Rediscovering Sunday

Prologue

Every night is like a Saturday night, and every morning is like a Monday morning. That’s what happens when you lose your Sunday.

Incidentally, it was a Sunday afternoon that it happened. I was walking through the park, and I was entirely too sober by my standards. I was pondering how interchangeable some words are, words that seem to be antonyms. For example: my desperate pursuit of some kind, any kind, of toxin. Was I looking for a way to make reality easier to face, or was I just looking to avoid it? Indeed, we say things keep us sane, but really I think we’re all just happy because we’re too crazy to know any better. Along the same train of thought, was moving from pot to crack, or from meth to heroin, a progression or a digression?

It was inane thoughts such as these that haunted me that day, that foretold the slow demise of my identity with every step I took further down the path. Or perhaps it was up the path.

Chapter I

Ow. Rock. Ow. Root. Ow. Incredibly ugly old homeless lady on bench whose pungent aroma is assaulting my poor nostrils in the most blatantly offensive way.

Aw hell, who am I kidding? Ow, hangover is more like it. I sigh heavily and try to ignore my pounding skull, promising the little Hellboy inside that if he’ll just put his hammer away long enough for me to find some weed he’ll be happy again. Things will be okay.

Hello. Speaking of weed, what’s this I smell? This certainly is no urine-soaked 60-year old homeless lady stench. The butterflies begin to flutter in my abdomen. I only hope that they’re fluttering in excited recognition of an old friend, not in sullen and explosive rejection of last night’s booze-up.

Sniffing the air, I easily discern the happy perfume from the motley collection of other scents, all so typical of an afternoon stroll through the mid-autumn park. In another life I might have been able to appreciate the vibrant colours of the turning leaves, the fresh purity of our city’s remaining scraps of nature. The billowing clouds, fluffy and white as unsheared lambs, bobbing along the pastel blue ocean of the sky like waves lapping gently towards the shores of paradise. Yes, in another life I might have been able to appreciate all that. But not now. Not today. Not sober.

Stepping off the bike path, I stoop low and begin to work my way through the underbrush. Although it’s hard work, the warm, smoky haze of impending highness envelops me, urging me along what seems to be almost a trail. It’s not an easy trail, but here and there the way’s just a little clearer, skirting around this bush or that tree. I’m almost stoned already, just out of sheer anticipation. I feel how a very young child must feel when its mother hugs it, chasing away all the bad dreams and filling it with the absolute certainty that everything is going to be wonderful. The glorious melting sensation is almost like an orgasm.

Okay, okay, so it’s possible that I might be addicted. They say that marijuana is not an addictive substance…well, they’re wrong. Perhaps it’s not physically addictive, not like crystal meth or heroin. But the psychological addiction is overpowering.

Panting, almost drooling, I clear away the last weave of branches and dive in. I’m in a little clearing. It’s impossible to tell whether the clearing was natural or man-made, but it has certainly been taken over by man. The grass is trampled into dry yellow wisps, and the surrounding bushes have been molested by knives, fire, and God knows what else. Ashes smoulder in the centre, marking generations worth of campfires, and the entire area is littered with cigarette packs, broken bottles, and miscellaneous other bits of trash. And, as my well-trained snout has already detected, there’s a bush party in progress as we speak. At least a dozen pairs of eyes have shifted in my general direction, almost but not quite achieving focus. I quickly evaluate their glassy stares for any signs of hostility, but these savages appear to be friendly. University kids, by the looks of it.

A tall guy in a plaid jacket ambles over to greet me. He’s about my age, but more clean-cut, more innocent-looking.

“Sup?” I’m trying to play it cool. Even though I don’t think these kids mean any harm, my hands can’t help but tremble a bit. I always get paranoid and uncomfortable when I’m sober.

“Hey man. What’s shaking?” The grin is relaxed and friendly, the wide-set hazel eyes glassy and impenetrable. He holds out a joint in one hand. I study that hand. It’s smooth, clean; a hand that has never known real hardship, real work. The joint is half-smoked already, the ends of the paper curling around the rapidly fading cherry. I can’t figure this guy out. Which to believe: the amiable, inviting smile…or the voice? The voice is also friendly of course, but he’s not as good as hiding the subtle vocal inflections as he is with his face. I most definitely sense an overtone of I-dare-you.

What the hell. Honestly, what have I got to lose?

Smirking right into his fresh college-boy face, I grab the joint and take a huge hit. Sucking back the hot stinky smoke, I hold it in as long as I can, feeling the burn all the way down my throat and into my lungs before exhaling directly into his face.

He doesn’t flinch. Instead, he breathes deeply in, receiving the secondhand smoke as a gift rather than a challenge.

“Hey man, don’t hog all of it. You pitching?”

I shake my head sadly. “No, actually, I was looking to score some. Have I come to the right place?”

Plaid Jacket smiles. “I ain’t a dealer or anything, but you can pretty well always find hoots with our crowd. I’m AJ, by the way.”

“Darren,” I reply, nodding my welcome.

“Sarah,” a voice to my right chimes in. I glance over in surprise; I hadn’t noticed the rest of the group gathering around us. The speaker is a short, very thin girl with silky black hair and a lot of piercings. She’s cute, in an anorexic sort of way. The rest of the group murmur their names, the gamut of high and low voices traveling rapidly around the circle effectuating an almost musical quality. Images of haunting gypsy melodies and the booming transcendence of long-lost medieval strains flash through my mind, temporarily flooding my senses. I’m suspended in mid-air, scrabbling for solid ground, for a breath, for an instant of normality. I need something solid that I can hold onto.

Whoa. I shake my head almost violently to clear the chaos within, forcing my attention back to the present. Only three things are important right now: I obviously need to make a serious cutback on my acid intake, I have no idea what anyone’s name is aside from AJ’s and Sarah’s, and most importantly of all, I am about to get ripped.

Chapter II

“So what you’re saying is you’re the Antichrist.” Anthony dissolves into a fit of hyena-like mirth at his own wit. His rope-ish black dreadlocks, usually resting halfway down his back, swing about in a sort of counter-rhythm to his shaking body.

“What? No! All I said was that I’m not a Christian!” I protest. “I mean, I don’t go to church, I never did, not even when I was little – ” I bite my tongue as he cuts me off again.

“That doesn’t mean anything. Your lifestyle as a small child is entirely a reflection of your parents’ beliefs and habits. A person doesn’t even begin to start living until he – or she – ” he adds with a quick glance at Sarah and Jules, “gets out of the home and out from under the shadow of their upbringing. As a matter of fact,” he continues, “few people are ever truly free in thought, and therefore in deed. That’s why we smoke this stuff,” he concludes with a wicked grin, holding up the just-killed roach. “It releases us from our hang-ups and inhibitions. All the great thinkers were totally loaded all the time, I bet you. I mean, Voltaire, Gandhi, sure as hell they were passing that peace pipe around. Artists, too. Just look at Van Gogh. You think a sober mind could have come up with crazy shit like that?”

I poke my lip ring with my tongue, a habit I’ve developed of late, the same way that Sarah twirls her hair when she’s concentrating. It’s still a bit swollen and sore; I only got it pierced a week ago. No doubt playing with it all the time isn’t helping.

“That’s completely beside the point,” I insist, reverting back to the original topic of conversation. “We’re not talking about Gandhi or Voltaire or Van Gogh. We’re talking about me. It’s true that my parents are atheists – well, agnostic is more like it, but anyway. I haven’t lived with them since I was fifteen. I’m twenty-four now. Besides, it’s not exactly like we were ever close, like they ever actually bothered to talk to me about anything real.” Or anything at all, I added silently.

I was lucky, I suppose. My parents never beat me or anything like that, and they always provided me with the material necessities. It’s just that we never quite saw eye-to-eye. Even as a toddler, it was always me with my toys and my silly games and my crazy imagination, and my mother impatiently shooing me “out from underfoot” as she bustled here and there. She was too caught up in her plans to take over the world or whatever it was that she did to pay any attention to some obnoxious little scrap of life, blotting out a tile or two of her spotless kitchen floor. As for my father, well he really doesn’t rate mention at all. On the approximately two days a year that he was home before my bedtime, he didn’t seem to register my presence at all. My mother at least recognized me enough to impart a lazy warning kick in my general direction, depicting in no uncertain terms that once again I was in her way. Not him though. He was, and no doubt is, in a world of his own.

I return my attention to the present. Anthony is speaking again.
“Then why haven’t you at least checked them out?”

“Checked who out?” I have to ask. I must have missed the “who” when I was delivering that silent monologue. Or, knowing Anthony, it’s entirely possible that he’s speaking of a generic “them”, the way a paranoid schizophrenic might rant and rave, “They’re coming for me!” Okay, so that was a weak example. But it fits.

“Religious people, of course,” Anthony explains impatiently. “Well, not religious, necessarily. But spiritual. There’s some really cool ideas floating around out there. Worth looking into, anyway.”

Jules gives a short laugh. “Yes, in Anthony’s world everything is worth looking into. Everything but a real education, that is, and a job, and all those other things that could actually help him get somewhere in life.”

Anthony gives her a hard look. “You can go ahead and chase all that material crap if you want. I’m not into that shit. I’d rather expand my intellectual and spiritual capacities, be a better person. I’d rather not be chained down. Punch in, nine to five, don’t mind those walls around your mind.” An odd expression suddenly crosses his face.

“Hey, that was pretty neat. Sounds almost like a song. What do you think, guys? Promising lyrics?”

I have to laugh. He’s so scatterbrained sometimes. All the time, really. Cruel comments and insults slide off Anthony like water off a raincoat, not even staining the surface. They simply don’t have time to sink in before he’s off again, gallivanting around some circus tent in the psychedelic playground of his brain.

For the last two hours, Anthony and I have been verbally sparring, debating everything from the meaning of life to whether or not the answer to the universe is in fact 42. Jules has interjected occasionally, usually to deliver some waspish comment in Anthony’s direction. I don’t know what the deal is between those two, but Jules certainly does seem to have a moderately large stick up her ass when it comes to him.

Sarah, on the other hand, has been lying on her back, perhaps a metre or so out from the rest of the group. Every now and then I glance over to see if maybe she’s sleeping, but she never is. She’s staring at the sky, spotting cloud shapes or dreaming of faraway lands. Now she’s fiddling with a twig; closer inspection reveals that there’s a ladybug scurrying madly up and down the bark. Every time it reaches the end Sarah flips it around so the bug has to start all over again. Finally, the ladybug tires of the game and flies away. Sarah abandons the twig and sits up to face us.

“Have you ever tried Buddhism?” she asks of no one in particular. I’m surprised; I hadn’t thought she was paying attention to our conversation. “I like it a lot. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of the whole fatass statue presiding over things, but there’s some really good theories put to work there.”

Anthony is interested. “What, you mean like meditation and stuff?” he queries.

“Yeah, mostly,” Sarah replies. “I don’t so much go for all their stuff about reincarnation cycles and I don’t know about the whole nirvana thing – to me, Nirvana was an amazing grunge band killed by heroin and a gun, and that’s about it. If there are higher levels of awareness, I’d just as soon find them through some good old substance abuse. But what I do agree with,” she continues, “are the principles of karma, of self-discipline and mental training, of wisdom, and yeah, of meditation, like you said. It’s all about self-regulation and self-control. Inner peace of mind.”

“Is it true,” Jules chimes in, “that Buddhism isn’t considered a real religion because it has no god?”

“Well, I don’t know, I’m not an expert or anything,” Sarah says quickly, almost defensively. “But there are supernatural beings in the Buddhist psyche. They just aren’t worshipped, and they are considered to be living beings that undergo the same reincarnation processes as humans.”

“Well that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Jules grumbles, visibly dismissing an entire movement of 700 million followers with an insolent toss of her hair.

“Sometimes you don’t make a lot of sense,” Anthony mutters under his breath, but she doesn’t hear him.

“Darren, what do you think?” Sarah steers the conversation away from Anthony and Jules before they get into another fight. “There’s a Buddhist temple downtown, we should go sometime.”

“Alright,” I agree casually, not so much because I have an interest in Buddhism – I don’t, not really – but because I’m excited by the prospect of spending more time with Sarah. Alone. Without this goofball group of stoners in the woods. I’ve been coming here for close to a month now; soon we’ll have to find a new stomping ground. We’ve had a cold spell lately, and besides, it’s dangerous to have the same rendezvous point all the time. That’s how heatscores form, and God knows that getting arrested is the last thing any of us need right now.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve all found something to occupy yourselves with,” Jules says sarcastically, brushing stray leaves and blades of grass off her clothing as she climbs to her feet. “Some of us have to go home and study for midterms now.”

“Bye, Juliette my precious. We’ll miss you dearly,” Anthony mocks.

Casting him a look that could have frozen over hell, Jules stalks off towards the bike path.

“Uh…wow?” I offer meekly.

Anthony shakes his head, his dark eyes mere pools of blackness in the fading light. “Just don’t ask. Just don’t. Even. Ask.”

Chapter III

“So do you actually believe in all this stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah replies, her hair coiled around her finger in that now-familiar gesture. “I want to believe it. Don’t get me wrong, I hate organized religion. It’s all so corporate, and all it does is preach hellfire and damnation. But oh! if you give us your life savings, we’ll forgive you! Shut up, of course we can do that, God gave us executive power.”

I raise an eyebrow at her, not sure whether she expects me to laugh, or agree, or both. I’ve discovered that Sarah is an amazing mimic, always doing little caricature routines. She’s told me that her real dream is to be an actress – Broadway, not Hollywood – but that it’s a secret because she doesn’t want to sound like just another stupid starry-eyed kid who’s never had to make a living in the “real world”.

“Anyway,” Sarah continued, returning to her own voice, “like I said, it’s not that shit that I’m interested in. I don’t ever want to be identified as Christian, or as any label really, not even Buddhist.”

I nod my head in understanding. I saw the way she freaked out on A.J. when he called her a punk rock princess. At the time I thought she had just taken offence because she thought he was making fun of her. Sarah hates Something Corporate, and “Punk Rock Princess” was their biggest hit. Now I know differently. It’s not what the label actually says that makes her angry; it’s the fact that somebody thinks they can stuff her entire identity into a little box in the first place. A coffin is what she called it when she explained it to me.

“You ever driven an ‘80s Oldsmobile? Like a Cutlass or something?”

“Yes….” I reply, surprised and more than a little confused at the abrupt change of topic.

“They just never die. You can’t get them stuck, you can’t wreck them, the gas tank will run on fumes for an hour, and no matter what, that fucking motor just won’t quit. Oldsmobiles are the most reliable damn car anyone’s ever come up with.”

“Truth,” I concede.

“Or Astro-Turf. You know, that nasty green indoor-outdoor carpeting they use on professional ball diamonds and stuff.” As if I had never spoken. “And I’m sure you know someone who’s got a trashy old couch on their back porch, or in the garage.”

I nod again, ruefully remembering my grade 12 year, the better part of which was spent sitting in my buddy Joey’s shed getting high. Joey had a couch in there that he had literally found in a back alley. Sober, we avoided it like the plague; someone had probably died of the plague on that couch. Drunk and stupid, however, we had all crashed in its voluminous depths at one point or another.

“It was just the comfiest damn couch you’d ever sat on, right? I mean, you didn’t actually want to touch it ‘cause it was so gross, but it was just so soft and inviting. Like one of the cigarette burns would just swallow you right up, through the hole and into the padding. Right?”

I start to laugh. Seems like these couches are a sort of cultural icon, at least for our screwed-up stoner-ish subculture.

Sarah ploughs right on ahead, oblivious as always to background noise. It’s not the audience’ part to deliver the speech, after all.

“That is what I crave. What I want to believe, be a part of, trust.”

“What?” Now I’m lost. Sarah’s not usually as bad as Anthony when it comes to disjointed rambling, but I had to have missed something this time.

“Trust,” she repeats impatiently. “I want to trust in something. My entire life, I’ve always had to take care of myself. At home, at school, on the street, everywhere. No one ever gave a damn about what I wanted or what I needed. Just once, I’d like to know that there’s something bigger than me watching over things. Just once I’d like to know that things will be okay.”

“Uhm…alright?” I offer tentatively.

“Have you ever read the Bible?” Sarah presses.

I have to laugh. “Sarah, please. You’ve been around for all our discussions about this stuff. I had agnostic parents, and I don’t give a fuck about any of it myself. I’m not exactly into acting all superior and holier-than-thou. I’m not gonna pretend that I’m better than anyone else, or even that I want to be.”

Groaning, Sarah flops her face onto her drawn-up knees. “Have you heard anything that I’ve just said?” she exclaims, more accusing than questioning.

“Yeah, I’ve heard you!” I say defensively. “I didn’t mean it like that; I didn’t mean that you’re like that. Just that that’s how Christians and religious people in general have always seemed to me. You’ve seen the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Hare Krishnas and all those other nutjobs handing out pamphlets everywhere. Not to mention the stereotypical blind evangelist ranting on the street corner.”

“That’s just it,” she insists. “Stereotypical blind evangelist! Those are all stereotypes! And I don’t want to be a stereotype. I don’t want a religion, I want a faith.”

“I see.” I’m sceptical, to say the least. I can’t believe that I’m hearing this bullshit from the girl that I’ve been getting loaded with every day for the past six weeks. This isn’t an inner spiritual connection; this is a drug overdose. Anyway, “What were you gonna say about the Bible?”

“There’s this one thing in it, like a poem or something. Psalm 23, it’s called. I don’t remember much of it now, but when I was like nine I had to memorize it at Bible camp. There’s this one part that I still remember perfectly.” With an incredibly faraway, wistful expression in her eyes, Sarah deepens her voice and begins to recite. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
“Wait a second,” I cut in. “Rod and staff? That doesn’t sound like godly stuff. That sounds like BDSM.”

She casts me a withering glare. “If you’re gonna make jokes about it, I might as well just shut up now. This isn’t exactly easy for me to say as it is, you know. I’m no fan of religion. I’m not proud of not being able to take care of my own shit without wishing some ghost or something would handle matters. I feel like a brainwash victim just talking about it.”

I don’t say anything. She sounds like a brainwash victim, too – but damned if I’ll say it. I have no interest in upsetting her even more than she already is. A peace offering is in order. “How’s this? How about we go to the library right now and find a Bible? We can look up this psalm or whatever it is. I probably just need the whole context to understand it.”

Sarah nods slowly. “Okay. That sounds good. Really good, actually.” For the first time since this entire conversation began, she smiles at me.

Chapter IV

I can’t stop chewing on my cheeks. My jaws clench with a will of their own, and I can hear my teeth grinding.

“Darren, could you at least try to keep your tongue in your mouth?” Sarah hisses. We’ve brought an entire case of water bottles, enough for a whole hockey team, because Sarah doesn’t want us drawing attention to ourselves by constantly getting up. It’s still not enough, though. AJ told us when we bought the pills that we should be careful about drinking water anyway. Powerade is better, he said, because there are electrolytes in it, and it balances the water/sodium ratio in your body. However, neither Sarah nor I has overwhelming amounts of money to spend, and Powerade is expensive. So now we’re stuck with cottonmouth worse than I could ever have imagined. I feel as dehydrated as a grain of sand on the surface of the Gobi Desert. Even so, I can’t stop giggling. I know Sarah’s not really mad at me; she’s wearing a shit-eating grin bigger than mine. With a less-than-Herculean lunge, I stretch across the pew and wrap my arms around her.

“Later on…once we’re out of here…I gotta tell you something,” I mumble. I can feel my lips buzzing, my breath rushing against her ear. Incredible.

“Okay, but shh,” she hushes, placing her finger over my mouth as she pushes me gently away. The thrill of the sensation makes my entire body tingle.

The old lady in front of us keeps turning around to glare. I know I’m being disruptive, but it’s just too funny. She’s such a crabby old lady, too; it’s really a shame. I don’t know how anyone can be crabby in such a wonderful world. Then again, she’s probably not on ecstasy right now.

The thought of this bitter old hag popping pills is just too much. All I can think about is her waving her cane around at a rave, dancing with all the junkies as the bass shakes the floor. The strobe lights would really make some cool effects on her bluish-white hair. I try to muffle it, but I can hear myself snorting and sputtering, and I’m sure I look like I’m having convulsions.

“Darren! Stop it! We’re gonna get kicked out!”

Sarah’s gonna be so mad at me tomorrow. Right now she’s laughing as hard as I am, but that’s because of the E. She’s been going to this church for a few weeks now, and supposedly she’s really taken a liking to it. No doubt she’ll never be able to face coming back to it after today.

Oh well. She was the one who pressured me into coming. I told her that I didn’t want to. I’m only here because, well, anything sounds like fun in the state I’m in. When Saturday night rolled into Sunday morning and the opportunity arose, Sarah took advantage of it. Took advantage of me. Mmm. That wouldn’t be so bad at all, actually. As a matter of fact, I think I’d really enjoy having Sarah take advantage of me.

Crap. The usher’s headed our direction, and he doesn’t look pleased. Crap-diddly-app. Crapoodles. Crapadillyillysilly. Oh man. I can not stop laughing! She’s gonna kill me, oh man, oh crap….

Chapter V

I can’t believe myself. I mean, I always knew that I was messed up, but I honestly never imagined that it would come to this. It’s all Sarah’s fault. First she gets me curious, then she takes off to nurse her malignant great-uncle or something and leaves me here with nothing to do but ponder.

Anthony’s in rehab, and he’s not allowed to have any visitors until his behaviour improves. Jules has hurled herself into her schoolwork. She insists that she doesn’t want to procrastinate before finals again, but I think it’s a distraction. I still don’t know what the deal is between her and Anthony, but they’ve definitely got a bond of some sort, and she’s either worried or upset or both about his current “living arrangements”.

I don’t know where AJ and the rest of the gang are, but after Anthony got busted they all faded pretty fast. I don’t blame them. Rehab’s no laughing matter, prison’s worse, and any of one of us could have been the narc that turned him in. If it was a narc.

In any case, this story ends the same way. I’m lonely, bored, paranoid, and kind of depressed. Which has resulted in my current habit of sitting in the park blazing the sweet Mary Jane and reading, of all things, the Bible.

I’m almost ashamed – no, I am ashamed – to admit it, but Sarah might actually be onto something. Most of this is still horseshit; it’s so hypocritical and self-contradictory. Not to mention that the vast majority of what I’ve read is just plain creepy. At the same time, though, I’ve really taken a liking to the Song of Songs “book”. It didn’t take me long to get weirded out by books like Leviticus, let alone Revelation. Leviticus seemed to do nothing but list off the types of sex that aren’t allowed. It actually said that you weren’t supposed to have sex with animals. That really makes me wonder. Like, were they experiencing problems of this nature, that they had to make a law about it? Anyway, as I already mentioned, Revelation was even worse. I can see where the psycho fundamentalists get their lines from now; I had thought that the Bible was written before the movie Armageddon came out.

Reading the Bible is a lot like watching deviant porn. You’re absolutely sickened by it, but there’s some sort of gruesome fascination holding you transfixed. You don’t want to look away for fear of missing something; you have to know just how far they’ll go.

At least, that was until I found Song of Songs. That must have been considered deviant itself, back in those days. It’s like this whole collection of erotic love poems. Some of them are downright funny, actually. For example: “Your two breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies”. Honestly, how is that possibly charming? Actually, I’m starting to understand why they thought it was necessary to declare that bestiality is wrong.

What I find most amazing of all is the true extent to which Biblical references have permeated our society. In another poem in Song of Songs, I found the term “rose of Sharon”. Killswitch Engage has a song called “Rose of Sharyn”, and I had always wondered where that title came from. Apparently even metalheads are familiar with the Bible.

I looked up that Psalm 23 that Sarah told me about, too, and read the whole thing. That thing’s been quoted everywhere! I couldn’t believe it; I already knew half the lyrics – well, words, I guess – from their appearances in songs by Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, and even Megadeth. Apparently I’m the only one not cool enough to have already investigated this stuff.

I still don’t understand how Sarah can actually believe this junk, and take comfort in it, but it is turning out to be a far more entertaining read than I had anticipated.

Epilogue

Within a week or two, Anthony managed to clean up enough to have visitors. Jules and I were still the only ones around, so we began dropping in on him daily. As fate would have it, there had been a Bible provided in his hospital room; one surviving relic of an age where Church and State were one and the same. He had been reading it in a desperate attempt to distract and amuse himself, and had miraculously found the comfort and reassurance that Sarah had been after all along. Anthony has even gone so far as to claim that his “newfound faith” speeded his recovery, however much you want to believe that. Either the “faith” part or the “recovery” part.

Meanwhile, Jules revealed that she had been having serious doubts about our philosophical-but-lazy-and-stoned lifestyle, which is why she had been so critical and harsh. As I had suspected, she and Anthony were an on-again, off-again couple. Jules, however, was afraid to get too deeply involved with Anthony, just to lose him to his deep involvement with drugs. So she recoiled and lashed out at him instead.

Now, thanks to all this Bible reading, Jules has Anthony, Anthony has faith, and I have an eighth of weed and a whole lot of questions. Perhaps when Sarah gets back we can get high and try to figure out the meaning of this once and for all. Who knows; if I can get my hands on some acid, we might even be able to discuss it with Jesus himself.