Victory by Surrender (Piers)

Dear Piers,
° I wish you could’ve seen the Priestess’s face as I approached the Altar for Communion.
° I wish I could’ve.
° For the instant she saw me she averted her eyes, and it was God’s own miracle she didn’t trip and dash the Host clear to Kingdom come. And then what a lot of scraping and sanding there’d’ve been:

15. Si Hostia consecrata, vel aliqua ejus particula dilabatur in terram, reverenter accipiatur, et locus ubi cecidit mundetur, et aliquantulum abradatur, et pulvis seu abrasio hujusmodi in sacrarium immittatur.

° So the tile’d've had scratch marks and the Altar Guild’d've had fits.
° I might not’ve been able to see the Priestess’s face, but it didn’t prevent my reading her mind: "O my Daddy was right right right, Nursing would’ve been a happier choice, nothing but bedpans and excremental stench from morn till night, but still--."
° I didn’t blame her, I saw her point.

§

° It‘s exactly a year since the Series of Unfortunate Events at Assumption. Folks who don’t know me still come up, as after the funeral for Andrew’s wife, and thank me for singing the hymns so unselfconsciously. Some folks who know me, like Andrew, are touchingly friendly. Some folks who know me dread me, as if I were some French anticlericalist fundamentally attacking the right to exist of Institutions and Institutionalites that persistently outrage human decency.
° I don’t blame them, I see their point.

§

° I hold in memory C----’s (A Picture of Me) Thanksgiving blog:

My aunt started ranting about John Kerry. I kept my mouth shut . . . . But when she started ranting about sexual preferences, I had to speak up. I held my own and she kept changing her argument. She beat me down anyway.

After the dishes had been cleared, my uncle walked up to the table, where my dad and I were still sitting.

"Here’s the thing," my uncle said. "It says ‘In God We Trust’ on our money. We sing ‘God Bless America.’ We say ‘One nation under God.’ We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."

"Huh?" my dad and I asked together.

"You have to believe in God to be an American," my uncle said. "People who don’t believe in God do not belong in this country."

"I strongly disagree with you," said my dad, a traditional Catholic.

And then the temperature rose.

§

° How peaceful that Thanksgiving Day dinner would’ve been if gentle Giac had devised the responses. For I have learnt from Smart David, and Smart David isn’t called that for nothing.
° First, the samesexers (for I don’t know what the deuce "gay" means. And neither does anybody else, just try to define it yourself, then rerun Kinsey and pay attention this time.)

Aunt: "Gayism is rampant."
Giac: "It seems so, and yet so many die young of AIDS, you’d think they’d be nearly extinct by now."

Aunt: "It’s sinful."
Giac: "Yes, Jewish Law is very clear that they must be put to death."

Aunt: "They prey on children."
Giac: "Well yes, parents have to be on constant guard nowadays. Of course, you mean preying on males, it’s nongays that prey on female teens. Why the Church and the YMCA and Boy Scouts and Schools can’t get it through their heads that two adults must be present whenever there’s a single child, I just don’t know. Protects the child, protects the adult."

Aunt: "I saw two of ‘em kissing during intermission at the Opera, and I just wanted to puke."
Giac: "I know how you feel, so many samesexer guys aren’t even cute. Ewhhhh!"

Aunt: "They’re always parading it in front of folks."
Giac: "That’s God’s own truth, nobody wants to hear about anybody else’s sex life. Well, Jennifer and Brad’s maybe."

Aunt: "I’m surprised to hear you so reasonable, considering those friends you run around with."
Giac: "O, you mean Xak, he does look like a fotomodel. And boy does he know how to dress."

° It can go on and on and on. Surrender after surrender after surrender. Bit after bit after bit of camouflaged retort. And in the end--
° --in the end, nothing. For Aunt was only ever saying, "This is my kitchen, this is my family, this is our belief."
° I don’t blame her, I see her point.

§

° And then comes Uncle.

Uncle: "It says ‘In God We Trust’ on our money. We sing ‘God Bless America.’ We say ‘One nation under God.’ We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion."
Giac: "Very true. Just think of the old Calvinist Blue Laws, you couldn’t buy a CoCola on Sunday. No, America’s never had freedom from religion."

Uncle: "That’s not what I meant."
Giac: "O no no, certainly not."

Uncle: "This nation was founded on religion."
Giac: "Very true. If the Anglicans hadn’t persecuted the Calvinists so, I reckon America would be part of Quebec or Mexico to this day."

Uncle: "The Founding Fathers wrote it into the First Amendment."
Giac. "Well they had to, didn’t they? For they’d left it out of the Constitution itself!"

Uncle: "Hollywood won’t stop till they’ve driven God entirely out of the public schools."
Giac: "Isn’t it amazing? Lord have mercy, we used to have prayer and recite Bible verses every day at ten, you always had to have one memorised. I remember B-- I----- and S---- Y--------, they always raced to be the first to say, "Jesus wept." Made old Miss B----- so mad, she paddled whichever one of ‘em got there first, it was a hoot."

Uncle: "People who don’t believe in God don’t belong in this Country."
Giac: "I know what you mean. I bet there’re twice as many Jews and Muslims and Protestants in this country as Catholic(k)s."

° And I just defy him to try to rescue the Protestants, "Good Lord, Uncle, they don’t even believe in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar!"

° For it’s all about mouthing, it’s all about marking territory, it’s all a plea for attention. Not for nothing did Daddy use to call Crossfire, "The Fussers."

"You’re a worm!"
"You’re a dick!"
"I called you one first!"
"No, I did!"
"Did not!"

American political discourse in a nutshell.

° Jane Austen: "His argument did not merit rational opposition."
° Ben Franklin: "Answer a Fool according to his own Folly."
° Giac: "If I can’t be a bigger Fool than Uncle George and Auntie Kerry, I oughta retitle this blog."

§§§§§

° O yes, Smart David.
° One day a somewhat motheaten young man walked up to the bar at Corner Coffee. He noticed the new Atomic Clock.
° "What happened to the old one?" he asked without any apparent motive.
° "It broke," responded Smart David without any apparent malice.
° "What made it break?" enquired the Motheaten One without any apparent lick of sense.
° "Why do things break?" responded Smart David with smiling, seething, suppressed sarcasm.
° I saw his point.

° Still dumber than Smart David, still defiantly unmotheaten, Giac.

P. S. "Every time I lay eyes on you you’ve grown cuter," said the elegant female as she stroked your cheek after the missa pro defunctis. I told you so.