I learned fear watching a twenty-something white man with three goody-goody sons and a wife of a teacher or maybe a teacher of a wife sermonize on hell clothed in the black cassock I imagine death decreed all pastors should wear in reverence to the end-all be-all. fear was realizing that all your friends that shared the same skin color were bound to hell by an omnipotent and benevolent and above all merciful god who couldn't tolerate any dissent. we were children, we were taught, didn't Jesus love children best of all?
I grew up, and then it wasn't just my friends who shared my skin color; no none of my friends believed in a higher power at all, and I was unsure I did.
but fear of eternity in hell kept me devout and that was when I learned that there was something worse than hell, there was heaven. how could I be happy without the people I loved? would God make me forget all about them? how could you be perfectly happy in a utopia with no problems to surmount? how could an eternal God judge mortal crimes so harshly? and then I realized that not even people who had dedicated their lives to preaching the word of god knew why God would allow it. I heard ******* arguments that hell was God's last great mercy, allowing those who did not believe in him to not have to be near him for eternity; I didn't believe them for a second. people are full of ****, but only because god created us in his image.

After your lecture on
polyphase something-or-the-others
we meet at my house which is also
your house. We were going to make dinner
but
you're wearing those square black glasses and
a tight lacy blouse and
that **** pencil skirt that hugs your ***
and those black stilettos and
I can't help myself. I lean
across the stove and twirl
it off, condemning the pasta to half-cookedness
and then I
grab you around the waist
pull you flush against me
and kiss you breathless
one hand on the small of your back
the other
on your *** kneading and squeezing
eliciting gasps from your parted lips that
end up between my teeth.
your trembling hands frantically
unbuttoning my shirt as I unzip your
skirt and throw it to the corner your
blazer and castaway your
blouse and then you're in your
bra and dampened *******, fingernails
scratching and raking and clawing at
the small of my back with your
legs spread in an inverted triangle and your
tongue in my mouth. I unsnap your
bra and moments later your
******* are under lipsteethtongue and then
lipsteethtongue
kisssuckbite
lower
and
lower
until
lipsteeth­tongue
kisssuckbite at
your ******* and your
***** until
gasping squealing moaning
you ****** your
juice in my
mouth and on my
lipstongueteeth.
The pasta is wasted.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked through a chuckle, and then it hit me. I knew exactly what was wrong with me. I was passionate about things, and never about people. I had loved people, but always platonically, or platonic and gilded with a crush or wrapped in lust that I always brushed off with innuendos and flippancy. I had never loved another person the way I loved twisting my brain around a calculus problem or constructing a flame chart. I had thought of people in a romantic sense more than I had evaluated people for science bowl, but lust and love had never consumed me as the issue of organizing practice and evaluation and cuts within the handspan of a month. I always fell in love with things, and never with people, and that's why already, not even 16 yet, I've reconciled myself to die alone.