Jesus Jumped My Hotrod

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

“They told your son he was going to hell!” Carrara yelled.

They ...

They ...

WHAT?

It must have been two in the morning Saturday night. My sister Sarah was having her a birthday, and we had been to the beach, then to the Dirty Bird, and finally to Main Street, a Laguna Beach gay bar where I’d once seen a growly, huge black lady sing “Do It in the Butt” while a weird “sexy lady” girl crotched on people like a baby monkey. This night, I had done a marvelous interpretive dance to a shitty club cover of a beloved old Wham song, but the patrons were not enthused. Also, they played “songs” with lyrics like “I’m the shit/Up in that bitch” and “I’m in Miami, bitch!/Now get me more Coronas!” and we were so horrified we had no choice but to stay till closing. It was actually very bad manners of us to show up with our boyfriends and husbands and then self-segregate their dance floor, and I don’t blame them one little bit for hatin’ all over my dramatic rendition of “Everything She Wants,” despite its grandeur. We love the Main Street bar!

art by Paul Takizawa

And so we were home, to our temporary lodgings anyway, an odd resort that had once clearly been cheap townhomes, but where the price was right and we could stow a dozen fellow travelers, and my buddy Paul and his spicy meatball Carrara were explaining that the Bible thumpers in the hot tub—who were there for some sort of Christ Convention—had told my 15-year-old son that if he had ever lied or lusted in his heart, he would be going to h-e-double-hockey-sticks his own terrible self. For being terrible. As of course my sweet, charitable, thoughtful, helpful boy is. Straight to the devil with that one, please!

Carrara, who is hot and smart and for some reason is totally into my goofy friend Paul (so much so that she’d spend her Saturday night hanging out in a converted townhome with him because he didn’t want my son to have to watch TV by himself while the grownups ran amok and got liquored up with the gheyz), got her mother lioness on, protecting my son from the soul snatchers for me since I was off living my life of homosexual sin. She yelled at them about evolution and fossils and whether or not someone who lived in the Amazon and had never seen a missionary would also be going to hell (their answer: DUH), and much much more. She explained about the Big Bang, of which they had never heard, and protons, neutrons and electrons, of which they also hadn’t. She employed incontrovertible facts they quickly attempted to controvert, before they played their trump card to my son, the One True Fact: that he was doomed unless he borned himself all over again. They were like the brightest minds of the sixth century, and had their pastor told them Jesus wanted them to strap on a bomb and walk into downtown, I imagine they would have praised-Jesus-God-is-Great.

I was jealous of the hot tub Christian-and-lioness fun, but I was certainly glad the hands I’d left my boy in had turned out to be such capable ones. I had only one additional piece of advice for my sweet son: “Next time someone tells you you’re going to hell,” I advised him silkily, “you tell them, ‘It’s really nice of you to be concerned for me. I appreciate that you care about my soul and whether or not I’m going to hell.’ Then you tell them, ‘BUT FUCK YOU!’” We howled and yelled and did not use our indoor voices despite the shitty thin walls of the hotel suite (townhome), and oh, I wanted a piece of those women. Leave your Taliban mitts off my kid!

Morning came, as is its wont, and when we packed all our gear and all ourselves into my tiny VW, we noted that Paul, having with his customary generosity offered to drop us at the club, had left the lights on all night, and my car, she would not start. And as is always the case in cases like that, the first people to drive up, offer a jump, and quickly and capably attach the cables were the women of the hot tub. Here was my chance for my stiletto tongue, but all I could say was “Thank you, how kind of you, thank you so much,” until one asked, with a beatific smile and out of fucking NOWHERE, “Are you a Christian?” and I answered perkily and with a strategic dismissal of my Catholic half, “I’m Jewish!” Which wasn’t much of a comeback, but I hoped at least it grossed them out. What I should have said was “FUCK YOU!”—after they jumped the car—but I didn’t have the balls.

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