Here, I have to laugh, because Hinn's handlers are pretty picky about whom they put on stage. I mean, they bypass all the authentic wheelchair-bound people, like the lady with Lou Gehrig's disease hoping for a cure, and go straight to the vapid-faced bovines who would believe anything, it seems. Lary could not pull that off with his curly hair and hatchet face. His teeth are not sharpened, but look like they should be, and when he smiles at you, you're immediately disquieted, wondering whether he just put poison in your coffee and is looking forward to watching the results. In a crowd of Hinn fanatics, Lary would stand out like a horny old uncle at a slumber party.
"You'd be so busted," I laugh.
But Lary is adamant. "I can be possessed," he protests. "I can get that look in my eye, I can twitch," and here I have to agree with him, because I've seen Lary twitch. I have even seen him fake an epileptic fit just to scare off panhandlers approaching him on Peachtree Street. At first I thought it was a bit over the top, since telling panhandlers no seems to work fine. But then I realized Lary likes scaring people, which is pretty much how Hinn and his coven keep their gravy boat afloat — by scaring people with threats of hell and devils who poke at you with fondue forks for all eternity. So, yes, Lary can twitch and get that look in his eye. Christ, who'd have thought Lary had qualities in common with members of the God squad?
"In fact," Lary continues, "I think we all need to be saved together, as a unit holding hands."
He's talking about Grant and Daniel and me, and, of course, I stop laughing. "No goddamn way are you taking me to a revival circus!" I shriek.
I went to one in high school once, and the experience was so painful it actually affected me physically. I'd been invited by someone from my sewing class, a fragile girl with a face like a pail of paste, and I accepted as a kind of rebellion against my atheist mother. The church was a cinder-block building that had all the curb appeal of a condemned sewage treatment center, and the service was really nothing more than a long, drawn-out promise to banish my soul to eternal suffering if I didn't immediately adhere to every letter of their sect. But the worst part was this: afterward they spoke in tongues, which entailed, as far as I could tell, writhing at the foot of an icon and gibbering, basically. I must not have exhibited enough enthusiasm for writhing and gibbering to suit their tastes, so they started literally pushing me around from person to person like a pagan beach ball, until finally they mistook the agony on my face for religious revelation and they let me go. When I got home that night, my mother didn't even look up from her book. "How'd you like church?" she asked, and I could still hear her laughing as I shut the door to my room and fell face down on my bunk.
So, no, I am not willing to put myself through that again. I think Daniel would be on my side, too. He won't set foot in a church unless it's a famous European cathedral, and that's only because it's his practice to visit famous European cathedrals and drink shots of tequila in the very back pew. Sometimes, too, he likes to drive through my neighborhood and stop in front of small A.M.E. churches hoping to hear gospel music wafting to the street from the front door. Other than that, Daniel will not go to church even if his sweet Wal-Mart-greeter mother begged him from under her Sunday bonnet.
Grant, on the other hand, would definitely enjoy a fake salvation, probably because he's completely impervious to the real kind. That must be what he and Lary have in common. Me? I am the daughter of a drunk and an atheist, but even so — even after the attack of the tongue-speaking God zombies — I think I still have some soil in me for the seed to be planted, and I think I need to be mindful about who tries to plant it there. After all, a fake salvation is only fake if you want it to be.
"I'm just curious, why do you think the four of us should hold hands and be saved as a unit?" I ask Lary. "So we can all go to heaven together?"
"Hell no," Lary answers. "It's so we can pull the others back if they start to lift away."
Hollis Gillespie is a commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, and the author of Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch and the upcoming Confessions of a Recovering Slut: And Other Love Stories.
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