A Catholic Christmas Eve Vigil (not Midnight - different kind of Mass).

The scene was thus: A strange-to-me Catholic church off of something and Capital in Milwaukee, near where my mom, not a religious person but a nice person, took me and my sis when Christmas happened to fall on our regular visitation weekend one particular year.

The priest spoke on and on, as fathers and Father tend to do. The readings familiar, unre(M)arkable, (L)ukewarm, Psalm verse, same as the first.

The Homily was delivered in the patented priestly monotonic nasally drone, the incense and insensitivity flowing too freely. The easily-employed white, gray-haired, "middle class rich", Kohl's-suited, stoic husbands stood, sat, knelt, genuflected, stood, knelt, stood, sat, stood, knelt, genuflected, prayed, sang-chanted, with their wives, who were fully guilt-jeweled for common marital slights, whether real or imagined, or who benefited from rich parents who left their ill-gotten legacies to their ill-raised, now boomer kids who have become reluctantly over-sexed wives. The department store credit cards tucked safely in their expensive clutch purses, these women were fully-prepared to wage full-out Karen-esque, post-Christmas sale consumerist war in the following post-holiday sales season.

Retail workers never stood a chance.

In short: The church was overheated, like hell hot, probably good prep for some of these people, and my not-Catholic mother was next to me trying to morally fix or better herself, or maybe she was trying to impress my sister and I, or, more than likely on reflection, trying to placate my very-Catholic dad and stepmom, but mostly I had been standing for what seemed like FOREVER, and my knees alternately locked and unlocked, and my youth-fitting suit that was too small but too expensive to replace at Kohls just yet sweltered me under imagined and real guilt, and the incense, and the droning, and the HEAT...

I was about 4 seconds from passing out when some stranger approached me and said "Hey, you don't look OK. Let's go outside now before you faint." and I swear it's the best religious experience I've ever had: A human being a human and taking pity on a young kid dealing with physical and emotional distress. I went outside and cooled off in the Midwestern December air. Soon after, my mom and sis came outside and we left in the beater car that smelt like gas if the heater was fully turned on, so we had to leave the freash air selector on and the slider control at no more than 3/4 quarters, but that's OK because the A/C, which hadn't functioned in many presidential election cycles, was fully-replaced by the December air, the religious experiment over.

I'm not at all religious but I hope that guy knows just what he did for us that night. We were faking faith, just trying to be good people, and the droning, heat, guilt, and THAT FUCKING CHRISTMAS INCENSE just did us in.

Lesson learned.