Cheryl Wagner – on her idea of Purgatory.

New Orleans, Louisiana
September 27, 2000

Julie –

You know my friend Ray who taught me stick-shift and used to play flute in the Guitar Mass I was willingly brainwashed to sing in after those make-em-cry retreats in eighth grade? Well I don’t remember if I told you this or not, but now he’s becoming a priest. The summer before my mom got sick I got in the car with her and a former-nun friend of hers and drove to Grand Coteau to watch him take his vows of Poverty and Chastity.

On the drive over, I tried to tune Mom and the ex-nun in to the realities of the Church by telling them that Ray was the first person ever to offer me pot and that I for one was never going to take Communion from someone whose favorite band was Rush. Mom pointed out that I didn’t take Communion any more anyway. The ex-nun just shrugged. I guess she saw it all in the convent, before she quit. They just kept laughing and chatting it up all the way past Lafayette into the secret Jesuit woods as Mom confided her stupid personal theory that I drove Ray into the priesthood by not dating him.

There were about ten guys getting sworn in that Saturday and the candidates single-filed into the old chapel all nervous and sweaty. A Hispanic guy with a crewcut sang in a sweet high voice like a Mormon Tabernacle kid or a castrato. I pointed out the Goth faghag friend of one of the gay pledges to Mom and said, “See?” Afterwards we drank non-alcoholic Sangria out of a big metal bowl in the cafeteria and the rectory’s lunch ladies served gumbo.

I almost laughed when I first saw Ray in his stiff black-and-white collar. What in the world brought this on? I kept thinking. I even walked through this wedding-like reception line to shake his hand and congratulate him and everything. But now it turns out I drove three hours through the swamps in flowery pink drag to see Ray get Holy Water shaken on him and he’s not even a full priest!

He’s just a Novitiate. Or was. Something like that. Now he’s a Philosopher. He has six or so levels to go before he’s all priest. Like Dungeons and Dragons or something. No wonder they can’t get enough priests.

Ray got assigned to teach religion at a high school near my house here. We went to dinner a couple of months ago – a mother of an obnoxious student of his had given him a two-for-one gift certificate as a thanks-for-putting-up-with-the-kid. And Ray – I would hope this would be enough to rile even YOUR inner dead Catholic, Julie – Ray wouldn’t even wear his collar.

“Aw, come on. Put it on,” I begged. “You’re not even going to wear it? You just got it and you’re already sick of it? They let you out like that?”

“I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable,” he said. “People act differently when they see a priest.”

I thought that meant people would give us stuff free, so I kept after him for a while. I even offered him a couple of dollars but no go. Turns out he just meant people would keep coming over to our table drunk to apologize for swearing if he wore it. Catholics today are cheap and over it and don’t buy you rounds of drinks and desserts like in the good old days. (Later Ray admitted this did make him feel a little gypped. Do you know how much his allowance is a month, Julie? He made me guess and I started low, but I never got low enough – SEVEN DOLLARS! Or twenty-seven dollars. Something terrible like that. He even has to ask permission and justify it if he wants a new pair of shoes!)

So during dinner I quizzed Ray about Confession and Purgatory and Limbo and generally made him stand trial for everything I learned growing up at Holy Ghost Catholic School. He kept laughing and calling my ideas “Pre-Vatican II” and “possibly Crusadish” all because I like the idea of Purgatory!

I think people should get punished awhile for being mean on Earth. But old Philosopher kept wanting to be all Zen about it and kept calling Purgatory “more like a time for personal spiritual reflection before you meet your Creator.” That’s as bad as some Baptist Bundy accepting Jesus as his Savior on his deathbed, like that zeroes out the mayhem and makes everything okay. You can’t have your Purgatory and eat it too.

I told him how in my Purgatory if you were ever mean to a retarded person, then you become a retarded person and people are mean to you for years and you don’t understand why. And how in my Purgatory if you’re greedy and rich and go around saying all your workers are lazy because they’d be rich like you if they weren’t, you’d have to work in a coal mine or a steno pool or a computer cubicle with no oxygen or Dilbert or bathroom or smoke breaks. And if you called yourself a Feminist and wore fishnets and acted stupider than you were and got your hair cut like a 1960s pin-up girl: one thousand automatic years of hard-time laundry on “The 1900 House.” Also if you harassed women, you’d have to spend a few eternities with like Sam Walton or Patrick Swayze’s head up your skirt.

Let us call this Exhibit A in my case to be your expected earthling’s godmother. I know neither of us are Catholic any more really, but then if even a priest isn’t, who is? That’s why the Pope calls Americans “cafeteria Catholics.” John Paul II says you can’t take what you want and leave the rest behind. Religion isn’t Ryan’s or Pancho’s, he says. Oh but it is – that’s why you can pick me to be the godmother, even though you’re not having any baptism or church or religion or anything. Please. I don’t want to be one of those weird fake “aunts” that this kid is going to have to go around trying to explain. Whereas everyone knows what a godmother is – someone who tells you about all the daiquiris your Mom drank in college and how she picked your dad up on a motorcycle and slept with him on their first date!!!

Also we’ve known each other for over ten years and I still like you. I will take you in without question after any and every divorce. I will start clipping Cathy cartoons and mailing them to you every day if you don’t give in. Plus, finally, you’re pregnant and I’m not, so I could kick your ass.

So keep thinking it over. But don’t say I can be an “aunt” ever again under penalty of your own special “This is your Aunt Julie” Purgatory. Don’t let all those I’m-about-to-breastfeed-the-world hormones make your nutty decisions for you. You still have a few months to do penance.

Talk to you soon,

Cheryl