ROOMS: A NOVEL - PART TWO
Let's finish this thing off. There will be times when I explain plot points. They will sound like I made them up and cannot possibly be real. Just. Just go along with me. Please.
Micah volleyed back. “Staying on the same path, name at least three actors or actresses in The Outsiders who went on to stardom other than Cruise.”
Rick turned left into the parking lot of an auto parts store that looked even older than his garage. He hopped out with a quickness belying his age and linebacker-sized body. “I’ll just take five minutes to get these parts.”
“Whoa. Sorry, Charlie, no tuna for you till you answer the question.”
“No time-out to pick up the parts?”
“No way. You might pull up IMDb on the computer in there,” Micah said.
“IMDb?”
“The Internet Movie Database. Playing dumb doesn’t work with me.”
Rick laughed, propped his elbows up on the open window, and stuck his head inside. “Okay. Would you count Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, and Matt Dillon as having had a little time in the sun?” Rick slid into the parts store and Micah shook his head.
He was drawn to the man, as if he were at the end of a bungee cord stretched to its limit. Confident. Well spoken. Intelligent. Why did this guy run a gas station in a tourist town? Every ounce of him spoke of more than oil changes and alternators. Micah suspected his list of accomplishments went beyond working on cars. And yet as much as he searched, he couldn’t find an ego hinting at hidden fortune or fame.
NICE REFERENCE TO IMDb, MAKING THIS SUPER TOPICAL AND SPECIFIC AND NOT AT ALL DATED. ALSO, HERE RICK IS DESCRIBED AS HAVING A LINEBACKER'S BODY, BUT HE IS CONSTANTLY OUTRUNNING MICAH, WHO IS SUPPOSEDLY A GOOD RUNNER, SO RICK IS JUST ALL MUSCLE, FROM WHAT I GATHER, THEN, NOT FAT. AND MICAH JUST CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT ALL OF THE WONDEFUL THINGS THAT RICK MUST HAVE DONE AND CAN DO. HE'S AMAZING. HE'S DRAWN TO THE MAN.
There's another flashback. Micah has just Won The 800 Meter Dash For State. So he's officially the best in the entire state of Oregon. Or Washington. I forget which. DOESN'T MATTER.
His dad sat in his twenty-five-year-old beige Barcalounger with no shred of emotion on his face.
“I had it today, didn’t I, Dad?”
“It was good, yes. However since the state record remains unbroken, it is apparent that you did not have quite enough. Might even describe that as losing.”
Who talks like this. Who in the world has ever talked like this.
This flashback is taking part in a room where Jesus (or The Lord) is showing Micah movies of his life, basically. It's in a room full of DVDs of movies that Micah watched to "insulate his heart" from the pain of the world. These movies are BAD. They have SEX AND SWEARS IN THEM. And then Jesus is all "And what did you want your father to say but he never ever did????" and the answer is:
“I just wanted him to say, ‘I’m proud.’ That I have what it takes to be a man.”
Not "I love you." I don't understand that impulse to replace "I love you" with "I'm proud of you" from a parent. From any parent. However, my queer-reading of the text is telling me that Micah is afraid to be loved by a man because he knows that if he admits to it even a little bit, he'll have to come out and say that he's gay.
And then Jesus takes all of his hatred towards his father away. Some. How. It's never explained. Literally it's "I AM PROUD OF YOU AND I LOVE YOU, NOW TAKE MY HANDS" "I CAN'T DO IT" "CHOOSE" and "I CAN'T" and "DO IT" and "I CAN'T" and then he takes Jesus's hands and he doesn't hate his father anymore. And then they walk into the room where he had insulated his heart from the world with his raunchy movies. So the room in his heart is full of hundreds of Bad DVDs, which brings him great shame, especially with Jesus there. And then when Jesus walks out of his heart-insulation-room and ~the movies are all gone~ EXCEPT:
As he stepped through, Micah stared in amazement. All except seven DVDs were gone. The Lord walked over to the shelf and pulled one off, tossing it to Micah. “That’s a good one.”
Time slowed down and the DVD floated toward him. Braveheart. Micah looked up at the Lord, but He was gone. Micah looked at the DVD again, and it dissolved along with the room.
JESUS LOVES THE MOVIE BRAVEHEART. Of course he does. There's a recent Evangelical-Christian movement towards being Manly Men and to go back to being Warriors for Christ, by being True Men. And movies like Braveheart and Gladiator become almost like scripture. There was a newspaper article about this about 7 years back, that I managed to find a copy of on a right-leaning website (librul demmycrats hate biblical manhood).
The author keeps using the word 'blue' to describe jokes with swearing and sex in them. It drives me mad.
When the other guys brought out the jokes with a blue tint to them, Archie didn’t laugh, but he didn’t condemn those that did.
So it was a little raunchy, the humor a deep shade of blue, and they showed a little skin, but so what?
Maybe a movie-no, he didn’t need to ingest another helping of his usual highoctane violence or blue comedy flicks.
YOU CAN SAY THAT THEY HAD JOKES ABOUT SEX AND WITH SWEARS IN THEM. THE WORLD WILL NOT COME CRASHING DOWN. YOUR CHRISTIAN AUDIENCE CAN HANDLE THE WORD 'SEX' AND THE WORD 'SWEARING'.
Micah's house is magical and it contains rooms that reflect the state of his mind/soul/spirit. This house was built by his Great Uncle Archie for him. Even though Archie has been dead for a decade. God told him to have this house built for him. So Archie spends millions of dollars building this house... and somehow it alters itself constantly to show new rooms, blah blah blah. Anyway, Micah goes to see the builder of the house, who is one of his great-uncle's old friends:
“I met Archie in the navy. He was the most popular aboard ship, even though no one could figure him out. He told jokes with the best of them. When the other guys brought out the jokes with a blue tint to them, Archie didn’t laugh, but he didn’t condemn those that did.
“He wasn’t the best at the physical demands of being on a naval vessel, but no one ever tried harder, and of course most of his shipmates respected him for that. I was pretty shy then, so I was taken aback when he sat next to me one day in the mess hall. He looked me straight in the eye and
asked, ‘You want more out of life?’”
[...]
Chris paused and looked right at Micah. “You know what I mean, don’t you? Archie worked on me, and I guess I helped him a bit, too. During the four years we served together, we became best friends. More than best friends. Brothers.”
Chris’s eyes moistened a little. “But I have monumental doubts you came to watch me get sentimental.”
[...]
“Archie never had kids of his own, as you probably know. Just didn’t work out that way, although I know he wanted a wife and children.
Yeah. Sure he did. What is it with all of the Very Special Male-Male Relationships in this book? Seriously. We never see two women who have these close relationships. It's always the men. And then, seriously, having Archie never marry. Really. I just. The slashfic writes itself.
ANOTHER TOTALLY APPALLING MOMENT IN THIS BOOK: We find out that Great-Uncle Archie was at the baseball game where Micah was viciously beaten by his father.
The next day Archie confronted your dad about how he treated you. About the choices he was making. Then they talked about the Lord, your dad saying God had stolen your mom and Archie trying to explain that that wasn’t God’s heart, along with a lot of other things. Suffice it to say, it didn’t go well. Your dad hated Archie for speaking the truth and has despised all Christians ever since.
Micah sat squeezing his knees, trying to assimilate the revelations Chris had just given. It explained so much. And Archie had tried to rescue him from his dad.
NO, HE DIDN'T. HE DID NOTHING. HE SHOULD HAVE CONTACTED SOCIAL SERVICES. INSTEAD HE CONFRONTED AN ABUSIVE PARENT ABOUT BEING ABUSIVE, THE ABUSIVE PARENT WENT "SCREW YOU, CHRISTIAN, I HATE CHRISTIANS NOW" AND THEN LEFT THE BOY IN THE CARE OF AN ABUSIVE PARENT. PRAYING FOR SOMEONE AND DOING NOTHING FOR THEM (OTHER THAN BUILDING THEM A HOUSE 20 YEARS IN THE FUTURE) IS THE SAME AS DOING NOTHING AT ALL. I am so mad. So. Mad. At this book.
This is the sort of thing that only I would care about. Or realize. But I read this and went "Wait, what, no." Great Uncle Archie, in a letter written in 1991, quotes from a translation of the bible -- The Message -- not published in full until 2002. The earliest part of it published was a New Testament only, published in 1993. The part that he quotes from is not from the New Testament.
GOD GAVE UNCLE ARCHIE A COPY OF THE MESSAGE A DECADE BEFORE IT CAME OUT. YES. IT MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS BOOK.
Parts of Micah's Old Life keep changing on him, and things are happening to him that he cannot explain. Things he remembers - playing sports with a guy, living on a certain floor in a condo, his old girlfriend Julie, keep changing. Julie no longer remembers him, and she doesn't work at the company anymore. Suddenly his ankle starts hurting and he finds out according to medical records six years ago he shattered his ankle and it was seriously injured. But he remembers none of this. So he feels like he's going crazy. The longer he spends in Oregon, the more fractured his life seems to be; there are evidently two competing timelines at work here, one in Seattle and the other in Cannon Beach - the longer he spends in Cannon Beach, the less Seattle life he has left. He starts loosing the company he spent years building, people back home don't know him anymore, he loses 60 million dollars. And his chaste new Very Good Christian girlfriend Sarah berates him for not trusting God more because he's having a difficult time adjusting to the space-time continuum shifting around every few days.
When he finished, Micah kicked sand toward the ocean. “Do you think I’m insane?”
“I think God is in all of it. But I wonder if you feel the same.”
“Of course I think He’s in it. Why?”
“I know you believe it intellectually. But do you believe it in your heart?”
Micah didn’t answer.
“Surrendering to the Lord is winner take all. Ninety-nine percent isn’t enough. It’s all or nothing.”
“Your point?”
“That when I hear you talk about the things you’ve lost, like the stock, your condo, your car gaining sixteen thousand miles overnight, you talk like you’ve lost your best friend.”
BECAUSE JULIE WAS HIS BEST FRIEND EVEN BEFORE THEY WERE DATING. HE'S LITERALLY HAVING WHAT HE THOUGHT WAS HIS LIFE TAKEN AWAY PIECE BY PIECE AND SO HE FEELS LIKE HE'S GOING CRAZY. GOD MESSING AROUND WITH THE TIME STREAM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT ANYBODY WOULD BE PREPARED TO DEAL WITH. AND YET SHE BLITHELY BERATES HIM FOR NOT TRUSTING JESUS ENOUGH.
Micah smacked the sand with the back of his hand. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. As bizarre as my life has been the past four and a half months, don’t you think a sprinkle of terror is warranted?”
“I’ll admit it’s unusual.”
Micah stared at her in disbelief.
“All right, more than unusual, but God has done some amazing things in your life since you came down here.”
“Agreed.”
“So, do you trust Him fully or not? Are these bizarre changes part of His plan or not? Do you believe no matter what happens, you don’t have to control it because He’s in control?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
“I think the reason it’s so hard for you, Micah, is because you’re still hanging on.”
“To what?”
“Your life.” Sarah stood, brushed off the back of her 501s, and reached down to pull him up.
SO WHEN GOD MESSES AROUND WITH YOUR MIND AND SPACE-TIME YOU JUST SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP AND ASK GOD FOR MORE. THANKS FOR BREAKING ALL OF THE LAWS OF NATURE TO MESS AROUND WITH ME, GOD. PLEASE DO IT MORE. CHANGE THE PAST SO THAT I AM A DIFFERENT PERSON. THAT'S COOL. COULD YOU ALSO MAKE THE SKY GREEN AND MAKE CELERY TASTE LIKE CHOCOLATE FOR ME??? FOR MY SPIRITUAL BETTERMENT?
Micah had had business mentors before, who had helped further his and their own careers as RimSoft grew. But his relationship with Rick was different. The taste of ulterior motive never flitted around the edges of their friendship. Rick never seemed to want anything from Micah, yet Rick pushed him, drove him, forced him to look at his life in ways he’d never considered. He couldn’t see what Rick got out of the relationship and
didn’t think about it too deeply. Micah didn’t want the illusion to be shattered that, for the first time in his life, someone knew about his money and success but couldn’t care less how either might benefit him.
Gay.
Rick sat, elbows on his knees, on a slab of granite twenty yards away with a smile so wide it drowned out the rest of his face. His eyes burst with delight, and Micah broke into hearty laughter as he ran to meet him. Rick grabbed him in a massive bear hug that Micah returned with all his strength.
“Thank you, Rick. Thank you,” was all he could say.
Gay. Sarah never does this for him. Not in this physical way. Only Rick is this physical with him. Sarah kisses him but its never seen on camera, it is just mentioned.
He turned to Rick, and they grabbed each other in a crushing embrace.
GAY.
Micah does Spiritual Battle with a demon living inside of his house/mind (literally a demon living inside of his house/mind). This demon has been giving him advice out of the bible, reading scriptures to him, to get him to slow down on this whole God thing. And just go back to Seattle. THIS IS AGAINST GOD'S WILL. Anyway. Micah eventually realizes that The Voice In His House That He Can Never See The Source Of But Sounds Like Him is not him at all, and he goes in to confront it. And he does so by asking it a question:
"Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is from God? And is God?"
The demon cannot say this or agree to it. But that nasty old Bible that the demon likes to quote from all of the time (seriously, the demon uses the bible more than anyone else; Rick is always off on how you need to EXPERIENCE GOD, MAN, only the demon seems concerned with actually studying scripture; it's awful when I find myself going 'yeah that demon has a point'; Rick at one point goes "The Word is our foundation. It’s what we test everything against. But during the first fifteen hundred years of the church, there were no Bibles in the homes of the people. Not until Gutenberg invented the printing press. Who led them? How did they know truth?" and then I go "People who studied the bible led them and told them what the truth was. How dense are you? That is why the Catholic church has a lectionary where, if you go to church every day you are supposed to, after three years you will have the entire bible read to you, to get around the fact that regular people couldn't afford to own a book, and couldn't read it anyway. That is why they had priests, who told them what was in the bible and how to apply it. Also "The Word" refers exclusively to Jesus in scripture, it is not scripture itself. WOW I AM GETTING OFF TOPIC.) contradicts this dilemma.
James 2:19 - "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-and shudder!"
Mark 5:6-9 - And when [the demon possessed man] saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
THE DEMON SHOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM IN SAYING THIS. AT ALL. NONE. AND YET IT DOES. And then it gets gay.
In it sat the demon, a pinprick circle of black in the center of its pure white, unblinking, dead eyes-its ashen gray lips turned up ever so slightly in a sneer of confidence.
Its face was stunning.
Beautiful.
And horrific.
Chiseled cheekbones and thick, pitch-black hair swept straight back from a perfect forehead, above a perfect
nose. Its skin was a pallid gray, lips a shade darker, eyebrows matching the midnight tone of his hair. Its grotesque beauty stirred something inside Micah-drew him.
Revolting.
Captivating.
“Jesus,” Micah whispered. As the word came out of his mouth, an intricate series of thin, black scars started at the demon’s hairline and spiraled down its cheeks, down over his perfect chin, twisting and circling along his throat till they disappeared into a black, skin-tight long-sleeved gauze shirt.
The author slipped up there. Almost always, the adjective used for the demon is 'it' but the author mentions his hair. The demon is male. This is Micah and his homosexual longings, right here. The skin-tight black gauze shirt? Gay. The beautiful-horrific-revolting-captivating longing? The part of him that has gay longings that he cannot dare admit to because he knows that Jesus Hates The Gays. I am now totally convinced that Micah is gay.
Rick comes to save him at the last moment as he's praying to God for some help, Micah Accepts Jesus For Real This Time. And after he accepts Jesus For Real (his earlier times weren't for real, they weren't giving Jesus His All), the next day his father calls him up:
“It’s good to hear your voice,” his dad said.
“Yours, too.” A small part of him meant it.
His dad cleared his throat three times. “Micah . . . I know ever since your mom died I’ve caused you so much . . . I mean, a lot of . . .”
The line went still.
“What I’m trying to say is, I was just thinking about, you know . . . You see, I checked the Mariners’ schedule. We could-I could get us a pair of tickets to a game coming up in the next few weeks. Not that you’d want to drive up-”
Wow. Not what he’d been expecting. Not what he wanted. After all these years, he was supposed to run to his
dad with open arms? Pretend everything was okay? Yeah, right. Forgive? Yes, he’d forgiven his father, but . . .
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t think that’s going to work for me.”
“Not a problem. I understand. I didn’t think you’d be able to get away.” His dad coughed. “Maybe next season.”
Suddenly Micah’s body flushed with heat, and tears threatened to spill onto his cheeks. Love. Not his. God’s.
He tried to sweep away the emotion that fluttered through his heart, but it wouldn’t leave. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Let me check my calendar and get back to you. I’ll make it work. I’ll be there.”
Accept Jesus and your abusive dad will suddenly love you again!!! Wow, what a great message. Seriously. God totally altered his life so that now, without Micah having to do a thing, his father loves him and is sorry. I HATE THIS BOOK.
MORE GAY TIMES WITH RICK:
When Rick spoke again, his tone changed. “I need to tell you some things now that will surprise you. And might even change how you look at Micah.”
As they walked next to the rumble of the waves, she stared at Rick, eyes wide. When he finished, tears spilled down her face, and she buried herself in his chest.
He is gay. And I love him. And you will never be together. Because we are gay for each other.
For a few moments he watched his friend toss rocks into the surf. Micah’s shoes felt heavy as he trudged toward the log. He sat without speaking and continued to watch Rick toss wave-polished stones into the ocean. “I’ve got to go now, Micah.”
The words hung in the air, and the silence stretched out. His friend’s voice had never sounded so serious and full of sorrow. Micah bent down and picked up two dry sticks. As he broke them into smaller and smaller pieces, he looked up. “What do you mean, go?”
But he knew what Rick meant. Somehow asking the question was a way to hold off the pain, if only for an instant longer.
“You know what I mean. I’m sorry.” Tears wound their way down both sides of Rick’s cheeks. It reflected Micah’s own.
GAY. Also, as Megan pointed out to me, the 'it' in that sentence refers back to either tears or cheeks. But it clearly is standing in for the word 'face.' 'Gay face.'
AND THEN COMES THE SUPER SURPRISING THING. HE'S AN ANGEL. RICK IS AN ANGEL.
“You’ve been with me since the day I was born, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” Rick waited a moment, then added, “I won’t stop being with you. It just won’t be in the same form.”
The reality of Rick’s words swirled through his mind, and Micah steadied himself against the log. Rick, an angel. His angel. Archie’s angel while he was alive. The wonder of it circled Micah, lifted him, then slammed him down with the reality of Rick’s departure.
RICK IS HIS UNMARRIED-BUT-EMOTIONALLY-CLOSEST-TO-ANOTHER-MAN UNCLE'S ANGEL. AND HE'S ALSO MICAH'S ANGEL.
~Hush, my angel~
GAY.
The last five and a half months spun through his mind like a DVD playing at thirty-two times normal speed. HE THOUGHT TO HIMSELF, BRIEFLY, ABOUT HOW HIS FIRST CD-ROM PLAYER ONLY WORKED AT 2X SPEED. HE HAD NO WAY TO VISUALIZE THINGS GOING QUICKLY BACK THEN. Conversations, runs on the beach, movies together. Coffee taking the edge off early foggy mornings, countless meals at Morris’s Fireside. Rick his confidant, mentor, LOVER and best friend.
Micah stayed silent, desperately hoping that if he didn’t speak, Rick would have to stay. Even if Micah had wanted to say something, what words would he use? He raised his head and stood. Rick was already standing and drew Micah up to his chest and squeezed hard.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to. It is time. But I’ll still be here.” He eased Micah away, his hands now on Micah’s shoulders, Rick’s eyes locked on his. “Who knows, maybe our destiny is to see each other face-to-face again before you step into eternity.”
“How can I live this life without you?”
At this point, really, all I'm waiting for is some sort of David & Johnathan comparison to complete the homo-eroticism of this moment. His girlfriend Sarah almost never gets direct confrontations like this. She gets one, but its nowhere near as emotional and physical as Rick gets.
As the light thickened, Rick turned his palms up and stretched his fingers as far as they could go. “I love you with the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” A grin split his face ear to ear in sharp contrast to the tears that streamed down his face.
Micah stepped back and the transformation quickened. Rick’s features changed from the ones Micah knew so well into the most handsome face he’d ever seen. The light around Rick expanded farther, and his body grew with the light till he stood at least ten feet tall and two men wide. Micah couldn’t keep his eyes off Rick’s face. Love streaked out of it; tears and joy mixed together in a radiant display of glory. A few seconds more and the brilliance coming off Rick’s face became blinding, and Micah shut his eyes.
When he opened them, the beach was empty.
He slumped back onto the log and sobbed. Tears of sorrow for Rick’s going and of gratitude for the gift of his friendship. Finally tears of peace. Great pools of peace.
TWO MEN WIDE. TWO MEN WIDE. LOVE STREAKED OUT OF IT. THE MOST HANDSOME FACE HE'D EVER SEEN. TEARS. POOLS OF PEACE. I need to remind our readers that, at least in his dreams, The Lord has physically manifested inside of his house. God never got this treatment. Only Rick has been So Utterly Beautiful. Jesus is not as beautiful as Rick is. His girlfriend is not as beautiful as Rick is. Also, is it too late to mention that Rick is one letter away from Dick? Yeah. Exactly.
The book ends when his chaste girlfriend (who forgot who he was entirely because he went back to Seattle for 3 whole days thinking he could be both a Christian and a software company president (YOU CAN'T) and so God changed time so that Micah never met Sarah; I decided to not cover that part as his confrontation with her doesn't include a lot of unacknowledged homosexual longing (HOMOSEXUAL MALE PANIC FOR REESE ROPER) and her reaction to a stranger running up and insisting that he loved you in another timeline is pretty much what it should be "you are insane, get out of here, and never see me again") went to his house and found the door to his heart. The door that took Micah the entire book to open. The door full of the presence of God. And she just waltzes in with him. And then all her memories come back and they love each other forever, end of book. Micah's old Seattle life is totally gone now, and God gave him a totally different last 6 years of his life and now everything is perfect and instead of him being a software company president he is an artist and he paints the most beautiful paintings and he loves Jesus and his Christian Girlfriend and his father loves him. The End.
Oh wait, the book actually ends with a list of websites for more information about Cannon Beach, Oregon.
I'm not kidding.
SO. GOD WILL REARRANGE THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE TO WIN A SINGLE CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY.
So what happens when nobody gives you a 9000 square foot mansion in Oregon that lets you see into your psyche so that God can rearrange the past to win you over? Well, I guess God doesn't love you enough. And also you cannot be a businessman and be a Christian. And also trying to study the bible and use bible verses is what demons do. Real Christians feel God. And if you accept Jesus your entire life will be perfect.
I hate this book.
[Edit 2:00pm]: From flashbacks it is evident that Micah has a younger brother named Mick (yet another name that's one letter away from dick). Yet he only appears in flashbacks. Mick is never mentioned by Archie in his letters or by Archie's heterosexual life partner Chris (why does Archie only care about Micah?). He is never mentioned in any of the phone calls that Micah makes to his father by either of the two. Why? What happened to Mick? Why, when God is restoring the rest of Micah's life, isn't Mick a part of his new life? Does Mick worship Satan? Is he dead? Did Mick only exist in Micah's old life and now that God has altered the past, God decided to kill Mick off? Did the author just totally forget about him? Mick, as he isn't a Damaged Father Figure, cannot make a Bible Lesson like the father can; does this mean that Mick has no worth to the author? WHY DOES THIS BOOK HAVE A CHARACTER NAMED MICK AND A CHARACTER NAMED RICK?
I still hate this book.
[Edit 5:30pm]: I JUST SAW ON HIS WEBSITE THAT HIS "day job is owning a marketing company / advertising agency called Barefoot Marketing." HE GETS "paid to brand and promote companies and authors." SUDDENLY THE 250 REFERENCES TO DIET COKE, SEATTLE'S BEST COFFEE, LEVI JEANS AND PANASONIC TVS MAKE PERFECT SENSE.
The author, James Rubart, has written another book, entitled Book of Days: A Novel. I may. If I hate myself enough. Try reading that one, too. It also takes place in Oregon. Oh boy.
Micah volleyed back. “Staying on the same path, name at least three actors or actresses in The Outsiders who went on to stardom other than Cruise.”
Rick turned left into the parking lot of an auto parts store that looked even older than his garage. He hopped out with a quickness belying his age and linebacker-sized body. “I’ll just take five minutes to get these parts.”
“Whoa. Sorry, Charlie, no tuna for you till you answer the question.”
“No time-out to pick up the parts?”
“No way. You might pull up IMDb on the computer in there,” Micah said.
“IMDb?”
“The Internet Movie Database. Playing dumb doesn’t work with me.”
Rick laughed, propped his elbows up on the open window, and stuck his head inside. “Okay. Would you count Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, and Matt Dillon as having had a little time in the sun?” Rick slid into the parts store and Micah shook his head.
He was drawn to the man, as if he were at the end of a bungee cord stretched to its limit. Confident. Well spoken. Intelligent. Why did this guy run a gas station in a tourist town? Every ounce of him spoke of more than oil changes and alternators. Micah suspected his list of accomplishments went beyond working on cars. And yet as much as he searched, he couldn’t find an ego hinting at hidden fortune or fame.
NICE REFERENCE TO IMDb, MAKING THIS SUPER TOPICAL AND SPECIFIC AND NOT AT ALL DATED. ALSO, HERE RICK IS DESCRIBED AS HAVING A LINEBACKER'S BODY, BUT HE IS CONSTANTLY OUTRUNNING MICAH, WHO IS SUPPOSEDLY A GOOD RUNNER, SO RICK IS JUST ALL MUSCLE, FROM WHAT I GATHER, THEN, NOT FAT. AND MICAH JUST CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT ALL OF THE WONDEFUL THINGS THAT RICK MUST HAVE DONE AND CAN DO. HE'S AMAZING. HE'S DRAWN TO THE MAN.
There's another flashback. Micah has just Won The 800 Meter Dash For State. So he's officially the best in the entire state of Oregon. Or Washington. I forget which. DOESN'T MATTER.
His dad sat in his twenty-five-year-old beige Barcalounger with no shred of emotion on his face.
“I had it today, didn’t I, Dad?”
“It was good, yes. However since the state record remains unbroken, it is apparent that you did not have quite enough. Might even describe that as losing.”
Who talks like this. Who in the world has ever talked like this.
This flashback is taking part in a room where Jesus (or The Lord) is showing Micah movies of his life, basically. It's in a room full of DVDs of movies that Micah watched to "insulate his heart" from the pain of the world. These movies are BAD. They have SEX AND SWEARS IN THEM. And then Jesus is all "And what did you want your father to say but he never ever did????" and the answer is:
“I just wanted him to say, ‘I’m proud.’ That I have what it takes to be a man.”
Not "I love you." I don't understand that impulse to replace "I love you" with "I'm proud of you" from a parent. From any parent. However, my queer-reading of the text is telling me that Micah is afraid to be loved by a man because he knows that if he admits to it even a little bit, he'll have to come out and say that he's gay.
And then Jesus takes all of his hatred towards his father away. Some. How. It's never explained. Literally it's "I AM PROUD OF YOU AND I LOVE YOU, NOW TAKE MY HANDS" "I CAN'T DO IT" "CHOOSE" and "I CAN'T" and "DO IT" and "I CAN'T" and then he takes Jesus's hands and he doesn't hate his father anymore. And then they walk into the room where he had insulated his heart from the world with his raunchy movies. So the room in his heart is full of hundreds of Bad DVDs, which brings him great shame, especially with Jesus there. And then when Jesus walks out of his heart-insulation-room and ~the movies are all gone~ EXCEPT:
As he stepped through, Micah stared in amazement. All except seven DVDs were gone. The Lord walked over to the shelf and pulled one off, tossing it to Micah. “That’s a good one.”
Time slowed down and the DVD floated toward him. Braveheart. Micah looked up at the Lord, but He was gone. Micah looked at the DVD again, and it dissolved along with the room.
JESUS LOVES THE MOVIE BRAVEHEART. Of course he does. There's a recent Evangelical-Christian movement towards being Manly Men and to go back to being Warriors for Christ, by being True Men. And movies like Braveheart and Gladiator become almost like scripture. There was a newspaper article about this about 7 years back, that I managed to find a copy of on a right-leaning website (librul demmycrats hate biblical manhood).
The author keeps using the word 'blue' to describe jokes with swearing and sex in them. It drives me mad.
When the other guys brought out the jokes with a blue tint to them, Archie didn’t laugh, but he didn’t condemn those that did.
So it was a little raunchy, the humor a deep shade of blue, and they showed a little skin, but so what?
Maybe a movie-no, he didn’t need to ingest another helping of his usual highoctane violence or blue comedy flicks.
YOU CAN SAY THAT THEY HAD JOKES ABOUT SEX AND WITH SWEARS IN THEM. THE WORLD WILL NOT COME CRASHING DOWN. YOUR CHRISTIAN AUDIENCE CAN HANDLE THE WORD 'SEX' AND THE WORD 'SWEARING'.
Micah's house is magical and it contains rooms that reflect the state of his mind/soul/spirit. This house was built by his Great Uncle Archie for him. Even though Archie has been dead for a decade. God told him to have this house built for him. So Archie spends millions of dollars building this house... and somehow it alters itself constantly to show new rooms, blah blah blah. Anyway, Micah goes to see the builder of the house, who is one of his great-uncle's old friends:
“I met Archie in the navy. He was the most popular aboard ship, even though no one could figure him out. He told jokes with the best of them. When the other guys brought out the jokes with a blue tint to them, Archie didn’t laugh, but he didn’t condemn those that did.
“He wasn’t the best at the physical demands of being on a naval vessel, but no one ever tried harder, and of course most of his shipmates respected him for that. I was pretty shy then, so I was taken aback when he sat next to me one day in the mess hall. He looked me straight in the eye and
asked, ‘You want more out of life?’”
[...]
Chris paused and looked right at Micah. “You know what I mean, don’t you? Archie worked on me, and I guess I helped him a bit, too. During the four years we served together, we became best friends. More than best friends. Brothers.”
Chris’s eyes moistened a little. “But I have monumental doubts you came to watch me get sentimental.”
[...]
“Archie never had kids of his own, as you probably know. Just didn’t work out that way, although I know he wanted a wife and children.
Yeah. Sure he did. What is it with all of the Very Special Male-Male Relationships in this book? Seriously. We never see two women who have these close relationships. It's always the men. And then, seriously, having Archie never marry. Really. I just. The slashfic writes itself.
ANOTHER TOTALLY APPALLING MOMENT IN THIS BOOK: We find out that Great-Uncle Archie was at the baseball game where Micah was viciously beaten by his father.
The next day Archie confronted your dad about how he treated you. About the choices he was making. Then they talked about the Lord, your dad saying God had stolen your mom and Archie trying to explain that that wasn’t God’s heart, along with a lot of other things. Suffice it to say, it didn’t go well. Your dad hated Archie for speaking the truth and has despised all Christians ever since.
Micah sat squeezing his knees, trying to assimilate the revelations Chris had just given. It explained so much. And Archie had tried to rescue him from his dad.
NO, HE DIDN'T. HE DID NOTHING. HE SHOULD HAVE CONTACTED SOCIAL SERVICES. INSTEAD HE CONFRONTED AN ABUSIVE PARENT ABOUT BEING ABUSIVE, THE ABUSIVE PARENT WENT "SCREW YOU, CHRISTIAN, I HATE CHRISTIANS NOW" AND THEN LEFT THE BOY IN THE CARE OF AN ABUSIVE PARENT. PRAYING FOR SOMEONE AND DOING NOTHING FOR THEM (OTHER THAN BUILDING THEM A HOUSE 20 YEARS IN THE FUTURE) IS THE SAME AS DOING NOTHING AT ALL. I am so mad. So. Mad. At this book.
This is the sort of thing that only I would care about. Or realize. But I read this and went "Wait, what, no." Great Uncle Archie, in a letter written in 1991, quotes from a translation of the bible -- The Message -- not published in full until 2002. The earliest part of it published was a New Testament only, published in 1993. The part that he quotes from is not from the New Testament.
GOD GAVE UNCLE ARCHIE A COPY OF THE MESSAGE A DECADE BEFORE IT CAME OUT. YES. IT MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS BOOK.
Parts of Micah's Old Life keep changing on him, and things are happening to him that he cannot explain. Things he remembers - playing sports with a guy, living on a certain floor in a condo, his old girlfriend Julie, keep changing. Julie no longer remembers him, and she doesn't work at the company anymore. Suddenly his ankle starts hurting and he finds out according to medical records six years ago he shattered his ankle and it was seriously injured. But he remembers none of this. So he feels like he's going crazy. The longer he spends in Oregon, the more fractured his life seems to be; there are evidently two competing timelines at work here, one in Seattle and the other in Cannon Beach - the longer he spends in Cannon Beach, the less Seattle life he has left. He starts loosing the company he spent years building, people back home don't know him anymore, he loses 60 million dollars. And his chaste new Very Good Christian girlfriend Sarah berates him for not trusting God more because he's having a difficult time adjusting to the space-time continuum shifting around every few days.
When he finished, Micah kicked sand toward the ocean. “Do you think I’m insane?”
“I think God is in all of it. But I wonder if you feel the same.”
“Of course I think He’s in it. Why?”
“I know you believe it intellectually. But do you believe it in your heart?”
Micah didn’t answer.
“Surrendering to the Lord is winner take all. Ninety-nine percent isn’t enough. It’s all or nothing.”
“Your point?”
“That when I hear you talk about the things you’ve lost, like the stock, your condo, your car gaining sixteen thousand miles overnight, you talk like you’ve lost your best friend.”
BECAUSE JULIE WAS HIS BEST FRIEND EVEN BEFORE THEY WERE DATING. HE'S LITERALLY HAVING WHAT HE THOUGHT WAS HIS LIFE TAKEN AWAY PIECE BY PIECE AND SO HE FEELS LIKE HE'S GOING CRAZY. GOD MESSING AROUND WITH THE TIME STREAM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT ANYBODY WOULD BE PREPARED TO DEAL WITH. AND YET SHE BLITHELY BERATES HIM FOR NOT TRUSTING JESUS ENOUGH.
Micah smacked the sand with the back of his hand. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. As bizarre as my life has been the past four and a half months, don’t you think a sprinkle of terror is warranted?”
“I’ll admit it’s unusual.”
Micah stared at her in disbelief.
“All right, more than unusual, but God has done some amazing things in your life since you came down here.”
“Agreed.”
“So, do you trust Him fully or not? Are these bizarre changes part of His plan or not? Do you believe no matter what happens, you don’t have to control it because He’s in control?”
Again, he didn’t answer.
“I think the reason it’s so hard for you, Micah, is because you’re still hanging on.”
“To what?”
“Your life.” Sarah stood, brushed off the back of her 501s, and reached down to pull him up.
SO WHEN GOD MESSES AROUND WITH YOUR MIND AND SPACE-TIME YOU JUST SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP AND ASK GOD FOR MORE. THANKS FOR BREAKING ALL OF THE LAWS OF NATURE TO MESS AROUND WITH ME, GOD. PLEASE DO IT MORE. CHANGE THE PAST SO THAT I AM A DIFFERENT PERSON. THAT'S COOL. COULD YOU ALSO MAKE THE SKY GREEN AND MAKE CELERY TASTE LIKE CHOCOLATE FOR ME??? FOR MY SPIRITUAL BETTERMENT?
Micah had had business mentors before, who had helped further his and their own careers as RimSoft grew. But his relationship with Rick was different. The taste of ulterior motive never flitted around the edges of their friendship. Rick never seemed to want anything from Micah, yet Rick pushed him, drove him, forced him to look at his life in ways he’d never considered. He couldn’t see what Rick got out of the relationship and
didn’t think about it too deeply. Micah didn’t want the illusion to be shattered that, for the first time in his life, someone knew about his money and success but couldn’t care less how either might benefit him.
Gay.
Rick sat, elbows on his knees, on a slab of granite twenty yards away with a smile so wide it drowned out the rest of his face. His eyes burst with delight, and Micah broke into hearty laughter as he ran to meet him. Rick grabbed him in a massive bear hug that Micah returned with all his strength.
“Thank you, Rick. Thank you,” was all he could say.
Gay. Sarah never does this for him. Not in this physical way. Only Rick is this physical with him. Sarah kisses him but its never seen on camera, it is just mentioned.
He turned to Rick, and they grabbed each other in a crushing embrace.
GAY.
Micah does Spiritual Battle with a demon living inside of his house/mind (literally a demon living inside of his house/mind). This demon has been giving him advice out of the bible, reading scriptures to him, to get him to slow down on this whole God thing. And just go back to Seattle. THIS IS AGAINST GOD'S WILL. Anyway. Micah eventually realizes that The Voice In His House That He Can Never See The Source Of But Sounds Like Him is not him at all, and he goes in to confront it. And he does so by asking it a question:
"Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is from God? And is God?"
The demon cannot say this or agree to it. But that nasty old Bible that the demon likes to quote from all of the time (seriously, the demon uses the bible more than anyone else; Rick is always off on how you need to EXPERIENCE GOD, MAN, only the demon seems concerned with actually studying scripture; it's awful when I find myself going 'yeah that demon has a point'; Rick at one point goes "The Word is our foundation. It’s what we test everything against. But during the first fifteen hundred years of the church, there were no Bibles in the homes of the people. Not until Gutenberg invented the printing press. Who led them? How did they know truth?" and then I go "People who studied the bible led them and told them what the truth was. How dense are you? That is why the Catholic church has a lectionary where, if you go to church every day you are supposed to, after three years you will have the entire bible read to you, to get around the fact that regular people couldn't afford to own a book, and couldn't read it anyway. That is why they had priests, who told them what was in the bible and how to apply it. Also "The Word" refers exclusively to Jesus in scripture, it is not scripture itself. WOW I AM GETTING OFF TOPIC.) contradicts this dilemma.
James 2:19 - "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe-and shudder!"
Mark 5:6-9 - And when [the demon possessed man] saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me."
THE DEMON SHOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM IN SAYING THIS. AT ALL. NONE. AND YET IT DOES. And then it gets gay.
In it sat the demon, a pinprick circle of black in the center of its pure white, unblinking, dead eyes-its ashen gray lips turned up ever so slightly in a sneer of confidence.
Its face was stunning.
Beautiful.
And horrific.
Chiseled cheekbones and thick, pitch-black hair swept straight back from a perfect forehead, above a perfect
nose. Its skin was a pallid gray, lips a shade darker, eyebrows matching the midnight tone of his hair. Its grotesque beauty stirred something inside Micah-drew him.
Revolting.
Captivating.
“Jesus,” Micah whispered. As the word came out of his mouth, an intricate series of thin, black scars started at the demon’s hairline and spiraled down its cheeks, down over his perfect chin, twisting and circling along his throat till they disappeared into a black, skin-tight long-sleeved gauze shirt.
The author slipped up there. Almost always, the adjective used for the demon is 'it' but the author mentions his hair. The demon is male. This is Micah and his homosexual longings, right here. The skin-tight black gauze shirt? Gay. The beautiful-horrific-revolting-captivating longing? The part of him that has gay longings that he cannot dare admit to because he knows that Jesus Hates The Gays. I am now totally convinced that Micah is gay.
Rick comes to save him at the last moment as he's praying to God for some help, Micah Accepts Jesus For Real This Time. And after he accepts Jesus For Real (his earlier times weren't for real, they weren't giving Jesus His All), the next day his father calls him up:
“It’s good to hear your voice,” his dad said.
“Yours, too.” A small part of him meant it.
His dad cleared his throat three times. “Micah . . . I know ever since your mom died I’ve caused you so much . . . I mean, a lot of . . .”
The line went still.
“What I’m trying to say is, I was just thinking about, you know . . . You see, I checked the Mariners’ schedule. We could-I could get us a pair of tickets to a game coming up in the next few weeks. Not that you’d want to drive up-”
Wow. Not what he’d been expecting. Not what he wanted. After all these years, he was supposed to run to his
dad with open arms? Pretend everything was okay? Yeah, right. Forgive? Yes, he’d forgiven his father, but . . .
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t think that’s going to work for me.”
“Not a problem. I understand. I didn’t think you’d be able to get away.” His dad coughed. “Maybe next season.”
Suddenly Micah’s body flushed with heat, and tears threatened to spill onto his cheeks. Love. Not his. God’s.
He tried to sweep away the emotion that fluttered through his heart, but it wouldn’t leave. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Let me check my calendar and get back to you. I’ll make it work. I’ll be there.”
Accept Jesus and your abusive dad will suddenly love you again!!! Wow, what a great message. Seriously. God totally altered his life so that now, without Micah having to do a thing, his father loves him and is sorry. I HATE THIS BOOK.
MORE GAY TIMES WITH RICK:
When Rick spoke again, his tone changed. “I need to tell you some things now that will surprise you. And might even change how you look at Micah.”
As they walked next to the rumble of the waves, she stared at Rick, eyes wide. When he finished, tears spilled down her face, and she buried herself in his chest.
He is gay. And I love him. And you will never be together. Because we are gay for each other.
For a few moments he watched his friend toss rocks into the surf. Micah’s shoes felt heavy as he trudged toward the log. He sat without speaking and continued to watch Rick toss wave-polished stones into the ocean. “I’ve got to go now, Micah.”
The words hung in the air, and the silence stretched out. His friend’s voice had never sounded so serious and full of sorrow. Micah bent down and picked up two dry sticks. As he broke them into smaller and smaller pieces, he looked up. “What do you mean, go?”
But he knew what Rick meant. Somehow asking the question was a way to hold off the pain, if only for an instant longer.
“You know what I mean. I’m sorry.” Tears wound their way down both sides of Rick’s cheeks. It reflected Micah’s own.
GAY. Also, as Megan pointed out to me, the 'it' in that sentence refers back to either tears or cheeks. But it clearly is standing in for the word 'face.' 'Gay face.'
AND THEN COMES THE SUPER SURPRISING THING. HE'S AN ANGEL. RICK IS AN ANGEL.
“You’ve been with me since the day I was born, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” Rick waited a moment, then added, “I won’t stop being with you. It just won’t be in the same form.”
The reality of Rick’s words swirled through his mind, and Micah steadied himself against the log. Rick, an angel. His angel. Archie’s angel while he was alive. The wonder of it circled Micah, lifted him, then slammed him down with the reality of Rick’s departure.
RICK IS HIS UNMARRIED-BUT-EMOTIONALLY-CLOSEST-TO-ANOTHER-MAN UNCLE'S ANGEL. AND HE'S ALSO MICAH'S ANGEL.
~Hush, my angel~
GAY.
The last five and a half months spun through his mind like a DVD playing at thirty-two times normal speed. HE THOUGHT TO HIMSELF, BRIEFLY, ABOUT HOW HIS FIRST CD-ROM PLAYER ONLY WORKED AT 2X SPEED. HE HAD NO WAY TO VISUALIZE THINGS GOING QUICKLY BACK THEN. Conversations, runs on the beach, movies together. Coffee taking the edge off early foggy mornings, countless meals at Morris’s Fireside. Rick his confidant, mentor, LOVER and best friend.
Micah stayed silent, desperately hoping that if he didn’t speak, Rick would have to stay. Even if Micah had wanted to say something, what words would he use? He raised his head and stood. Rick was already standing and drew Micah up to his chest and squeezed hard.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to. It is time. But I’ll still be here.” He eased Micah away, his hands now on Micah’s shoulders, Rick’s eyes locked on his. “Who knows, maybe our destiny is to see each other face-to-face again before you step into eternity.”
“How can I live this life without you?”
At this point, really, all I'm waiting for is some sort of David & Johnathan comparison to complete the homo-eroticism of this moment. His girlfriend Sarah almost never gets direct confrontations like this. She gets one, but its nowhere near as emotional and physical as Rick gets.
As the light thickened, Rick turned his palms up and stretched his fingers as far as they could go. “I love you with the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” A grin split his face ear to ear in sharp contrast to the tears that streamed down his face.
Micah stepped back and the transformation quickened. Rick’s features changed from the ones Micah knew so well into the most handsome face he’d ever seen. The light around Rick expanded farther, and his body grew with the light till he stood at least ten feet tall and two men wide. Micah couldn’t keep his eyes off Rick’s face. Love streaked out of it; tears and joy mixed together in a radiant display of glory. A few seconds more and the brilliance coming off Rick’s face became blinding, and Micah shut his eyes.
When he opened them, the beach was empty.
He slumped back onto the log and sobbed. Tears of sorrow for Rick’s going and of gratitude for the gift of his friendship. Finally tears of peace. Great pools of peace.
TWO MEN WIDE. TWO MEN WIDE. LOVE STREAKED OUT OF IT. THE MOST HANDSOME FACE HE'D EVER SEEN. TEARS. POOLS OF PEACE. I need to remind our readers that, at least in his dreams, The Lord has physically manifested inside of his house. God never got this treatment. Only Rick has been So Utterly Beautiful. Jesus is not as beautiful as Rick is. His girlfriend is not as beautiful as Rick is. Also, is it too late to mention that Rick is one letter away from Dick? Yeah. Exactly.
The book ends when his chaste girlfriend (who forgot who he was entirely because he went back to Seattle for 3 whole days thinking he could be both a Christian and a software company president (YOU CAN'T) and so God changed time so that Micah never met Sarah; I decided to not cover that part as his confrontation with her doesn't include a lot of unacknowledged homosexual longing (HOMOSEXUAL MALE PANIC FOR REESE ROPER) and her reaction to a stranger running up and insisting that he loved you in another timeline is pretty much what it should be "you are insane, get out of here, and never see me again") went to his house and found the door to his heart. The door that took Micah the entire book to open. The door full of the presence of God. And she just waltzes in with him. And then all her memories come back and they love each other forever, end of book. Micah's old Seattle life is totally gone now, and God gave him a totally different last 6 years of his life and now everything is perfect and instead of him being a software company president he is an artist and he paints the most beautiful paintings and he loves Jesus and his Christian Girlfriend and his father loves him. The End.
Oh wait, the book actually ends with a list of websites for more information about Cannon Beach, Oregon.
I'm not kidding.
SO. GOD WILL REARRANGE THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE TO WIN A SINGLE CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY.
So what happens when nobody gives you a 9000 square foot mansion in Oregon that lets you see into your psyche so that God can rearrange the past to win you over? Well, I guess God doesn't love you enough. And also you cannot be a businessman and be a Christian. And also trying to study the bible and use bible verses is what demons do. Real Christians feel God. And if you accept Jesus your entire life will be perfect.
I hate this book.
[Edit 2:00pm]: From flashbacks it is evident that Micah has a younger brother named Mick (yet another name that's one letter away from dick). Yet he only appears in flashbacks. Mick is never mentioned by Archie in his letters or by Archie's heterosexual life partner Chris (why does Archie only care about Micah?). He is never mentioned in any of the phone calls that Micah makes to his father by either of the two. Why? What happened to Mick? Why, when God is restoring the rest of Micah's life, isn't Mick a part of his new life? Does Mick worship Satan? Is he dead? Did Mick only exist in Micah's old life and now that God has altered the past, God decided to kill Mick off? Did the author just totally forget about him? Mick, as he isn't a Damaged Father Figure, cannot make a Bible Lesson like the father can; does this mean that Mick has no worth to the author? WHY DOES THIS BOOK HAVE A CHARACTER NAMED MICK AND A CHARACTER NAMED RICK?
I still hate this book.
[Edit 5:30pm]: I JUST SAW ON HIS WEBSITE THAT HIS "day job is owning a marketing company / advertising agency called Barefoot Marketing." HE GETS "paid to brand and promote companies and authors." SUDDENLY THE 250 REFERENCES TO DIET COKE, SEATTLE'S BEST COFFEE, LEVI JEANS AND PANASONIC TVS MAKE PERFECT SENSE.
The author, James Rubart, has written another book, entitled Book of Days: A Novel. I may. If I hate myself enough. Try reading that one, too. It also takes place in Oregon. Oh boy.