The Church of the Holy Dodger Dog

As I sat in Dodger Stadium, watching thousands of people stream onto the outfield to “recommit themselves to Christ,” it suddenly occurred to me that this was an ideal moment to get up and get myself a Dodger Dog. The concession lines would probably be empty, because for the first time in about three hours those in the stands were forced to choose between getting a third helping of nachos and getting born again.

I know for a fact I wasn’t the only one thinking about food at the moment. The second I entered Dodger Stadium the first thing I noticed was a sea of people carrying what looked like shipping containers filled with nachos to their families. Once I sat down, after wading through puddles of peanut shells, I noticed that everyone around me had a crate of hotdogs in their laps. As I looked around half expecting to find a man shouting that he has Cracker Jacks for sale, I noticed the pile of peanut shells rapidly growing into a flood of Noachian proportions.

Still though, even though the worshippers were eating enough food to feed a sizeable nation, I was willing to give religion at Dodger Stadium a chance. Truth be told, I couldn’t help fantasizing what it would have been like if I had showed up with a baseball glove and a Dodger t-shirt, wandering around the stands looking really confused. Would there be a seventh inning stretch? But, really, I gave it a shot.  I laughed off the fact that we were bouncing a beach ball around the stands, and I brushed off the fact that one Christian lady cussed out her fellow Christians for dropping the ball when it came to continuing The Wave.

But then came the prayer. Some pastor took to the stage to lead some generic “just” prayer, and the stadium reverently bowed its heads. At this point I noticed that, yes, people had bowed their heads. But some, and a fair few, continued to stuff food in their mouths…while keeping their heads bowed in prayer.

How do you pray and eat at the same time? Am I just spectacularly uncoordinated that I think this would prove difficult? If nothing else it seems disrespectful. “Dear Lord, SNARF we just want to GARRR thank you for just GULP giving us today and just HAAMMM just making us URGH all that we just are….”

Looking around at people bowing their heads and closing their eyes in reverence while shoveling Dodger Dogs into their mouths was perhaps the highlight of my life. It was at this point that I started laughing so hard that I cried.

These are the things I missed this past year in the English Anglo-Catholic world. And how would this year have been different? I imagined a world of seminarians eating nachos while kneeling in prayer. Of half a congregation getting up during the middle of the Creed in Latin to go get another suitcase-sized bag of peanuts. Or of choral evensong in St. Paul’s being interrupted by a fat man in a t-shirt letting out an echoing hearty belch fueled by gallons of non-alcoholic beer.

But no. it could never happen in England, and not just the non-alcoholic beer part. This Church at Dodger Stadium is such an American expression of Church—not the fact that it’s a megachurch, not the greasy charisma, not the red/white/blue color scheme, not the jokes about other people’s bad hygiene, but the FOOD.

And you know what, America? This is why we are all fat.  This is a sign of the end times—Americans who bother coming to “church” cannot put their hot dogs or frozen lemonades down for the one minute it takes to say a prayer.

Aw crap though. Now my next visit to a “normal” church is going to feel sorely lacking in Dodger Dogs.

Musical Cars

People ask me what it’s like to be back in America/Los Angeles. Usually I tell them about how I spend my unemployment watching movies about Amish people on Netflix. Often I talk about how totally hollow Episcopalians are. Sometimes I mention both.

But I should probably mention how great it is to have music again. And by music I mean a car.

I should probably back up and explain to foreigners and less fortunate Americans that Angelenos have quite a car culture. Everything is so spread out, and you have to drive everywhere. Last week, during my quest to find a kiddie pool at Toys R Us (I want to vomit just writing that name), I ended up on a trek across the parking lot that took longer than did my walk from my flat in Oxford to the city center, which was in a different zip code.

Granted, I had parked on the edge of the parking lot because it was full—for some reason everyone decided to congregate at Toys  R Us at 2 p.m. on a workday. I mean, I know why I have nothing better to do with my life, but what is the rest of Los Angeles’ excuse? Are we ALL unemployed? This parking lot the size of Oxfordshire is full, and Holy Hank there are cars all over the road. Traffic everywhere. Good God, is the recession so bad that about 50% of all Angelenos at any given moment are loitering, and loitering in a moving vehicle?

Anyway, my point is that I am in the car a lot. Usually marveling at the traffic and screaming at no one in particular, “WHERE THE FUCK ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING AT 11 A.M. ON A WEDNESDAY?!”

When I’m not screaming at the world to get a job and get off the road, I sing. Really loudly. You might know that I do not sing in front of other people, even when others are singing, instead preferring to lip sync or stand in rigid silence like a small child wanting to stay up after her bedtime: “Maybe if I stand still enough they’ll forget I’m here.” Fair enough, I can think of two notable exceptions:

1)      In elementary school I joined the choir. Not because I wanted to sing, but because my friends could sing and I didn’t want to be alone at lunch when they rehearsed. I lip synced at all the concerts and rehearsals, except when we did “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

 

      My God did I get into that song. 11 year old Sam felt born to sing that song—heck, I STILL feel born to sing that song. So into that song was I that I tried to do not only the a-wee-mo-weh parts but also the high pitched howl, even when the two were supposed to be sung simultaneously by different people. “Fuck you,” 11 year old Sam said to the rest of the choir through her singing, “I got this one.”

2)      Then there was the kibbutz laundry room. I’ve mentioned it a million times before, but in case you didn’t know, I once spent half a year of my life folding towels in a laundry room in Israel. When I wasn’t folding towels I was accidentally getting parts of my body (namely my chest) burned by the industrial iron, having my fingerprints seared off by freshly laundered tablecloths that seemed to come straight from the fire pits of Hell, and (most frequently) finding elaborate ways to avoid having to fold my Hebrew classmates’ underpants.

Anyway, my coworkers (the Women of the Wash), whom I hated and still hate with a fiery passion on account of which I am perfectly willing to go to Hell, would frequently sing along to the radio. And, this being Israel and the land of Ben Yehuda, obviously most of the songs were in English. And horribly dated. So, to them, the first two lines of “St. Elmo’s Fire” would, instead of “Growin' up / You don't see the writin' on the wall,” be a melodically daring interpretation of the lyrics “Gerrn op / You doesee a wraton a oll.” Or something. As the only native English speaker in the room, several months of nonsensical lyrics from a random assortment of 80s, 90s and occasionally medieval songs started to wear on me.

Finally I could bear it no longer. Neil Sedaka’s “Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do” came on the radio, probably right after Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

 

And as I sat there folding yet another dishtowel, I decided I needed to show the Women of the Wash how it’s done. THIS is how we sing English, you kibbutznik bitches. So I went big. I sang along with Neil as loudly as I possibly could, hoping even the Jordanians could hear my crackling voice. They’d think to themselves, “Well, I can tell the lyrics are Sedaka, but the tune is unlike anything we’ve ever heard…” Who cares though--my musical ability wasn’t what I was trying to prove, but rather my ability to speak English. See how clearly I enunciate the lyrics? See how I indisputably know how each sound I sing fits within the boundaries of a coherent, English word? Enjoy the free English lesson in this one-woman concert, you rancid communists.

Anyway, my point is that with these two exceptions (and a few others over the years, like the time in senior year when I was driving a freshman to school, forgot she was in the car, and ended up performing a noisy duet with Elton John), I don’t sing.

Except when I’m by myself in the car. When I got back in my car on August 1, there was eight months of pent-up diva that needed to be released. I’ve since then driven hundreds of miles around LA, singing at the top of my lungs.

Car song of the moment?

 When I’m in the car, I feel like Fun. need my help. And I’m happy to oblige.

Now, it’s nearly midnight. Diva needs her sleep.

Further proof that Americans are terrified of old things.

Some people like to use their tourism to live their failed dreams. You know, where there are tourist photo opportunities where you can stand with a drum kit at a replica of the Cavern Club to pretend as though you were a Beatle and not the boring insurance salesman that you actually are. Other people have slightly grander dreams, such as the dream to live like interwar British aristocracy, which brings me to today’s post.

Basically right now, in my stay in some ridiculously large room in a manor-house-turned-hotel, I’m living out the dream to live like a 1930s BAMF. I fully recognize that I am privileged to be staying in such a nice place and to have a room to myself. The only problem is that I have never had the dream to live like a 1930s BAMF, as I’ve been stuck watching far too much Poirot this year. If there is one thing I’ve learned this year about ANYTHING, it’s that everyone with that much money at that time was constantly murdering or getting murdered. And, quite frankly, I am just too damn lazy for that right now.

Lazy, but also terrified. Terrified to the point where I just peed with the door open so that I could still hear the comforting sounds of the BBC warding off evil spirits in the bedroom. Like a character from a Jane Austen novel*, the door seemed concerned about a potential breach of the boundaries of propriety in my leaving the door open, so it kept trying to close itself. I solved this problem by propping open the door with a tin that was filled with dusty shortbread biscuits that smelled like someone else’s grandma—was this a recent gift from the hotel or an actual relic of the manor house?

*Yeah, I know Jane Austen waaaay predates Poirot. But that’s the thing with this place. WHAT YEAR AM I? I am in a confused time warp. I found myself checking the closets for Zombie Mr. Darcys and also checking the wardrobe for a portal to Hell Narnia. I checked under the bed to see if I could find the body of the great-grandmother who decorated this room, someone else’s fussy, WASPy matriarch with a penchant for smalls prints of Victorian girls picking unsettling blue flowers.

My mother is similarly creeped out by her own hotel room, and (ignoring the fact that I’m not only a grown woman, but also a grown woman who involuntarily kicks the living b’jeezuz out of anything else in her bed while sleeping) has offered to let me sleep in there as well. I turned down the offer as their room has a canopy bed, and I feel like if I were a ghost with a  taste for blood I’d be more likely to haunt a room with a canopy bed. She’s tried to comfort me by encouraging me to think of our stay in this terrifying manor house [that smells of every unpleasant memory of reading Charlotte Bronte (and also of dusty biscuits)] as though it were a camping trip.

Truth be told, I’d rather be camping. At least in the woods there are no faded, long-ago trendy Japanese prints of flora and fauna. At least in the woods there are no fussy cloth Kleenex holders. At least in the woods there are no terrifying portraits of long-dead rich girls who used to live in this very building and who might be looking up at you from Hell and resenting the fact that you are sleeping in HER bedroom and also have indoor plumbing now.

How many people have died in this room? Why is the ceiling so high? Why the hell are there so many goddamn chairs in this room?

This place is nice, and I am massively spoiled, but oh my God I just want to be in a Motel 6 right now.

This one time I almost died in St Pancras

Okay, so the title might be a bit of an exaggeration. Let's back up a bit.

I took refuge in St Pancras.

Okay, again, a bit of an exaggeration. Basically I'd been walking around London for far too long, saw a church, and thought, "Ah, there's a place for a good sit." Because, and I think this is something people of all creeds can agree on, churches are great places for sitting. And, as an added bonus, sometimes they even have toilets.

Maybe that's why American tourists seem to always flock to churches in Europe. No, it's not our religiosity or our interest in European ecclesiastical history or even a penchant for fine architecture--it's just that we are a people used to having far more public toilets around. People frequently ask me, because apparently I'm the only American they've ever seen, what my biggest source of culture shock is. Can I finally admit it? Quite honestly I'm shocked by the lack of toilets. I'm not talking about in touristy areas, I'm talking about "real people" areas.

Anyway, you shouldn't have let me get onto the topic of toilets, because actually there's something else I really wanted to talk about.

So... I wandered into St Pancras. It had the feel of a hotel lobby, complete with some unseen person whose piano tinkerings gave me flashbacks to a childhood spent sitting in hotel lobbies around the world, waiting for that travel agent who went on family vacations with us (I seem to remember my brothers addressing her as "Mom") to come back from her tour of the luxury suites.

And then I saw the pews.

Box pews!!!!

The last time I saw pews like this I was a small child on a family vacation to New England. I remember standing in a church somewhere in Boston and seeing these boxes that families would sit in, and being in absolute awe. The height of the box, the size of the door, and the fact that a family would be shut into a box, all reminded me of a roller coaster car. At age nine, just as I was doing now at age 24, I imagined WASPs dressed in their Sunday best, throwing their hands in the air and screaming with fear and excitement as their pew went around a loop and into a corkscrew.

Well, 24 year old me couldn't help herself from living nine year old me's fantasy. I looked both ways (only a man on a piano and a woman praying in the corner) before dashing across the aisle to a particular pew that seemed to be waiting for me. Like a giddy idiot I slid into the pew and closed the door with a satisfying CLICK.

For a while I didn't even realize that I had violated some rule that probably got deleted from an early draft of the Chronicles of Narnia, something about not shutting pew doors shut unless you are absolutely certain how to open them back up. Instead I sat there imagining that I was on the roller coaster at the pier back home. Does that one even have doors? Who the hell cares. All I know is that I sat in this pew, trying to lean from side to side pretending to be on a roller coaster as quietly as possible so as not to disturb people in the church doing actual church things. I figured throwing my hands up and screaming, "WOOOOO!" would probably be frowned upon, so I made do with swaying slowly enough that the creaks of the wooden pew were hardly audible.

After a while I decided it was time for me to grow up and head out to the British Library, so I gathered my things together, pushed the pew door open, exited, and walked along the road.

Oh wait, no. That's not what happened.

Instead, I pushed on the pew door and absolutely nothing happened. I paused for about five seconds, hoping that in that time the pew door would sort itself out, and then I pushed again. Nothing. Again. Nope, still locked. Again? Nope. Nope. Nope. A horrifying realization then dawned on me, namely that I had no idea how to open the stall I had locked myself into. Basically my roller coaster fantasy had come to full fruition, and now I would have to wait for the ride operator to come release me. Except churches don't have ride operators.

At this point I let out a sigh and thought to myself, "Well, this is where I die." Because, let's face it, starving to death locked in a church pew is the preferable option to asking a priest/pastoral assistant/verger/parishioner/passing bishop to release me, an idiot who was pretending to be on a roller coaster in a church. I mean, there are worse ways to go. Just trying to look on the bright side here.

I briefly considered vaulting over the wall and hoping the man on the piano and the praying woman didn't see. Would I get arrested? Then again, is vaulting over a pew wall even an arrestable offence? Can the Church arrest people? Oh man, this is what happens when you let Jews into churches...we accidentally lock ourselves in.

Then I thought about hulking out of the pew. I've [accidentally] hulked out of a t-shirt before. Once. Could I do it with wood, too? Well, it was certainly worth a shot. I tried to think of things that pissed me off, and thoughts of the RE GCSE exam flooded my mind. I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT TEACHING TO THE EXAM...........................BUT WHY AM I NOT TURNING GREEN AND ENORMOUS???

Aw crap. Looks like I don't have the ability to hulk out of things at will. A disappointing discovery...

For a brief moment I looked down at my left hand, resting next to me on the bench. Just beyond the chewed nails and the faded notes to myself I caught sight of a little button. Now I was ready to cross over to the other side. I pushed the button and I was liberated!

I left St Pancras a changed woman. A woman who now realizes that even the hideous stack chairs at St Paul's Cathedral that look like something from a high school multi-purpose room, even these have hidden beauty and benefits. Specifically that they will not try to hold you hostage.

Footloose, Justin Timberlake, and Sam's Goodbyes

One of the most disappointing things about this year is the realization that I’m no less socially inept than when I started. After moving away from home to go to college, then moving away from college to go to Israel twice, then going home again, and then finally coming to England, I feel like I should be an expert in social interaction by now. After all, I’ve had to try to make new friends pretty much every nine months, much like professional surrogacy, minus payment/babies/giving birth/everything.
No, it doesn’t matter that I’ve had to meet an entire cast of new people and try to befriend them more often than some college boys wash their sheets—put me in a room filled with people, even people I now know, and I will still make strategic retreats to the restroom. Yes, if you’ve ever suspected me of going to the bathroom far too often, it all makes sense now.

Mostly when I retreat to the toilet I stand at the sink and think to myself, “Oh God, what if someone I don’t know particularly well tries to hug me?” Because, obviously, that would be the end of the world. Even worse, I panic about the prospect of people talking about boring things, simply because I think I’m physically incapable of pretending to be interested. And then everyone will think I’m horribly rude. No, much better that they think I have some kind of tragic bladder condition.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days. Along with Footloose.

See, Footloose comes in because I’ve been a bit sad saying goodbye to yet another group of people I’ve surprisingly come to like. And for some reason listening to “Footloose” more times than I’d care to admit in a public forum has been my way of dealing with the sadness.

On the plus side I’ve forgotten about the number of “GOODBYE FOREVER!”s I’ve had to endure this week. The downside, however, is that I have realized something that destroys Footloose for me. As a completely shit dancer I find myself more confused by movies like Footloose than I do by the concept of the Trinity. Yes, Footloose. You are more confusing than the idea that God is both three and one. You are more confusing than flawed math.

See, how can teens in a town that for most of their lives had outlawed dancing still dance better than me, someone for whom dancing has always been legal and often encouraged? Either the premise of Footloose is flawed or my natural dancing abilities are so sub-par that I should seriously consider seeking advice from a medical professional.

Anyway, thoughts of my social crapness and dancing crapness led me to remember something I wrote back in Israel three years ago. Here it is, in edited and censored “glory”:

Tonight in a bar some Justin Timberlake song came on. I wish I could tell you the title, but I know it only as “that song that embarrasses the shit out of me.”

(Strangely enough, 24 year old me knows what the song is...)

Back in 9th grade, 14 year old me took a dance class at school. I wish I could make my dear loyal readers proud (all four of you…); I wish I could tell you that I’m a great dancer.

And, wish fulfilled, I’m going to tell you that I am indeed a great dancer. A fantastic dancer. 

In my room.

At home, by myself, I am the greatest dancer the world has ever seen. My moves range from the smooth to the silly to the obscene. The problem is that the second anyone else can see me, I can’t dance. I freeze up. I’m embarrassed to even tap my feet to the beat in public. People who might not know me as well would say that I don’t like dancing, based on how they see me freeze up in clubs or at dances. This is a lie. Secretly, deep down, I have to stop myself from jumping on tables and going all out when I hear music in public. Especially if it’s a Mika song. Maybe it’s because I’ve done lighting/stage managing for too many musicals, but I even find myself struggling to refrain from dancing to the PA music in seemingly innocent places, like on the bus or at a pizza parlor or at Aroma. Basically, I’m a closeted Breslover, except with a larger arsenal of dance moves involving my ass.

So anyway, I thought taking this dance class would teach me some basic stuff so that I wouldn’t totally freeze up when I’m around other people. I’d still probably never fulfill my (then) dream of breaking out into a song and dance number in the middle of the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but I figured that there was some kind of healthy compromise I could reach. I figured a Level One class would be filled with beginners, like me, who had never taken a class before and who knew nothing about dance.

Boy, was I an idiot. The people in that class…. Let me put it like this: it was like being in a Level One French class with only native Parisians.

“Beginning Dance” consisted of me, my two friends, and apparently the entire cast of the film “Center Stage.” And my two friends, those fucking traitors, turned out to be halfway decent.

I’ve blocked out most memories of that class from my head, but when I cringe in utter humiliation at the mere thought of being in a dance class as an awkward teenager, clear moments of extreme embarrassment come to the front of my mind. I remember doing an interpretive dance about the creation of the universe (complete with dialogue: “Expand…expand……revolve revolve revolve….wither….wither….wither……..apocalypse. The End.”) I remember doing an exercise with the entire class that involved leaping like graceful gazelle across the wild grasses of the Serengeti. Okay, that’s what it was supposed to look like, and somehow everyone else in the class actually managed to pull it off. I on the other hand managed to look like a polio-crippled elephant jumping up and down in frustration.

…

But the worst part by far was the Justin Timberlake dance. This was what the teacher really focused on. A dance to a Justin Timberlake song. Needless to say, I was terrible at it. For one thing, I couldn’t remember all the steps—sure, remembering long passages of epic Roman poetry in its original Latin was a cinch for me, but the second you try to get my feet to remember anything besides how to walk…well, you’re in for trouble. And even when I could remember the steps, I couldn’t pull them off. A lot of the moves involved trying to look, for lack of a better word, “sexy.” You know, for example, you can’t just move your ass from Point A to Point B in a straight, efficient line, but rather you gotta put some attitude into it. Or something. Don’t ask me, I’ve never really understood this stuff. 

Frankly, the mere thought of me trying to act sexy is appalling enough to turn even the straightest of men gay. As a favor to the general public …, I decided that the best thing I could do for the dance would be to do try to be as unsexy as possible. I tried imagining that I was dancing in a church. And also that I was a nun. I’m not sure which church would have played a Justin Timberlake song in the middle of services, but oh well. This is what got me through dance class.

So anyway, every time I hear that song, my head always goes back to 9th grade dance class. That song was the background to all those memories.

When it came on in the bar, I realized that the song would now also be the background to the memories of this night. This song is what I heard when I was interacting with people. 

It made me start comparing the two experiences. Here’s Justin Timberlake singing as I stumble my way through dance class way back when. And here’s Justin Timberlake singing as I interact with people in a bar setting. Justin Timberlake and Me, the dancer. Justin Timberlake and Me, the person interacting with other humans.

I gotta say, of the two ……I’m a much better dancer.

Vocation

Today I went to an ordination. This being the first ordination I've ever attended, maybe you're expecting a thoughtful reflection on what ordination is, or about the work of a deacon, or about service in the church, or maybe about vocation.

Well, I am going to talk about vocation. Specifically, about the vocation of the guy sitting behind me, whose vocation was apparently singing "Alleluia sing to Jesus" loudly enough in Christ Church Cathedral (Oxford, England) that my family back in Los Angeles could appreciate it.

Put that video on full blast, and you still cannot appreciate the volume. It was like all the voices of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir combined, became Anglican, and were being channeled by a single man in a clerical collar. The only other time I hear singing that loud is when I'm alone in my car, driving along a mountain road with treacherous curves, and Ringo Starr's "Photograph" comes on the radio.

Now this isn't a complaint, mind you. No, I salute this man. I'm so embarrassed by my own singing that literally eating myself is a less terrifying prospect than singing in front of other people. When I look back at some of the most embarrassing moments of my life, such as peeing myself at age 12, or (falsely) coming out as a lesbian to my 10th grade students, or accidentally correcting someone's pronunciation of a word when actually they had a lisp, or the time I had to give an impromptu speech in Hebrew in front of a room full of executives about a project that I had not actually done, or the time my friend pantsed me outside Gelsons and I ended up mooning some poor old woman who was out doing her shopping, or the time I was 8 and I played a brick in a musical and had to dance around onstage in a bright yellow unitard ...when I look back on those moments, I thank God that at least I wasn't singing. At least when I was the unitard-clad brick I was only pretending to sing.

It looked a bit like this, except mine had the added asthetic benefits of childhood obesity.

And yet here's this man, surrounded by Englishmen in suits and some women who are dressed vaguely like the Queen, and he's singing this hymn with the same amount of gusto that primary school children have for totally random topics, like whales or cacti. I wanted to turn around to give him a thumbs up and a "you go, girlfriend!" But I figured that might make him stop.

Instead I post this silly bit of writing as a tribute to this man, whose enthusiasm for Jesus manifests itself in singing hymns louder than the drunken idiots sing soccer chants on the street outside my window at 3 am on school nights. And, may I say, YOU GO, GIRLFRIEND!

I've reached some new lows.

Let’s get one thing straight, since so many people pity me when they hear I’m a lone tourist. I love it. Until I find a traveling companion who is just as vile as me, I prefer walking around foreign cities by myself because it’s the only time I can walk around publicly belching like a cheap prostitute without consequences. And people who burden me with oppressive hospitality rob me of this joy.

You know what I mean by oppressive hospitality—the most I want from you for breakfast is a finger pointing me to the nearest McDonald’s still serving breakfast. I appreciate your effort, but your three-course breakfast that you watch me exhaustedly cram into my mouth like a chore under your eager, almost evangelical eyes is about as welcome to me as an extended tutorial with my professor who wants to talk about nothing but the golden age of British bus travel.

This is how I ended up spending 5 ½ hours alone with a 40 year old on an internship. See, I was in Geneva for a job interview. My host (and potential boss) had offered to find someone to show me around Geneva on my free day, and not wanting to seem like the anti-social bitch that I actually am, I pretended that this was a fantastic idea—thinking it’d be a brief lunch and visit to a church or museum or whatever it is you’re supposed to see in Geneva. Instead, in an act that gets the award for Most Misguided Act of Hospitality of the Year (Runner Up: Not allowing me to withdraw cash from the cash machine), my host arranged for me to spend the entire day with a complete stranger, and a weird one at that. A man whose first stop on our tour was an English language bookstore, so that he could spend an hour looking for a French dictionary for himself.

And I didn’t even get the job.

When I first met him there was a glimmer of hope when I detected his Midwestern accent. This hope dissipated, about as quickly as a fart caught in the early stages by lowered car windows on a freeway, when I realized his accent didn’t have the same, almost Swedish, sing-songy quality of most Midwesterners, perhaps the chattiest folk in America. Instead it was the gruff, monotone mumble of a defective Midwesterner, like one with a flipper for an arm. He reminded me of the impressions of Louie Andersen saying “Chicken, donuts, cheesecake…” that my brother and I used to do.

I’d like to think I did a pretty good job of keeping the conversation going for three hours, even with the occasional awkward silence, particularly when I gave correct navigational instructions that he ignored in favor of just wandering around like a retarded puppy, followed by a sullen me who occasionally offered a weary, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we need to turn right.” Followed by a passive aggressive, “…like I said.” But, as I said, we had three hours of the wonkiest conversation even I’ve ever experienced. The last 2 ½ hours were covered by my occasional murmurs of “Mm…this is a nice neighborhood. Is it known for anything?” And his brief, otherworldly “Yeah.”s.

But no matter. At least I got a hug out of it at the end, and you know how much I like hugs. This being a sweltering, sunny Geneva day, filled with loads of walking, it’s safe to say the hug was a bit wet. So, again, it’s not like I got nothing out of the day.

To be fair, the day wasn’t entirely horrible. I did quite like the Museum of the Reformation, and in particular its depiction of Luther burning in Hell. Also fantastic was seeing two teenagers clearly on a date, passionately making out in front of a portrait of a reformer. I’d like to think it was the boy’s idea to go to this museum on the date. “I’ll take her to the Museum of the Reformation—bitches LOVE ecclesiastical reform!”

But most spectacularly eye-opening was the exhibit where you could actually smell fragrances mentioned in the Bible. As I learned, all Biblical perfumes smell surprisingly of shit mixed with harsh chemical disinfectant. It makes me wonder how bad the ancient Middle East must have smelled if THIS was considered a luxurious improvement. I mean, I lived in the Middle East for a while, and I can tell you I’d rather be next to a sweaty Sephardi man on a bus than a bottle of nard. They tell me that nard is what that famous woman in the New Testament anointed DJ JC with, though perhaps given that nard smells of asparagus-flavored piss this woman should be considered infamous. I can clearly imagine her rubbing this vile, inexplicably expensive trash on Jesus’ feet and the world’s dear savior screaming, “For the love of God, Mary (they were all called Mary back then, weren’t they), get that off my feet!”

I also quite liked the cornball attempt to bring it all to life. I was told at the beginning by some overly enthusiastic Swiss girl that there would be a room with a dining room set up and OH MY GOODNESS if I’d only press 300 on my audio guide then I could “listen in” on John Calvin’s dinner conversations with other reformers. Needing to kill time as my tour guide, in spite of this being his fifth trip to the museum, had decided that every tiny label in the museum needed full, Talmud-length exegesis, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to let 300 be the soundtrack of my sit. I suppose they had tried to make it sound as realistic as possible by adding the sound of beverages being poured, but it had the effect of making the first minute of the recording sound as though I were eavesdropping on John Calvin having a particularly stubborn morning pee in an echoey bathroom. Ah well, points for trying, Museum of the Reformation.

Before we rounded off our day with a silent, hollow walk back to my “hotel,” we visited something called the Maison Tavel, which (as far as I can tell) is a museum. To what in particular, I’m still unsure even after spending an hour in there. Armor? Pub signs? Wallpaper? Dead stuffed pigeons? Who the fuck knows…

There was this one tiny room in Maison Tavel that was especially memorable. It was this tiny sitting room, sort of in a tower. I walked in and—I know I’ve talked about farts, belches, etc. already too many times in this post and that I’ve exceeded the quota, but just bear with me—and I caught a whiff of several hundred years’ worth of accumulated farts that have soaked into the wallpaper and gone stale. I have trouble conveying to you in words the strength of this smell, and the closest I can get is saying that it was actually like something out of a fairy tale.

Just over 48 hours in Geneva, and that’s probably what I’ll remember years from now when I look back on my weekend in Geneva. Foul smells.

Oh right. And having to start off my job interview by leading the chaplain in what was probably the most appalling bit of freestyle prayer he’s ever heard. But that’s a post for another day.

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