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God and Strip Clubs
I was walking through a crowd, west on 50th street in New York City, when I saw a sign for a strip club. I assumed "Bare Elegance" was a strip club because there's one near LAX with the same name. It had been a favorite destination of a friend of mine, who, on the afternoon of my NYC trek, had been dead two years of a herion overdose.
I'm not a guy who enjoys strip clubs. Spectator sports of the sexual nature frustrates me. Rex would take me just to watch me squirm. When I met him, I'd just recently given up drinking, and Rex was helping me through that devastation, but sometimes he had to torture me, too. Torturing me was often how he helped me through.
Thinking about Rex I felt a little better. A real wise-ass, he would have kidded me into a good mood by suggesting that we immediately go upstairs. He took me to places like Bare Elegance, I think, to explode my painful self-importance. He taught me that what I thought was sacred was usually corrupt, and what I thought was corrupt was usually fun. I never acquired a taste for strip clubs, but I no longer tell myself I'm a good man just because I stay out of them.
Before I tell you what happened to me on 50th street, I have to tell you more about Rex. A tax accountant with an armed robbery conviction in the past. Rex was a weird combination of Republican and gangster. If you can imagine James Cagney with a master's degree in taxation, you get the idea. His hair was bright red, and his face was unmistakably Irish. Hanging around him you could feel the criminal bad-guy junkie, but you could also feel the solid citizen who hadn't taken drugs in a long time. Rex use to tell me that some nights he would go to bed a dangerous criminal, and he woke up Ward Cleaver.
I first started praying because Rex suggested it. Something good had happened to him, and I wanted some of that action. He insisted that my approach to God didn't have to be fancy, that I didn't even have to believe in God for it to work. My first prayers where some of the most powerful prayers of my life because, in some weird way, they were the most faithful. I had faith in Rex. I said something like, "God, I don't believe in you, but I'm in a lot of pain and Rex said this would help."
It did help. I didn't feel so awfully alone. It helped so much that I kept doing it. I talked to God the way I would talk to a friend. For years my best prayer was..."Look, I've fucked this up. Can you help me?" Whatever it was it would always seem to get worked out.
Rex use to say that my solutions were worse than my problems. He said that life was "an inside job." I sat in Rex's office telling sad stories about what a mess I'd made of my life, and he would say, "Well, maybe this is as good as it will ever get." When this didn't send me screaming from the room, it reminded to start from where I was. If I left town, I'd be waiting for myself at the next location.
Maybe life was better than it ever had been, right now, and I was too big a jerk to notice. Maybe the most unlikely thing that could happen had already happened: that I was just okay, sitting in a chair in Rex's office on a pleasant day in the middle of my life.
When Rex had died of a herion overdose, eight years after I met him, the light went out of my life. Depression became my new friend. Saddness was my middle name, did I mention my favorite color was Blue? I rehearsed what I liked about life, and I couldn't find much, I wasn't taking any comfort in it. I missed my friend, and I couldn't avoid the worst question: How could the man who taught me so much have died this way? He hadn't had a drink or drug for a decade when he picked it up again.
Fortunately, I remembered something else that Rex had taught me-that helping people was a kind of prayer, that putting someone else's needs ahead of my own was a way to empty my mind so that God could fill it. "When all else fails," Rex use to say "find someone who's in worse shape than you are."
I did this. And one day, while listening to a man tell me his own sad story-I remembered where I was standing, but not who was speaking-I realized that Rex was in a good place, that I was in a good place, that everyone I knew was in a good place. In a moment I went from being the most depressed person I knew to being the happiest. It was as if a spiritual awakening was happening.
But it didn't last forever. Eventually I forgot. And even when I did remember, it wasn't with the clarity of the experience itself. That's how it is with me and spiritual insight. It starts off like the best movie you've ever seen-THX sound system, plush seats, flawless screen, thrilling special effects- and then it becomes pretty good television and then eventually, inexorably, heartbreakingly, it becomes "Yeah, I watched that show once."
I think that's what happened to Rex. I think he forgot. And he wasn't able to remind himself. Herion had been waiting a long time to fill the vacuum. What Rex had called "that God-sized hole."
And so, when I was walking on 50th Street, hoping that I could catch a movie on the Westside and stop my head for awhile, I was having a conversation with myself about whether I was "good enough" to get the things I wanted from my life. I'd done something stupid the night before with someone I didn't care about-you can only imagine-and I started to tell myself a story about what that meant. I was thinking maybe God was was reconsidering our relationship.
Rex was one of those people who helped me understand that God had to be bigger than that. A God who cared so much about my sins was too much like me to be of any real use. Still, some sick part of me loves that place where I am sinful and small and don't merit His attention. I think that's because to be apart from God is a step closer to pretending to be God myself.
Looking up at the sign for the strip clun, relaxing a bit into the memory of my good friend, a voice began to fill my head. The Voice said, "The question is not whether you're going to get what you want. You will get what you want. The question is whether you're going to serve me or serve yourself."
I knew exactually what He was talking about. I'd been selfish the night before, and that's why I was suffering. God was promising me that I would continue to feel bad so long as I lived for myself. And it wasn't Him who would be doing the punishing-it would be me. The laws of the universe were set up so the punishment was built in. Think I'm kidding? Try drinking a lot of alcohol and see what happens. I then understood that even my answered prayers would be a curse so long as my motive was to take rather than give.
WOW!
I wish I could tell you that this was the end of the story, how I walked from the moment, like Paul picking himself up from the road to Damascus, into a life of faith. Instead, I went to the movies and forgot about God. I'd remember and forget, then remember and forget. I think there is something useful in the struggle to remind myself.It's the reason we are not alone on this planet. "The hardest part is not admitting that you need God," Rex use to say. "The hardest part is admitting that you need bozos like me."
The Catholics have a concept called "The Communion Of Saints." They believe that all souls-living and dead-are bound to each other by God. That's why they say it's possible for us to pray for the dead-and the dead to pray for us. I like that, even though I'm not Cathloic. I believe that my message from God was a gift from my friend Rex, that he's in some sorta heaven right now, putting in a good word for bozos like me.
I'm not a guy who enjoys strip clubs. Spectator sports of the sexual nature frustrates me. Rex would take me just to watch me squirm. When I met him, I'd just recently given up drinking, and Rex was helping me through that devastation, but sometimes he had to torture me, too. Torturing me was often how he helped me through.
Thinking about Rex I felt a little better. A real wise-ass, he would have kidded me into a good mood by suggesting that we immediately go upstairs. He took me to places like Bare Elegance, I think, to explode my painful self-importance. He taught me that what I thought was sacred was usually corrupt, and what I thought was corrupt was usually fun. I never acquired a taste for strip clubs, but I no longer tell myself I'm a good man just because I stay out of them.
Before I tell you what happened to me on 50th street, I have to tell you more about Rex. A tax accountant with an armed robbery conviction in the past. Rex was a weird combination of Republican and gangster. If you can imagine James Cagney with a master's degree in taxation, you get the idea. His hair was bright red, and his face was unmistakably Irish. Hanging around him you could feel the criminal bad-guy junkie, but you could also feel the solid citizen who hadn't taken drugs in a long time. Rex use to tell me that some nights he would go to bed a dangerous criminal, and he woke up Ward Cleaver.
I first started praying because Rex suggested it. Something good had happened to him, and I wanted some of that action. He insisted that my approach to God didn't have to be fancy, that I didn't even have to believe in God for it to work. My first prayers where some of the most powerful prayers of my life because, in some weird way, they were the most faithful. I had faith in Rex. I said something like, "God, I don't believe in you, but I'm in a lot of pain and Rex said this would help."
It did help. I didn't feel so awfully alone. It helped so much that I kept doing it. I talked to God the way I would talk to a friend. For years my best prayer was..."Look, I've fucked this up. Can you help me?" Whatever it was it would always seem to get worked out.
Rex use to say that my solutions were worse than my problems. He said that life was "an inside job." I sat in Rex's office telling sad stories about what a mess I'd made of my life, and he would say, "Well, maybe this is as good as it will ever get." When this didn't send me screaming from the room, it reminded to start from where I was. If I left town, I'd be waiting for myself at the next location.
Maybe life was better than it ever had been, right now, and I was too big a jerk to notice. Maybe the most unlikely thing that could happen had already happened: that I was just okay, sitting in a chair in Rex's office on a pleasant day in the middle of my life.
When Rex had died of a herion overdose, eight years after I met him, the light went out of my life. Depression became my new friend. Saddness was my middle name, did I mention my favorite color was Blue? I rehearsed what I liked about life, and I couldn't find much, I wasn't taking any comfort in it. I missed my friend, and I couldn't avoid the worst question: How could the man who taught me so much have died this way? He hadn't had a drink or drug for a decade when he picked it up again.
Fortunately, I remembered something else that Rex had taught me-that helping people was a kind of prayer, that putting someone else's needs ahead of my own was a way to empty my mind so that God could fill it. "When all else fails," Rex use to say "find someone who's in worse shape than you are."
I did this. And one day, while listening to a man tell me his own sad story-I remembered where I was standing, but not who was speaking-I realized that Rex was in a good place, that I was in a good place, that everyone I knew was in a good place. In a moment I went from being the most depressed person I knew to being the happiest. It was as if a spiritual awakening was happening.
But it didn't last forever. Eventually I forgot. And even when I did remember, it wasn't with the clarity of the experience itself. That's how it is with me and spiritual insight. It starts off like the best movie you've ever seen-THX sound system, plush seats, flawless screen, thrilling special effects- and then it becomes pretty good television and then eventually, inexorably, heartbreakingly, it becomes "Yeah, I watched that show once."
I think that's what happened to Rex. I think he forgot. And he wasn't able to remind himself. Herion had been waiting a long time to fill the vacuum. What Rex had called "that God-sized hole."
And so, when I was walking on 50th Street, hoping that I could catch a movie on the Westside and stop my head for awhile, I was having a conversation with myself about whether I was "good enough" to get the things I wanted from my life. I'd done something stupid the night before with someone I didn't care about-you can only imagine-and I started to tell myself a story about what that meant. I was thinking maybe God was was reconsidering our relationship.
Rex was one of those people who helped me understand that God had to be bigger than that. A God who cared so much about my sins was too much like me to be of any real use. Still, some sick part of me loves that place where I am sinful and small and don't merit His attention. I think that's because to be apart from God is a step closer to pretending to be God myself.
Looking up at the sign for the strip clun, relaxing a bit into the memory of my good friend, a voice began to fill my head. The Voice said, "The question is not whether you're going to get what you want. You will get what you want. The question is whether you're going to serve me or serve yourself."
I knew exactually what He was talking about. I'd been selfish the night before, and that's why I was suffering. God was promising me that I would continue to feel bad so long as I lived for myself. And it wasn't Him who would be doing the punishing-it would be me. The laws of the universe were set up so the punishment was built in. Think I'm kidding? Try drinking a lot of alcohol and see what happens. I then understood that even my answered prayers would be a curse so long as my motive was to take rather than give.
WOW!
I wish I could tell you that this was the end of the story, how I walked from the moment, like Paul picking himself up from the road to Damascus, into a life of faith. Instead, I went to the movies and forgot about God. I'd remember and forget, then remember and forget. I think there is something useful in the struggle to remind myself.It's the reason we are not alone on this planet. "The hardest part is not admitting that you need God," Rex use to say. "The hardest part is admitting that you need bozos like me."
The Catholics have a concept called "The Communion Of Saints." They believe that all souls-living and dead-are bound to each other by God. That's why they say it's possible for us to pray for the dead-and the dead to pray for us. I like that, even though I'm not Cathloic. I believe that my message from God was a gift from my friend Rex, that he's in some sorta heaven right now, putting in a good word for bozos like me.
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