Fiction
To San Francisco and back…
THAT SUMMER, ANYONE MY age and Ellen’s age who considered themselves anti-establishment in any way or were inclined to adventure or who were simply after kicks would have been foolish not to go to San Francisco. Larry Demeter and his Italian girlfriend Laura Longo were all for it and so was Ted Rogel but he didn’t have a girlfriend. I suggested he drive up to New York and put an ad in the Psychedelicatessen on Tompkins Square. He showed up at my apartment on Eldridge Street and I took him over to the place; he pinned his note on the bulletin board ‘Chick wanted for trip to San Francisco! Must travel light’, and when he got back to West Chester, just outside of Philadelphia, there had been three or four calls. The next day, Ted was again knocking on the door, and with him was a beautiful 22 year-old girl in high heels, tight black satin slacks and a flowery blouse. Her name was Dalia and she was wearing three or four necklaces, a dozen bracelets, had rings on every finger and on most of her toes. She was part Vegas showgirl, part hipster road chick. In other words, she was just my type. We looked at each other and it was like there was a magnetic field connecting us. We both said hello, got into the fishtail Plymouth, and from then on ignored each other until we got to California. In South Carolina I’d heard music when we pulled over to get something out of the trunk and down the road saw a few black people go into the forest, followed minutes later by several more, all carrying boxes, baskets, bottles of booze. I went over and found the trail, and my companions reluctantly followed me into the piney woods. There were bonfires in a clearing, lanterns powered by car batteries and a pig turning on a spit. Four guys in suits and bib overalls were playing rhythm and blues that was fifteen years out of date, and just the way I liked it. People looked but nobody hassled us. The alto sax was held together by electrician’s tape. It was as if time stood still in the woods; it was eternally 1948, and Wynonie Harris was at the top of the Race chart. But the music either bored my companions or they were afraid the darkies would get them. So we left the woods and emerged into July 1967, and back on the road. The long, long road to the coast, and all the way across the country, the big song on the radio had nothing to do with white rabbits or flowers in your hair; it was Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.” It was the summer of love.
I knew they wanted me to shed my family, but I knew in my fickle little heart that I was just not ready for that. I guessed I loved them too much and I was going to have to work on trying to unlove them. The shedding of my clothes had really been pretty easy. I set myself a harder task. Not as hard as shedding the family, it was true, but hard enough. I started wrestling with the problem of food. Sure, it was one thing to get rid of my material possessions, but what about my chubby body, proof that I led an undisciplined and privileged life? None of Jesus' apostles were fat, although I was still holding out some hope for Bartholomew, the one who'd replaced Judas the traitor. I was thinking it was possible, just possible, he'd been on the chunky side. I'd never seen him in the pictures of the disciples that illustrated my brand new Bible. He wasn't at the famous feast either, the last supper, where all they ate was bread and wine together. He was probably somewhere else, having crackers and water, dieting, to be more holy than the others so he could be chosen when they needed a new disciple to make up an even dozen.
He had a fat-sounding name, the type of disciple who might laugh a lot, right from the centre of his big belly. I imagined Bartholomew as an opera singer or a jolly pub owner, even though my version of him had no scriptural basis.
The scriptures were everything, according to the Fellowship of the One True Church of God. And even though it didn't actually say thou shalt not be overweight, it was there in the Bible.
Aaron and Terry, who now led Wednesday Bible studies together, had pointed it out to me. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, they said. You have to learn to treat it with respect. What I heard them say was quite different. I heard, Ruth, you're fat. God doesn't like fat people. Every time the temple thing came up, I felt disgraced and self-conscious. The Holy Spirit had a lot of room in my temple, that was for sure. It was more like a hotel than a temple, a kind of rundown hotel at that, with no one staying in it because it had a reputation of being a bit on the fleabag side. The Holy Spirit would be wandering around in my hotel thinking what kind of place is this? It's so huge.
I wasn't actually even sure if the Holy Spirit lived in my body. I thought He visited from time to time, but actually lived here, no. Why would He? I was too fat. And the Evil One tempting me with chocolates had made my face break out in pimples.
I wondered if the Holy Spirit was too embarrassed to live in my fat body. I knew I wasn't created that way. I was created to be perfect and it was only my greed and gluttony that had made me so huge and unappealing to the Holy Spirit. I knew He lived in the bodies of some of the people in the Fellowship, the fit, sleek people who didn't ever smoke or drink or eat pizza or chocolate. Their bodies were like spas for the Holy Spirit. I imagined Him relaxed in there, dressed in some sort of toga and lying on one of those chaise lounge thingies, poolside. In those clean small bodies he was able to manifest Himself whenever the occasion arose.
I decided to give up food. Jesus had, hadn't He? Forty days and forty nights He spent in the wilderness, drinking only water, preparing Himself for the crucifixion. If He could do something like that for me, surely I could do something like that for Him.
I didn't tell anyone at first. It was between God and me. I wanted to prepare myself for the End Times, which were coming. I wanted to prepare my body to become a temple for the Holy Spirit so He could shine through me as a testimony to truth in the last days before the Second Coming.
"Watch and pray, people!" shouted one of the super Elders from the pulpit. "Watch and pray, oh people of Zion. The End is coming soon. Watch and pray."
"Watch and pray and don't eat," I repeated to myself, sitting in the pew, wondering if the visiting Elder's head was going to explode, he was so worked up and red-faced. If Jesus was coming back to claim His own I wanted to be light enough so He could lift me up at the end of the world. I knew that all the true believers would be taken away in the Rapture, before the wrath of God rained down on the sinful world, but I was a little bit scared that I wouldn't go up with the saints, my being so big and all. Stopping eating would help that, too. Help me get taken away in the twinkling of an eye.
I knew the End Times were upon us and the Rapture was soon. I figured the Second Coming was two years away, three tops. I had to be in good spiritual shape to take what was coming, according to the Fellowship. Persecution. People would laugh at us. Maybe even revile us or hit us. Count it all joy, my brethren. Count it all joy. That's what they said. I was going to count it all joy, too, but first I needed some assurance that the Holy Ghost was going to take the hit for me. Otherwise, how could I count it joy?
