Bad Habits (9 page)

“Different what? This is ridiculous.”

“What is ridiculous?”

“How you guys change everything, your rules.”

“Things change,” said Sister Nancy.

“Yes, I understand that. But when you teach us to follow the Ten Commandments and then switch the meaning behind them, how do we know what to believe?”

“What do you mean we switch the meaning?”

“In grammar school, I was taught the meaning of the First Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.’ When I inquired as to who that God is, so I don’t accidentally worship a strange one, my teacher said, ‘It’s Jesus’s dad, a guy.’ Now God doesn’t have a gender?”

“God is not defined by a gender,” said Sister Nancy.

“Okay, so five years ago if some dude believed what you believe now, a no-gender God, and brought this concept to the Catholic Church saying, ‘Stop worshipping that guy with a beard and a staff and worship the correct God,’ and showed everyone a picture of a light ball, the Church would have said, ‘Stop worshipping that strange god! You are breaking a commandment!’ Right?”

Sister Nancy just stared at me, not knowing how to answer the question.

So I continued. “So this dude and whoever else believed in a no-gender God five years ago are now burning in a pit of flames for all eternity. They will suffer because they were ahead of their time.”

“You are exaggerating the situation,” said Sister Nancy. “If someone was Catholic and believed in God and led a good life, they will not burn in Hell for all eternity.”

“But if you break a commandment and die with a sin on your soul, you are damned to Hell, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so this dude appeared to have a strange god. He didn’t match the Church’s concept and dies without knowing to confess it, so he’s currently with Satan.”

“Go to the principal’s office!”

“Huh?”

“Go. Leave.”

And that was my first day of high school.

I was always fascinated by all things Jesus.

My mom was a pope fanatic, but I was very much obsessed with my man J.C. This was no secret as it was celebrated in my house daily.

The commemorative
I
NY
T-shirts that became popular in the 1970s gave me the idea to design my own
I
J.C.
shirt. I wore it so much it was practically fused to me like body paint. I rocked that thing like it had to be everybody’s business. That is until Greg Baruch took a match flame to it. Not even my waterworks could save my precious J.C. memorabilia. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Greg broke into maniacal laughter as my bedazzled Jesus top burned to the ground.

Losing the top wasn’t going to ruin me, though. I had memories of Jesus everywhere. Most of my friends had posters of Michael Jackson on their bedroom walls. Not me. Oh no. My rock star was Jesus. I had framed pictures of my love cut from the latest tracts from the Jehovah’s Witnesses Watchtower Society that I religiously stole from a neighbor’s front porch. If the Avon catalog had a picture of a Jesus pillow for sale, it was getting cut out and added to my shrine. My side of the wall looked like a curbside memorial to worship Jesus, with dried flowers and rosaries held on by Scotch tape bordering the photographs.

Even though I was embarrassed about religious stuff during puberty, Jesus was the exception.

Meanwhile, my sisters would plaster pictures from
Teen Beat
magazine all over their sides of the walls to exalt their flavor-of-the-month crush. Scott Baio lasted a whole season, but I was sure that my Jesus crush would last a lifetime. I was in deep. I even had a Jesus scrapbook, for Christ’s sake. I was snipping out text to complement my shrine like a serial killer writing a ransom note.

Sex was never discussed in my house, so we girls were left to deal with puberty on our own. So right around the time my boobies started growing, I noticed that Jesus was hot!

I would stare at his poster and want to brush my fingers through his perfectly blow-dried hippie hair. Those baby blue eyes would look right through me. I dreamed that Jesus was performing live in concert. I was the crazy teenager sobbing in the front row, hoping he would sweat on me while playing his guitar.

Based on the Bible, Jesus was not only a great guy, but he listened and cared. Chicks dig that. I wish there was a part in the Bible talking about Jesus’s bitches following him around because I would have totally been one of those bitches back in the day. But the Bible talked only about men who followed him everywhere. Hmm …

Anyway, I mentioned my love of Jesus to a few of my friends and they called me a disgusting pervert. Well then, whoever was in charge of painting his picture should have made him ugly as sin, because if you’re going to put a hot picture of God’s son everywhere, it’s kind of hard to go through puberty and not think he’s sexy.

One time in high school, I snuck my boyfriend over to make out and dry hump in my bedroom. I closed my door and threw my cheerleading pompoms on the floor as he slowly lowered me onto my waterbed.

Yes, I said waterbed.

My boyfriend’s young, stubbly face rubbed against mine as I felt his hard-on through his tight jeans. It felt so incredibly naughty. He pulled my shirt up and started playing with my nipples over my bra. It was sending lightning bolts through my body that were so intense I couldn’t help but moan. With every dry hump, he would press his hard-on against the crotch of my jeans and rub faster and faster. My breathing got louder. I rubbed my fingers across his back and felt his muscles working so hard to maintain the intense rhythm. My eyes started rolling into the back of my head because my body was experiencing such pleasure. I started squirming my body around uncontrollably. Then he leaned into my ear and whispered, “You are so beautiful. You drive me crazy, Jenny.”

I felt a rush between my legs that made me know I was about to have an orgasm. Just as I was about to surrender myself to this intense pleasure, my eyes spotted Jesus staring at me. Those soft, beautiful blue eyes I had always gazed at in my dreams now looked angry at me, like a jealous boyfriend.

Oh my God,
I thought.
Jesus is totally watching me right now
.

The climb of my orgasm had all but disappeared as my boyfriend continued to dry hump me. I didn’t know what to do. I now felt dirty and shameful. I couldn’t continue with Jesus staring me down the way he was.

I had to do something.

“Can we stop for just a second?”

The look on my boyfriend’s face was like he had just been violently awakened from an amazing dream. “What’s wrong?” he said with concern.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this while Jesus is watching.”

My boyfriend was silent for a second, and I could see his puberty brain trying to defend what we were doing in the hopes of continuing our amazing dry-hump session. “How do you know Jesus is watching?” he asked.

“Because I can see him right behind you.”

“Jesus is behind me right now?” he asked.

“Yes, and he doesn’t look very happy.”

My boyfriend slowly began to peel his body off mine and stand up. He pressed his obvious boner into his body as much as possible and then slowly turned around.

His eyes were lined up with Jesus. They both just looked at each other, like a staring contest in a Western showdown. Then he finally spoke.

“You’re right. He does look pissed off right now. What do we do?”

My eyes quickly scanned the room. I spotted a magazine with Cyndi Lauper on the cover. I quickly ripped off the face, grabbed tape, and stuck Cyndi on top of Jesus’s head.

My boyfriend and I looked at each other to see how we felt. We nodded our mutual approval and then threw our bodies onto the waterbed.

As the dry humping continued, I looked at the poster and felt good having Cyndi Lauper watch me dry hump instead of Jesus. For security reasons, I thought it might be a good idea to move our risqué activity to under the blanket in the off chance Cyndi’s head fell off the wall.

Once the blanket covered us, my boyfriend started to unzip my jeans. His hand slowly reached between my legs as he slid his finger inside me. I was so incredibly aroused. I was so grateful that finger blasting didn’t count as premarital sex. I felt my body about to reach orgasm again.

Then I heard: “Jennifer! What the hell is going on?”

I whipped the blankets off and standing in the doorway was my mom. I died in that moment. A part of me is still there in that waterbed, dead.

My boyfriend was frozen with his hand in my pants and I quickly bolted up. My mom started screaming and my boyfriend ran out. My fear tuned out most of what she was yelling, but I remember key words like “disappointed” and “ashamed,” along with questions like “What kind of a girl did I raise?” Then she looked over at my Jesus poster. “What the hell happened to Jesus?”

“I didn’t want him to see what I was doing.”

My mom ripped Cyndi Lauper’s face off Jesus and yelled, “If Jesus has to cover his eyes, then you shouldn’t be doing whatever it is that you’re doing!”

She stormed out of the room and I fell back onto my waterbed, crying.

When I lifted my head up to take a breath, I noticed my Jesus poster.

When my mom had torn Cyndi Lauper off his face, she had pulled Jesus’s eyes off with it. Thanks for solving that problem, Mom.

From an early age, my parents attempted to teach us how to appreciate the things we have and to not envy our friends’ stuff. Unfortunately, watching them envy their friends’ stuff made it extremely difficult for us not to do the same thing.

My dad grew up in a small house with twelve brothers and sisters. He slept in a closet because his house had only two bedrooms. When Vietnam came calling for him at the age of eighteen, it was like an upgrade. He would have his own bed for once.

Unfortunately, and as expected, the stories of him walking the front line in Vietnam were nothing short of horrific. It took years to get some of these stories out of him, but eventually the vault began cracking and stories started spilling.

There were so many people dying around him, he expected not to survive. Just on the off chance he did, he sent his military checks home to Chicago so his mom could put them in his bank account and he could build a life for himself once he was out of the war.