They are called Exit, and I stare at the band on stage in utter horror. It’s not because they are unapologetically Christian yet play rock music–which in my normal state of mind I would find a sacrilege–but rather it’s because of what their stupid, white-washed, over-polished squeaking mascaraing as rock ’n roll is making me feel–a longing for God I’ve never, ever felt before. This is NOT who I am, goddammit. I hate Jesus, I hate these guys, I hate everything about religion. Yet something is melting inside of me and spreading this warm, thick paste inside my chest, and it slides down slowly to my stomach, my arms, my legs.
The melting makes me want to cry. Come on man, come on! I’m sitting next to my friends, my band mates and other punks and misfits who are coming up with increasingly creative ways of mocking the conniving preachers on stage disguised as just “one of you guys” who tour high school gyms around Finland like the one we are in right now, trying to convert their impressionable teenage audiences who are forced to attend during school hours by the teachers and the school system. Just minutes ago, I was egging my friends on with the insults, leading the charge to protest state-sanctioned brainwashing, and now I’m about to shed tears for Jesus? Imagine how my buddies would rip into me. What in the world is happening?
At fourteen, I pretty much wear only three t-shirts: one that has the image of a torched skeleton of a SS soldier with a stenciled text The only good fascist is a dead one; one with a beautiful young woman whose hair is partially shaved off and wires attach to her bald skull with a caption: Stop animal testing, use yuppies; and one with a defaced picture of the Royal Mother with ransom text running over her eyes and mouth, saying God Save the Queen. I read books like Thus Spake Zarathustra and Das Kapital(or at least the first thirty pages of them) mostly because of their anti-religious zeal. A guy who dresses like that and reads stuff like that does not cry for Jesus, or for any god or master for that matter.
But it’s something about the band’s earnestness, their willingness to go against everything that’s cool in the name of a higher calling. They believe in something far more than I’ve ever believed in anything. I want the conviction. I want that kind of a foundation.
After the show is over and the janitor is piling up the rows of orange plastic chairs, their rubber-capped legs thumping on the gym parquet and sending out hollow echoes in the large hall, I linger by a wall, not exactly knowing why. Watching the band bag their instruments on stage while chatting to each other, visibly happy with their performance, I’m hoping they’d notice me. And then what? Lay their hands on my shoulders in a circle and pray for me, pray with me? I don’t know, goddammit. I don’t know. But I want to be in their company, to have a purpose beyond all the numbing nonsense that normal teenagers and adults alike fill their lives with.
Suddenly one of the band guys turns to me and acknowledges me with a smile, probably readying to bring a lost sheep into the fold. A hot flash runs through me. I straighten up and scramble towards the Exit, acting as if I’d seen a friend in the distance. I haste a spiraling staircase up to the school halls, trying to blend in and disappear into the herds of recessing school kids in case Jesus or some other divine kidnapper is after me, reaching for my shoulder with his blood-dripping hand. I’d much rather lose my soul than lose face.
Post Script: This piece was originally the first chapter of my book The Recovering Materialist. It was only due to the sage counsel of my wife/editor that I settled with the army draft experience as the first chapter. I couldn’t see the wisdom at the time when Vrindaranya suggested the change, but now it’s so obvious that, although this one is fine as a stand-alone piece, it would not have worked very well in the book. This kind of thing is why you keep good editors around!