Going All Bibley

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

I am listening to a friend (who’s brought ceviche!) discuss the finer distinctions of gayness with my son. Right now, for instance, they are discussing whether or not Jimmy is gay for liking crushed ice. At this point, I’m forced to interject from the couch that there is nothing gay about crushed ice in his delicious beverages, and Jimmy states that, while there’s nothing wrong with being gay, he simply isn’t, and this is true (both thisses) and it makes me smile into my sleeve. I have raised my son well, despite or because of all those times I took him to see Medea on Mother’s Day or the play about the four-year-old girl with the imaginary friend who calls her a “fucking whore” and makes her kill their baby. The Medea was terrible—it being Mother’s Day and all, we were literally the only people in the seats, so the Greek Chorus addressed himself solely to us, which was a lot of pressure, really, and they’d updated it so Jason and Medea were, like, ad execs, but all sturm und drangy instead of suave and drunk like we like our (m)ad men now. The second play, though, Mr. Marmalade, was outstanding. It was hilarious and excruciating and absurdist and real, a real tour de force in abusive imaginary friends, with a really positive, uplifting ending when the imaginary friend imaginarily kills himself. We had a really great talk about it at the end, too. “I sort of liked it,” Jimmy said. “But why did she kill the baby?”

“That's a fine question, son!” I said, and then we had a nice chat about infanticide and emotional abuse while listening to some gangster rap.

I feel really sorry for people who’ve gone all Christ-y, who see the world around their preciouses not as fabulous teaching moments but as Satan breathing threateningly in their direction all the time. I look through my friends from high school’s Facebook pages, something I rarely care about, and they’re all completely weirdo stay-at-home moms, which is fine, but really nutty ones, which isn’t. I have never seen a post or update from them that didn’t use the word “blessing.” I have never seen a post or update that was about them instead of their kids. And they spend an awful lot of time thanking God for sending them the angel kisses that are the blessing du jour—which is inevitably a really good parking spot at their son’s soccer game that clearly proves they are among the Elect. GOD DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR PARKING SPACE, OLD FRIENDS I AM AFRAID TO WRITE TO BECAUSE YOU HAVE GONE REALLY WEIRD NOW. Fuck, they are freaking me out! I didn’t go to high school in West Virginia! I went to high school in Thousand Oaks!

So many of them went Bibley, and I just don’t understand where they went wrong. In fact, if I’m remembering right, the Bibliest one of all used to be Jewish. I can only wonder what her trim, stylish, educated mother thinks. Maybe I’ll write her. I bet she’s got some thoughts stored up!

When Jimmy was a little boy, we lived in a beautiful Craftsman bungalow in the Long Beach ghetto, and he got bussed everyday out to a really terrific elementary school in Lakewood. (I mean it: TERRIFIC!) The school was almost perfectly mixed; it was like 30/30/30 black/white/Hispanic, and, like, 10 percent Hmong. It was gentle and amiable and well-kept and had murals, and the look of adoration Jimmy gave his adorable blonde 24-year-old teacher the first day of kindergarten made tears shoot horizontally out of my eyes.

It was the next year, when I happened to take him to school on Halloween (I had a teacher’s meeting, so no school bus) that the weird suburban suck asserted itself. I’d applied some really half-assed monster makeup for him, and within a few minutes of our arrival, they had the two of us in the bathroom trying vainly to scrub it off. Were the Christianist parents in arms about the devilish Halloween? “It’s not so much that,” the principal said (emphasis hers). “We just find it distracts from the school day! But we will be having a Red Ribbon march in the afternoon!” I was so outraged, I almost ran for school board, but what would my platform have been? No more red ribbon parades? I’m for drugs?

Last week, SadlyNo.com, one of my favorite and meanest websites, which tends to find the most retarded Christianist wackadoodlia out there so as to mock the shit out of it, highlighted some Master Insano lady pastor from Jacksonville, Florida (of course), who said that devils and demons get into us via any candy bought in the Halloween season (because witches pray over it), and that bonfires are pagan (because ever notice that high schools only have them in the fall, which is when the witches pray to the Corn God?), and if she’d known how she was being led astray in high school, well ... oh, honestly, I have no idea. It’s a hoot, though. You should really read it.

And so it turns out that I am just as judgmental and superior and Elect as the weird old friends I’m no longer friends with—quite possibly more so, since for all I know they do all their Jesusing in the Metropolitan Church of Christ (that’s the majority gay one) or hang out at the Catholic Worker feeding the poor on weekends. But we all know they don’t, right? We know they’re getting their marching orders from Falwell and Dobson instead. We know this without having to ask.

I do know this: I’m not going to call my weird old friends for coffee, but I’m now on pins and needles waiting for our 20th reunion, and I only have to wait two more years. I want to see them as one wants to see strange reptiles in a zoo, with morbid, unkind, un-Christian curiosity, as though they are odd specimens who are not human in any way whatsoever but are merely there for my superior bemusement. I recognize the mark this leaves upon my soul, and yet I don’t care.

What a blessing that will be upon my day.

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