Clubs are on my mind, and I don’t mean the unmarked, after-hours kind you fall into at around 3am, or the “country” kind you fork over a big wedge of your income to so you can leer down the necklines of other rich men’s wives, but the sort you join because you have something in common with its participants. More and more keep popping up, and their themes get ever wackier as their focus narrows. Just recently I’ve heard about a few that have me going, “Say what?”
I remember when groups for survivors of abuse were the happening club trend, but apparently it’s not enough to have been violated by just anyone anymore, because now there are groups specifically for the survivors of the new “status” abuse, suffered exclusively at the hands of religious figures. Reading about this reminded me of the cadaverous nun I had in fourth grade who used to stalk down the aisle and shove in my left elbow with her bony, crucifix-bristling hip so I wouldn’t write “funny.” I wonder if that qualifies as “abuse by a religious figure.”
Then there was the windbag priest who used to regularly interrupt our class mid-lesson and drone on about Jesus and the little lambs while we sat glassy-eyed but with the required straight backs and folded hands, snapping to with “Yes, Father!” whenever the sly old blowhard threw in a question to see if we were still conscious. That certainly felt like abuse, but whether or not it would get me in the club, or if I’d be bumped by someone with a higher prestige claim of, say, being groped in the vestry, is another question. Which really isn’t fair, since at least getting felt up might be rousing, unlike Father McMumble’s stupefying tales.
If you haven’t yet had the privilege of being defiled by a member of the religious community, but consider yourself a thinking person, you can always join the group for “thinking singles” that I heard advertised on the radio the other day. This brings up the sticky issue of exactly how you determine who is thinking and who isn’t. Maybe the club leader submits potential members to some kind of puzzle or problem-solving test, and at the end declares to the ones who successfully solve it, “Now you’re thinking!”
When you think about it, though, a club for unthinking singles might actually be a lot more fun. Picture it: unthinking singles would always be up for that spontaneous, rutting-in-the-road, going down in the bathroom of a moving train kind of sex. Unthinking singles would combine Quaaludes and alcohol on purpose, and gladly shed their clothes even without the Quaaludes. They’d never insist on dental dams or condoms, and they’d always swallow. They would mix themselves a nice big drink expressly for the occasion of getting behind the wheel, and encourage all passengers to smoke. Unthinking singles would have rolling papers at the ready and pot brownies packed, pushing them perilously close to the category of thinking singles.
Of course you can think too much — witness the current separate group for alcoholic Jews. My mother always told me Jewish males didn’t drink much, and that’s why she fervently prayed I’d catch one, even though she herself is a serial Christian, having joined four different denominations. Some of the boys I knew in school proved this little piece of wisdom to be false, but still, it was a nice image, and the existence of an alcoholic Jews group tarnishes it.
Besides, you used to be able to count on groups for alcoholics to be cross sections of society, since every kind of human is a potential hopeless drunk. Before I went to my first AA meeting I assumed it would be filled with nothing but grizzled bums, but was astonished to discover instead that it was a gathering spot for all types, just like a lot of gay clubs.
In fact, a number of the same people showed up at both. A lesson I learned in AA and the bars is that you absolutely never know just by looking at them who sucks, or who’s spent time in a mental hospital, or who’s done all of the above. Clubs for drinkers should hold onto that tradition of inclusive fellowship, and not get into your religion, “cause how much can that matter anyway when you’re contemplating chugging the Scope?
Taking specialization to a new high is Lightning Strike & Electric Shock Survivors International, an organization formed by a fellow who was struck by lightning through a bank teller’s microphone! Jesus! I think if that happened to me, I’d have to review how I’d been living, since it indicates major targeting on the part of The Man Upstairs.
Apparently lightning strike survivors feel like they’re constantly buzzing or vibrating, so maybe they should get together with some unthinking singles, survivors of priest pomposity, and a few drinking Jews to seriously throw down and junk all these separate groups.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2003.
