Drunk Among the Pious 

Jaryd Porter

Drunk at church with Grandma. She told me I had so much to learn from these people. It wasn't meant as an insult, I thought, because Grandma smiled when she said it. I learned that these people did discriminate. Grandma was white and thin as her cane. I was mixed and thicker than folded fudge. The people at church spoke to me of redemption. I never bit. I knew what sins they'd judged me guilty of. I'd broken a few church pews. I remember two distinctly, but one instance was debatable. The lady who’d sat there before me was also fat as hell. But old white people get to be fat. Like age posits certification for obesity, but while my own certificate was probationary. I was expected to change. Only sinners are drunk at church. Not people who believe in God but think he might be everywhere but in the wet mouth of an old man with an older book. Or someone who watched Grandma smile at the young men, promising that I was losing weight, sobering up, coming to the light, and straight and single. None of that was true. She told the few Black men that I was half-Black and the many white boys that I was half-white. All of them told themselves I would change. A sinner doesn't need to be sober to see through pious lies. I was the only one in that room who couldn't smile while I hurt someone. Now I only attend punch-drunk to the gills and purring through buzzed handshakes and hugs with brilliant liars, numb to their holy barbs and good cuts.

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