$65 phone bill
$76 carfare
$91 charger
$149 strand books
Spring 1996, new York city. I'm standing on a moderately crowded subway car reading a paperback when I look up to see a man about my age--thirty-nine--who is standing a few feet away and staring at me with disconcerting intensity. For an instant we gaze speechlessly into each other's eyes. I expect him to say as sometimes happens that he's read one of my books and recognizes me from my dust jacket photo. Instead he asks me a question.
Are you a Christian?
The question takes me aback, though I know why he has asked it. I am reading rescuing the bible from fundamentalism, whose author, the Episcopal bishop john Shelby spong, is notorious for his denial of many orthodox Christian doctrines and for his work on behalf of an inclusive church.
Fuck you Anita Wilson you hearthating mothafucka. Anita I am going to get a gun and I am going to blow your mothafuckin head off you ugly ass son of a bitch. Sometimes when I try to talk to Anita she tells me to get the fuck out of my face. She treats me like a little baby. She wants me to be reincarnated into an African American female just so I could not go to heaven and only have sex with other black men which will keep me away from heaven for another 160 million years. I do not want to wait 160 million years until I reach nirvana and go to heaven because first of all 160 million years ago it was only God and God had not decided yet on whether he was gonna create the heavens and the earth.
