Power Steering

“Mur” means wall in French and that seemed about right for Dr. Mur’s class, which was so dull and lifeless I referred to it as Wills, Trusts, and Escapes; although, of course, there was no escape if you wanted to graduate from law school. Fortunately, my best friend Lee was taking the class with me; our note passing and sidebar humor helped me survive the most lackluster class in law school.

Lee was smarter than I was, but I won every mock trial and moot court case I participated in and was better at evidence and persuasion than he. I loved him as a friend, but he loved me in another way too, a way I couldn’t return. He never pressed me, but I knew. It was in his eyes. I wished I could take it out, but I couldn’t, yet there was no way I was giving up my best friend.

We were exceptionally good study partners and also partied together (both atheists, both Jews raised outside tradition). I bought the booze, and he provided the dope. He had a really good connection, and we smoked the best sinsemilla on the planet. It had dark golden “hairs” (pistil hairs) and light golden-blonde threads covering olive green, tightly packed buds, the aroma delicious and sweet even before it was lit. (Sinsemilla was so potent you could almost get high just from the smell.) We used to laugh, eat together, play games, study, make jokes about everything and listen to music until the wee hours. Whatever we did, we usually did together. This was my brother. This was my friend.

Lee was truly the best friend of my life (except for the rare awkward pause because of a feeling I wished wasn’t there) until one day when I came over expecting to smoke either the water pipe (a pipe we used with a water reservoir to make the smoke cooler) or a joint or something and proceed with our usual jovial evening.

Instead, he hit me with, “Guess what—?”

He was so happy. “What, you won the lottery?” I asked. 

“No, better, I’ve found the Messiah. I’ve accepted Christ.”

“No, you didn’t,” I yell-growled, outraged. He had betrayed me on the deepest level. I felt like a dagger had been shoved in my gut. Unless you’ve had a friend that close, you wouldn’t understand except if you had a spouse cheat on you or a family member try to have you killed, or something like that.

He had backstabbed me, but I was in shock: so, at first, I tried to talk him out of it. It was all to no avail; he even tried to convince me to accept “Yeshua” as my “lord and savior”. No way that was going to happen. Had he fallen and cracked his brain?

I tried to process it: Lee was leaving me, destroying our friendship, no more times together, no more us. It was over—O-V-E-R. And for what? A girlfriend? No, I could have accepted that. Because I was never going to sleep with him? No, I could have understood that too.

No. He was leaving me for the invisible man who didn’t exist. Nothing. I felt a deep rage, maybe more than if he had physically stabbed me in the back. I started yelling, cursing him with the worst language I knew. “How could you, you ——, you——. How ——— could you?!!” and so on. On and on I ranted while he calmly accepted my tirade.

When I finally finished and didn’t have the energy to hurl another expletive at him, I just looked at him. My energy was depleted, but my anger was not.

Then I felt like puking. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, you destroyed the greatest friendship either of us ever had!” I yelled and left, slamming the door. I didn’t listen to one word he had to say.

But I still had to see him in class: we took the same classes. There he was, sober and smiling. Whenever I saw him, I just wanted to throw up. It nauseated me.

I visited him exactly once after all these things, in case there was any chance our friendship could be salvaged. But he was playing that music. I hated it. It wasn’t even good music. Then he started talking about that man, and anger surged within me again. It was like he sucker-punched me. He had betrayed me on the deepest level. I had to leave and never come back. It was beyond the pale and I’m sure I was beyond pale, too, as I left, closing the door.

Aristotle postulated “horror vacui” (nature abhors a vacuum) and, in my case, it turned out to be true. I befriended my next-door neighbor, Deb, and, when finals were over in August, we immediately went to a bar and got “blotto” together.

Moreover, over the next few weeks, I began to notice a man walking past the house in which I rented a partitioned apartment. I hadn’t noticed him walking by before, and he was eye-catching, always smiling and speaking to me. One day, in my mind’s eye, I imagined his voice speaking to me. It was weird, because I was preoccupied with something else. So I said in my mind, “If it’s you, knock on the door.” Oddly, there was a knock on the door a moment later, and it was him.

While I wasn’t impressed by that, I was attracted to him and freely gave him what I had denied Lee. I believe I was punishing Lee for deserting me for that man. While I did spend time carousing with the new guy, I had absolutely no intellectual common ground with him, meaning our torrid affair would be short-lived.

Shortly after we had begun seeing each other, he started trying to control me more and more. One time we went to a movie rental place but disagreed on what movie to rent. I suggested we compromise, since neither of us wanted to give in and watch the others’ preference. Then he started yelling at me in the shop full of people. So I left him there and drove away. Surprisingly, he never brought it up when he came to see me again. I probably should have seen it as a warning sign. But I wasn’t afraid of him.

I didn’t hate him, but I saw him for the controlling, manipulative narcissist he was (yet fully availed myself of the physical consolations he had to offer). Moreover, I knew I was leaving him even as I listened to him discuss his long-term plans.

When I started back to law school in the fall, I had the privilege of taking my father’s evidence class (as well as the challenge of avoiding the overeager narcissistic neighbor). My dad was the reason I had gone to law school: his kids could attend free since he taught there, and it was an honor to go.

Aside from Lee and a few passionate love affairs, my dad had always been the love of my life. I may have been one of the least perfect daughters that ever lived, but he loved me anyway and was always good to me. Even though I was ridiculously dysfunctional on almost every level, I was able to keep my law school grades up somehow, and, amazingly, he was proud of me.

The year passed quickly, with Deb and my would-be manipulative night-thing trying to fill a void that was too big for them to fill (though I was only too happy to let them try). I saw Lee in class, yet never connected with him past polite greetings. I avoided looking into his eyes. He was dead to me. Betrayer.

My dad was the highlight of that year, and my times with him were golden. We always spent time together before and after class, sometimes going out to eat. When I was with him, there was no void. He was a brilliant person as well as being a brilliant attorney and professor. I had a loving father —maybe he wasn’t an observant Jew, but he was a mensch all the same.

The next summer I bartended again and began to formulate an evacuation plan unbeknownst to my—I don’t really know what to call him. My neighbor and friend Deb was in on it and would help me move secretly.

However, my whole world was about to end. I don’t know how I knew it, but I just knew something was wrong with Dad. He had been scheduled for dental surgery and I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach something was wrong. I called home and my brother, David, answered the phone. “Dad’s dead,” he said. That’s all he said. Then he hung up.

I called our grandmother; she told me Dad had had a heart attack. My heart broke into two pieces, and I thought I would die too. It was the end of my world.

 The funeral was held at our family burial plots in a cemetery three hundred miles away, a family-only graveside service. It was close to where our grandmother lived with my youngest brother, Daniel. At the funeral, Daniel threw himself over Dad’s coffin in a fit of grief, weeping. It hit him like it did me.

Life was over. My forever-Prince-Charming was gone.

My neighbor, Deb, was kind and let me stay with her, avoiding the fly-by-night. I don’t know how I had managed to keep them apart, but I had. Whenever Mr. Night-Thing had come over, we’d always gone to his place. I insisted on it (that way I could leave).

He caught me once between my apartment and her house. I could see he was miffed I had given him the slip, but one look at my face let him know more than I could tell him. I did tell him, though, despite the fact he was unable to grasp the situation. He said, “I’m sorry,” as one might if you had lost a pet.

I looked straight at him and said, “You’ve gotta give me space right now.” I don’t know why—maybe because I was as white as a sheet of paper with tabasco-pepper-colored eyes, maybe because of my facial expression or my tone of voice—I don’t know why, but he shut up and left.

After crying for two weeks straight, I was numb. And sober: I didn’t use marijuana or drink alcohol from the time Dad died until a month later, an unnoticed miracle (I still smoked cigarettes, though, as I had since I was about fourteen).

Mechanically, I found and rented the apartment in a different neighborhood. I looked around to make sure the coast was clear whenever I was loading my car to move but was unafraid of being caught because I just flat out didn’t care about anything.

The next year passed in quietness. Outwardly, I returned to “normal” (normal for me) and took an easy bartending job nowhere near appropriate for my education, just to live. I went back to alcohol like an old friend and found a secure middle-class dope connection so I could smoke pot when I wanted to. Deb and I got together often, and I was looking for a boyfriend.

Then something happened out of the clear blue sky. I will tell you what happened. If it doesn’t fit your paradigm, you can choose not to believe it, but truth is truth no matter what you believe (I learned that in law school).

Have you ever seen the cover of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather? The trademark image is featured on all the books and movies: a hand operating the controller of a marionette (and everyone knows who—or what—the hand is, it’s the godfather controlling everything like an unseen hand).

Thus, for no reason at all, I pulled my car into a Kmart parking lot one day (this was in 1997; I’m not sure there are Kmarts anymore) because of an unseen hand (my conscious will wasn’t involved). I got out of the car as if I knew where I was going (I didn’t) and entered the store. I walked straight to the bookshelf (I knew where it was. I had been to Kmart plenty of times but didn’t plan on going there that day) and picked up a book as if I were picking up a poisonous snake, like a rattlesnake or a black mamba. It was a Bible. I wanted to get it out of my hands as soon as possible, but the unseen hand made me take it to the cashier. I held it out, away from me, as I waited in line, looking at it like you’d look at a cobra that might bite you, if you held one.

But I paid money for it and took it home.

The first thing I did when I got home was turn to the last page and say, “Well, you’re a 1900-page book, and I can read you!” I was asserting control over the book. I felt mad and ready to argue but started reading it anyway. There was an unseen hand operating me like a spiritual godfather.

I felt a presence in the room from the get-go. And I asked so many questions, like why God killed animals and covered Adam and Eve with “coats of [animal] skins” in Genesis 3? Wondering if, according to Bible logic, Eden used to be connected to Earth or not, because I knew there were no flaming swords turning every way to keep people out of someplace on Earth, yet Adam and Eve walked out of that garden and onto Earth. But I also knew God got those animal skins from somewhere.

I kept disproving the Bible as I read it, until I couldn’t. I’m not one hundred percent sure the first place the Bible spoke out from its pages to me, but I remember the jaw-droppers. In Isaiah 22, for example, it said God would violently toss Israel out of their land like a ball (which happened both in the Babylonian captivity and as a result of the Jewish-Roman wars). I might have been able to say that was a lucky guess but for the fact that Jeremiah 29 and Isaiah 66 both prophesied God would bring them back and give them back the country of Israel—and He did, not once but twice. My law-school logic told me that people with no money and no power are not given free land—not ever—and never a country. Much less twice. That just doesn’t happen in real life. And Isaiah 66 pretty much hit the nail on the head a whopping 2,688 years before David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, with President Truman recognizing Israel the same day: “Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons [NASB].” That was a major eye-opener for me.

The other jaw-dropper was all the prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament [Tanakh]. There was a multitude of explicit ones, like when Isaiah 49 (written around 740 B.C.) said God had engraved Zion on the palms of His hands, and when Isaiah 53 referenced someone righteous, whom it said would be despised and rejected, bear all our sicknesses, that God would place the sins of us all on him, that people would believe that God himself had stricken this man down but that he was being crushed for our wrongdoings, that he would be whipped and we’d be healed by his stripes, and that he would make his grave with the rich. That meant if someone weren’t rejected, this prophecy couldn’t refer to him. If he weren’t a healer, it couldn’t be him. If he weren’t whipped, it couldn’t be him. If the Jewish nation didn’t think that God was the one punishing this man, it couldn’t be him and if he weren’t buried with the rich, it also couldn’t be him. In the long run, this passage of scripture was, by itself, enough to paint a very clear picture of Jesus as Messiah for me before I even read Zechariah 12 [520 B.C.], where God said, speaking of himself, that He asked the nation to give Him His price and that they weighed out thirty pieces of silver. God then sarcastically remarked what a great price he had been valued at.

Reading the Bible, I found God to be full of emotion as well as brilliant. He got into my mind somehow and seduced me with His logic, but I also felt His presence as I read, the presence of one who was magnanimous toward me, one who had an unexplainable passion for me.

As for me, Zechariah says, “They will look at Me whom they pierced . . . and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn,”— and I did. I wept a good deal reading that Bible, which, at first, I often read stoned on marijuana. I wept for all the years I hated anything to do with Christians or Jesus. I wept over how I had treated Lee. I wept for my many sins. And then I wept for joy.

I wept for joy because God was real. Then, based on Isaiah 53, which said God would forgive my sins because Jesus paid for my transgressions, I did the only logical thing I could do. I accepted Christ. I didn’t even make it to the New Testament [Brit Chadashah].

Then I called Lee and got my friend back.

While reading the Bible, I found a love like quicksand, that pulled me in over my head.

If you are pursued by an obsessed man, you might escape (if you are clever or quick) but, if you are pursued by God, you’re sunk.