Copyright 2010 by Donald Barber.
This story is about both religious repression and manipulation. The focus is more on sexual tension than explicit description, though it does not shy away from such as the story warrants. If you're looking for erotic encounter after erotic encounter, look elsewhere.
Also, this is part four of an ongoing story and is probably incomprehensible if the previous portions have not been read.
Any views expressed by any character are, at most, that character's and sometimes not even that. Many of the characters in this story are hiding something.
June 23
Well, I used to look forward to Saturdays but now it just means I don't get to see Jill for two days. I don't quite understand why Saturday-worshipers and Sunday-worshipers have to separate on the weekends, but Counselor Jeremy says we should be able to take a day for ourselves as well as for the Lord, and we don't want to get the two mixed up.
I kind of worry what'll happen if me and Jill
do
get married; I guess one of us will have to switch. Since I don't think Saturday worship is a sin exactly, it'll probably be me, but I can't picture being a Seventh-Day Adventist minister, cause I just don't think God cares exactly
what
day you worship him on, and I can't see telling a congregation that he does. But maybe my mind will change, or Jill's. I have to hope God'll fix it whichever way he sees fit.
I hadn't mentioned it before, but we also got divided up into boys and girls for sports. Since the guys played volleyball last Saturday, we played softball this time. I'm no athlete, but I'm just glad I was able to catch the ball when it was hit near me (lucky for me they went pretty high so I had time to get under them), and I got on base four times.
No one on either team was anything more than OK, but I guess we had fun. No one got mad at anybody else, even when they screwed up, so it seemed like we were all in a good mood. If we have anybody at this place whose charisma is athletics, I sure couldn't see it today, but maybe they're in another group.
They also showed us a movie after dinner, which I thought was nice, but there were a lot of moans and groans cause it was
It's a Wonderful Life
, and Pete and Dave in particular were going on about how it's old and corny and there's no action and it's not funny and a whole bunch of other stuff. And even though I like the movie I can see what they mean. It looks like something they'd make for TV, not something you'd pay to see in a theater.
But I guess anything with too much violence in it would get someone upset, unless maybe it was one of the Narnia movies. Sometimes I think they forget they're at a Christian camp.
They quieted down once the movie started, though. We almost didn't see it cause of some problems with the projector. I'm not sure what caused it, but when they turned it on there was this weird noise I don't quite know how to describe.
It made the hairs on my neck stand on end, at least that's what it felt like. It was almost like nails on a chalkboard, except instead of making you want to cover your ears I felt like I had to listen to it, like I had to piece out every little bit of sound in it like it was music I wanted to remember even though I couldn't tell you why I wanted to remember it if you asked me.
Then the projector light came up on the screen but it seemed wrong too somehow. The light started out spread out over the screen, like a regular projector, but then it seemed like the light kind of gathered itself together and squeezed into the center of the screen. And it was flashing and pulsing, almost like those lights you see on a police car, but white, not blue.
And then it seemed like the movie started playing, but it was going so fast you couldn't make out
what
was happening. Or I should say that's the impression I got; all I could really
see
was a weird, flickering blur, so it could have been a movie sped up or it could have been some weird kind of static, but I never heard of static on a projector, so I'm gonna go with my first guess.
I can't really say how long that nonsense went on for -- it could have been seconds or minutes -- but just as sudden as it started is how it seemed like everything worked itself out, as the picture just sort of shuddered and slowed down and all of a sudden "Buffalo Girls" started playing and the opening credits started rolling.
Well, I had another one of those spells where I was just drifting in and out, and it felt kind of weird. I mean, if a movie's good enough you can get so caught up in it that you don't really think about sitting in a theater, and then a baby cries and it's like a belt of cold water in the face, but I'm not talking about that.
I can't quite place
where
my mind was wandering to, just that every so often I'd come aware of something happening on the screen, and it was like I'd been flipping channels on the TV and just suddenly lit on Jimmy Stewart and I'd pay attention for a few seconds and then go back to flipping.
It kind of reminded me of watching TV at my friend Jerry's house. His dad had cable, but it was cause otherwise his mom couldn't watch the Christian channel without static, which made their screen go all blue. So almost all the channels were blocked, which meant most of the time all you saw was a program guide, and a news feed at the bottom of the screen.
But Jerry was obsessed with the idea that some kind of glitch was gonna come up just when something really good came on, like a woman with no clothes on, and it would be the greatest moment of his life. So he kept flipping channel after channel, never getting bored, always getting disappointed.
So it was a relief even to see a game show pop up once in a while, and it kind of irked me when Jerry flipped past after only a couple seconds, even though usually I don't care about game shows. Other than that (and of course the Christian channel) there was nothing to look at, and anything's better than nothing.
Well, this was like that. Except during the channel switching I was always wishing we could settle on something, even if it was boring. I can't tell you
what
I was thinking on when I wasn't focused on the movie. It's like a total blank.
I tried to chat with Dave and Pete when the movie was over, I especially wanted to ask if they'd seen what I saw at the beginning. I felt so out of it I half-worried I'd had a seizure, or maybe just a migraine.
But Pete started yawning really big and saying he didn't know why, but that movie had really wiped him out, and if he didn't head back to his cabin and lie down, he'd be napping on his feet. So they both headed off to get some shuteye.