church on Sunday wasn’t bad enough. When theology crimps my free time, you can keep it.
Twice a year we would drive to the big city and file into the venue under the cover of daylight. The conferences were always slotted for Saturday and Sunday afternoons, ruining any chance of weekend plans at the Pagans. Ten thousand Wilton Bilders from all over New England would take their seats, teeth shining white and unholy in the blast of the house lights, which would remain on throughout the length of the conference.
My dad kept me close by, trying to make me laugh, trying to undo any psychological damage that was being done. Always aware of my terrific sensitivity, my father held my hand as the Christian band began to play and the energy in the room turned claustrophobic, people already sweating, fanning themselves with anti-abortion leaflets. My father was no less terrified than I. The tension in my hand was digging into his with a force he didn’t know I had.
“Is it that bad?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, grabbing his wrist with my free hand.
The feeling inside the Civic Center would freeze me up. We’d go to the snack bar as much as possible, my dad buying me a Coke and him a beer each time. He wasn’t the only one drinking beer. There was a line of people secretly drinking beer out of soda cups, some of them at a conference for the very first time and in need of brain lubrication to ease the confusion, some of them at a conference for the very last time, scarred and burned with no eyelashes and no remaining hope for healing. Some were just plain alcoholics trying to level out the shakes, and I was glad every time my father raised his brow to say You wanna go back to the snack bar?
Watching the Civic Center employees flitting around, refilling soda and beer kegs, sweeping up leaflets, we would drink slowly from our cups, my sneakers scraping against the red velvet carpet in the lobby, doing anything to avoid reentering the inner sanctum.
Through the curtain were thousands of people speaking in tongues, arms raised high to the metal ceiling. Kathryn Kurden pranced around the stage like Vegas royalty, laying her pampered hands on cripples in wheelchairs or with canes, knocking them backward with the Holy Smack of Jesus. People would shriek, falling over in convulsions, being slain in the spirit and cleansed of their sins.
All of this healing only made me think of horror and death. Why couldn’t I feel the spirit that these people seemed to be so overwhelmed by? Why was I not being healed? There must be something wrong with me. These people were not faking it. They were feeling something, something powerful and spastic. Whatever it was, it was turning their lives over on to their ends while my life stayed the same.
The folks in the cheap seats were falling out, sweating, dancing. They were picking up on this energy that I couldn’t feel. All I knew was I wasn’t being healed. I couldn’t be. I didn’t feel anything. None of what made these people cry out in tongues or writhe on the ground ever got around to me.
At Wilton’s prodding, while my father had run to the bathroom, I was dragged up onto the stage to face the healer, Kathryn Kurden. She floated like a ghost in her beaded turquoise gown and the bubble of light around her was thin and dark with gold flecks spinning everywhere. When I’d try to pin down a fleck it would jump to her ankles. She was mercury. Her hair was teased to the sky, poking out of her bubble. It must have taken hours. Only a corpse could sit through that much backcombing.
In front of the thousands assembled, her shaking hand reached out to my head, my bubble resisting hers. The force had her hand bent back when she pushed on it, pushed on my head. Pushing, pushing, her eyes blackening. I should be falling over and shaking, she knew that. She kept pushing, her mouth twisted and spiraling at the corners.
This healer woman had me convinced that I was dying, right there on the stage. What am I being healed of? Is it curable? Is it my brain? It is, isn’t it? No saving this one, she thought. This is the damned, she thought, and I heard it. She knew I heard it and took a half-step. She thought she had easy game with a young kid but I couldn’t feel her, I wouldn’t feel her, and she hated me for it. Push. It must be from birth, what I have. Push. Genetic. I knew what she was thinking. She couldn’t get me out of her head. PUSH.PUSH.PUSH. Did she know about me? How I was born allergic to my own blood?
I was pushed out, early and aware. The lights were bright; I couldn’t see my mother. The tiny body of a tiny Christ dangled over my head by a tiny nail, and the plaster was cracking. I knew this crucifix could have fallen on my head at any moment, counting the seconds until it fell and impaled me, Feet-of-The-Savior-first, through the membrane covering the hole in my skull. Little baby Damocles, fighting against the prayers, one hour old. Fighting against the angels with their bright, smiling faces. Even now, smiling faces make me want to run and hide, to sink comfortably back into the cold concrete that created me.
On her next push I pushed back, and my bubble flashed as the sword dropped, she saw it all and fell back into the arms of her goons. People pointed and howled as Kathryn was fanned with missals. My father swooped me up and brought me up the aisle, past our seats and out to the lobby.
After the Revival, the faithful filed out of the Civic Center vibrating with the Light of Jesus, hooting like frat boys. Not wanting the magic to end, they cluttered the parking lot with lawn chairs and coolers full of Tab. Fish-shaped windsocks drooped from the antennas of woodpaneled station wagons, flopping limp in the windless Providence heat.
The lot was charged with the same carnival atmosphere exhibited at a Grateful Dead concert, and a passerby would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. The same long hair, acoustic guitars, incense, and copious hugging could be witnessed from a helicopter fly-over. I was convinced that the Charismatics were tripping their teeth out, all hopped up on Jesus. I wanted some but like any scene there was an elitist bent: if you didn’t feel it, you didn’t get it, and were thereby square. I lugged my tired little body into the back of my father’s Impala and waited for the drive home, cat-napping to the entangled sounds of generators and The Saved speaking in tongues.
When I got home I knelt by my bed, recited the Lord’s Prayer and said ten Hail Mary’s. Something had to give. The Saints and the Angels were asked for their intercessions and I begged for a sign, some message that I could join the Saved. I tried to feel a tingle, a vibration dropping on my scalp like soft fingers, but nothing. My tongue tried to find the inspiration to blurt out foreign exclamations but all that would come out were the lyrics to “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill.
“Sometimes when We Touch” was one of the first 45s I bought when Lu drove us to Mammoth Mart one Saturday. I bought it thinking it would be dirty. When I got home and played it I realized it wasn’t the disc of filth I had been hoping for. I pleaded with my sister to trade with me. She had bought “Strutter ’78” by KISS. She did the trade. It is still the best deal I ever got. Somehow the lyrics stuck in my head when I tried to speak in tongues: Sometimes when we touch / the honesty’s too much / and I have to close my eyes / and hide. It was as close to a foreign language as I could get. I felt ripped off again.
Does glossolalia just happen or do you have to practice? Everyone else seemed so good at it, each one having their own style of nonsense words at the ready. Wilton really had a flow. He would do a whole thing with his shamanamama grrraamaaaalla luuuunti, where it sounded like a combination of Nepalese and Latin, dished up from the depths of his throat. Very Churchy. I tried harder but the elusive “gift of tongues” was not in me. There was no way for me to access it.
I got into bed and lay there staring at the ceiling, watching its plaster dripping down in hardened points like the surface of the moon, Dan Hill swishing his lovey-dovey gibberish around my brain pan. I wanna hold you till I die / till we both break down and cry… My hands pressed against the sides of my head in hopes of dulling the mellow.
A few weeks after the last Conference, it was somehow decided that I should be able to attend my first concert, a trip with the boys, chaperoned by a van-driving neighbor. All the kids got to go, I said, and it was KISS, so. My sister was pissed. “Why does he get to gooooo?” I don’t think she’d even seen Foreigner yet. So mad. She called me “hateful” in French. “Heeee gets to go?” She was pointing at me.
“Yuht,