Free Crapalachia: A Biography of Place by Scott McClanahan Page B

graveyards.

AND THEN THE NEXT NIGHT
    I dreamed about Ruby and she was telling me it’s just one thing after another. Then she told me that some shit happens and then some more shit happens and then some more shit after that. There are floods, explosions, disasters, tornadoes and none of it makes any sense. It’s all just one big joke you have to laugh at.
     
     
    Are you laughing?

MESSING WITH BILL
    I don’t think we had anything to do after a couple of days living together except talk. Since Bill’s mom was never around we sure as hell didn’t go to school that much. No one could make us. For some strange reason we started talking about religion.
    I started giving him hell about his views of homosexuality. He repeated again that it was an abomination of God.
    I told him he was just pissed because he caught his cousin taking it in the ass one day. He came home early one day from school and there was his cousin getting fucked by the next door neighbor. I told him butt-fucking usually runs in families.
    Then I reminded him about his silver-dollar-size nipples and how I didn’t want him walking around with his shirt off when I was drunk because they kind of made me horny.
    He grinned and just kept going on about homos being an abomination of God. Homos man, homos.
     
    I asked him where he got that abomination of God thing from. He told me Leviticus. I asked him if Jesus ever said anything about homosexuality. I knew the answer was no. I told him didn’t Leviticus also say you have to keep your woman outside the tent if she was having her period? That shut him up. Then he quoted Leviticus.
    I told him that as much as he quoted the Old Testament you’d think he was Jewish.
    Bill was getting mad.
    I kept telling him seems to me if he loved the Old Testament so much we ought to change his name to Crookshankzowitz.
    I told him yeah you’re my Jewish friend Crookshankzowitz.
    Bill was mad.
     
    That morning I sat down at the computer and made a fake e-mail address that I could send him. The e-mail I made was called [email protected].
    I sent him an e-mail that went:
    Dear Bill:
    This is the lord. I have been listening to your religious conversations with your roommate Scott McClanahan. I would like for you to know that I am disappointed in your recent conversion to Judaism. It is a beautiful faith, and one my father started. But please understand that you must return to Jesus and the study of the New Testament or face eternal hellfire and damnation. Your friend and savior.
    Jesus Christ.
    The son of god.
    P.S. Please quit skipping school so much. Remember, drugs aren’t cool. Stay in school.
     
    That evening Bill sat down in front of the computer and checked his e-mail. I watched over his shoulder. He scrolled through his e-mail and started reading it. Then all of a sudden he got up from his computer and walked over to me. He was halfway grinning, but he scratched his head and said, “Jesus just e-mailed me.”
    So Bill walked out of the room. I heard him praying in the other room.
    I heard him praying for his grandpa and his uncles and then I heard him pray for my grandmother and me. I heard him praying for my Uncle Nathan. I heard him praying that my Uncle Nathan was in heaven. I heard him praying for a girlfriend. “I try to be a good person,” he said. “But I’m very lonely. I’d really like a girlfriend to spend some time with. I’d just like to have someone who I could talk to. I know I’m not good-looking, but I would like someone.” Then I heard him praying about his condition. He said he knew it couldn’t stop forever, but he would like for it to stop for a day. He would like the voices and anxiety inside his head to stop for a day.
    An hour or so later he walked back up to me and said, “I guess you think you’re real funny, don’t you?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    He told me he was just pretending that I fooled him earlier.
     
    It was around this time Bill started taking pictures of