Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

Now here are her lovers on either side of her, kissing her closed eyes, licking tears from her cheeks, stroking her all over gently, tracing lines on her slick skin. They’re all angels in Heaven; animals in some cave. Liz lets out this massive raggedy sigh. It sounds like a cartoon, she thinks, like a sound effect or something, and only now, in the moment of her hearing herself think the thought about her thought about the sigh, does she register the sad fact of her restoration to the fallen state in which she exists, her noumenal and bound existence, though this hurt is mitigated by the comforts of familiarity, home again home again , and isn’t it sort of wonderful to pull back from the infinite, withdraw into the skimpy little cosmos of the shuttered-up self? The demon already chattering again, and this torment not without some quotient of pleasure— Liz, you masochist, you head case —she berates herself for ever having doubted her lover, or the fact that she’s the luckiest girl in the whole wide world.

Now they’re running late for church and there’s still this problem of what will David wear. The plain white tee shirt he had on when he came here would be pretty much acceptable, maybe, only he can’t find it. He’s scouring the heaps and piles strewn about the bedroom floor, flinging one wrong item after another from his search path. Nothing. He’s like a lawn mower with no catch-bag. For the past few days he’s been wearing the HELEN KELLER WAS AN ANARCHIST shirt that Katy had on that night they all met. Since then, she’s been wearing a sleeveless puke-green hoodie (he loves the brown shrubs of her hairy pits) and Liz only ever wears black. Except for today, apparently, when both girls are dressed up sort of like they decided to be librarians for Halloween. Well, wherever the white shirt’s got off to, it’s staying there. They need a backup outfit.

Katy and Liz are rummaging together in the bedroom closet, the closet door eclipsing them from David’s view. They’re in there long enough that he begins to wonder if they’re getting up to something, and if so if he should join them — can they really be serious about this trip to church? — but then they emerge, exultant, bearing forth a man’s pale pink dress shirt that looks as if it hails from some dumb movie made in the early ’90s about corporate malfeasance in the mid-’80s. Where did it come from? A thrift store, an old lover, the trash — who knows? The point is it’s here. Now let’s see if it fits.

David buttons it up and stretches his arms out to the sides, then forward. It’s baggy on him, but it’ll do. There’s a coffee stain like the map of a sandy island on one of the shirttails. He frowns at it. He’s standing in front of Katy’s full-length mirror, which she found by the side of the road some months ago, and which, despite a jagged forking crack like petrified lightning through its middle, is still more than adequate to their needs. David sees himself sliced and sectioned, all the angles slanting crazily and none quite adding up. Liz is behind him, a Picasso face peeking around his shoulder. She says he should tuck the shirt in to hide the stain. Also, it’ll seem less puffy that way. She reaches around his waist, opens his jeans up, pushes them down his thighs (couldn’t find his underwear, either, apparently), and smoothes the fabric of the shirt down all around. She pulls the jeans back up and closes them — all business — then fidgets with the fabric to make sure the row of shirt buttons lines up with the button on his jeans.

You know what? He looks okay.

And so off they go through the late morning sun, through soupy swamp air, past still-dark houses, bars with their faces veiled by metal pull-grates, toward St. Augustine Catholic Student Center on University Avenue. They slip quietly into the eleven-thirty mass, which has already begun, squeezed together in an otherwise empty pew in the dead-last row like the bad kids in class. Katy’s favorite part is the recitation of the creed, which they at least haven’t missed. She loves how they lay everything out in that blasé liturgical murmur, as if nothing could be more reasonable and mundane. The whole thing is teaching her something, but she isn’t sure what.

David has never been to a church service before. Like really and truly: never. Not once. He’s on his knees during silent prayer. The kneeler, which folds out of the pew in front of him, has got a light ocher pad that looks like leather but feels more like vinyl. He’s unsure at first of whether it can bear his full weight — it looks kind of flimsy — but everyone else seems to be going for it so he does too and of course the thing holds. Relaxed now, sort of, he starts to think about how strange this all is, how unlikely — not his being here now but his never having been before — and what it says about the place he was brought up: something about Jews being clannish, closed off. Protective, his mother might say; and with good reason, his father would undoubtedly add. Weirdly, sitting here, he can for the first time in his life understand what it is they’re so afraid of.

The priest with his shepherd’s crook, or whatever you call it. Wisps of pungent smoke from the swinging censer. Mother Mary ablaze in east-facing stained glass. A boy in a white smock-thing ringing a small gold bell. And above it all, mounted high, close to the vaulted ceiling with its long wide ribs like the hull of an overturned ship, hangs the Man. He gazes down with His weary eyes, blood running from the thorn wounds in His scalp, the gash in His side. And yet His countenance is steadfast. He emanates endless love from the very heart of His endless pain.

This shit’s kind of amazing.

He glances over at Katy, who has been watching him approvingly and now meets his gaze with one of her signature incomparable smiles. It’s like she can’t help but beam all the time. Though maybe that smile was for Liz, who is on his other side, looking over his bent neck to watch Katy watching him. But really, what’s the difference? Katy is inexhaustible, she’s a wellspring, her reserves don’t run dry. There’s enough of her for both of them. (And then some, no doubt.) He puts a hand on each of their thighs and squeezes. Not sex now, but something both deeper and more elemental: intimacy, proximity. From each girl comes an answering hand.

There they all are: look at them, on their knees, heads bowed but eyes wide open, joined. A veneration of presence, the breaking down of the walls that make each of us one and one alone. A thing that is three that is also one. Godhead. He understands now why Katy wanted for them to come here.

After mass there’s a reception in St. Augustine’s sunny limestone courtyard, which sits beside the — rectory, is it? Katy can never keep all the names for things straight. It’s part of what she likes about Catholics, all that wonky terminology and structure. Trying to make heads or tails of it, and pick out the best parts, is like being set loose on a shopping spree.

“Rectory, right?” she stage-whispers to Liz as the three of them make their way toward a folding table set with lemonade and butter cookies on top of a white plastic tablecloth. But Liz doesn’t know, and David just laughs when she asks him, as if the very idea of him being able to answer her is the best joke he’s heard yet today. (In fact it is.) The tablecloth flutters and snaps in the hot, hard breeze. They stand in a tight triad, together apart in the midst of the larger gaggle, letting the happy chatter of the worshipers rise up like a fence hemming them in. The lemonade is warm, and too sweet; the butter cookies are already soft with humidity. Still. If the first rule of anarcho-mysticism is Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law , the second rule is Whatever’s not nailed down .