Bible Camp
…. He slew all the house of Baasha; he left him not one that pisseth against a wall….”(I Kings 16:11)
I’ll start this off with a list of things that I currently love: Whenever Paulie Walnuts beats the fuck out of someone on The Sopranos, taking a shit while smoking a cigarette and then tossing that very same cigarette in the toilet to get that burnt pube smell . I love masturbating. I love sitting alone in my apartment in my underwear shopping for girls on Facebook and then picturing the hypothetical future we could have together in our two story white suburban home with our fourteen children : Sam, Eric, Tim, Sarah, Superfly, Carson, McSally, Ladypants, Sitting Rock, Mister Mom, Wilber, and Fish-eye Larry. I love masturbating and then shopping for girls on Facebook and then masturbating again.
That’s what I love now, but it certainly is not what I once loved . Believe it or not, before the pornography addiction, and the smoking, and the drinking, and the drugs, and the various pre-marital carnal delights, I used to have one love in the world… God.
So where did this love begin to unravel? Where did Johnny-Uber-Conservative Christian turn into a perverse Holden Caulfield on crack? To answer that question I have to travel back into the furthest depths of my mind… all the way back to bible camp.
Let’s rewind and begin back when I was twelve. There I am, Johnny Christian, in the third pew back in my tiny white suburban church. I’m the small seventh grader with his conservative mother and father. I’m the small seventh grader dressed and groomed by his Mom with slick black hair and a white button down shirt tucked into his corduroy pants. Its mid-June: a week before I will depart via bus to Camp Timberlee, for a week of bible camp.
Camp Timberlee looks so fun to Johnny Christian. In the kitchen of Johnny’s house, with its fresh cut grass and “Dole For President” sign on the front yard, Johnny sits at the table with his mother. They flip through a magazine chronicling the possible adventures a Timberleeite could indulge in. There are kids diving off waterfalls; eye’s ecstatic and alive, huge grins spreading across their face. There is a young black male that is way to happy to have caught his first bass. His eyes are exploding out of their sockets, practically oozing with joy, one hand holding the fish on a line, the other victoriously giving a “thumbs up.” Johnny Christian claps his little boy hands, bible camp is just the thing he has been waiting for all along.
But Johnny Christian is a fucking idiot . Bible Camp will be the worst experience of his life.
Years later as an apathetic young adult in the cold city of Chicago I would start to try to woo a new girl. While the religion aspect of my life had faded, my love for what seemed so innocent and pure still remained. I remember going to her apartment and awkwardly meeting all of her friends after she added me as a friend on Facebook. There was Eric, the suave half-Mexican flannel wearing white boy, Beth the Righteous, Sandra the Dancer, and John the scruffy. We sat down in the middle of the brown disheveled living room amidst used mugs and papers and made the usual small talk.
“What ethnicity are you?”
“I love the weather here.”
“Do you like dogs? I LOVE dogs!”
But the tone turned slowly sour as I realized the content of the people I was with: Christians, a friendship and fellowship that I had long lost. I grew to love these kids and become great friends, but my first encounter with them was somewhat uncomfortable, suddenly there was this aspect of my past getting channeled that was quite rusty.
The religious interrogation started off with ease:
“Do you believe in a God?”
And slowly gained momentum, “WHATS YOUR VIEW ON GAY MARRIAGE?” and “DID YOU KNOW JESUS CAN SAVE YOUR HELLBOUND SOUL FROM BEING A BURNT CRISP?” to “ACCEPT HIM INTO YOUR HEART AND REPENT YOU SORRY ASIAN MOTHER FUCKER. REPENT OR BURN AND BECOME ASS CANDY FOR DEMONS!” At least that’s what it sounded like to me after all of my time in Bible Camp.
Suddenly I felt like an Arab American in 24 . Here I am hanging upside down from the ceiling, rope tied tight around my ankles while Jack Bauer beats me about the face with a flapjack and screams “WHERE IS SALVATION?!” He paces back and forth, muscles protruding from his tight black shirt. Suddenly he turns back and shoves a gun into my mouth, “DAMMIT! WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. I WILL DO WHAT IS NECESSARY. TELL ME WHERE YOUR SALVATION IS!”
The truth was that these kids made me nervous… nervous as fuck actually. But I didn’t know why… was it because they instantly could recite any passage from the bible and know exactly where it was from? Was it because they were interested in saving my hell bound soul? How did I get to this point? I used to love this kind of thing. Y’know, just me and the dudes sittin’ around drinkin’ apple juice and talkin’ some bible. Now it makes me violently shit my pants and quiver in fear.
I’m taken aback for a moment. I hit the ‘ring’ button my cellphone and throw it up to my face.
“HELLO KEVIN? WHATS THAT KEVIN? DEAR GOD MAN, I’LL BE THERE RIGHT AWAY.”
I tip my hat, click my heels, and before I know it I’ve run the fuck out the door. But how the fuck did I ever get to this point? Where the fuck did I go wrong?
Even now there are flashbacks of my week in the hell that was Bible Camp. I remember assembling outside of the cafeteria for role call and swearing my allegiance to Jesus each and every morning before I was allowed to even consider a meal.
I remember my entire Bible Camp crew. The one popular fat kid that told me to eat more Fish products because it would make my semen taste better, “don’t eat or drink any dairy,” he’d say, “that makes it taste like shit. Fish is much better.” I remember Jeremy the kid with tourettes and how he would keep me awake for every single hour screaming “TOASTER,” “FLAMING BABIES,” or “COCK SAUCE,” and words that had to have been in Arabic or Chinese , until the sunlight rose over the lake again and my camp consoler played Christian Speed Metal to wake all of us up for another fun day.
I remember the only black kid in our crew. His nickname was BBQ because a set of hot twins told him that they wanted to smother him in Barbecue sauce and then lick it off his erect nipples.
I remember that each and every day I would sin , and because I sinned I would have to pick up rocks at the bottom of the Timberlee lake, drop them in a bucket, walk the bucket up a hill, and then drop the rocks down the hill. A motion I would repeat over and over and over and over again for penance.
I remember my entire cabin getting lost during an outdoor candle vigil. At this point the entire camp had a Pentecostal preacher giving lectures for three and a half hours every single day. He told us to be curious about pornography was a sin. He told us that swearing and other socially unacceptable behavior was a sin. He told us we had to be saved or we would face eternal hellfire. One night he told us we could either take a candle and follow him out into the forest or go back to our cabins and continue in our life of sin. When I asked our camp consoler if we could go back (as I was already saved) he sentenced me to pick up 500 rocks on the lake the next day. On the way there, through the twist and turns of the dark road in the roaring pitch black forest we somehow got lost and ended up in the older girls section of the camp. We walked in on what can only be referred to as a miraculous sight of girls triumphantly lifting their shirts over their heads. We punched at our dicks in an attempt to prevent any future sin.
And slowly all of these days morphed into each other. Rocks on the beach, a pledge to Christ, old has browns and eggs, three hours of learning how I was going to hell, and then complimentary swimming lessons.
I remember one day when all of our camp activities came to a halt when one camper attempted to hang himself with the drawstring from the window shades in our cabin. There he was tying the string in a Boy Scout knot around his neck. Saying that nothing mattered, saying that no one would ever like or accept him.
I remember picking up rocks on a beach with another cabin member with freckles and red hair.
“This is such bullshit,” he said scooping up a pile of rocks.
“What is?”
“This entire camp, it’s a crock of shit. I remember my Mom showing me pictures of kids jumping off of waterfalls and kayaking, but all we do it get yelled and punished for being ourselves.”
And that’s what that week was: A censorship and oppression of sorts. I’ve been trying to shake the distaste I have for organized religion ever since.
And I think that deep down there is a God. I think that deep down there is a reason I am here and that I am living. Deep down I believe in a heaven and a hell and a right and a wrong. But it’s because of memories like these… it’s because of memories like these that I sometimes don’t believe in Humans.
Filed under: Personal Entry, Season 1