Chemistry Night: Part Two

-I feel like I never actually believed in Jesus, or in Christianity, Steve intoned.

Shock, disbelief -What?

-I have actually felt the same way for quite a while, Paul added.

What the Fuck?-What do you mean?

-I lack any sort of strong belief in any of the major tenets of Christianity, I feel no affinity for Jesus at all.

My alcohol addled mind reeled, I stumbled. By this point we had come to the stone steps of the park near Paul's house. We stood and sat in fits and starts as the discussion unfolded.

-I know that these Christians who surround us are bastards, but that does not mean that Christianity is flawed or anything. I mean, damn it guys. Look, what do we do that makes us such sinners in the eyes of this school? We drink, but fuck it Christ had wine... we have not even gotten drunk. We don't have to destroy our religion just because some pricks have a problem with the image of the bottle.

-I don't think that's it... have you ever thought about Christ? I am not convinced.

Paul had taken the lead on trying to show me the wisdom of their new proposition. I started to cry. These guys must know what hell meant. Hell. I knew what they meant, or thought I did, but just because some assholes judged us did not mean shit. I reiterated this as many times and ways as I knew how. Why abandon religion?

-I honestly worry for your souls. I said doing an awful job hiding the tears that were streaming down my face. -Jesus still saves, we are still on the right side of the righteous divide.

The whole thing just came as a shock to me, I had known non-Christians before but they had just not been adequately introduced to the beauty of grace and the peace of salvation. No one who had seen the light of God could ever turn away, not without being illogical fucks. How then could my perfectly reasonable friends... I don't understand, I must be missing something.

Chemistry Night: Part 1

As my ninth grade dragged on, I began to convort more often with those people who were a grade ahead: namely, Paul, Daniel, Steve, and sometimes Derek Anderson, rather than Marc, James, and Derek Brown with whom I shared a good rapport but who were drifting into flirtation with narcotics and obsession with pornography (neither of which I found to be socially stimulating). Late that year, the grade ahead found themselves on the eve an important Chemistry test from a notoriously difficult teacher (whose name I forget [Kryslo, Kristoff, Krysl]). A group of peers gathered on that Thursday night in what was intended to be a night of heavy studying and I came along because I knew that bottles were also making their ways there. Paul, Daniel, my brother (still not drinking), and I were the first to gather. They began discussing covalent bonds and I sat silently. We had decided to hold off on the brandy until Steve arrived from his house. At some moment, someone entered and said that Steve might not be coming after all.

So we opened the Brandy and had a round. And then another. And then quickly a third.

Steve arrived five minutes later.

-Assholes started without me?

-We thought you were not coming. We couldn't wait all night.

-I was only fifteen minutes late.

-Shut the fuck up. Just catch up.

So Steve had his drinks in succession. We all stood equal now.

-We should go to Derek's house.

Walking into hostile terrain was one of our forte's (especially mine and Paul's. We had re-entered the campus under the influence several times and talked cheerfully to many of my dormmates, we even played baskteball against some of the team [and held our own]. Nobody ever saw our stumbles and slurred speech; sometimes people just don't want to know. [Like in health class when Ashley posited that no-one at the school did any of that bad stuff to audible laughs from our little corner].

So Paul, Steve, and I went to Derek's house. His sister answered the door. The family was having spaggetti for dinner and Derek could not go to 'study chemistry' for at least another hour. We wandered listlessly until we decided to go to the park at the top of his street. We pissed on the trees of that park, surrounded though it was by all those members of the school's establishment. We wandered listlessly. We began to head back to Paul's house.

Then Steve renounced Christ.