The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

teachers explained all of this not as if it was an opinion open to interpretation, but as if it were an undeniable fact ordained by the Bible. They didn’t need proof; they had faith. And this practically filled them with glee in anticipation of the coming apocalypse, because they were going to be saved—dead but in heaven and freed from suffering.
    It was then that I began having nightmares—nightmares that continue to this day. I was thoroughly terrified by the idea of the end of the world and the Antichrist. So I became obsessed with it, watching movies like The Exorcist and The Omen and reading prophetic books like Centuries by Nostradamus, 1984 by George Orwell and the novelized version of the film A Thief in the Night , which described very graphically people getting their heads cut off because they hadn’t received 666 tattoos on their forehead. Combined with the weekly harangues at Christian school, it all made the apocalypse seem so real, so tangible, so close that I was constantly haunted by dreams and worries about what would happen if I found out who the Antichrist was. Would I risk my life to save everyone else? What if I already had the mark of the beast somewhere on me—underneath my scalp or on my ass where I couldn’t see it? What if the Antichrist was me? I was filled with fear and confusion at a time when, even without the influence of Christian school, I was already in turmoil because I was going through puberty.
    Sure evidence of this is that despite Ms. Price’s terrifying seminars detailing the world’s impending doom, I found something sexy about her. Watching her preside over class like a Siamese cat, with her pursed lips, perfectly combed hair, silk blouses concealing a fuck-me body and stick-in-the-ass walk, I could tell there was something alive and human and passionate waiting to burst out of that repressed

    Christian facade. I hated her for giving me nightmares my entire teenage years. But I think I hated her even more for the wet dreams she inspired.
    I was an Episcopalian, which is basically diet Catholic (same great dogma but now with less rules) and the school was nondenominational. But that didn’t stop Ms. Price. Sometimes she’d start her Bible class by asking, “Are there any Catholics in the room?” When no one answered, she’d lay into Catholics and Episcopalians, lecturing us about how they misinterpreted the Bible and were worshipping false idols by praying to the pope and the Virgin Mary. I would sit there mute and rejected, unsure whether to resent her or my parents for raising me as an Episcopalian.
    Further personal humiliation came during Friday assemblies, when guest speakers would talk about how they had lived as prostitutes, drug addicts and practitioners of black magic until they found God, chose His righteous path and were born again. It was like a Satanists Anonymous meeting. When they were done, everyone would bow their heads in prayer. If anyone wasn’t born again, the failed pastor leading the seminar would ask them to come on stage and hold hands and be saved. Every time I knew I should have walked up there, but I was too petrified to stand on stage in front of the entire school and too embarrassed to admit that I was morally, spiritually and religiously behind everybody else.
    The only place I excelled was the roller-skating rink, and even that soon became inextricably linked with the apocalypse. My dream was to become a champion roller skater, and to that end I nagged my parents into squandering the money they had been saving for a weekend getaway on professional skates that cost over $400. My regular roller-skating partner was Lisa, a sickly, perpetually congested girl but nonetheless one of my first big crushes. She came from a strict, religious family. Her mother was a secretary for Reverend Ernest Angley, one of the more notorious televangelist faith healers of the time. Our pseudo-dates after skating practice usually began with making “suicides” at the rink’s soda fountain—discolored combinations of Coke, 7-Up, Sunkist and root beer—and ended with a trip to Reverend Angley’s ultraopulent church.
    The Reverend was one of the scariest people I’d ever met: his perfectly straight teeth gleamed like bathroom tiles, a toupee sat clumped on top of his head like a hat made from wet hair caught in a bathtub drain and he always wore a powder blue suit with a mint green tie.