Dear Agnostic Father, "What Would Jesus Do?"

So I'm back after a grueling three days in Melbourne. Serves me right for not having a job, I did, after all, have to get a rent check from my mom. One of the last, of course, because she's going to have a lot of expenses very shortly. She is moving home to Hicksville, Long Island, at the end of August. She's going to be teaching again, at the community college.

I'm happy for her, I really am. She's wanted this badly for years, and now her children are old enough for her to abandon to university squalor-conditions... I'd say she deserves it, though, after 23 years of parenthood. Anything for 23 years is too much... I told her my father's heartbreaking behavior was probably a blessing in disguise, and she agreed, because 25 years of marriage was too much. Anything for 25 years is too much...

My father and I played golf on Friday. He took a job with the Army Corps of Engineers in St. Petersburg, Florida. So he'll be on the other side of the peninsula. Which is probably good, because I couldn't focus on the golf ball or the sand traps or the cart or any of that shit because I couldn't take my eyes off the little "What Would Jesus Do" bracelet on his wrist.

I read that and I kept thinking, "You have got to be kidding me." Turns out his new better-half is religious; my father didn't tell me that, of course, my mother did. I thought it was funny, really, especially to see the little blue thing coiled around his wrist like a false-prophesying serpent... It kept flicking its tongue at me and making me shiver, because my father has always been the most decadent agnostic for as long as I can remember.

And it's okay for an agonistic to do whatever he wants, because usually the agnostic god is deaf and dumb or indifferent or too big for us to see, so big that maybe it's impossible to tell if the creator is really there at all or just a big, symptomatic illusion... I can understand that, sure, this is the postmodern era. My father is a leader of leaders in the postmodern realm, because he doesn't believe in anything. He doesn't believe in good, or evil...

That's why it shocked me so, to see the "WWJD" bracelet on his wrist. It shocked me because it melted my father down into a simian mass of hormones and sweat and testicles, who was taken with a good, Christian home-wrecker whose aim was to woo Grumman's most popular project manager.

Ugh.

Remember I told you about the high school-classmate thing? Well I was lucky enough to touch base with an old friend, Evan. Evan still lives at home, and drives a shitty car that's completely unreliable. But don't let his meager circumstances fool you... He's actually rich beyond belief, for his age.

His small fortune was earned through his shrewd business sense... Apparently he's found a new "bud" supplier who cuts him amazing deals, and he's making a killing. Gotta love Melbourne, because it keeps people exactly the same as you left them (except middle-age parents).

Just as we had done a thousand times in high school, Evan flew to my house in a heartbeat, rolled some "wacky-tabaccky" and we stood and laughed like idiots for a long time. A really long time. My mom was inside packing boxes and breaking dishes and yelling "Opa!" every few minutes and we were laughing hysterically on the muggy driveway. Either way, I felt better afterwards.

Evan is one of those simple souls: it doesn't take much to shake his mood. He usually takes the middle path with everything, as far as emotions go. Girls come and go and he's never fazed. His mom is always away on business, and that's okay with him. He grew up without a father, and he never missed him. He lost his grandmother two years ago, and he says, "C'est la vie, because I got weed!"

Obviously I can't shove my mind into a state like Evan's, for perpetuity. I wish I could, because it doesn't take much for him to be happy. He just expects little from life. I don't think I've ever seen him disappointed...

-S