The solace of a man hides a litany of emotions. The heart of a woman lies all the love she will ever receive.

*Trigger Warning: Substance Abuse, Mental Health, Sexual Violence*

When my father came down the hallway, his face burgeoning with excitement at the potential of the long-awaited day when he could finally exist differently. Three hundred and sixty-four days of a monotonous gait zapped away by the mere presence of… well, presents. 

He is a simple man, five feet ten inches, with a beer belly that extends past his feet and droops downward like he is with child. His claws are trimmed once a year out of respect for the occasion of Christ’s birth, which never seemed to matter as much as any of his children. His skin was matted and smooth like charcoal, with his shiny, shaved head following suit. Divine features pulled straight from the plains of the African savannah; his inebriation enters the room before he can.

“Hey, man!” He grabs a hold of me to jive along with Billy Joel, but at this point, my life exists solely within him, and my mood is not necessarily in the place to be shucking. He dances away; nobody can take this holiday joy from his mind. 

“When’re we headin’ over to the church?” I reply. Christmas mass at St. Rita’s is probably when I feel closest to Jesus because, over the past couple of years, I’ve been getting so high that I must be saved. There’s no solace for a man without feelings, and there is no Savior where I’m from.

The suit on my back came from Kohl’s, and there is no rest for the weary in that clown costume. I’m only masquerading as a young adult because performing is quite literally my life. The maroon wing tips clack against the laminate hardwood as we walk out the door, and there is no soul around in the frigid night. My father rocks a similar fit since we are basically one and the same, and I chose to become a carbon copy of his entitlement. The ride awaits our collective presence to head to our saving haven six minutes away. 

When we arrive, the statuette of St. Rita glares down at our disheveled act, banishing us to the back corner of her sprawling circus where the chimps play around and master manipulating their own souls. Her church is massive and grandiose; I look up, and the rafters are made entirely of pure, one hundred percent black walnut beams. The stained glass windows are my personal bars of rage, trapping me in a gate of twisted love and obedience. 

Her presence is equally commanding and ostentatious; her warm love also flees when she leaves. Then we see him in the longest-flowing gown that even Queen Elizabeth would stutter and double-take in an effort to possess. He stands at the same height as my father, with similarly balding features that still maintain a light follicle of graying hair and a gut that demands at least a glance to ensure no baby is growing inside. The paleness of his features can only be explained through a recovery from an addiction to excess. Without it, he appears ghoulish and possessed. He floats through the center of the church at the end of the procession; his body becomes its integral lifeline. I could only imagine what it felt like to be so protected and perceived as so holy. When he approaches the altar, time stands still, as it does every year, to paint a picture in my mind of the sanctity and solidity of this moment. He is bulletproof through God, who ordains him. 

I am synthetic by this point; my mind passively allows whatever sound vibrations strike it most emphatically to seep through and become real. This is the true meaning of loyalty and faith; it’s how it was demonstrated and how I possess it. It’s unwavering and static and contingent on being good. When he begins trudging along His guided ceremony in an unenthusiastic celebration of His birth, I pray for momentary freedom from this life. I am unaware of how this unconscious, dissociated state is that dedicated devotion’s present and physical manifestation. 

My dad bumps my slumping head. “Hey man, you good?”

Good, yeah, but “you,” I’m still struggling to figure out what that means. “Man” is entirely out of the picture. I work backward since it’s all I’m familiar with. The way the images of St. Rita plastered around the congregation glimmer at my soul under the moonlight should tell the whole story. She is infinite now, so she sees all my secrets. She deems my questioning invalid. 

“Yee-,” I vaguely blurted, not surely or confidently or with any conviction. There's a funny feeling in my stomach when I lie precisely like this because I consciously think I'm doing more good than harm, but that gut instinct successfully convinces me of the opposite. I feel sick at the plight of my responsibility at this moment. 

I know this is the house of the Lord because what I think will be a simple white lie only opens his eyes more. He gives me a double take that turns this poorly performed scene of The Hangover into the entire arc of Waiting for Godot. He glances at my lifelessness, drifting for ages, while I wait for an end that will never come. I stare intently at my guilty conscience, guiding my church’s service with honor and pride. My mind goes in all different directions to distract from the facts of the matter. Being good means more than being right. Keep your loved ones safe and protected, and they will do the same; it will be fine. Nobody has to know what happened. 

“Hey-” I hear before I feel myself fading. A look of concern soon melts into a monotonous amalgamation of faces, all watching my experiment fail. Then, I see one face, that of St. Rita, whose features have sunk; her brow is furred, and she, too, expresses concern. 

I come to awaken on the ground outside under the purest full moon, and I breathe the first breath with a pierced lung. They fan my charred ashes and watch in relief as I ground myself back on Earth. 

My dad inquired for the last time, “What the hell happened in there, man?” I hear the crowd bait their breath. 

“I can't say it.”