I discovered at my Southern Baptist-funded college that faith in Jesus Christ was generally the common denominator among the obese, the country music fanaticism, and the strong aversion to sexuality. I lived in the only co-ed dorm on campus, but it wasn’t co-ed like my friend KC’s dorm at UC Brekeley. It wasn’t guys who lived across from girls, it was boys on one floor, girls two floors above separated by card-locked doors. Boys were required to check girls into their dorms via a sign in sheet a half block away and vice versa. Doors had to be cracked open at least, with all of our feet planted on the floor, so that on the half-hour, resident advisors who walked by our doors could hear us being Christ-like, whatever the fuck that means.
During my first night in the dorms, as my resident director, Dianne explained all of the rules to us then led us all in something called “prayer”, I looked around giggling hoping to meet the eyes of someone. After the first two minutes of asking God to bless our school year with honor and His values, I started to plead with my eyes for anyone to luck up and laugh or explain this to me or tell me when we were going to go see this buffet style cafeteria everyone was talking about.
No one. No one looked up. I scanned the room again and Dianne, the RD caught me. She actually used her hand to motion me to bow my head. I’d never prayed. Mom called Christians, “a bunch of Hypocrites” and only baptized us after her coworker asked how old we were when we’d been saved. She took me, at twelve and my brother at seventeen to Folsom’s Episcopal church and asked the minister to baptize us, because she’d forgotten to when we were kids. Frankly, I never felt deprived of religion as a kid. Vegetables, maybe. The Good Book? No.
All I knew, really about religion was that my home town was largely Mormon and that I went with my friends Josh and Brandon and their gaggle of siblings and parents to Temple once and my mom told me that no matter what, I should not drink their wine or water or eat their bread or crackers, because I was not Mormon. So when the water and bread was offered to me, I said to the family, “My mother says I should go use the bathroom during this portion of church and flush the toilets twelve times. Excuse me, please.”
And now, on this old, dirty Christian couch at belmont, I just wanted a bathroom break, but instead I’m being coached on prayer by my new resident adviser. This is not what Sinbad did on A Different World. Where the Hell am I?
In line by myself, my new roommate, Dave bumped into me and yipped, “oops, so sorry.”
“Hi.” I said hesitantly. It was becoming more clear to me from his Olivia Newton John Collection, nipple jewelry, and vocal solos in the mirror that Dave was gay, and that made me terribly uncomfortable, but he was the only person who knew every line to Reba’s It’s Your Call album.
“So, my friend Antoinette and I have tickets to see Wynonna at the Ryman auditorium tomorrow. They’re free if you want one.”
I placed pizza, free pepperoni pizza and meatloaf, cheese slices, and pasta salad on my plate. I went to the desert bar, the free desert bar and got a slice of cheesecake, a brownie and frozen yogurt with day old sprinkles and had to grab a second tray to carry it all as I thought about it...
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