The Milky-White Legs of Spring

The other night I was sitting in an Russian restaurant surreptitiously eavesdropping on the only other occupied table: two married couples, one older and one younger, North American, Christian…very Christian…more Christian than Jesus. I think the older guy may be a pastor at the US army camp here. Obviously they weren’t getting smashed, which is a shame because the 15% alcohol Russian beer is the only thing going for the place. The food is God-awful. But that’s okay. I was getting smashed enough for all of us. And, anyway, I love listening to American evangelical Christians. I mean, we all do.
What was interesting, was how they discussed topics like normal people: work issues, travel, relationships, current affairs, but, God, Jesus and the Devil managed to weave their way into everything. And how, especially the older couple and the young guy, were just so smug and self-assured about everything. Even when the old guy said that he doesn’t have all the answers, you just knew that he was only saying that to appease the rest of us and that, he actually is in possession of the full set of the answers because they are all there in the Book.
When the younger woman expressed some insecurities about such and such, the older woman would say, “Oh, the Devil would LOVE YOU”, and, “Well, that’s the Devil’s job”, in that sing-song, told-you-so voice which allows her to put every single thing that doesn’t fit her definition of goodness onto the head of the Devil (and she’s talking about him like he actually exists. I wonder what he looks like to her?). Everything was just so clear-cut to them. At one point, the older woman exclaimed what ‘a genuine Christian’ so and so was, and I accidentally laughed out loud and had to cover my tracks by pretending to be reading something funny in my iPhone.
And they were able to explain every known phenomenon with a convenient Bible parable. “Oh, that’s just like the Mines of Solomon”, they would say (the younger guy tried to pretend that he knew what this meant but I knew he didn’t).
Then the food came, and with it, the longest thank-you-for-this-bounty-of-overcooked-tough-as-old-leather beef we-are-about-to-receive speech I have ever heard. I mean, this pastor guy thanked everyone, except for me and the woman who cooked it and served it (which I thought was a little unfair given the things I was bringing to the table).
Then the younger guy began saying how his students wear really short skirts (bless ‘em) and, while the pastor was doing his best to remain stoic and nonchalant, I could almost see the Devil prizing open the cracks in him as his mind conjured images of short skirts swaying in the warm spring breeze and milky-white long legs fresh enough to eat sushi off of (at least, this is what I was seeing). I wondered if his wife was going to get a beating when they got home.
It’s interesting how this overriding philosophy, not only explains every aspect of their existence, but how they feel the need to bring it up every five or so seconds. I mean, there were other topics on the table, but they were all viewed though the prism of Jesus. And both of these men were quite demeaning to the women. It was like a throwback to the 50s, like watching some old American tv show. I’m sure Jesus was never like that. It was patronizingly patriarchal. But then, of course, that’s the deal right? The only other pastor I have known who worked on a US army base camp was Father Mulcahy from MASH and, though he changed his whole identity at one point and hoped none of us would notice, he seemed like an all-round nice guy.
From my apartment window, I can see five glowing red neon crucifixes. It is like five different glowing eyes of God looking into my apartment, into my soul, but red like the eyes of the Devil. And then there’s those images of milky white legs, like being poured from twin milk cartons, and the spring breeze and the short skirts…