The Bloody Doors Off

Ophelia was a bride of God
A novice Carmelite
In sister cells the cloister bells
Tolled on her wedding night

Ophelia was the rebel girl
A blue stocking suffragette
Who remedied society
Between her cigarettes

Ophelia, Natalie Merchant

This song’s been in my head for the past hour.

It’s interfering with the joyful experience of eating a bowl of Fruit Loops.

My brain can’t decide if this is a writing prompt for a new short play. Or just another trip down memory lane, Revisit my religious upbringing.

Hi. My name’s Paul. (Hi Paul.) I’m a recovering Catholic.

There was a time I believed one man could be three people.

That the wafer I was offered at communion was soylent green.

(I was a kid. No one bothered to explain it to me until I started attending Sunday School on Saturdays.)

For my first communion — it’s like being ‘made’ if the mafia was Catholicism — I wore a beige polyester suit. (I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, but this is clear as crystal?) There was a photograph of me standing in our backyard.

Oh man. I just remembered the slide projector we had back when I was a kid. I wonder who has the slides. Maybe Larry? I’d love to get them digitized someday so I can store them in the cloud.

We backed onto a park. It was amazing. There were two baseball diamonds, a row of trees that made sure people in the park couldn’t see in directly to our backyards. When we played hide and seek, you could hop the fence between houses but you couldn’t use Lustead Park.

On the right side was the Allen’s. On the other side. The Daigles.

Couldn’t remember their names. Had to call my brother Kevin.

He remembered the Daigles, Marlene and Vince, the latter of whom was the Deacon at our church, St. Rose of Lima Parish. He was pretty influential in the community.

I had a crush on his youngest daughter. (Neither Kevin nor I can remember her name.)

They were a good family. Whose father helped to excommunicate my father from the church after his affair and subsequent divorce.

So that was strike one against Catholicism.

I’m not gonna bother with the rest.

Chalk it up to ideological differences.

Huh.

Blog post it is.

Won’t rule out the possibility of another idea branching out of it.

Oh hey.

The music stopped.