Assuming The Worse: Donnie McClurkin

I really don’t want to post these videos. About three weeks after watching them I still find myself quivering with anger whenever I think about them. When I first watched them I felt a sickening mix of regret, anger, sadness, and concern. On top of all that I felt an urge to run to church and repent. Not because I felt guilty or ashamed.  Ijust felt I should act/pantomime repentance because I… should? (Old habits don’t die.)

While soaping my toes and remarking on/barking at the tough calloused skin on my feet I reached a conclusion about faith and life. (I have all of my profound thoughts in the bathroom.)

Anyway, I realized that any place where faith and life meet life cannot remain for long. At least not in any respectable way. A few weeks ago a red cloud of dust drifted into Sydney and covered the city in a fine layer of red dust. That cloud, in my mind, is like  faith. It drifts in during the night and coats everything in its “convictions”.

Faith, religious faith, has nasty habit of vilifying everything that it doesn’t like or can’t control.

Now I can only speak of what I have seen in the USA.  I understand more and more that after years of faith-based interference virtually every area of sexual expression or understanding in the U.S. has been influenced by religion.

I would like to pretend that I possess some modicum of eloquence. I don’t. I never have and probably never will so I will be frank.

Donnie McClurkin has put a very ugly aspect of faith on display.  Self Hate.

This sermon, this heartfelt, weepy, one man show isn’t about faith. It is about being ashamed of yourself. So ashamed that you decide to “give yourself over to the lord”. It’s crap. Any people that McClurkin manages to “save” are probably people who are already on the verge.

That sounds bad.

When I say a person on the verge I mean a person who is in the midst of a crisis. They are on the verge of making a decision; on the verge of successfully overcoming or succumbing to something; on the verge of actually finding themselves. These are the type of people that an individual like Donnie McClurkin preys upon. I, like many people, have been one of these people.  I have listened to these sermons and I have gone home and beat myself up for days thinking that something was wrong with me. That somehow, simply based upon a small part of myself, I was a broken, damaged,  or lost person.

Messages like the ones that McClurkin preaches are dangerous.

This sermon allows people to make a few assumptions.

1. A gay person is just a straight person who has been victimized by a person who was victimized by another straight person who was victimized by another straight victim of a person who was victimized by a……

That doesn’t really sound right. No to me anyway. Sure, some forms of abuse are passed down generation to generation, but to assume that “broken people” make gays is just wrong. This sermon would lead someone to that conclusion. Hell I was never molested and after watching this I started wondering if I had suppressed a memory or two.

2. You can assume, if you are gullible, that Donnie McClurkin is happy not being gay. I think that he is pissed about having to keep himself closeted into his old age. He’s made a big career out of pretending to not be gay and now he can’t stop. He is a victim of his ambition and he is bitter about it. (I might be reaching there.)

3.  People who are gay, look at porn on the internet, talk about sex and what not with friends, etc. all secretly feel ashamed of themselves.

I think that this is the one assumption that always pissed me off the most when I was going to church. Virtually every church I have been to teaches that humans are born full of sin and that we need to be cleansed or saved.  They basically teach people to hate themselves. Every time a person goes to church this lesson is reinforced with a new examples. As of late, late as in the last 15 or so years, a good fall back example has been gays.

I don’t know why. Perhaps its because after years of screaming hell at gays and equal numbers of years of whipping believers into frenzied mobs has yet to anything about the growing number of admitted gays.

why lord…

On to the next one

Perhaps Jay-Z isn’t the best medicine for a headache.

I think it is almost pass time for me to move on. I’ve been doing my current job, English Conversation teacher, for about 4 years now. I like this job, but I, partially due to the nature of the language industry in Japan, am growing more and more certain that is time for me to go.

Perhaps…

…perhaps the throbbing in my head that Japanese medicine seems completely powerless to stop is swaying my mind. Scratch that. The throbbing is obviously driving my mind like a stampeding herd of (something that stampedes) to the obvious conclusion:

I got to get out of this country, but the U.S. is definitely not high on my list of must return to quickly countries. So I have been auditioning various countries. Actually I have two countries in mind right now. They both have equal good and bad points. This decision is so difficult.

First on the list is Canada, ideally the Vancouver area. The fine people of Canada speak English for the most part and have a flourishing language industry. (That’s one point for a bitch being able to work.) Also laws concerning marijuana are somewhat more lax than in the USA. (Two points for a bitch smoking out.) It is potentially colder than the Seventh level of Dante’s Hell. (Negative three points for a bitch freezing to death.)

The second country auditioning is France.  With proper pleading, blow jobs, and a fair bit of competing job applicants experiencing…um, fatal accidents I could maybe land a job in a school or something. (One point for possibly working.) Believe it or not, I don’t sometimes, I actually took three years of french in university which I have mostly forgotten. So theoretically I could get my french speaking ability to a functional level by taking a few courses and re-befriending the cute, bi, married, french guy in my company. He’s trilingual and oh so cute. (Two points for a communicating bitch.) I am so uninterested in Europe. (Negative three points for a bitch screaming Boo at the Eiffel Tower.)

Do you see my dilemma? I can definitely get a job in another developed east asian country, but  I think it safe to say that I have sufficiently tasted the yellow portion of the man rainbow.

Will that statement make me go to Hell?

While I am thinking about the rainbow, what color would the french be? Green? How about Canadians? Golden, syrupy brown? You’ll never find that crayon in your child’s box.

This demands research.

Anyone else have any suggestions on where I should move to? I am pretty flexible.

Shit! I just rubbed lotion in my eye!

Success is success even if you don’t want to accept it.

What is that sound?

I live on the fourth floor of my apartment building and shortly after first moving into it my landlord (company?) started doing construction on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors. There used to be  a love hotel down there but it went out of business. I guess the love hotel to the left of my building had better lube or something.

Anyway, the original construction lasted about 2 months and involved the use of hammers, saws, and jack hammers. Loud noisy ass jack hammers that would go on and on and on for hours. At times the noise was so bad that I could not stay in my apartment. I made a few complaints but was basically told that there was nothing that could be done. (bitches)

Well the construction is back and it is scheduled to go from November 5th until December 28th. They havent used any jack hammers yet, but they are using something that could be worse. I think they have a lathe, saw, or a vacuum.  Whatever it is it is giving off a high pitched sound that is making my head ring.

It isn’t as bad as the jack hammers but it is still annoying. I hope i can make it till December.

Expressions

I often wonder what exactly people think when they first see me. You see I get an amazing spectrum of expressions.
From old people I tend to get fear, surprise, or distrust. They look at me like they know that I will rob them of the bend in their back the moment they look away. I often lose staring contest with old men.

From children I tend to get fear, distrust, curiosity, or tears. I normally wouldn’t consider tears an expression but kids in japan break into tears so beautifully that I think it needs to be elevated a bit.

I think women see me and tend to think of having a great big black baby or that they are about to be raped. (They’re not.) They tend to have these thoughts simultaneously and therefore tend to part their legs at the ankles while simultaneously squeezing their thighs together. This war of battling thoughts tend to make women gaze at me like they are nearing the end of a rough shit. You know afraid that it will keep going but then happy that it’s almost over.

Men tend to look at me and feel secure or insecure about their dick size. I think that is why they always spread their legs a little more than usual.

Hmm… Perhaps I look at people too much.

Oh yeah. Foreigners tend to look at me with dead “please save me eyes” or they are drunk and their eyes tend loll drunkingly in my direction.

It will definitely be you.

One of my little kids (4 years old) probably said that mentally to his mom after seeing my Halloween costume and just before assaulting her.

You ever hear the stories about animals getting caught in snares or bear traps and chewing off the trapped limb. Well this kid basically did that, but instead of sacrificing his hand he decided to sacrifice his mom’s.

It happened last Wednesday.  I went to work like normal. Well not really normal. Since it was the week of the Halloween lessons I was able to dress comfortably in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. On Wednesdays I teach a goodish amount of classes so I came to work a little early so that I could prep my classes and put on my costume.

I timed all of my preparation so that I could appear in my full makeup just as the kids were starting to come in. It all worked out well and as my first kids started walking into the building I walked out like this:

 

First, one child screamed. Her mother was able to quickly calm her down and assure her that is was me. The next child froze and looked at me. No, she eyeballed me like she was trying to assess the exact nature of the threat in front of her. Eventually she was able to move from where she stood but she kept her eye on me for the remainder of the day. The next few children acted the same way she had. The last child, the quiet one, responded differently.

The doors into the building are made of glass and give a good view of the my schools lobby. The child, the quiet one, looked through these doors saw me, stretched his eyes the size of saucers, and promptly attempted a retreat. Unfortunately,  prevented his escape by holding his hand and that is when he attacked her.

I nearly died of laughter watching it all play out. He really went after the back of her hand. It looked like he was gonna rip the bones out. Lucky for her his jaws and teeth are still developing. Otherwise he would have taken her out.

pig pen

I must love in a cloud of dust. It has been less than a week since my iPod fell from glory and I stopped using it. I was supposed to take it to the Apple store for prayer and repairs today, but just couldn’t find the… um, (insert a cool word for energy here) to get to that part of town.

Yes, I am extremely lazy.

During the three days my iPod has sat on the bench it has developed a fine layer of dust on it.

Is that normal? Does dust visibly accumulate in only a few days? Am I a dust magnet?

Maybe. Could be. Now that I think about it everything in this apartment is dusty. Not super dusty, but dusty enough to be alarming. Yeah, I know that the simple solution is to dust. But… but…

I just can’t. Every time I think of dusting I am reminded of how many hours of saturday morning cartoons I missed because my mom was unwilling to accept that the flashing images on tv were important to my development. Dusting and other household chores robbed me of parts of my childhood. I can never get them back and now dust is trying to rob me of a few more of my years.

I say no.

NO!

I will not be tricked into rubbing furniture incessantly.

NO!

I will not have the smell of furniture polish soak into my hands.

NO!

I will find a new path. A path of peace with my surroundings. A path that puts me back in touch with nature. I shall become like that great man who must not be named.