"Still on for the weekend man?" David asked me when he saw me in trig first period Friday morning.

"Oh, hell yeah!" I said, and he and I high-fived.

"The parental units still leaving?" he asked.

"Oh hell, yeah! They've already vanished. Nobody gonna be at home but the evil sisters, and you and me," I said.

"Excellent!" Dave said.

"Most excellent!" I said.

My two older sisters, who at twenty-seven and twenty-four are way older than me, think I'm pretty much a pain in their ass, and retarded to boot, so they don't pay all that much attention to me or to much of what I do, except to bitch me out if I forget my share of the chores, or leave my athletic bag laying around, or don't clean up the bathroom. It's fine if they leave the bathroom a disaster area, but let me leave a pair of sweat socks in the corner and all hell breaks loose. I'm used to being the youngest, and not having siblings to play with. Beth was eleven when I was born and Susan was eight. My parents didn't think they'd have any more children but Mom and Dad went on a cruise, and Mom got off the boat pregnant! Go Dad! Of course it also meant that my parents had sort of grown away from the idea of small children around. So the sisters being in the house wasn't an issue. As long as we didn't burn up the house, David and I could do pretty much what we wanted.

Being mainly ignored has benefits. When the parents go away I can do pretty much what I want, as long as my sisters don't have to cover for me, and spin a tale for the parents. I have to say that they have never ratted me out even though we fight all the time. Even the time I came home drunk, and puked in the kitchen, they helped me clean it up. I always clear everything with Dad and Mom first anyway, like going out on the boat on Saturday with David, my best friend. Beth, my older sister, is a nurse, and is now going for her physician's assistant degree, and Susan is an accountant. They both still live at home, mainly because home is really nice, and because our parents are actually pretty cool, and there aren't all that many rules. Beth is thinking about getting an apartment of her own.

Growing up, my whole life seemed oriented towards the river our property fronts on. In colonial days, the roads were so terrible for most of the year that people traveled along the Sound, and the tributary rivers, so the house "fronts" faced the water. The earliest parts of our house go back before the Revolution, and it's been added to and modified over the years, so that at first glance it sort of looks like a crazy person designed it. Guests who are there for the first time get lost trying to find the bathrooms sometimes. But it's pretty large, and very comfortable, and over the holidays with all the decorations my Mom puts up, and all four fireplaces on the first floor going, it's awesome.

My Father is a physician, and he has a wide circle of professional colleagues, and my parents entertain a lot throughout the year. My Mom had a career in nursing before my eldest sister arrived, and never went back to work because she couldn't bear to leave the children in a nanny's care. Or park us at a day care. I wonder a lot what it might have been like to have regular playmates instead of the few boys who got "imported" to our house to play every so often. Like every few days I was 'exported" to play in one of their houses. One friend in particular got imported more often than the others, and his name was David. We clicked the first time we met. David's father is also a doctor, and his family originated in Richmond, then his parents moved to Charlottesville, and then here to our area. My Dad met Davey's dad, and then the mothers met, and all four of them are wicked into playing bridge, and playing golf. In spite of our family being about as Old North State Episcopalian as you can get and David's family being Reform Jewish, the friendships that were formed are really strong ones. God knows, over the years Davey and I have put them through one crisis after another!

I have to confess, it was usually me who was the ringleader in any of our "untoward exploits" as my Father always calls them. It's not that we were bad boys; we were just energetic and reasonably intelligent kids who learned how to entertain ourselves! One time, when we were maybe six, Mom had just hung a whole house full of white linen sheets out on the line to dry. Mom likes the bed linens to be aired and sun dried, and then folds dried lavender in them. Believe me, it's worth the trouble. But we got into serious hot water by seeing the clean sheets as artist's canvases, and got two brooms, and found a convenient muddy place in the yard, and proceeded to, ah, "decorate" the linens. Mom, like Queen Victoria, was not amused. In fact she was so not-amused that Davey and I had to hand launder the sheets again in a tub on the front lawn. From then on we confined our artistic experiments to coloring books. Another time we discovered the delights of "cow plop fighting" in a neighboring farm pasture and returned home happy but so covered in cow manure and smelling so terrible we were ordered to strip in the yard and got hosed down before being allowed indoors to shower. I think they actually had to throw our clothes away.

Then there was the day we discovered the pile of lumber in the garage that was left over from building the new kitchen addition, and we immediately decided the only possible use for such a windfall was to build "a fort." Without parental permission we dragged all the lumber down into the woods near the riverbank. Once there, the idea of "a fort" was transformed into the idea of "a houseboat." We worked furiously all day; using all the nails we could find around my Dad's workbench, we also, ah, "borrowed" his tools. We also "borrowed" the rowboat. Y'know, for not knowing anything about wood, or tools, we managed a pretty cool looking houseboat, and of course we decided to go for a sail. We expected it to float, and it did. Well, sort of. When we climbed aboard the waterline was pretty much up to the gunnels, but we happily set out on our Great River Adventure. We had some 2x4's to pole with and to use as paddles, but we forgot the actions of both current and tide, and how fast the river flows at certain times of the day.

We were missed at supper, when David's Mom came to collect him. My Father noted the disappearance of all his wood, and the three began looking for us. It didn't take long because all the drag marks on the grass lead them right to our makeshift boatyard. Dad saw all the tools laying around, the quantity of bent nails, the further absence of the wood, the absence of the rowboat, and the absence of the two of us. He put two and two together and came up with the quite natural conclusion that he might have to tell his wife, and the wife of one of his best friends, that their only sons had drowned. Well, we weren't drowned. I wouldn't be here writing this if we had drowned. When we were finally found by the Coast Guard the amount of parental anger and yelling, not to mention the threats from the Coast Guardsmen, made us wish we had been drowned!

But I want you to know that we were never afraid or scared. We were frankly having too much of an awesome time to think that we might be in danger, and we were mad when our Great River Adventure was cut short by the arrival of the Coast Guard cutter. Part of the punishment for that adventure was that we had to scrape and repaint the rowboat.

Over the years there have been lots of other adventures centered on the river. One Fourth of July we had been excused from the parents company to go and amuse ourselves, and frankly they should have learned that David and I left to our own devices could prove to be a dangerous combination. We had a whole case of bottle rockets just waiting to be used, so we pretended the passing holiday boat traffic on the river were British ships, and we pretended to be Colonial artillerymen on our dock. The bottle rockets became, well, you get the picture. For brief time "Battery Moore" and "Battery Delecroix" sent across a fierce fusillade of improvised artillery. The yachtsmen aboard the target vessels were less than enthusiastic about playing the part of the British, and given the amount and volume of the cursing directed at us they were really mad! Nor were our parents particularly enthusiastic when the police arrived. Adults have no sense of humor.

It hasn't always been fun and adventures though, and like any long-lasting friendship there have been serious times too. I got into my first and last fight because of David when we were ten. Some idiot at school had told Davey he couldn't play ball with us because he was "a kike." I didn't know what that meant, and when David said it was like if somebody called our friend Rodney "nigger." Well once, when I was little I had used that "n" word at home, and got my mouth washed out with Dial bath soap and punished for a week so I knew it was bad. So if the "n" word was bad, then the kike word must be bad too, and when I had finished with the asshole who called Davey a kike he probably shit teeth for a week. Not really, but you get the idea. I got suspended for three days, but oddly not punished at home. I mean, I got lectures about not fighting, and settling arguments without fighting, and stuff like that, but not punished. The next time David's Dad saw me he shook my hand. David came over every day to give the lessons from school. But that guy and I are still enemies. He's never spoken to me since.

Then, when David and I were thirteen, he invited me to be a guest at his Bar Mitzvah in Richmond. Now, I'm not religious. I believe in God, but not the "God" portrayed in the Bible. David and David's family aren't really religious either, but even as non-religious as I was, I knew that the day was special. I was so proud of him, y'know! Standing up there and reading from the scrolls. I sort of realized too that we weren't little boys any longer, that this marked some sort of transition in David's life, and therefore in mine as well. His grandparents gave me a prayer shawl and a yarmulke to wear in their synagogue and I've kept them ever since, in a special drawer in my highboy, carefully folded and preserved. They remind me of David whenever I see the bag they're in. I gave David a gold mezuzah on a gold chain as a present. He rarely takes it off.

I'm not religious, like I said, but other people's religious beliefs figure sort of large in my life and in this story. My girlfriend, Meghan, comes from a Southern Baptist family, and so does my good friend Ethan. And their religious beliefs change the way they view certain things in life, like sex. So maybe I should tell you about what I personally believe, just so you don't get the wrong idea about me.

Until fairly recently, my Mom and Dad were constantly on my case about going to church. It never let up. The trouble is, I just can't believe in all the stuff that hangs onto Christianity, and I feel like a hypocrite every time I go to church. Like I said, my girlfriend is from a very strict, very sort of fundamental believing Southern Baptist family, and she is on me about church too, and what I believe and all the rest of it. Her family has a big Bible on the coffee table in their living room, and whenever anything happens that's nice they're like "Oh, praise God" and "Praise Jesus!" and stuff like that. Whenever anything bad happens then "it's the Will of God." I mean, her parents actually believe that Hurricane Katrina was "God's Punishment" to the evil city of New Orleans, and that 9-11 was caused because of homosexuals.

I know it's hard for my parents and my two older sisters to understand how I feel. When your family has been in the same church since the church was built in the 1730's it's hard to understand how totally a member of the family rejects virtually everything the Episcopal Church stands for. Back in those days, I mean when the church was built, it was called The Established Church. It was The Church of England. Everybody had to tithe to the Church. My family has records where we gave so many pounds of tobacco a year and so many bushels of corn for tithes and that was in Colonial times when there wasn't much hard money going around. Then after the Revolution it got turned into the Episcopal Church.

It's not like these ideas about religion came on me suddenly or anything. My Dad said it was a normal part of growing up to question things, and to question authority. But this goes way deeper than that. Even when I was little and being forced to go to Sunday School I never believed the stories they told us. I just didn't. They all seemed too fantastic to me. Ribs being taken out of people to create other people, and angels talking to people, and all the rest of it. I think it's all bogus, like this is the mythology we happen to believe in, while thinking the Greeks and Romans were pagans for having mythology just as weird.

I do believe in God. When I think about God, I don't think about an old dude with a long white beard and dressed in flowing white robes floating around in the sky. I don't think of God as the Earth Mother. God to me is sexless. To me God is a Force. God is a Power. God is a Spirit. God doesn't get pissed off at people and make terrible things happen to them, and likewise God doesn't think other people are better and send them "blessings." I believe that God did create everything. I don't know how God did that, nobody knows how God works. I believe, like lots of the Founding Fathers of our country, that God started the process we have come to call evolution the instant the spark happened that created the universe. After the spark, God just sort of chilled out and let the process develop. I don't believe for one second that God gets involved in everyday stuff on Earth. God doesn't cause illnesses, or earthquakes, or suffering. Things like that are most definitely not "God's will." I don't believe in miracles either. Science, medicine, natural selection, those are the things that cause unbelievable cures, not God's intervention. My Father seriously disagrees with this. He says that as a doctor he's seen quite a few miracles happen.

I don't buy into the Bible. I don't believe that God created man in his own image. Totally bogus. That's my opinion. I figure, if God created man in his own image, then God either created the monkey creatures from which we evolved, and that would mean God started out as a monkey and is evolving along with us, or if life started as plankton, or whatever, it's only rational to assume God started out as the "whatever" and is likewise evolving along with us. It's ridiculous. But since I don't believe God has a physical form, then the whole argument is nuts.

Like I said, I do believe in God, but I don't believe in "the God" in the Bible, visiting wrath and terrible things on people for being people. Bad things happen. Floods happen, fires happen and people get killed. These are natural things, and God has nothing to do with them. The Bible to me is not the revealed Word of God. It's a collection of stories written by human beings, each with a personal agenda to pursue and most of it was written in the Babylonian Captivity to give the Jewish people some sense of their own history. The bunch of stories we call the New Testament is just what the majority of bishops thought was the truth back in the early days of what is called Christianity. What if there had been more bishops believing something else? Like the Arians or those other guys? Christianity would be totally different. There are many, many more "gospels" that didn't get included in the Bible because they weren't "politically correct" for the times.

People invented "the God" in the Bible because they needed some explanation for everyday things. All that stuff about not eating this and not eating that, it's just because desert dwellers couldn't keep stuff fresh, and they learned that pork spoiled faster than goat, and shellfish spoiled faster than fish, and they learned if you mixed meats and milk stuff together then everything got spoiled. David is Jewish, and he told me all this, which is why his family is Reform Jewish. They eat everything. So back then, they needed fear to keep people from making the mistakes with their food. So they made all these religious prohibitions against everything that they knew would cause sickness or death. Just like today, ministers tell people what to be afraid of.

I'm not gay. Well, okay, I'm still trying to figure all that out, but I'm not ready to pin labels on myself. The same thing goes for all the "thou shalt not sleep with men as thou sleepest with women" bullshit you hear. Bogus. Totally bogus. Times were so terrible back then, and infant mortality was so high, and life expectancy was like what, thirty? So any relationship that didn't help increase the tribes was not tolerated. In fact, I'll bet that the boys were having so much fun with each other they neglected the girls, and the birth rate started to get low, so bingo! Let's make boys having sex with boys a religious taboo. The religious club my family belongs to, The Episcopal Church, is going through a whole pile of crap because one diocese consecrated a gay bishop. Who cares? God's evolution process developed us as sexual animals, and gave us our sexuality to enjoy and as a way to duplicate ourselves. If sex wasn't fun there wouldn't be any babies. But sex is fun, and we should enjoy it regardless of who we enjoy it with. If two people agree they like sex with each other, hell man, go at it! Girls with boys, Girls with girls, boys with boys; it's all good. We should be responsible about sex, and never force each other into something that might hurt another person, but nobody has the right to tell anybody else what is allowed and what is not allowed between a couple who are expressing their love for each other.

I don't believe in eternal punishments and eternal rewards. People invented the idea of hell, and being punished by fire because that's the worst way to die. I do some volunteer work in a hospice and sometimes I have to help with getting people to the hospital, and I have seen burned people. It's terrible. People learned that the first time one of them caught on fire sitting around the campfire in their bear skins. Being burned alive is the worst way to go, so they made that the ultimate punishment for breaking the rules. Just like they used burning at the stake to punish people. I don't believe in hell, and I don't believe in heaven either. When you're dead, you're dead.

I believe that we should be good and kind to one another while we're alive not because of some religious promise that we'll be rewarded after we die, but because being nice to each other makes life in general nicer. It's nicer to be nice. It's better to tell the truth, it's better not to kill people, it's better not to steal other guy's stuff, it's better not to fuck another guy's girlfriend. These things are better because the world works better if we all get along, not because "God" dictated some shit to an old dude on a mountain.

I don't believe that there is a place called "heaven." Like they invented "hell" as the final punishment, they invented "heaven" as the ultimate reward for toeing the line in whatever religious club people belonged. Death is very scary. Nobody wants to die, I sure as hell don't. I guess nobody else does either. Thinking that you will just die, and nothing will be left is hard to take. But I believe that once a person's place in the evolution of the species is over, it's over. It's done. Like trees in the forest that die and rot, we die and rot, or we would if we didn't have all these weird ideas about the resurrection of bodies and all that shit, and embalm people and put them into coffins, and then vaults, and bury them. The best thing human beings can do is to get cremated and have the ashes spread in the woods and fields as fertilizer. At least we'll be giving something back to the earth for having taken so much out of it.

So, what about Jesus? Davey says his name was probably Jeshua ben Joseph back then, but that's not important. I don't believe that Jesus was the Son Of God like the Bible says. We are all sons and daughters of God because we are all part of creation. I do believe that Jesus was a great teacher, maybe even a prophet if you will, and that he had some totally radical and excellent teachings on how we should live our lives. I have a copy of the Bible with the words that Jesus supposedly said in red printing. One time I read just the red words and I was like, wow, this dude had his shit together! I could be a Christian if it meant believing in the red words. But being a Christian, and "being in the club" means you have to buy into all the crap that's been hung around Jeshua ben Joseph's neck over the centuries, and I can't do that.

My parents made me go to confirmation classes, and I asked so many questions the teacher couldn't answer, and raised so many doubts in the other kid's minds, they actually told my parents that I wasn't ready for confirmation. That was their polite way of saying I was too curious, and wouldn't swallow all the crap that surrounded the red words. I asked the teacher where the women came from who married Adam's sons. That was just one thing that got them going. I asked them "if the Bible says it's bad to eat pork, and we do it, are we going to hell?" They said no, so I asked them "well how about gay guys? The Bible says not to be gay and they are anyway, so are they going to hell? And the teacher said yes, so I asked "how come we obey one law and forget all the rest?" And that's what got the call to my parents. I don't agree with these people who pick and chose shit out of the Bible to "prove" stuff. I mean, people say that Sodom was destroyed because everybody was gay there and wanted to have sex with the strangers. Bogus! None of that actually happened of course, it's Jewish mythology, but if it did, then why wasn't Lot punished for offering the guys his own daughters to have sex with? It's like "Oh, dudes! You can't fuck the visitors to my home, but here're my daughters, fuck them instead!" See what I mean? Different standards. People read what they want to read, and believe what they want to believe. You know, you can read the Bible, and prove that slavery is okay?

I took World History in tenth grade, and we spent a lot of time on the Middle East and the historical background to all the shit that's happening over there now. I think Jeshua ben Joseph was born at a time and in a place that was ready for a religious and political reformation and revolution, and he and his message got perverted for political reasons by some zealous Jews who wanted an armed insurrection against Roman rule. I believe that Jeshua ben Joseph was tortured and crucified because we have historical records for that, and I think that was terrible and I feel sorry for all the shit he went through, but I'm really sorry to say that I just don't buy the story of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jeshua ben Joseph's body, and the rest of the miracle stories. His followers stole his body to make him an instant hero for the cause. Every religion needs a "hero" to have miraculous powers and perform "miracles" and to be special above all others. The Christians have made their Jesus into a hero like that, and most Christians have totally lost the real meaning of what Jeshua ben Joseph was teaching.

If any so-called Christian uses the words "I hate...." in connection with other people; like persons of color, gays, lesbians, foreigners, Asians, Jews, Moslems....then I say they are not Christians. Jeshua ben Joseph never hated anybody that I can tell, except maybe he got angry at hypocrites. I can't say I love everyone. I can't say I even like everyone. But I can say I don't hate anybody. I try to be tolerant of people who are different, and try to be nice to everyone. I try to practice what Jeshua ben Joseph taught about not judging others, and about not finding fault with others before I correct the faults in myself. I try to be honest in everything, and I try not to hurt people's feelings. I know I fail at these things sometimes, and I'm sorry. I know that sometimes I show disrespect to my parents, and I'm sorry for that. I know that I have hurt other people's feelings without even knowing it, and I'm sorry for that too.

I worship God, or the Creator and Sustainer, or the Great Spirit, by caring for the little bit of Creation I live in. I try not to destroy nature, I try not to consume more than my share of resources, and I try to respect and care for all the other creatures that God's evolution process has caused to live here with me. I try to be at peace with other people, and I try not to behave in ways that hurt other people. I hunt animals because I like to eat them and not because I enjoy killing them. Shooting a deer with my bow doesn't make me feel powerful and dominant. Catching fish with a hook or netting crabs doesn't make me feel better than the creatures I will be eating. Like the Indian peoples who lived along the Sound before me, I try to remember to say I'm sorry to the animals I eat, even though I really like eating them.

Any kind of organized religion, is bad. Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Shinto, Buddhist, whatever. All bogus. It's like a group of people get together and said "We're going to have this special club, and this club is going to have these special rules, and these special books and these special beliefs, and if you agree to all of these special things, then you can be in our special club. But if you don't believe in then, then you can't be in the club, and not only that, but God is going to punish you because God loves our club the best." Then later, a few of the club members get different ideas, and say to the club, "no, you guys are wrong, we have this new idea that is better, and we're going to go and have our own special club with these slightly different beliefs, and God will love us better than you." And then even later, some of the new club's guys say, "Oh no, now we need these different beliefs from even the second beliefs, and God will love us best of all!" That's why there are so many so-called "Christian" churches. Just look in the yellow pages! Why should there be ten different kinds of Baptist churches, and five different kinds of Presbyterian churches? And now the Episcopalians are having splits, and it's just totally crazy. It's also total bullshit. If Jeshua ben Joseph really was The Son Of God like Christians believe, just what the fuck d'you think he would say about all that? And don't even get me started on what Jeshua ben Joseph would say about idiots like Falwell and Robertson and the rest of them.

One of my fave subjects in school is history. I've had social studies and civics and world history and now I'm in American history. I'll bet more people have died in religious wars or for religious causes than for any other reason. I think religion, and the feeling that it gives people that they are "right" and everyone else is "wrong" has caused more trouble in the world than anything else. When people start to believe that "God" is on their side, terrible things happen. This goes for Moslems and Christians and Jews.

I pray sometimes. I don't have a clue if God hears what I say or not. I think not, but I'm willing to be open on the question. So, if God doesn't listen, why pray? I don't know. I don't beg God for miracles because I don't believe God interferes in our lives like that. But I need to say thanks, even if my thanks go out into space and never get picked up by God. Sometimes you just need to say thanks. Thank you God, for starting creation; so amino acids could combine and form cells, and cells could combine and form organisms, and eventually I could be here typing this.

Like I told you, David has been my best friend since we were little and by the time we got into high school we had become totally used to each other in that cool way guys do. Like we can ride in the car for long trips and not say much, but feel like we've spent a great time with each other. At least that's the way I feel about Dave. Over the years we've been in trouble together, and covered for each other, laughed together and encouraged each other. We've fought and argued and made up more times than I can remember, about stuff I that was so stupid it was never remembered the next day.

Then, last summer, we had an experience together with two girls in a motel room. And that experience, seeing my best friend in that situation, feeling the things I felt towards him, started me thinking I might not be as straight as I thought. A new friend of mine I met through the Internet wrote to me that most guys drift along a scale from being totally straight to totally gay, with most guys falling someplace in between. I'm not sure about all that, and I'm sure as hell not about to come onto any of my team mates or classmates or friends. I mean, a guy needs to preserve his rep, y'know? Especially in small-town North Carolina. But I think about Dave, and what we did together, and the freaked-out feelings and thoughts I had while we were with the girls.

The things I feel towards David get even more confused when we watch my porn DVD together. See, last year I loaned another guy my biology notebook to use, and he traded me a porn DVD in exchange to use it. The movie is a guy and a girl supposedly stuck in a motel room during a snowstorm. It has zero real plot or acting, but lots of action. The guy supposedly "teaches" the girl how to have sex, and I do mean everything, including taking his dick up her ass. David found out I had it, and we watched it together sitting in front of my PC in my bedroom. From then on, every time we spend the night at each others houses, we usually end up watching the "fuck flick" as we call it. Either at my house or I bring it with me to David's. I always get hard, and lately I've been getting hard thinking about Dave getting hard. I know he is because I see his cock bulge in his pants or shorts. After watching the movie for a while he always hits the PAUSE button, and goes to the bathroom. I know he jacks off, and I do the same thing while he's gone. I've thought about, you know, maybe doing something with him while we are watching the fuck flick. Just jacking off with him, y'know? I thought it might be cool to do that. But I'm so freakin' worried of what he might think about me if I suggested anything like that.

On Friday, Dave and I went to school and then to practice like usual. We have three classes together and we were talking about how cool the weekend was going to be. We love fishing, and messing around in boats. We had been planning a weekend together at my house with some serious fishing on Saturday and some serious school term paper writing on Sunday. Dad was going to allow us out aboard Miss Betty Lou by ourselves. I wondered, for the hundredth time, how he might react to any suggestions from me that we mess around together while we watched the DVD I have. How could I get him in a situation where just jerking off with each other would seem sort of the natural thing to do? Well, whatever might happen between the two of us, like always, ever since we were very young, just thinking about seeing him made my heart sing.


On to Chapter Two

Chapter Index

An Albemarle Tale is Copyright © 2007 by The Whitewater Kid
This work may not be duplicated in any form – physical, electronic, audio, or otherwise – without the author's written permission.
All applicable copyright laws apply. All individuals depicted are fictional with any resemblance to real persons being purely coincidental.

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