Getting Stoned With My Dad
My father sometimes reminded me that the bible authorized him to have me stoned if I were disobedient. This often had to do with whether I put enough ice in his vodka or cooked his meat too much. I reminded him that I was considerably stronger than he was and noticeably larger, and maybe we should both take stone baths and see how that worked out. He laughed.
My father and I generally agreed on everything that mattered. I excise from that the question of whether or not I should ever try to become a writer (he was against it) and his insistence that I should marry a woman whom I knew to be a lesbian, despite her vast wealth and even vaster intellect. In many ways she would have been a perfect match for me, but there were parts of me, physically parts of me, that she required in a relationship, that I simply lacked.
Dad and I never really discussed that part of it. I’m not entirely sure he knew lesbians existed. He was fairly concerned that gay men would attack me in the shower at the downtown YMCA, but I assured him I was the strongest person at the downtown YMCA except George Harmon, and I was pretty sure George had no designs on me. If they were going to jump me, they’d have to do it in a group and use ropes and pulleys, and possibly narcotics.
The notion that I was a gay ally, even then, probably would have confused him. We didn’t have words like “gay ally” when my Dad was alive. We just called it “not being an asshole.” That generally covered it.
People tend to use the word “myth” to describe things that aren’t real. That’s inaccurate. “Myths” are stories of the gods. They can be Christian or Jewish Gods, or they can be the Scottish gods that no longer have names, just “green man,” “wicker man,” and “water horse.”
Stories about the gods can be quite real and true without regard to whether they ever actually happened. I’m quite sure that snakes didn’t sneak into the crib with Hercules, and I’m quite sure a snake didn’t convince Eve to choose wisdom over innocence, but that doesn’t mean these stories aren’t true.
One of my favorite Christian and Jewish myths involves Noah, his friends the fallen angels, and the day the great “I AM” decided to destroy the world.
Wickedness is a matter of interpretation. The Levite priests taught that a nice spring shrimp salad would bring about your destruction, hamburgers condemned you, and not making your dad’s drink the way he asked gave him the right to stone you. The Levite priests probably could have spent more time with me and my dad. That’d straighten them out.
The people on earth were being wicked to the earth, and wicked to each other, and the great “I AM” that created us, so he decided to destroy the earth, but he gave a heads up to Noah so he could preserve life, including his family, so everything could start over.
My entire life, scientists, actual scientists—not internet scientists have been saying we were being very wicked to the earth, and the earth was not only capable of cleansing itself of us, but seemed poised to do so.
Ironically, the people most offended by this scientific warning are the people who believe that the story of Noah actually happened in real time and wasn’t just a story given to us to teach us something. The great “I AM” said he would never do it again, so, in their minds, we were safe. They don’t like to discuss the times when I AM decided that I HAVE changed my mind.
If there was ever a time to destroy the Earth because we who live on it are wicked, I feel like we’re pretty close. I myself have been very wicked. Some of you were wicked with me. I’d rather not be why I AM made the world I AM NOT, so I prostrate myself and ask for forgiveness. It’s kind of a lonely position, though. A lot of Christians are laughing at me.
In the end, Dad never had me stoned, although I’m sure he was tempted. I sometimes got stoned when he wasn’t around. I don’t really consider that wicked, depending on who was with me at the time.
My grandfather kept this well-worn, red Bible at his desk. Dixon-Ticonderoga, one of our pencil manufacturers, had given him a large, entirely flat carpenter’s pencil with a slogan about how they were the best printed on it. I assumed he used it as a bookmark, but the bible came with a gold-colored ribbon sewn in for a bookmark.
One day, I brought him some coffee at his desk, and he was reading the bible, using the flat pencil to isolate and follow the line he was reading down the page. I used the same technique with an index card because it helped with dyslexia. The mystery of where my dyslexia came from was solved.
Neither of us was particularly wicked, at least he wasn’t, despite leaving a small herd of goats in the president’s office when he was in college. Neither of us, I thought, was wicked enough to be punished, but here were two guys in the textbook business who couldn’t read properly. Maybe that’s some secret the story of Job was trying to unlock.
None of us were the simple, pious men John Wesley proscribes. My grandfather was the closest. We weren’t wicked, though. I was the closest, and I repent. I’d let you throw quite a few stones at me to talk to them again. Maybe one day.
