fingers.

Apparently we had an official spirit…great!…candles, history and each a personal saint, superb.

 

A devout Irish Aunt came to visit and offered to take me to mass. I was thrilled and jumped at the chance, but soon found out it was a club to which I could lay no claim. They had secret squirrel speak. The priest said something that I gathered was not off the top of his head, and everyone but me knew what was coming next and replied in unison.

I felt  as I always did when I couldn’t recite my times tables in class, and half expected being asked to leave the room again, to the same sound of laughter.

 

Some people got to eat and drink something up front like prefects, and made an orderly queue. They didn’t invite me or some of the others, who seemed to know why.

My aunt went too without a by your leave. Rude!

I had never had my white dress day which wasn’t my fault, so I had to stay put.

I felt foreign. I didn’t know any of the songs.

 

I decided I should stick with the gang that owned the hymns in school assembly. The songs I knew well. Theirs was a benign God, an inclusive God and a charitable God. We had only to listen. We had to say Amen after the finale and learn one prayer. All were welcome and Jesus loved us each and everyone.

 

Were they Protestant?

 

Is everyone that follows Jesus’ teachings, who is not a Catholic - a Protestant?

 

Even the nutters who kiss snakes in His name and have Beelzebub

bitch slapped from their temples?

 

Who tells you what the difference is between a Baptist and a Methodist and an Evangelist and an Anglican and a Seventh Day who ever they are, and do that last lot have anything to do with Craig David?

 

I left school and lost touch with my class mates. I lost too any chance I had to ask who we were.

 

I miss the God of my enfance.

 

World Aids Day

It is early hours. I like to take care when i write but fuck it, i am drunk and it seems it doesn’t take much. Still, I suppose a blog should be about your head space. So be it. I am not too gone so as not to use a full stop…or to remember how many ‘o’s there are in which ‘to/too’.

I have just got home. Shocking I say. I am a lady of the suburbs who likes to do her Guardian Kuruko (sp?) before bed and tends to wake up oft these days at 4 am with too much on her mind.

I went out at 11pm. Bonkers.

World Aids Day today…. yesterday…I have not yet slept.

I remember Phil McCavity. His face  round, as though he stands here by me now. I see him opposite me on the train. We are singing Xray Spex and The Damned. He hams …stormy sea!…and he looks like a bank clerk but for his fluorescent socks and tonight he will wear his mohair jumper and dance like a bastard. He was my friend and I think his dad scared him and i never knew him long enough, not beyond our partying teens, not long enough to get beyond a wrap of speed or our record collection to ask him. We were Gang. The last time I saw him he was standing outside Laindon station, he had discovered the new romantics. His shirt was frothy and I was still a punk and he told me I looked a state. I didn’t mind that he wore his brave new skin like a weapon. I still loved him for who he had been to me. That is how it is with me.

When I was sick with neurosis, Depeche threw a party in the bowling alley. I should have gone. I found another reason not to. Phil was there so I was later told….in a wheel chair. Four years earlier I hadn’t known he had had sex. He wasn’t out. Then he was dead and I never got to tell him how his was a face that stuck around for me. I had wanted to find him for a long time after chance collected me and sent me skating, but i lost him to london and then to Aids, by which time he would have no idea that I laid claim to him at all.

I sang at G.A.Y tonight.

Someone poured me a slug of cognac that was many times greater than my choice of shot size. I drank it nonetheless…like a cup of tea that ceases to steam, and I changed into a mouth that works and eyes and legs that do not. I sang in some form. Who knows if it sounded right. I do not. My monitors seemed not too be working. I wasn’t too bothered. The crowd was dense…were they with me? I don’t know. I wasn’t too bothered. I smiled into the cloud of smoke and I sang hearing only the room and I felt well enough at home.

I sang Don’t Go…to a Yazoo backing track. I have not done that since last i was with Vince. It was faster than I remembered..my voice seems to have dropped lower than an old man’s naggers…this track was pitched for a girl. Was I ever a girl?

I was on and then i was off and i don’t know where the time passed.

I met some very nice people today. Briefly in that way you do when your paths cross fleetingly and you imagine they are not likely to again. Lovely people with faces as familiar as  family members. Ordinary, warm,  famous people wanting to connect for a short while..to dance and to sing and then to fuck off home. I wonder why they ever intimidated me. Age is a great thing…or is that cognac?

It will be light soon. I think I shall sleep tonight