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СКАЧАТЬ my new flock. Slow motion showed an eager girl sliding into a pool of puked-up Southern Comfort and Peach Schnapps, landing flat on her back while her asshole boyfriend laughed. She was running towards the front, hoping to be one of the groupies picked by the roadies to be taken backstage to do it with KISS. She probably would have gotten picked, too, she was so metal, but she never made it past the puddle, her cheap pumps snagging an undigested piece of filet o’fish that slid her legs out from under her. She jumped up, her perfectly big hair flattened to the back of her head, soaked with cold puke and warm Budweiser, the drip drip drip from the nest of her frizz pouring into the bowl of her cowl-neck sweater.

      Nobody prayed over her, nobody called on the Infant Christ to heal her. Instead the entire balcony laughed, hoping another person would fall victim to the puke slick before security made them leave.

      The parking lot was all blasting KISS, puke girl was laid out in the back of a tricked-out Mustang, and there wasn’t a cop in sight and no Kumbaya. I rode this wave of Rock and Roll chaos all the way home in the Van, now knowing the truth: that I was good, I was part of something that I could feel. Driving home, I could still feel the heat of the flames from my spot in the cold van, and it still said KISS on my eyelids when I blinked. Marty’s dad could kiss my ass for all I cared. I wasn’t scared anymore. Every bump in the freeway made me rise up a little more and I knew I had been saved.

      When I got home I was dazed, like I had aged ten years. I put on a record and went to sleep. Either the excitement or the healing was keeping me up. After the record was done it didn’t pick up at the end, the needle repeating in the wide circle of grooves ph-lup, ph-lup, ph-lup. Sinking into the hum the skull makes when the ears are blocked, I pressed hard against my pillow. The hum began to morph into a whooshing, a new sound coming from outside my head, a sonic whoosh from the backyard. Not a whoosh like the wind, more of a backwards whoosh, like a vacuum.

      Beyond the red shades that covered my window came a blink, then a solid light, like a streetlight coming on. Peeking through the side I saw a figure in my yard, floating a foot above the ground between the bulkhead and the shed. A swirl of flames with the outline of a body visible through the whiteness, the hands down at the side, palms out. The face on the body was that of Ted Neeley’s in Jesus Christ Superstar, only it didn’t sing or smash anything but just floated there, burning.

      I couldn’t break contact with the glass of my window, warm to the touch. The vision didn’t say anything to soothe me; it was busy being a vision. My fear grew as it stretched out its arms, I wanted to shove my head down but I couldn’t move. I had seen enough passion plays and movies to know what was coming next, with the nails. My throat closed up around my scream and I forced myself down, the surface of my bed shaking along with my body. I fell to sleep.

      In the morning my red shades were still drawn, the sun behind them smacking filtered red light onto my walls like any other sunny day. The faces on my KISS wall posters hadn’t changed. Paul Stanley was still beautiful, his one-starred eye telling me it was all a dream, like the UFO dreams and the Nuclear War ones.

      Examining my hands for stigmata, I noticed half–moon shaped slices in the center of my palms, where the nails were driven. All oxygen left me as I waited for the holes to reopen and the blood to resume its flow. My nervous hands balled and I saw my fingernails slide perfectly into the grooves they had cut while I slept. Another mystery explained.

      I wondered if all of the people who claimed to have received holy stigmata were only like me, stressed out to the point that their own fingernails ripped holes through their hands while they slept. There was no blood on the sheets, the impression of my fingernails fading as quickly as the memory of a dream. I rolled out of my waterbed and ate Count Chocula for breakfast which tasted the same with no holes in my hands (I tried to pour the milk through my palms, to be sure). I never told anyone about the emergence of the Risen Christ from the gypsy-moth laden lawn of my stolen childhood. Having visions didn’t seem very Rock and Roll.

      My sister wanted contact lenses more than I wanted Clown White. Going into ninth grade, she was as marked as I was. I can’t imagine being a girl in ninth grade, let alone being The Girl in The Cult, the one with the big nose and glasses. My father felt bad for not being able to provide contact lenses, and for passing down the giant schnozz that they would bookend.

      He saved up all his working-class nickels until he could afford the new eyeball covers she wanted. He was proud when she opened the package and saw them; I think we all cried. My family was always happy for one another when something went well. Not a lot of competition when the bar is so low. Not particularly encouraged, I never shot too high, something that is with me to this day.

      When I wanted a paper route my mother said, “Oh, no way. I am not driving around in the rain at seven in the morning on Saturdays when you don’t wanna wake up and do it. It’s a big responsibility, Francis. You’ll join up and then you won’t do it, just like the Cub Scouts. Remember the Cub Scouts?”

      When my sister got to remove her giant glasses, I was genuinely happy that she broke through to my parents. To her, they didn’t say, “Oh, we’ll get ’em for you even though you probably won’t put them in.” They just got them for her, knowing. And she wore them, too. Every day. Her old glasses sat on her cracked wooden shelf like a fossil; on one lens was a gold butterfly and on the other lens were her initials. They were that big.

      When Wilton and the other Men in The Community found out about the contacts, they called my parents into an emergency meeting with the parish priest, Father Moe. Moe was a raging queen who was later sent away from the Church — not because he was diddling boys but because he was having sex with men, and because they knew he was a big old ’mo. Father ’Mo.

      “So, Wilton, what’s this all about?” my father said.

      “Maybe we should all sit,” said Father ’Mo.

      “Yes, maybe. Good idea, Moe,” said Wilton.

      My mom sat silent as Wilton took the seat across from my dad, took Father Mo’s seat. Wilton was such a fucking donkey.

      “We see you bought your Carlene some contact lenses… that’s what we heard from the girls today, that Carlene had some contacts in at school.”

      “Yeah?” my father said.

      “Well, we just don’t think…”

      My father’s hands shook as he waited for Wilton to say it.

      “…we just don’t think you should be making such large purchases without consulting the Community first… or at least tell Moe here…”

      “Father Moe,” said Father ’Mo.

      “Father Moe… sorry… but we — me and Moe — see this purchase as a reduction of your tithe, of our tithe, and we can’t have that. You understand.”

      My father jumped out of his seat and held up his hand to the men with his middle finger extended. He never did it before, maybe once in the Navy, but giving the finger wasn’t his long suit. Like me, when enraged, he turns into Don Knotts.

      “Screw you, Wilton!” he screamed. “Screeew youuu!” His voice shook into the higher octaves, his register getting tighter with each word and his voice cracking. “I’ll buy anything for my damn kids that I damn well want. You don’t tell me how to spend my damn money, you big jerk!”

      My father grabbed my mom and plucked her out of her seat — she was starting to cry — and pulled her out of the room, pushing past Wilton and through the door, walking out the clackety doors of the church rectory. “And screw СКАЧАТЬ