People are talking about intermittent fasting again. It's something that I always have done without thinking about it.

Since childhood, I would go without eating for a day or two. Sometimes I didn't feel like eating. Sometimes I just forgot.

Seriously, I simply forgot to eat because I was so focused on some activity that I couldn't stop to eat. This habit has carried over deep into adulthood.

My ex-wife used to yell at me about remembering to eat when she wasn't home to remind me.

As a child I once explained to an adult that "I eat to live. I don't live to eat." I was maybe ten years old.

I remember that fasting was a popular fad in the late seventies and early eighties. Fasting was especially popular at church. It's very Biblical, you know.

The popularity faded after a few people died attempting to fast for 40 days like Jesus. Then someone died from a 3 day fast, and the fad was over. They did not rise again.

I remember everyone talking about it. The decedent had been a young woman in her twenties. She was anorexic. That's when I learned the word, in church, because they turned and looked at me, Stick Boy.

Yes, that was the nickname I had been given, in church. The joke got even better when one of the adults disapproved of the appellation and the most clever of the monkeys throwing poop at me explained that "he really likes hockey. Don't you, Stick Boy?" I knew that would be physically brutalized by the group later if I didn't play along.

They stopped calling me Stick Boy when they started calling me Jinx. That's quite a story, too.

It was my first participation in the weekly teen Bible study sleepover organized and hosted by one of the youth ministers. I wasn't a teen yet, but I had been invited to leave the children's Bible study a year early for asking questions about Bible verses which made the adults uncomfortable as they were unable to supply any satisfactory answers.

Eventually I was invited to a sleepover at the youth minister's house.

We watched a Christian propaganda film about the end times, which was intended to be frightening if not traumatic. Then we had a group discussion of the film and relevant passages from the book of Revelations before going to sleep in sleeping bags in the living room.

I woke up a little later to the sound of s teenage girl screaming. Oops!

The light appeared and everyone was awake! Hallelujah!

Turns out that the youth minister had been engaging in extramarital sexual activities with a girl in the regular group.

She ALWAYS slept in a special spot behind the sofa which was oddly positioned several feet from the wall.

However, this one time, another girl put her bag down and claimed that spot first, because I had taken her spot on the floor. If she had to give up her usual position, then so would someone else. That was her idea of fairness, Christian kindness and forgiveness wasn't foremost on her mind in that moment. She was very surprised when the youth minister crawled into her sleeping bag.

We were all told to go back to sleep and the light was extinguished. We could hear the youth minister's wife shouting at him behind the closed door down the hallway. They divorced soon after that.

He wasn't in church the next morning. The next week his resignation was announced before the service. His resignation was published in the next week's newsletter to make certain that everyone understood that the sinner was properly punished and not forgiven.

I didn't see him again for almost a year. He showed up at Wednesday night teen Bible study to apologized directly to several people. Of course, he did not take full responsibility for his actions and blamed the demon of lust for possessing him in a moment of weakness that had lasted many consecutive weeks. Still he wanted certain people to be certain that he was sincerely repentant, even if they couldn't bring themselves to offer their forgiveness.

He had lost everything. His wife wouldn't speak to him or let him see his kids. His business had failed because he had been using his Christian identity as a selling point for hiring him, but now he had been exposed and ostracized.

People were still angry. Of course, some were only angry that he blew it and they had lost a good thing where they could escape parental supervision without suspicion as the older teens had been drinking, drugging, and fucking after lights out. After his tearful apologies, he departed fast.

Then the new youth minister led the group into a discussion about forgiveness.

Then we ate donuts.

Epilogue:

I still remember choosing a donut with pink glazing and one of the bullies commenting "figures that you would pick pink, I knew you were queer."

Normally I ate it in silence, but I made everyone else laugh when I said "a pink donut looks like a pussy but your chocolate donut looks like a butthole."

He turned red with obvious anger and burning hatred for me. The other kids laughed but no one wanted to be friends, because I was the jinx for taking the surprised girl's spot on the floor.

One of older kids who laughed especially hard said, "You're alright, Stick Boy." But, he was quickly admonished by another that "he's not Stick Boy anymore, Stick Boy is too good for him! He's the Jinx!"

Another kid backed that up by shouting "Faggot fucking Jinx!" as the youth minister opened the door having just returned from confirming that the sinner who came seeking forgiveness had been escorted from the property by church security before allowing us leave the building, so as to prevent him from having any incidental contact with his victims or those who would initiate violence against him.

An apology was made for the profanity and the bullying situation continued to be ignored by anyone in a position of authority within the church. That was just the position I was expected to accept, being a target for sustained abuse.

My family left the church shortly after that, when certain facts regarding the church operations became public information as a disgruntled accountant revealed how the pastor had been treating the congregants' donations as his personal piggy bank. Even today, buying a daughter a Mercedes Benz for her sweet sixteen in addition to $3,000 worth of spring wardrobe is a bit out of line for a pastor living on the generosity of the church, but in the mid-1980s that was outrageous.

I had to begin again and get kicked out of both the children's and teen Bible study groups at another church for again asking uncomfortable questions about inconvenient Bible verses.

I didn't have a television at home. I was required to read the Bible. I learned that the Bible study instructors hadn't read much of it. They were familiar with John 3:16 and some of the more popular Psalms and Proverbs, but not much beyond that.

I was disappointed. They were embarrassed. It was mutually agreed that I was mature enough to graduate to attending the adult service, but not the adult Bible study.

I requested but was denied admittance to the adult group. I was 15 and they didn't know what to do with me.

I was sentenced to a double serving of the services every Sunday. The pastor was a talented talker and I was often entertained by his performance the first time through, but I would fall asleep during the re-run.

This was embarrassing for my parents who insisted that I sit up front where everyone could watch me nod off like a freshly fixed junkie. And, I had stopped cutting my hair.

Letting my hair grow freely and looking like a youthful and freshly shaved Jesus is apparently a sin. It's a very serious sin which angered another bully from the youth group, because from behind he thought I was quite attractive and he spent the entire sermon having sexual thoughts about me. I heard about it afterwards when he called me a fag and another kid who had been sitting next to him told me a couple of the things that had been whispered to him. He, of course, thought it was hilarious. I thought it may be a rape threat.

Something had to be done, so they stuck me in the sound booth recording the sermons and dubbing tapes. I could sleep through the second sermon and no one would be tempted into deviant sexual thoughts by my sexy, sexy hair. Amen.