A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER XXIV
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
John said he would take me sightseeing on his day off. When he left, he pulled out of his pocket a little yellow snuff tin and slipped it to Moe.
“For Frank … it isn’t snuff. It’s pretty fair stuff. Hope he gets off.”
People always wanted to give me things … candy, ice cream, dope, money. After John left, I set to work finding a rider for the trip … looking through the want ads in the underground paper. There was someone wanting a ride to Dallas … which would have been ideal … Carol and I would make it from Texas to Santa Fe alone easy. There was someone else who was willing to “go with anyone anywhere.” Not what we were looking for exactly. There was an ad from a handicapped nineteen-year-old who wanted “to meet a chick.” Sounded familiar.
I just had to wait until a rider came in. One did. An acid ghost named Jim … glassy, blown-out eyes, dreamily talking, in slow motion, the fatality of physically fried brain cells. It took forever to track down the word he wanted to say … forever to decide if he would eat the hamburger that he held. He usually just hung around the store, sometimes helping Moe by neatly stacking up bellbottoms … or answering the phone … or turning over the record. Anything to feel useful. He hadn’t been in the last two weeks because he got a job at a shoe store. He had hoped to get enough money to get his trumpet out of hock.
“I think I’m going to get fired soon … or quit. But I won’t have enough to get my horn back,” he said as if he was talking in his sleep, staring into space. “I can’t take their hassling me, hurrying me to do this, do that … I get lost, blank out. My head can’t handle it. I’m not a salesman. I am a musician. But when will bands start using horns again?”
“The two bands in Santa Fe are starting to experiment with horns,” I said.
After he fitted the puzzle of letters and words finally together in the right order in his head … it took my spelling the line over three times before that happened … Jim’s face woke up. “Really? Do you think they need a good trumpet?”
I went into my Santa Fe spiel, emphasizing the coffeehouse that the two bands own and run together … telling him there was a loose group of musicians that he would fit into. He wanted to go, wanted to be our rider. He could hang on at the job for another two weeks to get the money for his contribution to the trip … but not for the two months needed to ransom the horn. However, he couldn’t’ make his mind up. It swirled around in him, making him dizzy. What good was a horn player without his horn? Although Jim wasn’t happy here in D.C., he could survive here … he knew the ropes, the tricks. How could he be sure he could survive there, even though it was heaven? He said he would make up his mind and would come back. I had a feeling that Jim could never make up his mind and the next time, he would still be in the fog. When Carol came in later that day, I told her about Jim.
“But I don’t think we should count on him,” I said. “How about calling that rider going to Texas … and calling the Switchboard so they will put us on their rides board?”
“I’ve been thinking today. I don’t want just any rider. I want to travel with a real Christian,” Carol said in a hard tone that pushed me backwards away from her. “Someone that won’t let me stray from the path. I’m weak … I give in to temptations too easy. Like last night.”
“What about last night? Oh!” I had a flash of understanding. “You did what you know that you shouldn’t do … drinking beer, smoking dope … maybe even smoking cigarettes.”
“That’s partly it. I escape into those things when I can’t stand the pain any more … Rather than going through the trials that Jesus sets before me … the fires that would strengthen me, harden me. Instead, every time, I fall into the temptations that Satan has set right in front of me. Temptation of going off and hiding … lighting up a cigarette when I get nervous … like right now,” Carol said, crushing the cigarette out on the floor violently. “Why am I so weak! Whenever the loneliness and pain get to be too much for me to stand, I get stoned or drunk … or eat … instead of calling on the Lord to lift me up. Maybe I don’t really believe that He will pick me up when I’ve had enough.”
She knew so much of why she did things, how she avoided looking at her pain and loneliness and avoided really doing something about it. No. That isn’t right. Carol didn’t know or see. Something inside of her knew and saw … and was trying to get the truth out. But Carol didn’t hear the truth that she spoke. People rarely did. Talking to her was like listening to a person with a knowing and talking to an ignorant person at the same time.
“What we did last night was good … more than good. It was something I have waited for for a long time … The same thing happened on the mattress that time,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“We loved each other.”
“Loved just to get away from the pain and loneliness. I loved for the same reason why I get stoned … to hide from the pain.”
“Stop feeling guilty about what you do!” I jabbed on the board. I didn’t care whether or not we drank or smoked the joint last night. It didn’t matter. It felt good … the smoking and drinking felt good because we loved each other … we loved each other. That’s what’s real. Don’t be blind to that by being guilty … by feeling guilty!
“This is why I want another real Christian traveling with me … with us, I mean. To keep me from getting confused.”
“By who?”
“By you. You are confusing me right now.”
“How can I, if you really believe what you think you believe … if it is true?”
Carol was quiet for a while. Moe was sitting on the car seats, talking to Wattbulb, a tall, black social worker, about our new unofficial sale.
“Yeah, half off on everything … well, just clothes,” Moe said with his book on Malcolm X in his lap. “Offer is good for blacks only. If you’re white, you’re out of luck.”
“Aren’t you afraid of being charged with reverse racism?” Wattbulb asked in a deep, cultured voice.
“No. I don’t have the money to advertise it. So I just tell every black to divide by two what is on the tag. So, the whites don’t know about it. But the news will get around in the black community fast. Anyhow, race isn’t really the reason. Blacks just buy the clothes that they really want when they finally get enough money. They buy the clothes that I like … flashy … wild … pants with huge elephant bells. Even if I go out of business, I refuse to sell the sissy flairs the whites want to buy … think they should buy. The whites limit themselves by what they think is safe to wear … what they should wear. The way I see it, if they want to be safe, they’ll have to pay for it.”
Their conversation turned to politics and the latest injustices laid on the poor people. It was interesting to them, because Wattbulb had a clear understanding of the problems involved and had some new inside scoops, not clouded by emotion, of what new trickery the government was trying to pull. Interesting to my journalistic reformer’s mind because Wattbulb showed some new side of the problems. He didn’t have any answers, any solutions, he didn’t pretend to. He just spent his days trying to make things a little easier for the people until the answer was found. While they were talking, Carol went over to sit next to them, leaving me nine feet from them. All of a sudden, she interrupted them to attack Wattbulb for seeing everything material and seeking the answers in the world of politics and violence … in the world of man … when all of the answers were within God through Jesus.
“When will Man learn that the only way he can ever change the world is individually changing himself inwardly, getting back to God? Getting back like he was before Adam and Eve sinned,” Carol said, busy thinking what to say next, how to teach Wattbulb something. “Man shouldn’t concern himself with government. Let the men who are in government govern … they are doing a fair job, all things considered. We should just concern ourselves with finding out what God’s will is and following it.”
Wattbulb just listened to all of this patiently and then said, “I really do believe in God. But we live in this material world, and we have to use what is around us in this world. I have a baby to feed and protect from the rats. I wouldn’t be doing that if I sat in my room meditating on God.”
“Man does not live by bread alone.”
It went on and on like this for a half hour at least. Wattbulb gently tried to bring Carol down to earth with calm reasoning. But Carol got more wound up, thinking he was denying her Lord, getting more frustrated at not being able to bring him into the light. I just sat there uninvolved, listening to them, wondering what had made her suddenly rigid. I knew the needs of a fanatic were always in her. But what set them free? Guilt? Doubt. Fear. Finally, she had become so obnoxious that she had pushed Wattbulb into a place where he could either try to push her back into her own absurdity or walk away. He chose walking out of the store. She tried to continue the debate with Moe. But Moe just laughed at her, refusing to take her seriously. So, she came back to me.
“Jesus said it would be lonely being a true Christian. Everyone will deny me like they did,” Carol said. “Why don’t you believe in Jesus?”
“What makes you think I don’t?”
“Because you never talk about Him. You’ve never gone out on a limb and declared your faith to me.”
“How dare you! Being so arrogant! Why should I have to confess my faith to you?” My indignity, the force behind it, surprised me even more than it did Carol. I felt I had to soften it by adding, “Besides, you never asked.”
“Well, I am asking you now. I have to know because I cannot … will not … be close to anyone who isn’t a true Christian. Are you a Christian? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Not just in God, but in Jesus as your personal savior?”
“If I said I did, what would that prove?”
“It’d prove to me that you are willing to go out on a limb, to risk shame for Jesus.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you. I can’t! I won’t!” I poked out on the board, then went on sadly, “Words do not prove anything. What you feel from me does even more than what I do. What do you feel from me?”
“I feel a peace and a great deal of love … that is why I want to be around you. You also have more knowledge than I have. I’m a little afraid of that because you could twist your knowledge and use it to confuse me, to lead me from Jesus.”
“I don’t really feel peace all the time … I don’t think I do … It rarely feels like it to me. And I don’t know how much real knowledge I’ve got … I do know things. But that isn’t real knowledge. I want wisdom. But what I do have is love. I hope you can feel it from me because I can’t prove it any other way than the feeling.”
“I do feel it.”
“That love makes me a Christian … I think.”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m not sure with you because I feel such a powerful thing from you. How can you be a true Christian if I feel you trying to argue against Jesus through me? Or you are just on the verge of giving your life to Jesus. Most people say they believe in God and love … maybe they even really do. But they have not been saved because they haven’t made the commitment to Christ. They may do good things all their lives, but they won’t get into the Kingdom of God. It’s faith that gets you there, not what you do. Most people who go to Church on Sunday aren’t even Christians because they won’t dare to look like an asshole for Christ. That is my greatest trial … to swallow my pride and look like a fool to spread the word. That’s why I failed with that Negro … Wattbulb or whatever his name was … I failed because I got overawed by his worldly knowledge, by his facts of earth. I withdrew a slight bit from Jesus and the Bible rather than standing firm in them. I got pushed back.”
“That isn’t why you didn’t get through to him,” I said, knowing that I didn’t want to be around when Carol stood “firm” … rigid … on what she thought were the Bible and Jesus.
“Why didn’t I then?”
“Because you didn’t take the time to love Wattbulb, to get to know him, to listen to him … really listen to him … Am I listening to you … really listening with you? Of course, I am not agreeing with everything you say. But am I openly listening to you, not closing you out as Wattbulb finally did?”
“Yes. You are very open to receiving the Word … even though you haven’t fully accepted it yet.”
“It has got nothing to do with me. If you had hit me with the “Word” cold, I probably wouldn’t have been as gentle as Wattbulb. But you did something to me, with me, before you opened your truths to me.”
“I wasn’t totally committed to Jesus until I had a revelation last night.”
“Do you know what you did to make me want to listen to you? You made friends with me. You let yourself love me and made me love you … in the car last night and on the mattress that night when you gave me the massage. Now that I am something more to you than a mere soul that you want to save, but not to know … and now that you’re something more to me than just a Jesus freak trying to lay her trip on me … now I can listen when you open up your ideas.”
“If you don’t stop confusing us, I will have to leave,” Carol said, fear in her eyes.
“But I’m not trying to confuse you … or make you change what you believe.”
“Even if you aren’t trying, you’re doing a good job … of confusing me … not of changing my belief in the Lord.”
“I’m just trying to show you a better way to do what you want to … what you want, not what I want. You want to bring people to Christ. Right? What I’m saying is you can save people easier by giving them a part of you … by taking a part of them in return … rather than giving them just pious words. Words won’t save or convert … but what you are naturally will change people, if you let it … if you let what you are shine.”
“I have to go before I let you lead me into false pride, the unforgivable sin against God. You’re telling me I can do something without Jesus, without using His Word – the Bible, without letting Him come through me and guide me in everything I do. Something inside wants to listen and believe you. But it’s just my rebellious pride that would take me away from Jesus. Every time I listen to that, I get fucked up and Jesus has to come and rescue me. That is why I have to leave now … to not listen to my pride coming through you and fall into temptation,” Carol said, getting up to leave. But she stopped, shaking her head sadly, “Why am I so weak?”
“Would you believe I am a Christian?” I asked solemnly.
“I would,” Carol said, and walked out the door without looking at me.
I hope that Moe didn’t overhear my last question. What was I doing implying that I was really a real Christian? I was as much a Christian as Moe. The last time I was even close to a straight church was a high school youth fellowship class near my folks’ house four years ago. All the “in” kids of the high school … honor students, football players, homecoming queens, school politicians … belonged to this church. We sat in a circle hearing about a black church that had been burnt down. There were many fine speeches about how we should lift up our less fortunate brothers. The plate was passed around to start this project moving. The plate made it around without stopping even once and returned to the leader’s hands as empty as it started. The leader’s “Come on, you guys!” didn’t help and he wisely let the project fade away. After the meeting, the cigarette machine did a booming business as the kids chattered plans for a beach party next week. I never went back … like I never went back to Vacation Bible School when I was ten, after the whole class ganged up on this one girl who they thought was always “acting naughty”, whatever that meant. Finally, she ran out of the room, crying, having trouble opening the door. After she left, the class went back to studying about the Tower of Babel as if nothing had happened. I sat there too … trapped. I wanted to go out to comfort the girl, letting her know there was someone who understood, who saw her … saw her wild, but not as a naughty spirit. I didn’t know her at all, only watched her a few times, observing her like I would watch an actor on TV. Once in a while, she would look my way and flash a warm smile. That was all that there was between us. She was only the match that made me start seeing what the Christian Church was. I didn’t have the talking board until years after. So I had to … [this is where the document ends]