Late Night Ramblings

I grew up in southern West Virginia. The culture was steeped in fundamentalism. When I was young, West Virginia was still a fairly isolated place, and fundamentalism was pervasive. That isn’t to say everyone was religious or fundamentalist. It’s just that alternative beliefs were not widely understood or expressed openly, and even many of those who were not particularly religious believed that fundamentalism was the only religious option available.

Fundamentalism was common in my family. Those who were religious were fundamentalists, and even those who were not particularly religious had a kind of fundamentalist perspective. The Bible was understood to be “the word of God,” and the only way it was to be interpreted was literally. Some relatives became preachy and strident when the subject of religion came up. Some would use Bible verses like darts. They would try to stick other relatives with their pointy verse quoting. In retaliation, the relatives under attack would throw out other Bible verses. It seemed like a vicious game to me, and I hated it.

I have never been comfortable with this brand of Christianity, and I can remember wondering when I was no more than eleven or twelve if there was something else, some other way. I guess you could say I was a seeker, but I was also simply curious. I needed to find some way of coming to terms with all of these beliefs and ideas that I found oppressive rather than uplifting, at least in the way they were expressed around me.

I’m still curious and I’m still seeking to understand, but I have some ideas about what might have happened. I thought I’d share of few of them. I’m not a historian or a biblical scholar, and I don’t have a crystal ball that lets me see into the distant past, so these are just my ideas. You can take them or leave them.

I think it’s likely that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. As I understand it, apocalypticism was common among a subset of Jews in the first century, and at the time, it wasn’t the scary inspiration of horror stories it is today. There may have been horrific nightmares and expectations of violence associated with apocalypticism, but the basic message was one of hope because at the end of this expected violent clash a new era of peace and justice would be ushered in.

I think it’s likely that Jesus wanted to comfort others with this message and persuade them to prepare for this event. I think it’s likely that he believed that the apocalypse was coming very soon.

Jesus seems to have been a small town preacher, but he might have gone to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. As I understand it, this was common at the time. Jerusalem’s population would swell every year around Passover. And I have heard that riots broke out in the city from time to time when all of these strangers were in town. I have heard that Roman soldiers were not usually in the city in force but were there during Passover because of potential riots.

We have been told that Jesus instigated a disturbance inside the Temple. If this happened, it might have been his way of expressing dissatisfaction with prevailing Jewish attitudes and practices at the time. Maybe the Jewish authorities arrested him and turned him over to the Romans because they feared he would stir up a riot when the city was overflowing with out-of-towners celebrating Passover.

I think it’s possible that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. Maybe he simply predicted the coming of the Messiah as part of his apocalyptic teaching. And after he was crucified, maybe his followers began claiming he was the Messiah and that he rose from the dead as a way of keeping the interest in his message and teachings alive. Maybe they didn’t even mean it literally. Maybe these claims were symbolic from the start.

I think after a number of years, Gospel writing and perhaps oral storytelling about Jesus might have become a way of expressing the various ways in which Jesus’ followers viewed his life and teachings. Maybe they never meant for these accounts to be taken literal. Maybe they never considered them as historic records. Maybe they were meant to be a kind of spiritual poetry from the beginning.

I have heard that many Biblical scholars believe that the ending of the Gospel of Mark, which is assumed to be the oldest canonical gospel, was added in the Middle Ages and that originally, the gospel ended abruptly with several disciples fleeing from Jesus after he rose from the dead. If this is true, maybe Mark was trying to say that not even the original followers of Jesus understood him.

Matthew, or I should say the author of Matthew since no one seems to know who actually wrote the gospels, seemed to be most interested in convincing fellow Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. Maybe this is why he connected Jesus’ story with the story of Moses, and maybe this is why he harshly condemned Jews for not accepting Jesus’ teachings in his lifetime.

Luke seemed to have been speaking to Gentiles. He universalized the story of Jesus so that Jesus wasn’t merely the Jewish Messiah but the world’s Messiah. As I understand it, many Biblical writers believe that the author of Luke was Gentile and that his writings were the only gentile writings to make it into the canon.

John goes further by emphasizing that not only was Jesus the Messiah but also the son of God. And the Gospel of Thomas, one of the non-canonical gospels, claims that not only was Jesus the son of God but that we’re all the children of God and that we all have the divine in us, only we don’t know it.

I don’t think many of the claims about Jesus are literally true, especially the fantastical ones, and I don’t think we can ever know for sure what Jesus actually said or did, but that isn’t to say that these stories don’t have some significance. I think that if an individual finds worth in these stories, then that’s good. But I don’t think there’s any one particular interpretation of the Jesus stories that we’re obliged to accept. In fact, I think it’s quite all right to reject all of them or to come up with a completely new way of viewing Jesus. I reject the idea of cosmic war. I reject the idea that some people are evil and some are good based on what they believe.

Religious beliefs are obviously very important to many, but I wish there were some way of getting people to understand that it’s all highly speculative and that we need to allow others to come to terms with the questions of purpose and meaning in their own way. The fact that some use their religion to attack others who disagree with them or as a way of accruing political power and status is disturbing to me. I’m always uneasy around those who are certain about their beliefs and intolerant of dissent. Sadly, my guard often goes up when I find out a person is religious, and it usually stays up until I know they aren’t “that way.”

Let's Talk About Satan

Elaine Pagels is an academic Christian historian, and she is most interested in early Christianity. Pagels has spent much of her career studying the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, early Christian writings that didn’t make into the canon and in fact were suppressed by early Orthodox Christians. The Nag Hammadi texts were discovered in 1945 and contain some of the Gnostic Gospels. For most of Christian history, the only information available about these “heretical” Christians came from the Church Fathers who were proponents of Orthodox Christianity, and their assessment was profoundly negative.

Last week, I read Pagels’ book The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics. According to Pagels, the idea of Satan as a malevolent supernatural human-like creature evolved over several centuries. Satan was at first merely a messenger of God. Then Satan became a fallen angel, a heavenly being who once enjoyed the favor of God but was then rejected due to insubordination. Satan was a kind of warning for Jews because he reflected their own situation. They believed they were in a covenantal relationship with God, and they believed God would bless them so long as they fulfilled their end of the covenant, but if they were insubordinate, they, too, could be rejected like Satan.

Eventually, Satan became a kind of rival, a leader of an army against God, and the army consisted of both supernatural and human soldiers. An individual was either on the side of God and righteousness or with Satan. This duality closely resembled another significant religion in the region, Zoroastrianism. It was this vision of a cosmic war between good and evil that the Orthodox Christians adopted.

The earliest Christians were, of course, Jews, and the Orthodox Christians first used their cosmic war leitmotif against fellow Jews who rejected their message. Their demonization made it into the New Testament canon, and it should be noted that the canon contains the writings the Orthodox Christians favored. They suppressed other points of view within the early Christian movement. The Gospels of the New Testament placed more blame for Jesus’ execution on his Jewish adversaries than the Romans, and the Gospel writers accused the Jews of being under the influence of Satan. Gospel writers paint an almost benign portrait of Pontius Pilate. But unlike Jesus, Pontius Pilate did leave a historical footprint, and it’s less than benign. Even ancient Roman writers viewed Pilate as ruthless and tyrannical. Moreover, crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, and the Romans regularly killed those suspected of sedition in this way throughout the empire. It was their way of keeping locals in check. If you challenged Roman authority in any way, you would be summarily dispatched. If Jesus was a real person, and if he did go about the countryside preaching to large crowds and urging them to question tradition and the status quo, the Romans would have more than likely viewed him as a troublemaker, and it’s likely they would have killed him without giving it much thought, just as they had killed thousands and thousands of others who dared to speak out.

Pagels speculates that the singling out of the Jews in the New Testament and the claim they are on the wrong side of the cosmic war is an expression, by and large, of a sectarian conflict—one group of Jews upset with another group of Jews. However, Christianity spread and became a separate religion with adherents who were mostly gentile. When this happened, the accusations of Satanic influence in the Gospels become the grounds for anti-Semitism.

By the late second century, Christianity had spread all over the Mediterranean, as far as Spain and northern Africa. By then, their primary rivals were not Jews but pagans, and rather than dismiss pagan gods as being merely false, the Christians incorporated them into their cosmic war. The Christians claimed these gods were really warriors in Satan’s army and their followers had been seduced by these demonic forces.

There were a number of Christian writings floating around these far-flung groups. Some of which were contradictory. So the Orthodox Christians began to favor certain writings over others. Over a period of time, this is how the New Testament canon that we have today was formed. These Orthodox Christians were interested in establishing a cohesive formalized church with specific rules and rituals. Of course, they saw themselves as the leaders of this emerging institution, and they chose the writings that reflected their viewpoint and underscored their authority.

Many of the other early Christian writings not only contradicted the Orthodox version, they were not conducive in establishing a formalized church. Some were, in fact, quite odd. Some of the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi invert the Old Testament so that the God of the Old Testament becomes the devil and the serpent in the Garden of Eden becomes the true God, and as if Genesis wasn’t strange enough, they add other peculiar stories to it. But other writings are intriguing. For instance, the Gospel of Thomas rejects the cosmic war between good and evil. The author of the Gospel of Thomas even rejects the idea that Jesus’ divinity was unique. The author claims that we are all the children of God, just as Jesus, and we must look inward to discover our own divinity. The author of the Gospel of Thomas claims that he is revealing the “hidden” teachings of Jesus. They are hidden because in this version of Christianity, the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was trying to tell them. When Jesus spoke of the coming the Kingdom of Heaven, the disciples assumed he meant a historical event, but Jesus was talking about the world being transformed for an individual after the completion of an inward spiritual journey. In this version of the religion, you will be in heaven at the very moment you realize your connection to the divine. When this happens, you will be transformed, and you will act accordingly. There are no rules or rituals, no creeds, nothing formal or established or anything to be regulated by authority figures. Just you and your experience of God within yourself.

The Gnostic Christian Valentinus taught that God generally worshiped by the Jews and Christians was a kind of anthropomorphic projecting and that the true God was more mysterious and harder to contemplate. He believed that God was neither male nor female but was the source of both energies, so there was no reason to insist women remain subordinate to males. He rejected the idea that good and evil were so easily and clearly delineated, and he advised his followers to do as they will so long as they act in love. However, he also warned them to remember that they are capable of self-deception, so they must guard against fooling themselves into believing their purely selfish acts are true expressions of love.

The Orthodox Christians were having none of this, of course. They demonized the “heretics” and claimed that Satan had seduced them. Church Fathers such as Tertullian even refused to debate them. According to them, they were the representatives of the truth and anyone, even fellow Christians, who disagreed with them were part of Satan’s army. They demanded that these other Christians be shunned and they insisted their writings should be destroyed.

I think the ultimate joke is on the Orthodox Christians. Their church fragmented anyway. Many Christians think for themselves. Many have rejected the cosmic war. Many view Jesus’ miraculous birth and resurrection as symbolic. Many Christians think of their religion as an inward spiritual journey that culminates in discovering their own connection with the divine. Many refuse to believe that non-Christians or “heretics” are part of a satanic army. Many believe that ethics are often complicated, grey and situational. Many believe that their God transcends our understanding and that our talk of God is anthropomorphic. And even some of those early non-orthodox Christian writings they tried so hard to eradicate have resurfaced.

Longing For Young Tobey

I first saw the film The World According To Garp in the early ‘80s when I was in high school. It was on HBO, and I watched it over and over again. It made a huge impression on me. In the late ’90s, I finally got around to reading the novel. I read several other books by John Irving after that, including The Cider House Rules. So I was excited when film version came out.

I don’t normally go to the theater. I usually wait for movies to come out on DVD—or VHS tape back in the day—but in the spring of 2000, I had my father drive me to the nearby town of Beckley, West Virginia, so I could see The Cider House Rules on the big screen. I loved the movie, except the story felt rushed as compared to the novel. When I walked out of the theater, I can remember even now feeling a little cheated because it seemed the middle part of the story had been edited out. But I understand that movies are not mini series, and I really did enjoy the film a great deal.

I especially liked Tobey Maguire as Homer Wells. He was so boyishly cute and sweet, and he seemed so befuddled and mystified by the world. His eyes always seemed to be filled with wonder, surprise and curiosity tinged with uncertainty and timidity. I fell in love with Tobey while watching this movie. I was 34, so I was still fairly young myself, but I knew my youth would soon be gone. I could feel middle age creeping up. I had already had my head surgeries. I had already been hospitalized for depression several times. I had already undergone electroshock. And I had basically given up and moved back home with my parents. Most of the time, I felt much older than 34, but there was still a spark of youth and hope inside me, and I felt it while watching Tobey’s young, pretty face and listening to his squeaky voice. How I longed for Tobey or someone like Tobey to come into my life.

I watched The Cider House Rules again earlier, and I have to admit that I still love Tobey in this film. Fifteen years has passed, but watching young Tobey as Homer still fills me with longing. This screenshot shows Homer admiring Candy who is stretched out naked on his cot in the bunkhouse. Homer tells her that she is so beautiful to him that it hurts. I know just what he means.

 

The Prodigy by Gary Cottle

I like to think this is a still from a recently rediscovered film from the ‘60s that was never released because of its subject matter. It’s about a shy young college student named Max who loses his cool summer intern job in the city at the last minute and has to spend the next three months with his grandmother. The grandmother lives in an isolated seaside village in Maine, and she has offered to pay Max to do yard work.

The boy is quite depressed and lonely until he meets an odd young man of about the same age in the local cemetery. Max is usually awkward around strangers, but much to his surprise, he feels completely at ease with Philip…even though Philip is preoccupied with death and frequently speaks of ghosts.

Philip begins taking Max on tours of supposedly haunted locations in town. Philip taxes Max’s patience with his maudlin theatrics, and the two boys quarrel. Philip finally admits that he doesn’t really believe in ghosts, but he wants to believe because he can’t bear the thought that death is truly the end.

On his last night in town, Philip talks Max into breaking into the deserted Drake mansion, a huge Queen Anne Victorian that sits on a high bluff overlooking the Atlantic. Philip explains that the Drakes died in an accident the year before. The house is empty except for a baby grand piano in the front parlor. Philip never mentioned having any musical abilities, but that evening, he sits down at the piano and plays the most beautiful and melancholic sonata Max has ever heard.

The boys admit they are attracted to one another and make love for the first time. Afterwards, Max notices that Philip has become a little sad and asks him what’s wrong. Philip says he was thinking about Max going back to school. Max promises to come visit Philip the first chance he gets. Philip thanks Max and gives him a kiss, but he doesn’t seem to really believe they will see one another again. The boys decide to sleep there in the Drake mansion, so they hold onto one another and grow silent. Just as Max is about to drift off, Philip tells him in a strangely urgent voice that life is short and that he can’t let anything or anyone hold him back. He makes Max swear that he’ll make the most out of his life.

The next morning, Max wakes up alone. Philip is not to be found, so Max returns to his grandmother’s house. The grandmother is upset, but Max apologizes and explains he spent the night with a friend. Since Max is about to leave, the grandmother lets it go and asks Max in a calmer voice where he was. Max tells her he was in the Drake mansion. The grandmother tells him it was tragic what happened to the Drakes the summer before. Their breaks went out, and their car went over the bluff. Their son was with them, a prodigy who had been accepted at Juilliard. Max asked what the son’s name was. Philip, his grandmother said.

Story: by Gary Cottle
Model: Frederik Meijnen

 

The Intern

In May 1994, I was hospitalized for depression and suicidal ideation. While in the hospital, no one asked me anything about my sexuality. The doctors and the nurses didn’t ask me anything about it in private. They didn’t ask me if I was seeing anyone or how long it had been sense I had gone on a date or had another human being touch me in an intimate way. The doctor and therapist I saw as an outpatient asked me about such things regularly, but going into the hospital was like going into the closet.

I was assigned to the unit for survivors of childhood trauma, and we spent much of the day in group therapy. The other straight members were encouraged to go into detail about their private lives and their past traumatic experiences. But no one asked me about my private life, and I wasn’t asked to describe what it was like growing up in a homophobic environment, even though that was a significant part of the trauma I had survived. Everybody carefully avoided the topic…except one intern.

One day this intern was interviewing me alone in my room, and he declared that I had become a homosexual after failing at being a heterosexual. I quickly informed him that I had never been a heterosexual, and that being gay had nothing to do with striking out with the girls.

I was a desperate young man, and I had turned to these so-called professionals for help, but I quickly realized that they were not ready to face my reality. It reminded me of having to work around my mother’s psychosis when I was growing up…the other significant part of the trauma that I had survived. My mother at least had an excuse. She had a serious mental illness that caused her break with reality.

A couple of years ago, I shared this story on Facebook, and someone who obviously wanted to express sympathy said that my encounter with the intern illustrated why we should be careful about what we say because those who hear us might remember what we tell them for years.

Well, yes, but that was hardly the point. I didn’t share the story because a stupid comment still hurt years later. The intern wasn’t an indelicate, rude stranger that I had come across by chance. The intern was a paid professional who was supposed to be helping me stay alive. Instead, he was just one more person who didn’t understand. Having to face this level of ignorance and lack of compassion was one of the reasons I was so uncomfortable around others.

Looking forward to film Carol.

The film Carol is scheduled to come out in November, so I’ve not seen it, but I am looking forward to it. It is based on the novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, the same author who wrote Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. I recommend the novel. Highsmith has a simple prose style, but with everyday language and relatively short sentences, she manages to evoke vivid images and feelings.

Therese is a young woman of 19 and just starting her adult life in early 1950s New York. She works in a department store and is dating a young man named Richard. One day in December, Therese sees an older woman doing some Christmas shopping in the store. Therese is instantly drawn to the woman, and she ends up waiting on her. The woman wants her packages delivered, so she fills out a form with her name and address. Therese goes so far as to copy the address and sends Carol a Christmas card. It’s an odd thing to do, but it leads to the two women meeting and getting to know one another.

Therese experiences intense longing for the woman, but she’s young, and it’s the 1950s, so she doesn’t understand that she’s attracted and falling in love.

      

Crazy In My Dreams

I'm a randy little devil. I can remember standing on the steps in front of the student union at WVU in the middle of the day when thousands of young men were heading to their next class, and it was just a little bit of heaven for me. I wanted them all, and in my imagination, I had them all. In my head, I'm a wild and crazy guy. And that has not changed as I've gotten older.

But I also have PTSD and extreme social phobia. It's hard for me to ask someone what time it is, much less ask a stranger for sex. And my discomfort around others is super obvious. People know they make me uncomfortable, so most of the time, they keep their distance. Back when I had one night stands, it was sometimes difficult for me to climax because I couldn't relax. It's hard to have an orgasm if your body is reacting as if you're under threat of an immediate deadly attack. I remember one partner stopping and saying, "You look terrified. It's like you'd rather be anyplace else but here." Well, he was right, but it wasn't anything personal. He was a cute and adorable boy. I wanted to have sex with him, but I couldn't relax.

To Hell With Your Devil

I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I’m open to the idea that there is a spiritual, transcendent reality and that our awareness and understanding of it is ineffable and beyond the scope of science and ordinary sensory perception. However, I find the belief in supernatural beings like Satan with malevolent human-like personalities to be primitive and absurd. Satan is the grownup version of our childhood bogeyman. He is the personification of our fear, a convenient excuse for our misdeeds and a means to bully others. I have little patience for those who threaten us with the idea of Satan or hellfire.

None of us want to be stereotyped.

We’re all individuals. But the gay men as effeminate thing… I don’t think that’s so horrible. I think it’s far more bothersome that so many believe there’s something wrong with being an effeminate man, and I think it’s sad that many gay men are so terrified of being thought of as effeminate that they put themselves down and attack other gay men for not being masculine enough.

Try not to care so much.

People will judge the hell out of you.  They’ll look for excuses to do it, and they’ll pretend they’ve never done anything morally questionable.  You have to learn not to care so much.

Shame and Fear

Our house was extremely sexually repressed while I was growing up. No one ever talked about sex. And even though the four of us lived in a small, 800 square foot house, we remained covered up all the time. Modesty was strictly enforced. If the subject came up on TV, my father would say it was disgusting. The most disgusting sex of all was homo sex, and homos were the most vile creatures on earth.

I learned early on that I was not to talk to my parents about sex, and certainly not about homosexuality. I learned about sex by closely paying attention to the things said on TV and in the movies, and listening to what the kids said at school.

Looking back on it, the way the subject was treated was ridiculous and paranoid, full of fear. I think the environment that I grew up in was highly toxic and abusive. I grew up feeling ashamed of my body. Once I realized I was gay at 11, I kept that to myself until I went away to college 7 years later. That is a huge amount of time for a young person to carry such a secret. I guarded that secret every day. I was terrified of anyone finding out I liked boys and wanted to do “nasty” things with them. That early experience wore some kind of grove inside my head that I’ve never been able to get away from. Making friends has always been difficult. And romantic and sexual intimacy has always been a struggle. Even hugs are awkward and embarrassing to me.