Currently Listening: “Bang Bang” by Nancy Sinatra, “Hate Me” by Blue October, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” by Johnny Cash, and “Jerusalem” by Matisyahu.
So … in an effort to make myself feel productive and to get some stuff out there that I am tired of merely doing nothing more then gathering dust on my laptop(s), I have decided to post one excerpt a week from my current writing project, “Destruction & Peace from the Ramparts at Damascus Gate.”
Each except will be from a consecutive chapter. When you read this, you may read of someone named Will. That is me. I am going by my full name, William J. Nash-McAdam, for this and all (mostly) all future writing projects. That is okay to do, since this book is a non-fiction personal narrative. Enjoy.
This excerpt is from Chapter I, “The Gun Powder.”
“I don’t know, William. You wanted to tell me about it.”
“Yes — because that’s where it began. The depression. That’s what triggered it.”
“Bring this home for me. I’m not understanding. How did the car wreck make you depressed?”
We both lean back in our chairs as we were at the start of the conversation. I am frustrated with counselors who have to ask more questions then they answer. I want to walk out, walk out on this old fucking Jew who is charging me Gentile fees but not answering my questions.
“The car wreck didn’t make me depressed. It was a trigger. Everything before that had been gun powder, and this was the fucking trigger that shot it all off, but it wasn’t a violent blast, it was a slow burning. I was forced to die slow.”
“What had been the gun powder? Tell me about the gun powder.”
“Everything — every fucking thing had been the gun powder — friends, family, Church, life, society I don’t know if you can appreciate this but ” I learned forward and wiped my hands on my face and sighed deeply through my own humidity. “I could not accept who I knew I was.”
“You could not accept being a homosexual, having these feelings, because it goes against what everything you have seen and what everyone has told you.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“So the two are intertwined.”
“You know maybe. Maybe they are. I’m sure in some psycho-analytical way, they are. But I don’t think my orientation triggered how I feel, doctor, I don’t. I think society and everything else around me triggered it. I think I was fine, I came that way.”
“So if you believe you are fine, then why would you take what the others say to heart?”
“Because I’m a romantic doctor, I’m egotistical and romantic.”
The old Jew laughs. “I’ve had months of counseling with some people before they admitted to me that they were egotistical! Hah! There’s some progress!”
“It’s not progress, I’ve always been honest in that way with myself.”
“But not honest with yourself about the larger things. See, most people are dishonest about the small things in their life but completely transparent with the larger things, so that’s how they can go through life. They have their foundation in order. You, William, are the opposite. You are dishonest about the large things but completely honest about the small. You don’t have a foundation, and it caught up with you.”
“Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome. You built your house on sand.”
“Interesting you would quote Jesus.”
“You know the Scriptures.”
“You’re Jewish.”
“Jesus was a Jew.”
“And what did Jesus build his house on, doctor?”
“Sand. Stone. Depends. The Romans would have said sand, the Jews would have said water, the Gentiles would have said stone.”
“Which element do you go with?”
“Water. Turned into wine. A sweet discourse in human history that is a taste one has to acquire or appreciate. Perhaps Jesus gets better with age.”
“But my house is sand.”
“Quicksand. You’re not smart enough to find the stable soil. You cast yourself among weeds then got angry at the world when it didn’t water you.”
“I didn’t ask to be watered.”
“No, maybe you did not. Nonetheless, you got angry when it didn’t happen, that’s what you’re telling me now. Whether you born gay or made yourself that way, or if the world made you that way, there seems to have been a level of acceptance on one hand and a level of rebuttal on the other.”
“I feel as if I was lost in the inevitable. Have you ever been lost in the inevitable, doctor?”
“I’m going to die. That’s being lost in the inevitable if you ask me.”
“We’re all going to die.”
“But you wanted one part of yourself to die young? But you also wanted to be okay with it living?”
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