giving up on ‘god’
how do these things happen? the moment we fall (or rise) in love? i don’t think it’s ever said. not right off. those three words. maybe they aren’t even in your head. your knees give out in spite of yourself. in spite of all expectation, self-protection, longing. but there it is. that incredible bullet in the heart. and it can happen late, really late, in life. and it can happen early. Tommy Supplee never knew i fell in love with him. i don’t think i ever put it that way even to myself. i was 14 i think. or maybe a year older. and i wasn’t the only one. many of us at school had that stab in the gut over this kid. the sun stood behind him wherever he was. blazing smile, boy’s regular haircut, sport ready arms and legs. i was a year or two older. he wasn’t in my class. he would visit my friends next door cuz he was their age. i hung on the periphery. all my get-into-trouble adolescent skills stuttered around him. i felt lucky just to be near that golden energy. when i think about him now i recall Martha (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) describing her fantasy son who’s ‘hair was blond before all the other boys’. that rarified over-the-top memory. i’m not even sure Tommy n i ever spoke about anything that mattered. i just wanted always always to be near him whenever i could. the odd thing was, he had an allergy. he could not be stung by a wasp and survive. this was before there was the emergency shot to fix it. and so it happened. he got stung. he died. 12 or 13 years old. everyone went crazy. school stopped classes to pray for him. our little group on Atlee Rd, stayed home. we walked silently to an old stone Episcopal church to pray for him. pray that he’d come back. if there was a God, we figured, He would save someone as beautiful as Tommy. there was no resurrection. we gave up on God that day. God failed us. He failed Tommy. strange thing is, i still love him. i still ‘see’ him in my heart. the sun still leaps out of his smile. the infinity of the soul is known to me through this boy i could only be close to without ever really knowing if i was.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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