WHAT A BEST FRIEND I HAVE IN JESUS

By Perry Brass

I am a Jew who does not believe in Jesus. But I am certainly aware of His importance. The world waited several thousand years for Him to come, and if He had not come, sooner or later we would have invented Him. Maybe we invented Him away. God, Who was huge and lonely, had to have a Son-or at least a Best Friend, and we all needed a best friend, too, so Jesus was the Answer. He was, of course, a total Enigma, full of strange, questionable behaviors and holes in his story. And, certainly, by anyone's standards, Queer-as-a-three-dollar-bill. Even if you are a devout follower of Billy Graham, believe everything you read in Time magazine, and watch Pat Robertson's "The 400 Club," it's difficult to avoid the idea that J.C. (or J. X., now, as in "X-mas") was more than a bit fey. He was an odd duck. Lovable. Cherishable. But definitely on the queer side. He was passionate in His loyalties-and certainly arousing Passion itself. As well as being more than a tad ("I am the Light and the Way!") narcissistic, if not psychotic. If He showed up today, he would probably be on Haldol, a powerful narcoleptic given to raving psychotics, since He would be out on the streets preaching things that nobody wanted to hear. He would be brought in, promptly, to the local precinct and then to some well-meaning mental health professional working with the homeless and jobless: into whose ranks, in today's economy, Jesus would drop faster than a MacDonald's french fry into reprocessed hot animal fat. The New Testament is laced with Jesus' homosociality and the intensity of homoerotic attraction to him. Obviously, He was the Monty Cliff or Brad Pitt of His time. Men (as well as women) are intensely attracted to Him. They find Him irresistible. They want to follow Him. They put off their careers, lay down their lives, and take off in His footsteps. Part of His attraction was His understanding of Himself. He was flatly what He was, and He makes no bones about It. He got this attitude from his Father whose name in Hebrew, Yahweh, means literally: "I Am What I Am." In other words, G-d can not be defined any further, or broken down into parts. (Neither can He be completed, which is the reason why Jews never write out, for G-d's sake, His full name.) He simply Is. He is Unknowable, and completely Complete. And He gets pissed off if you doubt Him. Jesus always identifies Himself as "the Word," or "the Word Made Flesh." After God, Who simply was, there was The Word-or just generic words (which pulled things into the particularity we call "consciousness"). But Jesus is the Word, He is the great word that we all have in our hearts: the One Name which means something and everything to us; which becomes, in the last analysis, our own name. So what we really want to do is marry Jesus and take His name. Now the Egyptians believed, similarly, that their own Best-Friend god, the resurrection deity Osiris, could also become themselves, if they believed in him enough. Many Egyptians added the name Osiris to their own: something few Christians, especially from Anglo countries, have the balls to do-to name themselves Jesus. (This, of course, brings us back to the question, "Why does Jesus have a Puerto Rican name?") But the Egyptians (trailblazing a type of theology that would be employed two thousand years later) also believed that Osiris was "the lover of my soul." Osiris, in his yearly resurrection (often seen in terms of an erection), would "germinate" inside every devout Egyptian. He would sprout. He would flower: he would "come" inside them. The Egyptians were hot with passion for Osiris-who enjoyed erotic cults dedicated to his worship; and much of this passion lives covertly in the same erotic attraction we have towards . . . (oh, don't say it . . . ) Jesus. (Now I realize all this must be a complete coincidence: even though the Hebrews, about fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, had spent four hundred years in Egypt; and the mystical Hebrew Essene cults-the New Agers of their time-keeping alive much of the language of the Osirian cults, had remained an underground phenomenon in Palestine up to, and even after, the era of Christ.) almost impossible to believe that He did not. But that He was immensely, wondrously, attractive to these followers, that He gave them everything they had been looking for and could never find in a repressive Hebrew culture, seems to be something nobody don't wants to admit. Could it be possible that the entire cult of Jesus had a homoerotic engine behind it? That Jesus was the "best friend" Hebrew queers had been looking for: knowing that they could not find this desired figure in Judaism (nor were they allowed to stray over to the culture of classical Greece or Rome, which might have embraced their needs, but taken away their Jewish identity which was too important to risk even to be among the more tolerant pagans)? No. It's not possible. (Oh, yeh. . . .) But, finally . . it kind of sweeps over me sometimes. Like a wave . . . like a dream. The dream of him. He overwhelms me. I want Him so much. He is tactile, visceral, real. The language of Him. The idea of Him. The thought of Him. The visions. "He walks with me and He talks with me," an old hymn goes. "What a friend we have in Jesus." The Ultimate Best Friend. He forgives me everything. He holds my hand and gives it a manly squeeze when I need it. He intercedes between me and his Father, the Big Boss, who will judge us all but keep his Son on His right hand side, when the Final show down comes. In the old days, right after He died, his circle must have been bereft; and, just crawling with queers. They could not be open about themselves. They had to make secret signs. The sadness of them. The misery; the fuck-It-all missing Him. They wanted Him so much. Touching Him. Washing his feet. Pouring sweet oils over His head. Feeling the aura of Him. The breath. The Spirit. He was a dove; a Lamb. A Word. A word we could not use, except in private. He was purely sexual and yet without the limits . . . the boundaries, the defining male-female patterns of gender sexuality, to which we still cling. And yet, there was nothing eunuchoid about him. He had both balls intact. He was a regular guy. He must have looked like the teenage John Wayne, kind of pretty, but tough. And yet not like John Wayne. Not like him at all. Maybe He was like nobody. Or everybody. But He was a real man: with hair in all the right places. And a nice body: in the old pictures he always has this nice body. Wide shoulders, trim waist; cute little male nipples. Not deformed. Never ugly or twisted; even though the Christians later made a lot of talk about Jesus being "body neutral": the body didn't mean a hill o' beans to them; or to Jesus. Jesus was more than the Body, and yet . . . (another secret) He liked the Body. Being anointed. Washed. Touching. Kissing. Holding. He liked that. But he was ballsy. He'd bite your head off if you got Him mad. He was the best friend who'd fight the schoolyard bullies for you. He was that best friend who was popular. He was totally cool. The Truth was, He was a buddy to the Principal. And, in with the coach of the football team-and all the teachers; when he wasn't telling the teachers what to teach. Yet, one day in the halls, just when you felt most shitty, He deigned to look at you. His gaze just hit you, and you crumpled. You'd never be the same. You . . . little schmucky you. And your heart stopped; and all you had to do was just . . . take Him to you. Believe in Him. Deny Him not. "It's only a paper moon just as phony as it can be. But it wouldn't be make-believe, if you believed in . . . the Son of Man." So without a lot of backtalk, we believed in Him. Sometimes He was the refuge. We wanted to crawl inside Him. Curl up warm and tight; just suck on Him, like little blind kittens do their mommies. Other times He was a tough shield. If we believed in Him-enough, the schoolyard bullies wouldn't bother us anymore. In fact, our Jesus could beat up their Jesus. Then finally, after a dozen-or-so centuries, the queers, who'd been so for Him all through the Ages, who loved Him, but still had to watch their butts in the schoolyard; who prayed that despite their best buddy Jesus, the bullies wouldn't gang up on them; well, they started to get "hip." They started to discover that their Best Friend . . . had a cute hunky body. They could actually love Jesus physically. (Or even-Oh, Jesus-carnally!) That is, as long as nobody "big" really saw it. Or figured it out. So you had all these High Anglican "metaphysical" uptight-upright poets talking about how they wanted to embrace their Best Buddy's lacerated body, kiss His bloody wounds, wash His dirty feet with their hankies ... and the upright Catholics, rolling around in their Baroque S & M scenes (which sometimes-like the Inquisition-got a little too hot), what with scourging themselves over Him, and walking on their knees until their skin popped, and holding their blue balls extra tight for fear of spilling their seed "on" their best Friend ... and all those choir boy televangelists, between wringing their hands for old ladies and ringing in the Visa Card money, with their little tear-stained faces . . . they, too, had discovered that Jesus was not only a Best Friend, a Pal, and a Confident: but a lovely smoke screen for all their High and Low goings-on. Jesus was as good as Anti-Communism. He was the Ant-Acid for all your burning queer problems. In fact, He could even keep you from being burned as a queer. Just as J. Edgar Hoover learned, nobody could accuse you of being a queer as long as you hated them darn Commies so much, nobody could accuse you, likewise, of being a fruit if you Truly loved Jesus: loved him enough to deball your Best Buddy, while holding tight to your own cahoonies. Oh, them blue balls- darlin', they hurt! (So you let 'em go just a bit; just a little bit, and then you really see Jesus.) But then . . . what can I say? Sometimes He comes to me. Passionate. Warm. Fulfilling. He holds His great right hand out: the Father/the Son/the Best Buddy. He has these big dark hands with neat hair on His wrists. His palms feel like a catcher's mitt, because He's caught so many of us. He tells me I don't have to be afraid. All I got to do is believe in Him. In his Importance. His Love. And I do. I believe in His importance. I would have invented Him if He had not existed. I would have seen him in every mirror: seen Him next to me on the subway: written off to every personals ad to try to find Him. He sweeps me up with him, takes me on His ride, is part of the gut-level tribal force that I feel myself a part of. Is the glue that holds the tribe together: and yet (the tragedy of it; the awful tragedy), His cult is the rope that will be used to hang us. They would take His sword and cut our heads off with it, even though He-veritably-would have used that sword to protect us. We cannot understand it. He was going to be our refuge, but He has become hostile. Bitter. And at last neutered, in the dirty war over the final copyright ownership of his Name. They have made Him into a brand name; into another arm of the corporate P.R. concern that runs what we call "Knowledge" or "Information." He has been lost to us, we fear-and yet we are the only people who can find Him. Didn't he once favor the downtrodden, the unpopular? He who had been the Principal's favorite, the Home Coming Queen-all right, King-of the football team who won all their stupid games in His name? And now He's packing arenas: a whole so-called "Christian Men's Movement" is coming out to proclaim His sovereignty and show that they'll beat up anybody who's not on His side, their side: all the street queers, and the druggies, and the "deadbeat" daddies (who want to get away from them) as if Jesus had actually talked about them ("Who so ever believeth in Me and is not a deadbeat dad. . . ."), when what he really wanted to talk about- did talk about, was us. That we weren't separate from him. Nobody was. And about love. About being there for us: about the Kingdom of Heaven that we were going to walk into, with Him. So I don't believe in Him. He contradicted Himself all the time; just like I do. Sometimes He was meek and humble. Sometimes He was full of Himself; just like I am. So I don't believe in Him; but I believe in His importance. And if He had not existed . . . anyway, one day I may find Him. And when I do, He may be Jewish (again), or black, or Chinese, or deformed or disabled (okay, I'll say it right: physically challenged), or even . . . incredibly stupid. Just kind of brainless and simple and sweet. Not cutting edge of anything, but a good guy. And then it'll be up to me to know Him. I won't have to be brainy, either. Just smart enough to be open to Him. Maybe I'll fall in love with Him, because that seems to be the only language we have-in our limited, stupid time, for what Love is. But I'll have to stop everything. All the rushing ahead and all the silly games I play-like we all do. And I may find Him at the end-the smoky, piss-stained end-of some gay bar; one of those bars that's no longer cool. Where the aged, and the too young, and the too broke, and the too unhunky and the never-gonna-be-winners hang out. And when I do find Him, we'll have a wonderful talk. Just Him and me. And He'll listen to me. And finally, just before "last call," He'll tell me that if I really believed in Him, I'd never be alone. He will walk with me and talk with me, all the time. And neither will He be alone. Because He needs somebody like me-every so often; somebody who doesn't believe in Him. Who doesn't think He's such hot crap. But who knows how important He is: who is convinced of it. Who would have made Him up, if He didn't exist, and who's waiting for Him, just the same. ___________________________________________________________________________________ The above is a selection for The Lover of My Soul, a book by Perry Brass coming out this fall from Belhue Press. Perry Brass's most recent book, The Harvest, a sexy gay science fiction thriller dealing with cloning and body-part transplants, can be obtained through amazon.com or adlbooks.com or ordered through 800-343-4002. Perry Brass can be reached at belhuepress@earthlink.net He has published four novels, including the famous Mirage trilogy, dealing with the planet Ki, where gay men mate for life and carry the powerful Egg of the Eye, a third testicle that allows them to read thoughts and travel through space.