Montana Billboards/ I'm Bad at Church.

         Driving I-90 West to Butte with everything I own in my car besides my paintings and college books, I pray to God for direction.  I know how to get to Butte, where a friend I'm visiting lives; I even know how to do it alive. (On Homestake Pass  –– a steep, winding, and narrow serpent–of–a–mountain pass –– grip the steering wheel with both hands, stabilize your core, and contract all muscles including your glutes as you try not to get bullied off the road by semis). By “direction” I mean guidance –– a message illuminating my “next step” in life. (I’m not on Homestake Pass yet, and so I can afford communication with God about things other than not wanting to die because I haven’t yet reached my full potential as a writer, yogi, human, girlfriend etc.). So what is the first thing I see? A billboard: Ever Picture Losing your Virginity Here? (Image of a rusted toilet). Don’t Do Meth.

            “Really God?” I say aloud, and, with one hand, tear open the box of cereal I’m bringing my friend. (Don’t ever ask me to transport food and expect it to arrive as if a raccoon hasn’t abused it.) Stuffing my face with handfuls of cinnamon–sugar covered flakes, my one of few consolations in the moment is that I’m not even close to being a Meth addict.

            “Also,” I say with my mouth full, “I don’t grow a moustache.” My friend in Butte started shaving the hairs above her upper–lip in middle school and has had to do it ever since to avoid stubble. Particularly vigilant about smoothness when she thinks she might kiss a boy within the hour, she keeps a razor in her car.

            “But I couldn’t find my razor anywhere,” she’d once said over the phone –– recounting her misfortune at a music festival, where she’d met a cute boy she thought she’d kiss and, excusing herself, went to shave her “moustache” in her car. “By the time I quit looking for it, he’d disappeared. Ugh. He was so cute!”

            “The curse of being French Canadian,” I’d said. Despite my lack of a moustache, I, too, am French Canadian and have one hair that grows from my chin and one from my sternum. I pluck them both of course . . .   

            But enough about Meth and hairy French Canadians. Requesting a different message from God, what is the first thing I see? Billboards advertising a sex shop called “Adam and Eve” and then Pro–life and then a Gentleman’s Club called Teasers. What?! Convinced the carnival of mixed messages reflects more on the Christian state of Montana than on me, but wary nonetheless, I shift my focus to the other side of the road: Wheat Montana Bakery (7 miles ahead). Eat pastries? I choose it as the most reliable and desirable message. And then I swerve because I’m praying, snacking, and looking at billboards instead of at the road, and maybe the best of God’s messages to me is this:

            Focus On Exactly What You Are Doing In The Moment.

            So what do I do? I stare straight ahead at the road and the slabs of yellow, purple clouds on the horizon. Then I review incriminating things I’ve done in the past seven years. For example: at twenty, in Quito, I almost got arrested for “prostitution” when six police officers caught me making out in a parked car. At twenty-one, after a breakup, I ran down the street ripping the stuffing out of a teddy bear my ex-boyfriend had given me. At twenty-two, I came down with a stomach bug in the middle of a job interview and threw up on the floor. Twenty-three was getting caught hiding a hard-boiled egg in a mean professor’s office. Twenty–four and twenty–five were a series of mini–crises like the one with the malted milk balls at the bulk section of the supermarket (I was trying to sample the balls and, when twenty of them came out instead of one, I began stuffing them in a pocket to hide the evidence. Well, the pocket had a hole, and so they rolled out from under my pant leg and across the floor). Last winter, when I hadn’t heard from my ex-boyfriend when he said I would, I showed up at his house flustered and with a sack of potatoes for him. When I opened the door, his conservative, Montanan friends with whom he was sitting on the couch and who already thought I was odd turned their heads and stared. (Sharing all of the above is, perhaps, incriminating in itself, but I don’t care because life would be too hard with or without a moustache if I didn't laugh about it).  

            And I miss the exit for Wheat Montana Bakery. Wanting a different snack, I snatch my bottle of gummy multi–vitamins from the glove compartment: serving size two and so I of course have eight. I need to stay as healthy as possible to succeed in the fitness industry, right?

            So where does this story end? Church. In Butte. My friend is singing in the choir. 

            “Come with me,” she says.

            “I guess so." I have some follow-up prayers to say anyway . . .  

            At church, the first thing they ask me is if I’ll be singing with them next week too.

            I’m not singing with them even this week. But I don’t say this. Instead: “I’ve never been to church before; I’m Jewish. But it’s really wonderful to be here. Thank you for welcoming me.”  

            One woman with orange lipstick places her hand on my shoulder, furrows her painted brows, frowns, and then smiles. As if I’ve told her I’m not feeling well; I have cancer. But they caught it early and it hasn’t spread; the doctors said I have a good chance of making it.  Then she offers me a long, purple robe. I smile and accept. When the choir starts fussing about something else, I duck out to the lobby, doff the robe, hang it neatly over a chair, and eat candy from a bowl by the front door until the service begins.  In the back row, I stand when I’m supposed to sit and sit when I’m supposed to stand. I can’t master the melody of the chant about Jesus and his bones: “Them bones them bones them dry bones.” And I can’t pray because I’m picturing dry bones and then, remembering the billboards, wondering if any of the men in the room have had an experience of "Adam and Eve" outside of from what they’ve read in the bible. And have they secretly been to Teasers – the Gentleman’s Club? And what do these people think of abortion? Which of these kids running down the aisles will become Meth addicts, or will that sign make a difference? 

            It turns out I’m not good at Church.  I’m not, in fact, good at many things. Within one decade, thirty-eight jobs and a slew of disastrous and odd dating situations have taught me this.  For example, I’m bad at math, waitressing, letting go, pleasantries, shaving, sleeping, cowboys, parking, watching movies, accessorizing, and strategizing. But I can write to tell about the exquisite madness and what comes of it –– the deep understanding of and connection to all that is real. I didn’t plan for this post to get philosophical. In fact, I didn’t have a plan for this post at all. And what is my “next step?” I will revise this and then eat a snack. Maybe research classes to take through the International Fitness Professionals Association (despite my snacking habits, I am actually very healthy and interested in taking a Sports Nutrition class). Then we’ll see what happens. I’m visiting my mom in the suburbs of Massachusetts at the moment, so it probably won't be anything as exciting as Church in Butte . . .