When I was around 11 years old, I was already a well-established staple on the local babysitting circuit. One parent would tell another parent that I didn’t microwave their kids or something equally disqualifying and that parent would tell another that nothing burned down on my watch, and so on and so on, until I found myself babysitting for kids I’d never met in towns not all that close to my own. I was making up to $5 an hour at the time, which for an 11 year old in 1984 was big bucks. I did have that one slight hiccup of a whipped cream fight which the mom came home to in the middle of, and as it was still sliding down the walls, but that’s the ONLY time I was ever fired, and even then she paid me, so it doesn’t really count.
So when my neighbor Puddin’ (that was the name she went by so who am I to judge) asked me if I might want to babysit some kids from her church group, I said yes of course.
She pulled into the driveway of a benign looking bi-level, and said she’d introduce me to everyone. Two kids, like 5 and 7, mom and dad.
Everyone seemed nice. All seemed well.
I was told the adults would be going to a church meeting. That it wouldn’t be more than an hour and a half before they’d be back. I went inside with the kids and noticed immediately that there were a lot of crosses. Crosses on the walls, crosses on the doors, posters of crosses on walls and on doors, it might have been the single largest independently owned collection of crosses in the tri-state area, but I don’t think anyone actually measured that sort of thing, although having witnessed it, they probably should have, because it was a lot of fucking crosses.
The kids wanted to watch tv, so we sat down in the living room of a thousand crosses, when all of the sudden, in walked the dad.
I assumed something had been cancelled. That I would be going home. Nope. The dad, a middle aged white dude with dimpled, squishy looking skin that reminded me of Porky Pig, sat down on the couch across from me, crossed his legs and began to chat. The kids stayed in the room, thank God, because I was only 11, I didn’t know what the fuck was happening. This dad was just hanging around while I watched his kids watch tv.
And then he started talking about God and shit got real, real fast.
Had I found God? Did I believe in God? What did God mean to me? I don’t even know what else he asked me about God, did I know what shoe size God was, it was Godpalooza. And I honestly had never really thought that much about God, outside of the George Burns movies I’d seen on cable, and those were pretty hilarious, but what I was really thinking at that moment was, “God, this is weird.”
And then it got weirder.
Then he asked if I had a boyfriend. And that’s when I was getting really uncomfortable. I moved closer to the kids who were watching some dumb show. Asked if they wanted to go outside or play cards, read a book, knit a scarf, build a fucking cross out of Lincoln Logs, any fucking thing to make me feel safe.
Nope. They just wanted to watch the dumb show.
His questions went on and on, each more inappropriate than the last, he was asking if I’d kissed a boy, were my friends kissing boys at my age, and so on and so on, and the whole scene was suddenly a surreal overload on my senses. I felt unsafe. There were crosses everywhere, they seemed to be multiplying before my very eyes, and he just kept looking at me, and talking and talking. The kids were oblivious, he could have done anything and they would have kept on watching that dumb fucking show. I began to panic.
And then I blurted out, “I need to call my dad!”
It was like 1985, we didn’t have cell phones, we barely had cordless phones, so if I wanted to make a call I had to use the house phone. I’d have to use THEIR house phone. 👀
I’m many things, I’m bratty, I’m impulsive, clumsy as fuck and I basically never shut up, but I’m not dumb. Never have been. Never will be. So I tapped the little girl on the shoulder, “can you show me where your phone is and maybe we can get a snack too!”
Her eyes lit up. The little boy’s too. I sure as shit wasn’t asking Mr. Crossed-Legs sexterrogation to show me.
“What’s wrong?” He asked based on what I am sure was the sheer look of terror on my face.
“I just told him I’d call.” I said quickly.
I prayed under my breath as the phone rang.
Please pick up, dad, please pick up, please, please, plea… Dad picked up.
“Please come get me, I don’t feel well.” I whispered. He said sure. Until he rang the doorbell, I remained in the kitchen eating Cheez-its with two little kids for whom I would never babysit again.
It was a very, very fucking weird, predatory, unsafe experience, and the fact that there were all those crosses and all that talk about God, while an adult man essentially preyed on an 11 year old girl in front of his kids has never really left me.
But, it also gets super triggered by MAGA. All the Fucking time. Because at the end of the day, they are Porky Pig McSextalk, and the country is 11 year old me, only we have cellphones now, in addition to a few other distinctions which make the entire metaphor completely fall apart, but details shmeetails, the point is — like the Uber-religious likely pedophile I was dealing with in that Biblical bi-level, what we see time after time with MAGA, is that all of their religious posturing is supposed to be hiding the insidiousness lurking beneath that cloak of “Christianity.” It’s dark. It’s scary. It’s dangerous. Only much like that dude who was likely only a few questions away from “have you ever been in a Turkish prison”, they totally suck at hiding their awfulness from view.
Let’s just take the events of the past few days, shall we…
There’s a video of a Trumper comparing the Angry Oompa Loompa to Jesus, that’s right Jesus. She made the “connection in her mind” you see, between Trump’s indictments on paying a porn star campaign funds, subverting democracy, stealing national security documents and interfering with election results to Jesus dying for our sins.
I’m not sure, I didn’t know the guy, but I really don’t think Jesus had a man raw-dogging a porn star while he was married and then paying her to be quiet about it with money that wasn’t his so he could win an election on his to die for list, but then again, what do I know, after all — I didn’t know God’s shoe size all those years ago,
But that chick who thinks Trump’s ten seconds of porn star cumming makes him the Second Coming of Jesus is actually indicative of a larger MAGA trend. They’ve gone full Branch Davidian ya’ll. Trump used to be this feller they knew wasn’t devout, but it was ok, cuz he was an “outsider” and an “every man”, which of course couldn’t be further from the truth when you’re talking about a born-to-privilege “billionaire” born and raised on champagne wishes and caviar dreams in a gilded NYC tower where he literally and figuratively looked down on the every man daily.
But MAGA never cared. And it’s worse than that now. They’ve gone from at least having a remotely close to reality view of the guy, to believing he has been SENT FROM GOD, to “save America.”
And that’s just fucking drink all the Kool-aid crazypants.
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