smote the smittened

I receiveth a great number of brochures on the street. I've come to believe that everyone passing out "literature"—from the super duper suit sale dude in the sandwich boards to the juice bar special dudette in the banana costume to the Christian evangelist hocking salvation for the Asamblea de Iglesias Cristianas Bethesda, trembling in his T-shirt on the platform of the Delancey F-train stop to the well-scrubbed face of the woman professing her love for Supreme Master Ching Hai, this shot is my favorite, and advocating The Quan Yin Method of meditation as the surest way to God from the top of the stairs on Essex—all of them, really just want me to take the brochure so that they can go home.

Yes, I tuck them in my bag, later reading them too carefully, probably driving myself further and further toward the kind of midlife fundamentalist new age renaissance that a girl like me (godless, jobless, homo pervert that I am) was practically born to experience. I've never had the the structure of any type of religion, except maybe the Cult of Girlhood and The Invisible Shield of Whiteness, and I chose to be an English major, dragging myself through Dante, Milton, and Blake without a fucking clue about any of the biblical references, thematics or symbolism (I was the kind of chick who always wrote papers that were more like glowing previews from the marketing department—exhaustively praising the clever depiction of the lovers or the snake or the yawning gates of hell).

Speaking of the Cult of Girlhood, I've been studying up on "The Sin of Immorality," which offers a number of helpful tips. You know about how "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse" (2 Timothy 3:13), a clear argument for the swollen, recently dipilated hairlessness of the pure. I also learned that "some of the pleasures which are indulged in today are drink, drugs, and sex...'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging'" (Proverbs 20:1). Here's some nice personification and a fine use of teen lingo from the Bible. Also, the pamphlet says, "men and women go to parties and dances to relax and enjoy themselves." Such frank recognition of our important and particular contemporary condition. "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) says the Bible and this pamphlet, but what, I ask you, doesn't lead to death?

Of course, I read these things with a drumroll or a magician in mind—hoping for that great high-hat tingle in my nipples or the wonderful shazzamm of a bunny from the hat—waiting for that direct and personal address to moi, she who so assiduously practices her homosexual fornication. Usually the homo beat down is set up by a positive review of the spiritual and eternal benefits of marriage and followed by the threat of AIDS and a cursory condemnation of adultery which aim for withering worldliness: we're hip to your game, we've got your number, you're going to sacrifice that key deposit if you don't check out on time, etc.

But then I'm so goddamn literal. They're not talking about me, I think, they're talking about boys. All this he will resort...and his unrestrained passions...his work...Not to mention that God, "He said, 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination'" (Leviticus 18:22). What to make of this? Really sounds fine...maybe they're going the old reverse psychology route. Who's thou? Tell me no, sorry, you can't, it's bad—and whatever IT is glows with the ambrosial odor of sex. I'm a simple girl. I'm thinking of contacting the Gospel Tract and Bible Society, P.O Box 700, Moundridge (!!!), Kansas 67107 U.S.A. I'll tell them that if they really want to snag the ladies in their moral you know where, they should start with the pronouns. That's kid stuff. I could be their consultant!