Well, no more Jerry Falwell to complain about or blame for my college experience.

Update: Okay, so - when I first wrote this post, I had another paragraph that said, "I wonder how many people in my current life are reading this story and thinking immediately of ME?" I erased that line/sentiment, b/c I thought "Zuska, you cocky bitch, some man just DIED, and you think people are thinking of you? Get over yourself!"

Since then, I have received 7 e-mails and 4 phone calls "Zuska! Jerry Falwell died!" My friend who just called (sorry fellow library studiers!!) said, "I read the news and I said, 'I have to call my friend! She's my only Jerry Falwell connection!'"

I now feel like I can add my second paragraph into this post. People ARE thinking of me when they read the news. Jerry Falwell = Zuska. At least, since I left that world, and since those people who are in MY world really know very little about Jerry and Liberty University, and since I have educated many people in the realities of the Jerry Falwell Universe.

I may still be a cocky bitch, though.

Update 2: Wow. I just read a blog of an old classmate of mine (from liberty) who just posted this font of sadness over Jerry's passing - talking about how much he respected him, and how he (classmate) "and everyone he hung out with" was so happy to have Jerry on their team when we were there.

Uh. I hung out with this guy - we made fun of Jerry all the time. All The Time. He was a joke. He was this odd omni-presence that we used as a tongue-in-cheek reference whenever we broke the rules (i.e., went to the student center during chapel to take a nap).

I am sorry I cannot link to his blog - because there are many other topics on his blog that I often find surreal - proof that he somehow continues to live in that world, and is raising his poor, poor daughters in that world. I am not really up for him tracking back to MY blog if I ended up a referral for his.

So y'all have to take my word for it.

Labels: family, friends, liberty university

posted by Zuska @ 1:44 PM 2 comments

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Religiosity IV: My Exodus

Here we are - my final installment in the back story of my religious experiences, which all coalesce to make Zuska the bitter, or is it better?, person that she is today.

Religiosity I
Religiosity II
Religiosity III

X [Like the new moniker? I'm trying it on for size] and I did find a church as soon as we were married. I think we were both uncomfortable with the church world at that time, but we weren't in any sort of all-out rebellion. We were newly married, knew we would one day be parents, and we wanted to do the "right thing."

We went to a relatively large church, but by far not the largest in Birmingham, which a friend of his parents recommended. I was quickly startled at the similarity between this church and all I had seen at Liberty. Liberty was my first exposure to church as a stage, and I thought it was unique. Turned out it was NOT unique. The pastor in Birmingham had the same hair sprayed man haircut that all the men at Liberty had; the sermons were cookie-cutter; the parade of people walking down the aisle so they could "rededicate their lives to Christ" was just as persistent; the fear of hell was just as consistently evoked. I was not impressed.

For a little while, we were just less than enthusiastic about attending. We had initially tried the "young married couples" bible study group - but I found no real connections with the girls [no, we were most decidedly not women, no matter how desperately we were playing at it] and all of their hairspray. X found no connection to the boys. In some ways, looking back, the "young married" bible studies I had come across in those years give me the absolute creeps. I almost feel like it was on the same spectrum as the training of boy soldiers we saw on Blood Diamond last night. They didn't hand us a gun, of course, but they handed us the ability to bind ourselves to one another, to bring children into the world, and to think exactly what they wanted us to think. We were painfully young, and so wanting to do good in the world, and with our lives, and each other, and our future children. But we were so little. I was 21! X was 22.

X was concurrently embarking on another major relationship in his life [our lives], which I think contributed to his discontent with the Church. He was heading into a much more "intellectual" phase of his life, and I think he was ready to be done with the emotionalism. I just thought it was fake, and I was sick of all the damned hairspray. I also thought that the repetition, and the 'sameness' of it all made it suddenly less credible. I was squirming. My world view was starting to crumble and shift.

So we started looking around at other churches. The first thing we tried (which, really, is 100% in line with X, his field, his interests) was the Episcopal Church in town. I was uncomfortable with that church. First of all, there was a woman .. what? priest? pastor? reverend? Had they not read the bible?? Women can't head churches. Hello, sin much? Second of all, they were having AIDS fundraisers. This was absolutely, positively pushing things too-too-too far. How could they support homosexuality like that? I couldn't do it. I felt like there was no point in attending a church that didn't even bother to crack a bible open (which, oddly, was also a complaint I had about Jerry Falwell in that he spent so much time on politics, I would seethe over the fact that there was no real preaching going on).

I think, instead, we just stopped going to church.

Then we moved to Berkeley. E was born 25 days later. Once a kid was in the picture, I felt like we were missing something by not going to church. I had heard somehow about a Presbyterian Church in town, and I wanted to try it.

In the meantime ....

I had a very close friend from college. We will call him T. When we were in college, T was just the life of a party (a very alcohol-free party, of course). He was fun, he was funny, he was warm. He was a very very best friend of mine. He had an excellent sense of fashion, he loved to sit and tease girls (and boys) for their lousy clothing choices, he used to just revel in the fact that he, myself, Rose, and our other friends were considered "beautiful people." I was so comfortable with him all the time.

At one point, X and his friends told me that they walked in on T kissing another boy. I told them they were full of shit, T was not like that, and they were a bunch of macho fucks [okay, I probably said "jerks"] who had too much testosterone. T was my friend. Of course he was not gay.

At another point, T called me to tell me that someone else had accused him of being gay [I think it was X's friend - X was/is a jock, and his friends were of that sort. He was, too.]. He asked me what I thought. I said, "it doesn't matter, because you're not." Maybe I said, "well, we'll tell them that you're not."

I wonder how quickly I knew that I had failed a major test of our friendship? Was it that day? Or was it not until much, much later?

After college, T floundered around a lot. He couldn't settle down. He was flitting from NYC to Atlanta to D.C., and then at one point, he landed in Maryland, at some camp or something. Why a camp? What is he talking about? he said he was trying to be more spiritual. There were things in his life he needed to deal with, and he realized that, and so he was trying to deal with things. I think it was a place like this.

By the time I hit Berkeley, it was clear to me that T was gay, that he had been hiding it, that he had been making up the fact that he had girlfriends over the summers at home, and that he was in the world's shittiest situation. I was angry. How could this be? How could someone try so damned hard, and still not be what everyone around him thought he should be? I felt that there was something fundamentally unfair about a religion that served to make people hate themselves, and put people in a situation where they could not live up to the standard - no matter what they did. No matter how many damned CAMPS they went to. T was T. And he wasn't going to stop being himself because this religion said that he was sinful.

That was Issue Numero Uno -- my doubts were huge at that point, and had nothing to do with hairspray and face make up. [An aside to say that during my last days in Berkeley, T moved to San Francisco. We got together, he officially came out, I told him, "I know, T!" and I apologized for not being more accepted years before. We had a great 6 months hanging out before he realized that San Francisco was not and could not be home for him, and he went back to the Southeast. We still talk occasionally, and every time, it's like home again.]

A second thing: I had made a couple of friends through the Presbyterian Church. They were Very Christian. They used their beliefs (separately, though) to craft a parenting style which I saw as mistreatment of their children. Spanking their babies for crying when they were told to stop. Creating a puppet of an 18 month old who would practically walk in place crying and frustrated because he was afraid of what his mom would do if he didn't listen to her, but wanting to run over to her and grab her legs. The spankings, though! So many spankings.

And my own parenting journey also pulled me away. Dr. Dobson's parenting missives were nothing but child abuse in my mind. Why was I being told that my children were horrid sinners at the age of 2 months? Why was I being told that my job is to teach them to get in line; to obey; that when they cry in their cribs, they're not unhappy or hungry or lonely -- they're rebelling?

This went 100% against my instincts, and I was unwilling to take any of it on for myself.

How much was I influenced by the town I was in? I like to think not at all. I don't think it mattered that I was in a town with co-sleeping, bare breasted, baby-sling wearing mommas who would have had me arrested if I dared raise a hand to my child - because I didn't know them yet. I was alone - other than these two women I met through the church. Who were scary.

There was also the time that I went home to my parents' church while visiting. E was in my arms - she was probably 9 or 10 months old. An ex boyfriend of mine was their with his wife and their 6 month old child. His father was a deacon or whatever in the church, and he got up to pray, and in his prayer, he said to god that he knew that both my E and his grandson were sinners. That they had been sinners since their conception, and until they accepted Jesus Christ at their lord and savior, sinners they would remain.

I walked out. I would have nothing to do with a place that told me and my child and the heavens above that a 9 month old child was a sinner.

So, that was Issue #2.

I believe my final big issue - other than some other episodes that worked to seal the deal - was the Welfare Queens. Another big lie which I had uncovered.

X was a student, and we didn't have that much $$. I wasn't willing to give up my goal of staying home with my baby, and so I decided to try to start my own business. I posted fliers, I sent out letters, and I made phone calls. I ended up with a few lawyer-clients, a few mediator/arbitrator-clients, and a few professor clients. And a couple of students. For the lawyers and mediators, I did paralegal work - summarizing transcripts and depositions and other legal things. For the professors and students, however, I did straight transcription.

Oh how boring, you may say.

But really, not so much.

I worked on a project about sex ed in schools; a project about sex workers; a project about welfare reform; a project about father's involvement with their kids if he was never married to the mom, and it also ended up being a LOT about welfare; and a project about college admissions.

I listened to tapes of conversations with people who were experiencing a poverty I had never imagined. Women with 2 or 3 children and no income other than welfare. I learned what the welfare system really is. I learned about the lack of opportunity given to people who find themselves on welfare long term. I heard the voices of women who were absolutely trapped, and had nowhere else to go.

There were no welfare queens. There was no cheating of the system. There were poor women, poor children - suffering from a true lack of food, education, opportunities, self-respect, respect from others, and on and on and on.

I could not believe how the principles I was taught varied from the truth. How could people just say "if you want a job, go to McDonald's and get a job!" - and put the kids in what daycare? And get there with what car? And wear what clothes when we get there? And when we can't do the work because we left school before we could read - not because we were rebellious, not because we made bad choices, but because we did not have the examples that you had, Mr. Falwell, and your children, and your students who pay $10,000/year [yeah, that was all it cost then] - we didn't have those examples, and those lessons. We had schools that were falling apart and we didn't have textbooks and we didn't have buses, and we were hungry all day.

And I knew that I was lied to.

I was lied to about people who need help; I was lied to about the fact that they are out to take from me - and that if they only TRIED, they would be able to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and have everything my parents had.

I was lied to about homosexuality.

I was lied to about human nature, and the sin in babies.

And I found that when it came time to talk to E, as she got older, about the universe, and about church, and about god .... I couldn't do it. I had piles upon piles of books that were full of religious bullshit - written for kids, sent by the grandmas - and I couldn't read them to her.

Because I knew that if I did, then I was lying.

I did spend some time reading the bible on my own. I thought that perhaps the people who I had learned from had contorted the message. Perhaps it's not the religion itself, but rather, the religious. I looked closely at the passages about women not teaching men. I didn't see it as succinctly put as I was taught to think it was, but I still wasn't won over by some new, and newly beautiful, truth. I put the bible down.

Other episodes:

1. When I found out that X had lied to me about how and why we were in Berkeley, I felt like it was all a freaking sham. I thought I had "found god's will" and in fact, I had found that someone wanted my husband -- really bad.

2. When I found out that when he was 8, my brother had been molested by our "worship leader" at church - a man who I had felt so close to, and whose family (wife, son and baby daughter) was so important to me during my later teen years. I was so angry - but less at him, and more at my parents and the general population of the church. At their blind trust because this man stood up at the front of their church every week with his hands raised to the ceiling made them turn off their other filters. I know that I didn't have alarm bells going off about him, either, but -- I think they were there. I hated the idea that someone can just say, "yes, I'm born again" and wa la! Come to my house! Eat at my table! Have my children at your house whenever you want! You are a Christian, and therefore, you are "okay."

3. When I realized that if X hadn't been a virgin when we married, I would have known that for some reason, having sex with him gave me yeast infections. Every fucking month. Yeast infections that made me feel like I was on fire, all the time. That made sex hurt more than any other painful ordeal I had been through (including childbirth!). I would also have known that X didn't give a shit if sex hurt, that he wouldn't be willing to change a damned thing (I don't know what would have worked), and he wouldn't be willing to stop having sex.

And he wouldn't have been a virgin if we weren't told that sex was evil and bad and gross and that we would go to hell if we did it. We would have been able to find out whether or not we made a good couple. Hell, we could have moved in together before getting married, and I would have known that he was not just a tall boy with a high level of intelligence who played Division I baseball, but rather that he was a selfish son of a bitch who had a lousy sense of humor and loved to manipulate people into thinking that they were stupid and that he was so smart that they should never think to disagree with or argue with him, or else he would laugh at them, for being stupid. (Which his daughter, E, has recently pointed out to me - and which made me very, very, very sad. Because while I was able to file for divorce - there isn't anything that I can do to help her avoid that condescension, as infuriating and hurtful as it is.)

________________________________

So, if you take all of these issues and episodes, mix them together with the fact that I never really "got" the spiritual vibe of the religion, you get Zuska today. There were times, while X and I were still together, that I wondered if I made the right choice. Was I snatching my kids from heaven's promises? Those doubts are gone - they were fleeting. I never wonder if I was wrong. Never. I have been to my parents' church on a few occasions since I fully turned my back, and I was not at all pulled by the message or the "truth" as they see it. I went once with my sister, and she pinched me and said, "Z! You need to stop looking so angry, I swear, you look like you're going to explode!" because I just can't fathom believing that crap. Why do people choose to sit down in a town hall or a high school or a store, just to be told that they're evil sinners? When they're not.

I don't think I'm articulating this last piece as well as I'd like to. I want to talk about the brutality of this god of my parents', and about the absolutely SICKness of revering a being who killed his own child. I want to talk about the promise of heaven as it is described by the churches I was a part of: a place where you spend all day every day on your knees praising god. Huh? That's heaven? What the hell is up with this god character that he keeps creating new people, trying to convince them to live their lives in this manner while thinking themselves (and everyone who doesn't agree with them) vile, just so they can die and then fall on their knees and worship him forever and ever amen? No thanks.

I'm going to sit on it a bit - the story's still the story. I'll see if I can revisit the conclusion when I'm more refreshed ... which will likely be on May 19th, after I hand in my last exam.

There may also be more story in how my parents a) found out that I'd turned my back; and b) reacted.

Labels: homophobia, liberty university, parents, religion, sex, X

posted by Zuska @ 10:39 PM 1 comments

Friday, May 04, 2007

Exams ... or Backstory?

Googiebaba asks for my back story -- why Liberty -- after reading my last post. When this blog was a baby, I tackled probably 50% of what I see as my back story. The third installment has been in draft form since November of '05.

I think that studying for exams is really 100% conducive to re-visiting the story. A little IP here, a little "Zuska used to be a born-again" there. A super nice mix.

For now, I'll link to the first two installments:

Religiosity I

Religiosity II

When I get home from the bank and the grocery store, where I'm going after I fold the clothes, and then after I get another section of the IP syllabus outlined; I'll work on Part III.

There is a large part of me that worries about re-posting these. I worry about my parents stumbling onto my blog. Yet, this is my story. This is how I see my story. I do not feel that I'm being hateful, and I do feel that I'm looking at my own behavior and decisions more than I am at theirs from that time in MY life.

Labels: liberty university, life, religion

posted by Zuska @ 1:14 PM 2 comments

Riders

I think that the bar peoples are going to want to interview me before they let me take the stupid test in July.

I have to attach riders to my applications, explaining my affirmative answers to a couple questions. Why? I've never been arrested (let alone convicted), I haven't declared bankruptcy, I've really never done anything bad.

But I did get a divorce, which certainly counts as "legal action" which requires a Rider; and

I went to Liberty University.

Where they micro-manage their students' lives. I think it's not as bad now as it was when I was there - but it's still pretty bad.

My bar application asks if we received "reprimands, discipline, were suspended or expelled" from a college, and if so, we have to attach a dean's report ... or something. I had wondered what I should do ... Liberty issues what they call "reprimands," and I certainly received a handful of them. But they do not carry the import that seemed implied by the bar application. But I spoke with a friend who had a relatively similar situation, and she said she decided to disclose. So I thought, what the hell. Why not? But I can't remember the details - it was after all, 13-17 years ago. It wasn't a big deal - I never had any true consequences from the reprimands (it was a nominal monetary fine).

So I called Liberty to try and find out if they had a record of my reprimands. They don't. Because the things I was reprimanded for were so intensely minor, they don't KEEP records. They only keep records on offenses that are 18 reprimands or higher (per offense), and mine were all 3 rep offenses, which used to be the smallest. Now it looks like the smallest is 1 Rep, and then it jumps to 4.

So I wrote a rider, and I explained the system, pointed out that all "reprimands" came from fellow students (RAs), and that the school does not have any records.

I also let them know that my recollection is that I had reprimands for the following 'offenses':

skirt not reaching the knee
dresser in my dorm not dusted/floor not vacuumed
late for chapel
[likely late for curfew, which was 6 p.m. on Church days (Sunday and Weds) and midnight on weekends]

I notice from the current list of offenses that not dusting your dresser (or vacuuming your floor, or washing your sink) are no longer on there.

Here are some of my favorites from the list:

4 Reps:

"Disturbance/non-participation during Convocation" this may mean you must sing praise songs, and you must raise your hands in the air in showing of your love for jesus.
"Improper personal contact (anything beyond hand-holding)"
"Music code violation" *

6 Reps:

"Attendance at a dance"
"Entering entryway of opposite sex on campus or allowing the same"
"Improper social behavior" - what does this even mean?
"Possession and/or use of tobacco"
"Unauthorized room change" **

12 Reps

"Attendance at, possession or viewing of, an "R," "NC-17" or "X"-rated movie"***
"Entering the residence hallway of the opposite sex or allowing the same"
"Entering the space above ceiling tiles"****
"Out of residence hall overnight or substantial portion of the night without permission (after 2:00 a.m.)" *****
"Participation in an unauthorized petition or demonstration" - 1st Amendment much?
"Students of the opposite sex visiting alone at an off-campus residence"

From there, the discipline gets a little more traditional, other than the policing of not only the sex lives of college students, but the sexual talk and a seeming attempt at sexual thought police.

* When I was there, a girl on my hall got written up for having the Little Mermaid soundtrack. This brings a few things into my head: 1) How awful it was that we weren't allowed to listen to anything but "Christian music" - which meant music which carried with it the message of salvation through jesus christ (another person was written up for either Bach or Beethoven); 2) who the HELL was I going to school with that they'd bring The Little Mermaid soundtrack to college!!!

** In my Junior year, I had it made. My roommate was my best friend. We were very lucky, because our RAs that year had NO business being in leadership at a Christian college. They helped us sneak off campus (overnight!!), they had a t.v. in their room [which was illegal then, I'm not seeing it on the list now]. They also didn't write us up for an unauthorized room change. Because my friend and I took the two twin beds (which we slept in) and pushed them together, then used one loft bed to create a private nook for our pushed together beds. This was scandalous to many people on our floor, but our RAs didn't care. We thought the scandalized girls were dumb, not to mention highly uncool. Clearly we just wanted to talk at night, and we needed to be that close so my friend could scratch my back while she read out loud from whatever book we were reading at the time. What's the big f'ing deal? And no - this was not a lesbian affair. We also got away with listening to Toad the Wet Sprocket without a single concern of being written up for it.

*** I think this is a surprisingly big violation. It's a $50 fine to see a rated R movie? This was something I never got written up for, but was always nervous. We had a dollar theater right down the street from campus, and we went to the movies all the time - and I highly doubt I saw a single PG or PG-13 movie.

**** Yeah, people were this desperate to get out of chapel. There were boys on the sports teams who had entire bedrooms set up in the ceiling tiles. Food stashes, blankets, pillows ... and come 9:55, when everyone was on their way to chapel, they'd just climb up into the ceiling and go back to sleep - that way they wouldn't be spotted during room check. Interestingly, the most scandalous things that happened when people were hiding from room check was that they ended up witnesses a lot of awful behavior by the RAs. On my hall, a girl hid under her bed one morning, and saw the RA come in for "room check" and then proceed to eat all this girls' food. Totally binging. Others witnessed RAs stealing and snooping.

***** If I didn't have those cool RAs in my junior year, I would have gotten written up for this. My roommate and I went to a friend's off campus house one night, sneaking off campus in his van at 2 a.m. We just wanted to sleep late and stay in our jammies all day on a Sunday. Our friend lived in a house with 2 other boys, and one of them was away. So my friend and I stayed in his room. And this brought on "lesbian accusation #2" -- when he returned from out of town, he was told we stayed in his room. He went OFF, because he only has a double (queen?) bed, and he couldn't believe we slept together in it. He was disgusted and upset and called us yelling and threatening to turn us into the Dean of Women for being lesbians. Repeat. We were not lesbians and did not have an inkling of a sexual relationship. Liberty people are SUPER uptight.

Labels: bar exam, liberty university

posted by Zuska @ 8:55 AM 1 comments

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