When I was twenty-one, with one foot out of the closet, there was one lean, mostly naked man that no one could fault me for gazing on in adoration.
The German crucifix I wanted as a birthday present--yes, I was that fucked up--offered me a very male, and very dead, Jesus. I can only imagine what friends thought of it, hanging on the wall of my first apartment.
Fifteen years later, I wanted nothing more to do with Christianity.
Twenty-five years later, I was ready to return, but on my own terms. I hung this artifact of who I'd once been over the Korean rice chest that I'd bought as my altar.
Thirty years later, it freaked my Jewish boyfriend right out, and I tried to give it away. In any case, the glorification of suffering it represented had become completely foreign to me.
Forty years later, it lies inside the rice chest, a relic I still respect of who I once was, and what I once needed.
Gracias a la Vida.
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