I Am The Local Atheist (8 page)

“
Yeah, good as. I’ll txt ya’ to let you know where.”

“
Cheers.”

We agreed on
lunch at the Fraterniser downtown – a bar/café with deeply stained
wood panelled walls and rough tables that gave it a semi-rustic
vibe, almost an Irish tavern if it wasn’t for the mini chandeliers
hanging from the high ceiling and the café vibe squeezed into a far
corner with sofas and settees stolen straight out of the
seventies.

“
Sit at the bar by the window?” he asked, moving ahead of me,
sitting down and immediately lighting up a cigarette.

Lucas wasn’t
going to be returning to any work for another couple of weeks. I
asked how he got by with such random amounts of income coming in.
He said he relied on the government to top him up with a benefit
whenever he didn’t have full-time work. He considered himself so
unskilled that they had given up trying to find him full-time
permanent employment ages ago and just accepted that he was quite
happy to go about looking for temporary work on his own.

“
So long as I’m finding work, even casual work, then it’s a
sign to them that I’m making the effort. Those guys can’t stand
people who don’t make the effort to find work. They bug you and bug
you, but fuck, most people who don’t wanna work, just don’t work or
find a good excuse to get themselves out of it.”

I sipped shyly
at my light ale. After leaving church I had claimed emotional and
mental stress. That had lasted a good solid six months before they
began putting pressure on me to start finding work again. I kept
skipping meetings and then ringing up making an apology and
rescheduling so each monthly meeting got later and later in the
month and eventually it would work out that I had managed to skip
an entire month. I think I must have been one of the lucky ones who
got a soft case-manager, because she was forever taking pity on me
and letting me off the hook.

“
Yeah,” I said.

Lucas blew
smoke out of the open window as people walked past. There was a
clear signal from most pedestrians that they didn’t appreciate
having to walk through someone else’s smoke.

“
So what else do you do with y’ time David?”

“
Play computer games.”

“
Like what?”

“
Half-Life, Splinter Cell
. Mostly
first-person shooters. Basically anything that allows me to run
around killing people.”

“
Sounds like you have some pent-up anger there.”

“
You could say that. SWAT games demand a few more tactics so
you don’t kill innocents. My flatmate Martin is more into strategy
and RPGs;
Final Fantasy,
Civilisation,
and stuff like that. He’s
doing Computer Design and IT at the polytech. Pretty typical for
computer nerds. I don’t really have the patience for those kind of
games.”

“
Right. What about car racing?”

“
Like
Gran Turismo
?”

“
Yeah, and
Need for
Speed
.”

“
We have console nights where we get together and have
comps.”

“
That the only time you get together with y’
flamates?”

“
Generally. Martin and I have a tendency to stay in our rooms
playing individual games, occasionally having lan games together or
connecting to outside servers.”

“
Internet eh?”

“
Yeah, it connects people.” I took a swig of the beer, happy
that we were making conversation about something that at least
interested me. “Tinsdale ain’t much of a gaming freak like me and
Martin.”

“
Tinsdale? Matt Tinsdale?”

“
Yeah. You know him?”

“
Kind of. Know some people who know him. Been to a few of the
same parties. I heard he was a drug dealer. Not the sort of person
I care to hang around with, especially some of his
friends.”

“
Yeah, he’s alright most of the time. But has a kind of
attitude about some things, y’ know? Maybe that just comes with the
territory of having to be a dealer. Well, he’s a weed dealer – I
wouldn’t really class that in the same category as being a
full-blown drug dealer, y’ know?”

“
Illegal is illegal.”

“
Right,” I said taking another sip of my beer, not really
convinced that legality was all that it had cracked up to be. “But
still, sort of the kind of person y’ don’t wanna get on the wrong
side of.”

“
Likes to think he’s a tough nut.”

“
Trust me, from what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t fuck with
him!”

“
What have you seen?”

“
Some nuts were yelling abuse…” I took a quick sip of my beer,
“at him in the driveway. Don’t know why, but he walked right out
there amongst the four of them, smashed one through a window and
had another on the ground warning them never to return. I keep out
of his way. Just live in my room watching the computer screen and
tapping at the keyboard. Or at least I used to.”

“
Work always has to interrupt the play.” Lucas took a long suck
on his cigarette. “Unless you can combine the two. Then it’s a
whole new ball game.”

I couldn’t
imagine how work and fun could be compatible. I always enjoyed my
role in the youth group, but I had never considered that as work,
more a vocation that allowed me to share my joy with others. Work
so far hadn’t been fun at all.

“
How do you make work fun?”

“
Well, work is work, but the enjoyment that I get from it is
knowing that I’m doing myself good from whatever I do. If no good
is coming from what I do, then I stop doing it.”

That wasn’t
the answer I was looking for.

We sat for a
while musing over our drinks, occasionally joking about some
strange looking person that had walked past, and then going
suddenly quiet as good looking girls caught our attention.

Because it was
on my mind, I asked “do you have a girlfriend?”

“
Is that a come-on?”

I laughed.
“No. There’d be physical touching if it was.”

He laughed as
well. “Nah, I don’t. I’m not the girlfriend type.” His face struck
a perplexed grin. “Hold on, that made me sound like… I mean, I’m
not the type that hangs on long enough to call someone a
girlfriend.”

“
One night stands?”

“
Weekly distractions.” He turned from looking outside. “What
about you?”

“
No girlfriend. Haven’t had much luck on that front. Been quite
a while!”

“
Dry spell?”

“
You could call it that.”

I wanted to
talk about Lisa. I couldn’t help it. Seeing her twice in one week
had caused a great deal of frustration. The kind that I had been
able to deny while engrossed in games that substituted sexual
desire for an adrenaline rush based around the excitement of
killing or being killed. Games made it so much easier to ignore the
fact that I didn’t have a girlfriend but Lisa had managed to bring
that knowledge rushing back. Being out in the work-force didn’t
help either. Somehow I wondered if Mum’s advice had been any good
after all – conversing with someone like Christie made me want to
hide even further in my room. As a Salvation Army officer, she was
even more off-bounds than any Christian I had ever known – these
people took oaths for crying out loud! It wasn’t just a case of
‘giving’ yourself to the Lord in mind, being re-born and then
carrying on living your life as usual, but the Army was an actual
life-long commitment that involved a uniform. I should have been
reassured knowing that she was off bounds, the uniform wasn’t
exactly sexy, but damn it, her smile definitely was!

“
I have this friend. She’s suddenly come back into my life.
Been over a year since I last saw her.”

“
She wants to have sex with you?”

“
No!”

“
You wanna have sex with her?”

“
Not particularly.”

“
Ugly is she?”

“
It’s awkward.”

“
It’s always awkward when they’re ugly.”

“
No. She’s really good looking. No problems there, I just mean
that she came from an abusive family. I took her away from that,
gave her a chance to be around people who weren’t abusive and
accepted her on her own terms. I don’t really feel like she’s
acknowledging my help in her life anymore.”

“
Well, sometimes people move on. Y’ know, they gotta put their
past behind them, no matter what.”

“
Yeah true. It’s just that…”

“
What?”

“
Well, we used to be really good friends. I mean I can’t deny
that I tried to take advantage of her in a moment of weakness, but
that didn’t work out too well for me…”

“
Haha – right, I know exactly what you mean! Women are at their
most vulnerable when they’re sad. Yeah, I’ve been there before.
Been there done that, lah-dee-dah. Haha.”

I carried on.
“Well I got to know her a lot better after that and I thought that
we had become really good friends, but we had a complete
misunderstanding and she wouldn’t speak to me. Completely deserted
me, like I hadn’t even existed. Now after more than a year she
seems to finally be back talking to me. But I’m not sure why. Add
to that the fact that she now has new friends who she seems to
appreciate even more than me, and I can’t help but feel suspicious
about why she’s befriending me again.”

“
Sounds terrible.”

“
Thanks. Your sympathy doesn’t help.”

He laughed.
“Sounds like there’s heaps of sexual tension. Just have sex with
someone else and imagine it’s her underneath you.”

I rolled my
eyes.

A young woman
with dark tousled hair pulled up outside on a bike, chained it to a
pole, walked past the window, looked in, pulled a finger and poked
her tongue out at Lucas. He waved a hand towards her, smiling and
winking at the same time. “What about her?”

I knew who she
was though. It was the girl who had had the exhibition that Lisa
had invited me too. I could still vividly remember her shoulders
shaking before I turned away and walked as fast as I could towards
the door.

“
I think I know who she is.”

Lucas looked
at me. “You do? She’s a friend of mine. Callasandra. You wanna meet
her?”

“
No.”

“
I’ll call out and stop her…”

“
No! Forget it.” I didn’t want to be put in that position of
having to explain to her that I had seen her nearly burst into
tears. And that I ran away.

“
Okay. Well, maybe some other time then.”

“
Sure. Whatever.”

“
How do you know Callasandra?”

Damn. I hadn’t
wanted him to ask that question. “I saw her exhibition.”

“
You were there? I missed it. Heard about it though. Bit of a
stinker what happened eh?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Fuckin’ Christians. I hate how they go ape at even just a
little criticism, y’ know? I mean, fuck, Callasandra didn’t deserve
to be treated like that.”

“
So how come you spend so much time with The Salvation Army if
you hate Christians so much?”

“
I’m not saying they’re without their faults, but I mean for
people who are supposed to be living by the example of Jesus, they
are the only ones who even come close.”

Everybody does what they can.
I had
always focussed on the youth group because I had felt like that was
my calling and that was what God had been asking me to do. I didn’t
need to be out helping the poor, healing the sick; God had
something else for me to do. And I had done it to the best of my
abilities.

I couldn’t
deny though, that he had some cause to be antagonistic. Rickerton
was the least ‘Jesus-worthy’ of any Christians I had known in the
church and he was the man at the top, the one that, if anything,
was supposed to be setting an example. Yet all he ever did was
either sit in his office surfing the net or drive around in his big
blue hybrid car showing it off to Invercargill as though he was the
only person in town who could afford such a luxury.

“
I don’t hate Christians anyway. I just hate the religion. Y’
know? I mean Christie, and even Alice, are cool people, but if they
ever started preaching to me, I’m fuckin’ out of there!”

“
Do they know you’re not a Christian?”

“
Don’t think so. Don’t exactly make it obvious eh? I just like
to fit in where I can, not make too much trouble. I’d rather get
along with people than constantly feel like I was in the wrong, or
was being judged because I was somehow different. They don’t ask, I
don’t tell. If it gets left at that then everyone’s
happy.”

Lucas started
puffing on his cigarette with greater enthusiasm. “But fuck
Christie is a hot chick. I mean, she’s not like cover-girl material
or anything, but there’s definitely something about her that really
turns me on.”

“
It’s the smile” I said.

“
Yeah, I guess so. I’d like to put my smile all over
her!”

“
Is she married?”

“
Nup. Still a pure-born virgin.”

“
We assume.”