“The best part about being male is a female.”

The two-mile long corpse.

Christmas and Easter are about the only times I attend church anymore. So only a couple days ago I was sitting in a Catholic mass, considering the people around me and wondering how many of them were there as I was; keeping the family happy and foregoing the argument and disappointment that would follow revealing to your loved ones that you do not believe in any god, let alone their God.

I had a very Catholic upbringing in so much as I attended Catholic school for much of my life, was an Altar Boy back when there were “Altar Boys” and not “Altar Servers” and studied Catholic theology in school for more than 12 years. As one could logically expect, there was a period of time where I was extremely devout. Devout enough to feel guilty when I masturbated to Playboy nudes I had torn out of the magazine in the bathroom before a nightly shower and devout enough to think, for perhaps a year, that I should become a priest.

I wouldn’t say I took the Bible literally at this time. I just never really thought about it. If you had asked me when I was 13 if Adam and Eve was a true story I probably would have said, “Yes.” If you had asked me if I thought evolution was real, I also would have said, “Yes.” The contradiction in that is embarrassingly apparent now, but at the time I just sort of accepted this as how it was. For a 13 year old reconciling something like that was not a primary concern. It wasn’t until high school where I began to really critically consider the reality of the notion of God. Ironically it was my Freshman year Theology class that planted the seeds of Atheism in me.

I went to an all-male Catholic high school. The Freshmen Theology class was taught by a monk at the accompanying Abby. I hated him from almost the first day of class ( I remember him making a derogatory comment about uncircumcised men whilst discussing the early Old Testament books that I found distasteful), and I became increasingly defiant towards him as the semester continued. At any rate, while discussing the Great Flood of Noah’s Ark fame, he explained that the entire story was a metaphor. That there was no “Great Flood” and that at best it might have been a normal regional flood. It certainly did not cover the entire Earth and Noah certainly did not fit two of each animal into a boat. He was trying to make religion identifiable for a group of boy who really did not care about religion. For me, however, it was the beginning of the end for God.

“Of.. course…” I thought to myself. “How *could* Noah do something like that?” I felt like an idiot for ever thinking such a thing could be feasible. Looking back I think my 14 year old counterpart might have been slightly dense. The fact is though that I had been indoctrinated to God since I was born. The idea of questioning any of it had never materialized in a discernible way until a priest provoked it. But once that doubt was implanted it was impossible for me to stop questioning. Suddenly all of religion looked to me to be a collection of cherry picked beliefs. As we continued to read through the Old Testament, more and more of God became questionable at best, offensive and ethically objectionable at worst. Then there was the issue of evolution and how that could realistically work along with religion. Some argued that “7 days” was not actually “seven, twenty-four hour, days” and could instead span millions, if not billions, of years. But if Adam and Eve is also a metaphor, then why does it even matter?

I flirted with Agnosticism for a while. But as my other philosophical beliefs developed I could not accept gods as an unknowable issue. Humans are capable of anything, and the knowledge of the existence of gods is one of them. Therefore I could do nothing more than cast my lot with non-belief. When religious people find out I’m an Atheist they immediately question my fear of death. Of course I am afraid of dying. Countless Christians are too. I have to wonder how popular Christianity would have been if it had developed exactly the same as it is today, minus the promise of eternal life after death. Would it still have been appealing?

I doubt it.

No one likes a crybaby

The primary impetus of my renewed interest in writing is because my girlfriend broke up with me almost 5 years to the day. I have free time, quiet, and a lot more money now. I drift back and forth between needing to swallow a couple shots of Scotch and smoke half a pack of Camels to fall asleep, and looking forward to being on my own again. Lately I am feeling like I am going to end up like one of the billions of people on earth who have to accept that their life is not what they were hoping it would be. Never get where I want to be in my career, and settle for marrying a woman simply because being alone has become too much. Then again, I try to tell myself that being aware of that puts the odds in my favor. After all, fear of real commitment worked well enough for me to fuck up this relationship with someone who I was really beginning to think I could be happy with for the rest of my life. However, I can’t really reconcile my love for her with the fact that a part of me is definitely a little excited to be open to do anything, with anyone, again.

Relationships are fucking bizarre. They are a series of intense emotions. First you LIKE her intensely. Then you LOVE her intensely. The you FIGHT intensely. Then those feelings crisscross back and forth between the kisses and the fucking until you either end up married or broken up. Most likely, you’ll beak up - and while all those intense feelings were so true when you felt them if you’re smart they eventually become meaningless; a relic of what you convince yourself was young naivete (which it was, or worse).

And yet even if you love the loneliness, you never really feel completely comfortable with it. You’ll probably end up getting a cat.

I disappointed her again tonight and she was angry with me; it felt like we were dating again.

I still smoke.

One thing has remained the same since the last time I actively blogged (which, incidentally, was when I was in college) - I’m smoking. I remember when I really started to smoke. I had been casually smoking for several years. Mostly over coffee with friends (this was back when you could smoke indoors with only minor looks of scorn from passersby), but never habitually and with the pangs of “need to” from addiction.

I don’t know why it took so long to really take, but it finally did while I was throwing a birthday party for a long ex-girlfriend in my apartment. I don’t know if it was the sheer quantity of cigarettes I smoked, or the number of people smoking, but I remember the next morning waking up with no cigarettes and thinking “I need to buy a pack… right now.” and rushing down the stairs to the gas station across the street to start to feed a new vice. In the city packs were $6.00 and I thought it was insane. Now they’re $10.00 - and a $6 pack is like a quaint childish price from what might as well be the 50’s.

I have to admit that sitting here writing again with a cigarette burning next to me feels good. As much as I would actually kind of, halfheartedly, like to quit - smoking and writing go together about as smoothly as smoking and drinking coffee.

How a fucking cliche.

And, I just lit another one.

I used to write a lot.

I have not written much in a very long time. I used to write about what I hoped to achieve, what I had achieved and what I was about to achieve. I would write essays and I would stories; as much as I hated them sometimes I would write poems. I don’t know why I stopped. It was never because I didn’t have anything to say.

Actually, thinking back now I do know why I stopped writing. It was because people started reading. People I knew started to read and instantly the candor and honesty disappeared. At that point there is no reason to continue.

But now I know no one is reading, because there is no one left. So here we go again.