Departure From the Norm July 30, 2010

So, for the last 5 weeks I’ve been working as an intern for a New Jersey based marketing firm. The gig put me right across the river from New York City and I was able to get over there a fair amount.  My purpose for visiting the Big Apple this morning was actually to check a family friend out from surgery and we decided the best way for me to get there without any problems was to take a cab part of the way.

I’ve had quite a few crazy experiences with cabs over the course of my internship. I was proposed to by a sweet driver named Amir and when I explained that I wasn’t exactly looking for marriage – he pushed harder. Did I want to return to Alexandria with him? Did  I realize how much money he made???? Didn’t I want to be with an older guy? Could we just be “friendly”? How about I take him back to Chicago with me? Another time I got into a cab and the driver had about 7 Bible verses taped to the window, labeled as “God’s Law.” I decided not to ask him about them and instead looked them all up when I got home. I was grateful I hadn’t engaged him on the topic because many were hardcore Zionist scripture. (For the curious they included Deuteronomy 6:4-25, Jeremiah 32:27, Joshua 1:1-9.) But also listed was among my favorite verses (weird favorite for an atheist, I know)

Matthew 22:36-38

But today, my cab ride was very, very pleasant. The driver, Michael Kon, and I talked about everything from his early childhood in Russia to Anna Karenina to immigration policy and economic quotas. By the end of it, he tried to give me his tip back! I guess he felt like we were friends and he was just doing me a favor… Anyway, I know a lot of people know vaguely about taxi Medallions in NYC but I wanted to give this drivers’ perspective.

So, according to Michael, the medallions are typically owned by megacab companies. He told me he rents his at $110 for 12 hours and his profit is about $200/day. Assuming his business is steady and he doesn’t take a single week off, this comes to $52,000 a year which is twice the living wage for a single adult in NYC. It is however, BELOW, the living wage for a family of 4. Now, Michael said he liked his job because he had control over his hours and it enabled him to go out to dinner every few months.

I asked him how he could attain his own medallion if he wanted one and he said he’d need a million dollars. He later amended this claim to be that he would need about a $50,000 down payment and he could probably get a 30-year loan for the medallion, “the same way you’d get a mortgage.”

I asked him who typically sold medallions and he said sometimes the city would have auctions and sometimes private cab drivers would decide to retire and sell theirs. Companies rarely sell theirs unless they are in some form of financial distress.

Some of the workers who benefit from El Sol's services volunteered at a Habitat for Humanity site. I think of this as a "Pay it Forward" style benefits of humanitarianism.

When he asked me about immigration, I told him about how I’m going to start working with El Sol and the controversy surrounding it. Considering he came to the U.S. at the age of 4 because his mother was afraid for the family’s safety and standard of living in then-USSR, I expected him to be a more liberal when it came to immigration. Instead he took a more moderate stance. He supported increased border control but the immediate legalization of current undocumented residents.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for an honest cabbie with an interesting outlook in NYC – seek out Michael Kon.

The Religious Other is Not Always What You Hope July 23, 2010

Disclaimer: This post describes my first interactions with a certain type of Christian. I now know that this is not representative of all Christians, or even the majority of them. Unfortunately however, this kind of Christian has the most visibility in our society thanks to people like James Dobson, Sarah Palin, and many televangelists.

***

My dad is a lapsed-Catholic and my mom is a Southern Methodist. I have Jewish aunts and Catholic uncles by marriage. My first best friend was Jewish. But all those people in my life had more of a washed-out, cultural religion than observant practices and active theology. So even though my life was filled with religious diversity I didn’t really encounter a religious person until later and I have to say the experience wasn’t very positive.

When I was nine my family moved about two hours further north and I met Julie.  It turned out that Julie’s parents were biblical fundamentalists.  Since I didn’t really know anything about religion I was quick to believe everything they said Christianity was. For example, their Christianity didn’t believe in gender equality. Julie’s dad was the lord of the household. He made all the financial decisions and decided who the family was voting for like a block even though he was much less educated than her mom. He was allowed to drink and she wasn’t even though he would casually and jokingly admit to getting violently drunk. I remember him announcing that he “spanked” his wife at Julie’s 10^th birthday party. This was all so different from my house where both my parents worked and played an equal role in the household decisions.  I mean both my parents drank and neither of them hit the other! Could that really make us bad Christians? Did that make us bad people?

Julie’s parents terrified me. They said Pokemon was of the devil so my younger brother was probably going to hell. They said that I wasn’t being raised in a religious enough home and that “God didn’t like that” my family had an incense-burner shaped like the Buddha in our computer room. They told me that the rapture was coming. I was petrified. We never went to church except on Christmas and Easter! My parents had lived together before they were married! Would my family be saved? But in the same way I didn’t know how to tell my parents that Julie’s dad hit her mom, I didn’t know how to ask my parents about Christian theology and our family’s holiness. I knew they thought

In case you were unfamiliar with Bible Man...

Julie’s family was a negative influence on me but they couldn’t quite pinpoint how (they’d never been inside Julie’s house far enough to see the Bible Man poster that hung behind the front door).  Julie was my only friend in our new town and I didn’t want to add legitimacy to my parent’s worries that “Julie just seemed a little too controlling.” So, I just didn’t tell them anything about what Julie’s parents said.

In fifth grade, Julie’s mom, Connie, volunteered to run a Christian afterschool program called “Light Club” at our elementary school and Julie invited me to join. I guess even though I hadn’t mentioned any of the things Julie’s parents said my mom wasn’t clueless. She told me I couldn’t join the Light Club because she didn’t want me to be under the religious guidance of Connie. I remember her saying “Kelsey, your father and I haven’t taught you enough about what we believe. You’re too impressionable and I don’t think Connie’s religion is good for you.”  I threw a fit and my mom relented but she kept close tabs on what Connie was teaching. She’d always ask me what I learned in Light Club after she got home from work. I don’t remember what finally did my mom in but after a few Light Club meetings she decided she had been right in the first place. I wasn’t allowed to go anymore but if I wanted to, she would take me to youth group at the Methodist Church down the road. I was forced to admit that I had no real interest in learning about Christianity; I just wanted to spend time with Julie – who was still my only friend.

I started to confide in my parents more about the things that Julie’s parents had said. I remember my parents deconstructing all my fears. My dad explained that the Buddha incense burner was sent to him from his step-dad after he’d been drafted as a medic to Vietnam. He said “This is just something that reminds me that Papa Joe was thinking about me while he as at war. It doesn’t mean we’re going to hell. It’s not an idol for us. We don’t worship it or pray to it” and then I remember him pausing and then he said definitively “Even if we did, we wouldn’t go to hell. That’s not what God is about.” The next day my parents announced that I could still be friends with Julie but I needed to find new friends too. They started taking me to look at magnet schools and we settled on a new program so that I could change schools and start over. I hadn’t realized how much I needed that until after I was in a new place with a solid group of friends.

I kept in touch with Julie over the summer but we organically drifted apart once middle school started. We actually ended up going to the same “choice” high school and became friends again. By this time I was much more self-assured and it turned out that Julie’s life was very different too. Her parents had gotten divorced. She was mostly living with her mom because she had decided she didn’t like her dad much. Most shocking was that she was re-evaluating her religious beliefs. She still liked listening to Christian music but she’d listen to secular artists too sometimes. She still wouldn’t read Harry Potter but the Magic Treehouse series was no longer a threat to children’s souls. After she got her drivers license she started experimenting with more mainline churches. She still considers herself a Republican and an evangelist but she has a strong friendship with our two gay friends and me. We don’t talk about the past or her parents very much but we can talk about religion and in recent years she’s never told me that I’m living my life wrong or that my beliefs need to change. We started doing some volunteer work together and eventually we ran the Key Club as co-officers. We just had fun hanging out again without the interference of her overbearingly-religious parents.

“It’s Complicated” July 22, 2010

So today, someone at work told me that he couldn’t figure out my “stance” on Christianity. I told him that was because it was complicated.

I’m not sure there is a good word for my faith identity.  This is particularly problematic because studying religion is both my part-time job and my hobby.  This leads people (like my coworker) to ask about my faith quite frequently  and I always find myself stumbling around for an answer. I hover between wanting to say “I’m an atheist” or the softer “I’m not really all that religious.”  The full truth is that I don’t believe in God but I consider some Christian teachings to be at the center of many of my ethical decisions. I just don’t know of any term that fully encapsulates the role Christianity plays in my decisions, if not my faith per se.

To start with, my atheism comes with a latent Christianity. As much as I learn about other people’s faiths and consider what it means to be without one, I find it hard to see the world without Christian glasses – and I wasn’t even raised religiously.  I was never encouraged to study the Bible. I was never confirmed. We don’t say grace unless my maternal grandfather is visiting. My paternal grandmother was formally excommunicated. Half my family isn’t baptized! Still, I see the world through a very Judeo-Christian perspective. To paraphrase Eboo Patel paraphrasing a man named Brother Wayne paraphrasing Gandhi,  your faith tradition is like your home but it should have its windows open so the breeze of other traditions can freely blow through. I get what he meant.

For my job, I had to write a reflection about my faith’s “roots and wings.” As I got to thinking about it I realized I’m smack dab in the middle of getting my faith-wings and discerning my roots.

My ex-communicated grandmother died at the beginning of this summer and it wasn’t until then that I really thought about her faith and how much it had shaped my dad’s and mine in that latent way. Even though the Church just, well, chucked her out, she still insisted my dad be an altar boy and go through all the rites of Communion and Confirmation.  She’d give me rosaries for Christmas. She would ask if the boys I was dating were Catholic and grumble when they weren’t. She never went to mass willingly but would go to light candles under special circumstances. She prayed to St. Anthony – but only when she lost her keys. She baptized my hamster with water from the sink and would cross herself if she narrowly avoided a car accident. While she was alive I just thought this was my Nana being dramatic and practicing a self-important, bastardized version of her ex-religion. But now I understand that maybe she was just amending it to more inclusive of her lifestyle. Obviously it was important to her because she took great pains to pass it on to my dad (who married a Methodist and didn’t return to mass again until he went to light a candle for his dying mother this May).

I don’t know what all that meant for me. So, I don’t really know where my roots are.

But right now I’m living in a campus ministry building, majoring in religion and doing A LOT of interfaith work. I guess I feel like that must mean something. (My friend Tughan says I’m too religious to be an atheist. My friend Cary says I’m “the most evangelical atheist” he’s ever met.) The only thing that is concrete right now is that both through my religious work and outside of it I’m meeting a lot of people who are motivated by service in a deeper, fuller way than I’ve ever seen before and it’s affecting me profoundly. So, I guess that’s where my wings are.

Xenophobia, Menopause, and Diarrhea December 28, 2009

We went out to dinner tonight and my dad ordered a pitcher of some Indian beer. My grandfather threw a hissy fit and said “Brown people can’t make beer!” As if to make his point more ridiculous, he decided to order himself a separate bottle of Corona. I pointed out that the people who make Corona are just a different shade of brown and got yelled at for being disrespectful.

On my way out I ran into my friend Bryson’s grandmother who informed me that his mother was going through menopause so I should visit. It was about then that I realized my stomach did not take well to dinner and I needed a private bathroom fast. It only took two seconds for me to remember that while my brother’s new personal GPS promised we were only 1.4 miles from home as the crow flies, the bridge detour meant we were in fact 9.4 miles from my toilet.  My mom ended up dropping me off at the bridge and I sneaked over on foot to the other side, making it home just in time.

That is my life. Xenophobia, menopause and diarrhea.

Driving the Detour Continues to Drive Us Crazy December 14, 2009

My brother built a hovercraft a few years back.  It consisted of a piece of plywood attached to a leaf blower and some fiberglass paneling  to help direct the jetflow. He would propel himself along the street using a pole, gondola-style. I think the farthest distance he made it at any given time was about a hundred yards.

This was pre-puberty. Now he weighs too much to be supported by a leaf blower. I know this because he dug it out of the garage in an attempt to ride it across the river and thereby avoid driving the extra eight miles when my mom asked him to run out for milk and bread. The Stop and Shop is one block after the bridge, you see, it’s a pain in the ass to drive 8 miles when you could walk 3 blocks.

While too heavy for a home-made hovercraft now, my brother is still rather small. I think he weighs 135 lbs. According to the policeman that guards the bridge, that is too much strain and he cannot cross it on foot.

This slightly overweight police officer sits on the bridge all day. Not to mention the two ten-ton cranes have sat on the bridge 24-hours-a-day for the last month… They haven’t performed any work. Construction on the new bridge can’t start until an environmental engineer decides whether the pilings of the old bridge will destroy our ecosystem if left to just fall into the river below it. I’m willing to bet he will rule that it will be ecologically damaging to add a bridge worth of trash into our river. But I suppose it’s always worth asking.

So while environmentalists like me continue to grow frustrated, the angry old people have been placated by two things. First they have set up an emergency ambulance and firetruck on my side of the bridge that the EMS people take turns manning. Second, on top of each of the cranes are American flags. My mom tells me this is standard crane procedure. It makes the old people feel patriotic anyway…

That’s all most grumpy old people really care about – their health and patriotism.

The Saga of Sara December 14, 2009

9/30, The Introduction of Sara to My Life:

I’m pretty sure I’m unwittingly flirting with this girl in my Queer Theory class. Her name is Sara and in class she’s just sort of androgynous but I ran into her at a party the other night where she came in drag. She’s really cool and we talked for a while. I take it she spends most of her non-class hours in drag but identifies with herself as a woman. The way we sit in the room I find myself looking at her a lot… and she’s noticed. I just think she thinks that since because we spoke at length at this party that I’m into her.

I’m hoping she’s sexually passive so that this doesn’t become an issue.

Are women who dress in drag typically sexually passive?

10/10 Throughout the last two weeks I have continued to flirt with Sara… and remain confused as to why. I consider myself a straight person.  I begin discussing our possible-future-relationship with my friends, mostly for humor value. It is established that she would wear the pants in the relationship… because when my friends met her at that party she

I should've been more scientific myself... I was with my next romantic choice... (Courtesy of xkcd Comic)

was wearing pants… and a beard.  I am so confused. Today, I discovered that she has dated both a transman and a transwoman. A gay male friend of mine has admitted to feeling the need to flirt with her.  She is a pansexual minx that Sara.

10/12  is a Sunday night.  I spent it joking around about the confusion I feel over my crush on Sara. The audience was my church. I live in the church building actually, despite being an atheist.  I hadn’t realized it was National Coming Out Day. Two members of my group came out. There was lots of hugging and tears. I felt bad for being so cavalier about my girl-crush in the midst of so much acceptance and confusion. Sexuality is tough. I’m glad the church I’ve found doesn’t deny its existence.

10/14 I may or may not have played footsie with Sara today. My foot touched something. I think it was her foot. I was afraid to look at her. Partly because I hoped we were being flirtatious and I was supposed to be coy. I realize that if it had been anyone else, I would have apologized for bumping into him/her. This new level of ridiculousness adds legitimacy to my crush. There is no turning back now. I tell more people about it.

10/18 4:30 pm

I may have a maybe date-ish with Sara tonight. We are getting together to watch a t.v. show for class and “hang out.”

Does hang out mean lesbian sex? Do I want that? I am confused.

10/18 5:30 pm

Sara just called to firm up our movie plans and I told her that apparently the film’s length is 6 hours.  She told me to come over and watch until one of us falls asleep. I wonder if that means I am expected to spend the night. Am I reading too much into this?
Duhn duhn duhn?

10/18 is another Sunday. Over dinner and worship I discuss my pre-maybe-date-ish jitters with my church. Everybody laughs. The lesbians in the group encourage me to “do what feels natural.” They claim to have no preference for how this thing turns out, yet they offer to throw me a party if I decide to swing the lesbian-way. I try not to let my church peer-pressure me into being gay. It’s hard. I’m confused.

10/18 7:30 I’m standing outside Sara’s apartment with the DVD for class and some popcorn. I am nervous. She buzzes me up. Her roomates are just leaving, she tells me, and we sit next to each other on the couch.  She makes adorable, artsy comments about the color saturation of the film. My heart beats a little faster. At one point, the characters say something or other and we both start writhing in laughter. Somehow her hand lands on my thigh. Through our fits of giggles I try to assess how I feel about her hand being there.  Am I turned on? At this moment, still laughing she says “That reminds me so much of my boyfriend!!!! He hates the word ‘pussy!’”

I am more confused than ever.

10/12 10:30 pm

Isn’t pussy sacred on lesbian dates!? Is she not a lesbian!? Is her boyfriend actually a transman!? Am I a bad person for feeling like that matters. I yearn for the days when I was straight.

11/28 Sara spent the past week in El Salvador, visiting an orphanage she worked with a year ago.  Despite her absence, my interest in her continued… though I have more pressing interests in males. She and her boyfriend are serious, I’ve heard. Her boyfriend does have a vagina. The fact that she can see past that only makes me want her more.  The class’s subject matter becomes more and more confusing. She continues to talk about color saturation. I fail to see how color saturation relates to the class but the professor is impressed. I am now confused for so many reasons, personal and academic, that I grow to resent Sara.  I still want her though.

12/3 By now I loath Queer Theory class because it confuses me so much, but I love it because Sara is there.

12/5 I am thrilled to have finished my paper and be done with this quarter of confusion. My friend Liz writes me the following haiku:

Class with Sara’s done,
It’s finally time to go
Back to being straight.

Quick Intro of Super Important Background Facts December 13, 2009

I have lots of stories to share. Enough that, with luck and lots of hard work, I will make a career of sharing them. This seems like a free way to start practicing.

It is already late and I want to get to bed.

But first, I want to plant a teaser and some background details.

1. My town is a peninsula within the larger peninsula of the state of Florida. At a typical point in our town’s history there are 2 ways in and out, a bridge that takes about .5 minutes to cross over about a 30-foot wide river, or an 8 mile loop through residential areas at a maximum speed of 25 miles an hour that takes you through two counties.
2. Due to jetski damage (no lie) this bridge is closed indefinitely, forcing us all to drive the loop anytime we want in or out. Old people are rioting because they used to be 10 minutes from ambulance aid and now they are 35 or so.
3. My town is 2 square miles (honest to God) and has a very low crime rate.
4. My parents somehow manage to involve themselves in every crazy crime story that manages to find its way into this tiny town.
a. This is how I know I am truly descended from them.
b. Tonight’s involves carjacking, viagra, and pancakes (granted – loosely).