dale bridges writing

It’s a phrase I’ve  heard repeatedly in recent weeks from conservative Christians: “I disapprove of gay marriage, but that doesn’t mean I hate gay people. Love the sinner, hate the sin.” It’s a useful rhetorical position to take because evidence of its authenticity can only be found in the heart of the person using it.

I used the phrase often when I was growing up in the late ’80s and early ’90s, during the heights of the AIDS scare. My father was (is) a small-town fundamentalist preacher who insisted the dreaded “Gay Disease” was a plague sent from God to punish homosexuals for their sins. When it was discovered that AIDS was not restricted to the gay community, he broadened the scope of God’s wrath to include adulterers, communists, fornicators, pornographers, feminists, and Democrats. There were enough sins in America to go around.

At the time, I had never met a gay person. Actually, let me rephrase that: at the time, I had never met an openly gay person. Surely there were men and women in my hometown who preferred their own gender, but they would never have admitted as much. I don’t believe any physical harm would have come to them, but they certainly would have been socially shunned, and in a town of 2,000, that can be personally and financially devastating. There were rumors, of course. Why did two male bachelors own the only video-rental store in town? What was up with the women’s volleyball coach? But these were questions whispered behind closed doors.

So I never had to look someone in the eye when I said that I loved them but hated their sin. I never had to explain how that dichotomy worked. It was philosophical exercise at best, and one the rest of my community agreed with. It fit perfectly with my beliefs as a Christian. Jesus loved everyone, but he did not tolerate every action. He socialized with thieves, prostitutes, and tax collectors, but he did not condone their behavior. I was following his example. Every sin was an abomination in the eyes of God.

But homosexuality was different. I would have never admitted this at the time, but it repulsed me in a way that, say, stealing or lying did not. Even murder. When I was in high school, the local newspaper reported a stabbing in a nearby town. The perpetrator was a man I’d met once, an uncle of a friend. He was sent to prison, and although it shocked me to know that he had stuck a knife in another man during a bar fight, I found it easy to pray for his forgiveness. He didn’t seem like a bad guy.

But homosexuality…that was where I drew the line. It was unforgivable. Why? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I knew the reason had to do with sex.

Sex was a problem I struggled with, the primary source of sin in my life. I wasn’t having sex, of course–I firmly believed in abstinence until marriage–but I was thinking about it constantly, and that was the same thing. I was sinning in my heart. And not just once or twice. In school, in church, at the dinner table, during basketball practice, at the grocery store, in the shower. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew nothing about sex. My father had removed me from the only Sex Ed class our high school offered because he said he’d already given me all the education I needed on the topic: don’t do it. I didn’t consider sex a biological imperative, I didn’t know about hormones, that it was physically impossible for me to stop wanting sex. It was a test, and I kept failing. I wasn’t supposed to masturbate, so instead of actually touching myself (which would have been a conscious transgression) I humped things. All kinds of things. Pillows, couch cushions, car seats, chairs, tables. I would rub up against just about anything. It sounds funny now, but at the time it was not. I developed rashes and infections. My groin burned constantly. Still, I would not use my hand. After climax, I was devastated. Every time. I had broken God’s laws. I cried. Not crocodile tears. This the real thing: head bowed, rocking back and forth, clenched fists, snot everywhere. Sometimes I would slap myself in the face or pinch myself on the leg so hard it bruised the skin. There was something wrong with me. I needed to be punished. I knew that sex was a beautiful thing inside the confines of marriage, but it was a dirty thing inside my own fantasies. I struggled to understand how that worked. I prayed for forgiveness. I promised never to do it again. But of course, in the end I was not strong enough to uphold that promise. I let God down. I sinned. I was a sinner.

Homosexuals disgusted. me. This was a form of sex I was allowed to openly despise. They were gross. They were unnatural. I focused all of my own self-loathing on them. I called them “homos” and “faggots” and “fags” and “dykes.” Not in church, of course. Just in my head and sometimes in school. In church, I called them “sinners” and I prayed that they would be healed by God’s love. But even though everyone in the church claimed to love gay people, I could tell by the looks on their faces it took a special kind of effort. These people were disgusting. These people were an abomination. This sin was worse than the others. And somehow the idea that they could love one another was even worse than the idea of them having sex. How dare they claim to have deep, lasting, committed relationships. How dare they claim to be like us.

I have never been able to figure out why I was so repulsed by gay people–the issues are buried deep in the slippery waters of the subconscious–but I do know it had something to do with my own self-loathing and sexual dysfunctions. I feared the very idea of them. Their existence was a direct assault on my faith and my definition of self. These feelings felt right at the time. Intuitive. Natural.

I was a homophobe. There’s no justification for it. It wasn’t the totality of who I was, but it was a part of me.

Things started to change when I went to college. Not right away, but gradually. I met openly gay people for the first time, people I never would have guessed were gay, people who were so very…normal. I asked questions. I had conversations. I made friends. I discovered it was impossible to love the sinner and hate the sin. There was no sinner. There was no sin. There was a person. I could no longer reduce someone’s existence to a bumper sticker. It took a long time. I’m still dealing with the weedy roots of my homophobia today. It was planted when I was young, and it runs deep.

Not all Christians understand my experience. I have friends and family who have always supported the gay community, others who have discovered paths of acceptance within their faith. There’s hope in the younger generation.

But there are many more who still believe they can divide people into neat compartments, that they can love someone while simultaneously despising a core aspect of that person. It’s impossible. You can’t keep hate separate from love. It will find a way to get out. Despite all the pop songs, love is not as strong as we want it to be. The hate will win. For the most part, these are good people. I don’t share their faith anymore or many of their political views, but I know they are kind, caring, funny, giving, weird, happy, wonderful human beings. I have eaten pie with them. I have watched The Princess Bride with them. I have listened to Johnny Cash with them. They volunteer at homeless shelters and bake casseroles for the elderly. They go to their children’s t-ball games. They curl up under blankets on rainy days with giant bowls of popcorn. They are good.

But the thought of two men getting married fills them with anger. They see pictures of a wedding, and they cannot contain their rage. They post awful things on social media and then do incoherent philosophical somersaults to justify themselves. They cannot see the recent Supreme Court decision as a long overdue civil rights victory that upholds the core fundamentals of freedom that this country was founded upon. They probably don’t understand why they are so angry. I know I never did. It’s the hate they tried to separate from the love. It cannot be contained. It has no logic. It has no reason. It is the true sin.

That’s a great question, Hypothetical Reader. Here are a list of places where you can order the book in its physical and ethereal forms:

Amazon (physical)

Amazon (Kindle)

Monkey Puzzle Press

Google Play and Google Books

Smashwords (Nook, Kobo, Sony, Apple, pdf, epub, etc.)

And if you are so inclined, it would be ENORMOUSLY helpful if you could review the book on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be a good review. Be honest. I’m a big boy; I can take it.

Justice, Inc: savvy, somewhat savage short stabs.

A review of Justice, Inc. by the one and only Rowena Hoseason.

“There are certainly moments where it appears Bridges is being an A1 smart-arse simply because he can – and that’s part of the delight of this anthology.”

Wonderful. Thank you, Rowena.

I honestly don’t understand the purpose of book trailers (why the hell are we making movies to encourage people to read books?), but my publisher says they help indie authors reach larger audiences. And since I need all the help I can get, I agreed to make one. So I downloaded some free video-editing software, and set up some shots in my living room. I have to admit it was kind of fun, although I’m not sure the end result is going to help us sell books. However, if anyone besides myself gets a chuckle out of it, I guess it was worth the effort. I call this book trailer Hello, Dolly. Enjoy.

This is a blog post to thank those kind souls who have contributed to my Indiegogo campaign, which is raising money to market my debut short-story collection, JUSTICE, INC.

The book is being published by Monkey Puzzle Press, a small press that does not have a budget for things like advance-reading copies, advertising, postcards, bookstore fees, or a book tour. Without marketing, your book basically just sits on the shelf and gathers dust. This is the nature of publishing in the modern age. No one can do it alone. Thank you, everyone. This book literally (get it?) would not be possible without you.

We raised $3,745!

In no particular order:

Michelle Crouse

Shalauna Miller

Megan Bell

Chris Bell

Erica Grossman

Sandra Renteria

Paul Osincup

Cheri Coop

Adam Coop

Lois Bridges

Lisa Billig Roina

Tom Parkin

Reg Davey

Rowena Hoseason

Kim Whitrap

Dave Whitrap

Turisa Rucker

Ashleigh Phaneuf

Linda Duits

Jason Quinn Malott

Stacey Merkl

Christina Torres-Petitt

Branden Petitt

Dana Jacobs

Chad Jacobs

Amy Kathleen Ryan

Phil Heron

Kelly Bartlett

Frank Westworth

Lindsey Barger

Adriana Montenegro

Marisa Lubeck

Josie Pack

Dave Lieberman

Cortney Holles

Demesia Razo

Dyland Wilson

Chris Gotcu

Kent Bridges

Nicole James

BJ Heck

Tim Cochran

Kathy Brill

Emmett Evanoff

Luke Franklin

There have also been several anonymous donors. I don’t know who you are, but thank you.

We live in a strange neighborhood. I don’t think anyone would intentionally move here, but it’s kind of awesome. The main road near our apartment building is filled with car dealerships, strip malls, gas stations, pawn shops (all desperate to buy your GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! for some mysterious reason), fast-food franchises, storage-rental facilities, hot tub dealerships, and furniture stores. There’s an interstate less than a mile away, and apparently some train tracks nearby (I’ve never seen the damn thing but it’s close enough to wake me up at night). In less than ten minutes, you can walk to a Toyota dealership, a Walgreens, Olive Garden, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, and a Napa Auto Parts store.

But there are other places to walk, too.

There’s a windowless bar four blocks away with John Wayne’s face stenciled on the outside and a mannequin dressed in a cowboy costume inside. The mannequin’s name is Jasper. He’s popular with the ladies.

About five blocks away there’s a comic book store the size of an airplane hanger. We once walked in randomly and discovered that George Takei was signing head shots in the back.

In the other direction, there’s a nerd-themed bar/coffee shop called the Emerald Tavern, where you can buy a pint of mead and then slaughter trolls with your friends on the gaming tables in back.

Next to the drunk-geek factory, there’s an exotic-animal pet shop that smells like a junior-high boys’ locker room. They have a sloth in there that hangs upside down in the window all day long. They also have a taxidermied fox that they won’t sell me.

Across the street from this PETA nightmare, there’s an antique mall that takes several hours to walk through. I like to go there and fondle the doll heads until the owners kick me out. I found a stuffed cat there one time made out of rabbit fur. I repeat: a cat made of rabbit fur.

And right next door there’s a pool hall next to the best karaoke bar I’ve ever seen. When you walk inside, it’s like Stephen King wrote a short story and then Quentin Tarantino made a musical about it with a drunken, tone-deaf cast.

There’s an automotive shop around the corner with a neon sign out front that features a new pseudo-philosophical saying every month. Today it says: “A small town is a spot where there’s no place you can go that you shouldn’t.” Yeah, I don’t really get it either.

I’m glad no one else wants to live here.

In a recent podcast, Anneque Malchien reviewed the anthology “Tuned to a Dead Channel” and had some very nice things to say about my story. She also regularly reviews indie books on her website. Check out the podcast here: http://www.buzzsprout.com/17574/132140-indie-and-more-book-review-episode-2

Hills like Golden Arches

by Dale Bridges

(Published in Monkey Puzzle Magazine and nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

In the parking lot outside the clinic, Jane, flushed, red-eyed, looking a bit like Courtney Love on a bender, tells me she wants to go to the pet store.

“I want a cat,” she says.

“What?  Now?”  I try to sound surprised, though I am not.

“You owe me,” Jane points out, her Giorgio Armani mascara starting to slide down her pale cheeks, her nose ring twitching.

“Are you sure you want a cat?  How about one of those super-cool iguanas?  They’re very retro right now.”

“What’s wrong with a cat?”

“Nothing, babe.  There’s nothing wrong with cats, per se.  It’s just that we’re not cat people.”

She arches one of her pierced eyebrows and gives me her famous pseudo-incredulous glare.  “And why is that, Danny?  Please explain why we are not the type of people who would own a feline.  Bestow your infinite cat-people wisdom upon me.”

“I don’t know, babe.  Have you seen the type of people who have cats?  They’re just not very cool.  Trust me, babe, cats are not in right now.  Cockatoos?  Yes.  Albino snakes?  Definitely.  Small, ugly dogs that you keep in your purse?  Of course.  But cats?  I don’t think so.  That means we have to wear sweater vests and purchase refrigerator magnets and rent Meg Ryan movies.  It’s all just so…domestic.”

Jane shrugs.  “I like Meg Ryan.  She’s spunky.”

“That’s hardly the point.”

Jane holds up her hand to demonstrate that this discussion is over and I have lost.

“Does it have to be a cat?” I ask.

Jane nods.  “A black one.”

So we go to the pet store.  It’s one of those corporate stores that seems like a supermarket, except that all the vegetables are furry and loud.  The employees wear red aprons and they have nametags with their pictures on them and they smile too much and they smell tangy.  I try to talk some sense into Jane, but she’s sort of freaking out and she won’t listen to reason.  She barely even looks at the exotic box turtles, red-bellied tree frogs, South African angelfish, lesbian sand lizards, or Columbian trap door spiders.  She stops momentarily in front of a birdcage to watch an endangered parrot with a tuft of red on its chest that looks like a bullet wound.  Someone has taught it to sing “Stop! In the Name of Love” by the Supremes.  It sounds exactly like Diana Ross.

The dogs and cats are in glass cages, like the kind used to hold Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.  Hello, Clarice.  When we walk by, the dogs go ape-shit.  They’re puppies, all puppies.  No one wants to purchase a full-grown dog that’s been screwed up by someone else; you want the chance to screw up your own dog.  Anyhow, canine pandemonium.  Bark bark barkety bark.  I am suddenly very glad we are not getting a dog.

The cats are more mellow.  Obviously.  They’re cats.  There are a lot of kittens but I am surprised to see some adult cats as well.  One of them looks like an obese midget dressed in a feline suit.  It is lying on its side, panting, its distended belly rising and falling to the exact rhythm of the Phil Collins song playing on the sound system.  Jane points at it, rather unkindly it seems.

“I want that one.”

“What?  The one that’s the size of Danny DeVito?”

“That one.”

“Can’t we talk this over?”

“That one.”

Guess what––we get that one.  We also get a handsome carrying case and a scratching post and a collar with a nametag on it (Whiskers, what a shocker) and a toy that looks like a tiny fishing pole and a ten-pound bucket of kitty litter and a lifetime supply of fish-flavored cat food.  All of this goes into the backseat of Jane’s canary-yellow BMW.

“There,” I say.  “Now do you feel better?”

And that’s when Jane starts to cry.

Six days ago, while sipping a double mocha latte at Starbucks, after stealing the new My Chemical Romance CD from Virgin Records, Jane told me she was pregnant.  I had just smoked a joint and I think I might have taken some Percocet, so I didn’t really understand what she was talking about at first.  I made her say it again.

“What do you mean exactly when you say ‘pregnant’?” I said, trying to make eye contact with the girl behind the counter.  She looked familiar, kind of like Gwen Steffani but with shorter hair and bigger tits.  It was possible I had dated her, or her sister, or purchased Ecstasy from her, or all of the above, at one point in time.

“What do you think I mean?” said Jane.  “Through the act of coitus, your sperm penetrated my egg and formed a new genetic organism that shares our combined DNA.”

“Huh?”

Jane rolled her eyes and sighed.  “You shoved your wiener in my cunt and we made a baby.”

I bit the end off a biscotti and glanced at the girl behind the counter, who was practically staring at me.  “That’s kind of, like, gross, you know.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said.  “There’s like…um…like a little…um…thing inside of you right now?”

“That’s right, Danny.  I have a little thing inside me.”

“Wow, that’s pretty intense, babe.”

“Well, it’s going to get even more intense.”

“Right,” I said.  I looked at my reflection in the store window, pulled up the collar on my polo shirt, put it back down, fixed my hair.  “I see what you mean.”

The new U2 album was playing on the sound system and I remembered that I read an article in Rolling Stone that said Bono was like the neo-Elvis, which meant that Jack White was the neo-John Lennon and Mos Def was the neo-Otis Redding.  It was a lot to take in and I just didn’t have the energy to process it.  Furthermore, there was a new M. Night Shamalan movie coming out and I had to decide whether I was going to see it in the theater or wait to put it in my Netflix queue.  Either way, it promised to be a really suspenseful movie with a disappointing ending.  Which was exactly why I wanted to watch it in the first place.

“Well, what do you think?” Jane finally asked.

“About what?”

“About the plight of the Jews in Israel,” she said, then flicked her straw at me.  “About me being pregnant, asshole.”

“I don’t think it’s cool to make fun of Israel right now,” I replied.  I paused to consider this.  “Or the Jews, for that matter.”

“Shut up, Danny.”

“I’m just saying––”

“Shut up, Danny!”

“I’m just saying––”

“I swear to Jennifer Anniston, if you don’t shut your face, I’ll scream.”

I put my hands in the air, cops-and-robbers style.  “Okay, babe.  Chill.”

“And don’t call me babe.”

“Alright, baby, but chill, okay?  I don’t think this is such a big deal.  I mean, we can always get it fixed, right?  I mean, we’re not…like…like…Republicans.  We’re cool.  Everything’s copasetic.”

Jane looked away, at the Hot Topic across the street.  “I know,” she said.  “It’s a minor operation, right?  They just let the air in.”

“Air?  What air, babe?”

“Hey,” she said, pointing at the McDonald’s behind me, “don’t those hills look like golden arches?”

I turned around.  “What hills?  What the hell are you talking about?”

She shrugged.  “Nothing.  I’ll make an appointment for next week.”

That’s when Jane got up and went to the bathroom and the girl behind the counter came over and said she met me on MySpace and then she asked me for my cell phone number and I said that I was between companies at the moment but I told her to check me out on Facebook or Twitter or Blogspot and that I’d text her as soon as possible.  But I forgot.

I’m no expert, but it has occurred to me, although there is no way to prove this with absolute certainty, that Jane’s cat is evil incarnate.  And pseudo-retarded.

It just lies around the apartment all day, staring at me in a very Mommy Dearest kind of way.  Jen says it’s just my imagination, but it’s not.  This is not something that I would ever imagine, ever. The only time it moves at all is when I leave the room.  If I go to the kitchen, the cat goes to the kitchen.  If I go to the bedroom, the cat goes to the bedroom.  If I lock myself in the bathroom, the cat waits outside the door until I emerge, and then it continues with the whole staring routine.  It’s so monotonous I could scream.  It doesn’t make any noise, it doesn’t play––it just watches me.  At night, I can feel its stupid eyes looking at me.  I can’t sleep.  I smoke more pot, take more Valium, but it’s no use.

Jane has also become a major freak.  She hasn’t cried once since we were at the pet store.  I think she might have, like, post-traumatic stress disorder or something.  I read in Entertainment Weekly that Jennifer Lopez had that while she was shooting The Cell. Or maybe it was Vanity Fair.  There’s also a chance—but it is very small—that it could have been in People, but I really doubt it, because I don’t read People anymore since they did that interview that trashed Kevin Bacon.

Jane doesn’t smoke pot with me anymore.  She takes classes at the community college and reads all these books about psychology and yoga and the art of breathing.  She’s learning how to cook Thai food.  She’s gardening.  She’s listening to Tori Amos.  She says she’s going to counsel troubled teens when she graduates.  I asked her what was troubling these hypothetical teens, because it seems to me that all the teens I know have it pretty good, aside from the acne and the peer pressure and the kids showing up at school dressed in trench coats and shooting cheerleaders, but Jane just ignored me and continued reading her Oprah book.  She doesn’t want to talk about the issues, not really.

I have suggested that we get rid of the cat on several occasions, but Jane says she likes it.  I don’t know how this is possible.  It doesn’t do anything, it just sits in the corner of the room and stares at me while I try to watch VH1 or read Chomsky or play Street Fighter.  I don’t know what it wants.  It is a fat, ugly, disgusting black creature that won’t leave me alone.  I dream about killing it.  Sometimes, when Jane is in class, I pick up a kitchen knife and point it at the cat and scream “Get out of my life!” over and over again.  It only stares back at me.

I put the knife away.  I take another Valium.  I turn on the television.