Sundays in December



Fifty years ago we would have been eying the candles on the Advent wreath hung between us as we sat facing each other in the choir stalls up by the alter. Counting the candles down with each Sunday service, week by week, we eagerly approached the big day at what then seemed to be a snail’s pace. As Reverend Hardman pontificated to that captive audience, I was hard-pressed to think of anything more boring than having to sit quietly while that martini sodden windbag vomited on the willing sheep. My mind raced to get away from him…and to kill time. If I squinted at the back of the oak pew in front of me, I could see the face of a mountain man in the grain of the wood. He was a friend of Davy Crockett’s that I recognized from the TV show. John McGroarity sat in one of the pews opposite me, surreptitiously darting his tongue in and out around his lips and acting like he was loosing his mind. He did that pretty frequently, trying to make me laugh. A few weeks after he started his little show, he told me that he was “eating pussy”. Of course neither of us had ever even seen a pussy, much less “eaten“ one. I was unsure of what they actually looked like but apparently John had gotten a hold of a porn magazine somewhere that showed a man “eating” a woman’s pussy. He kept promising to bring the magazine to choir practice to show me, but he never did. It was just too hot, too volatile, to risk transport anywhere. And so, on those achingly boring Sunday mornings in December, that held the ultimate prize at the end, I sat, trapped. Squinting at Davy Crockett’s friend, the mountain man, my eyes reluctantly pulled up to catch a glimpse of John eating pussy, I fought sleep. The drone of Reverend Hardman’s narcotic assault urged me to close my eyes and shut him out. But then, finally, it was Christmas Eve. The Advent wreath had just one candle left burning, and there was only a short, troubled sleep between myself and Christmas morning.