bible – Bethany Leger

Eat Sh*t and Die: How My Mother Explained Christmas

The holidays were in full swing as my teacher strolled up and down each aisle complimenting a bunch of first graders on their crappy construction paper Christmas trees. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Christmas, so I clumped a handful of cotton balls into the shape of a snowman. A borderline heretic, I then slipped my glue-encrusted fingers through a random pair of craft scissors and carved out the shape of an Evergreen. “Aren’t you going to decorate your tree?”, asked Ms. Ridinger, hovered over my desk. No, I responded, instantly riddled with guilt. I just want to admire its natural beauty.

If I ever see a child sitting in the mulch on a sunny day, and this child tells me they don’t want to swing on the swing, or slide down the slide, they ‘just want to admire the architecture’, I’m going to hunt his mother for meat. It’s not that I’m against a budding Frank Lloyd Wright, or even a future horticulturalist. But, a child’s instinct is to play and explore, and my teacher was entirely justified in the silent eye-roll I guarantee she did in her heart. Who the hell are this kid’s parents, and why don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate Christmas?

After bringing my bare, not-Christmas tree home, my mother sat me down to explain why we refrain from engaging in the festivities. She placed a glass of water in front of me. “Look at this clean glass of water,” she said. “Now, imagine I put a teensy, weensy drop of poop in it.” I waited for the inevitable punchline that was going to teach me why I can’t have a normal childhood. “Most of the water looks clean, but that one little drop contaminated the whole glass.” Christmas might look beautiful and harmless with its twinkle lights and presents, she reasoned, but its origins are tainted by pagan traditions.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are technically not wrong about Christmas. The Romans co-opted Christ’s birth as an excuse to get wasted during the winter solstice, and today, we watch Will Ferrell on December 25^th while exchanging material goods we most likely don’t need. And, if our recent decade of marinating in extreme political correctness taught us anything, it’s that you’ll be put before a firing squad before you brazenly assume someone celebrates Christmas, as opposed to Hanukkah or Ramadan, or worships their garden gnome. But, there’s a problem with my mother’s logic. When I performed this same purity test to trace the origins of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I found my fair share of shit: thousands of cases of child sexual abuse that were never reported to law enforcement. Charles Taze Russell’s fascination with the occult. The Watchtower Organization’s ties to the United Nations. The fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrated Christmas even after claiming they were cleansed from pagan practices in 1919*. The math wasn’t mathing.

“Would you want to drink the water after you knew poop was in it? Eww,” she made a yucky face, satisfied with her argument but blind to her own hypocrisy. I could ask my mother the same question. Would you want to align yourself with a group that has sketchy roots and a history of systematically abusing the most innocent among you? “If we don’t stay faithful to Jehovah,” she warned, “we could lose our life.”

Drink up, Ma. I have a tree to decorate.

*For more info about Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrating Christmas, check out JWFacts.

Best Life Ever: Single Jehovah’s Witnesses and Depression

She spent her days grinding away at a tedious desk job. Her mother was on disability and needed her help to support the family. In her spare time, she spearheaded a foreign language group that offered rudimentary Bible studies to a remote indigenous community. She was reliable and loved by many. Then, out of the blue, she texted me: “I think I’m depressed.”

There are books to read, places to travel, foods to explore. There are hobbies waiting to be dabbled in, questions to ponder. The world is full of opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of others, as my friend proved every day. Don’t forget, others have it worse—at least you have a roof over your head. Most importantly, no matter what you must endure in this world for the sake of His name, you’re storing up spiritual treasures from your loving heavenly Father. And, sometimes, you just need to get laid.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have a loneliness epidemic. They are sexually repressed through guilt and shame, then gaslit into believing their gnawing, inherent craving for intimacy is a result of their own weakness. My overworked and undersexed friend tread lightly in her statements, as if the subtext belying her confession wasn’t glaringly obvious. “The single brothers here…. I’m not really attracted to any of them. I love Jehovah. I don’t know…I guess I’m just tired.” She was tired, alright. Tired of the bullshit.

Single Jehovah’s Witnesses are tired of having to routinely justify and dismiss their natural, biological needs. Tired of being told to distract themselves with more Bible reading, more preaching and prayer. It’s not their fault most of them reach peak maturation in a sexual wasteland. Since premarital sex is prohibited, those who want to do right by God enter ill-advised marriages by the time they graduate high school, and those who can’t find a compatible mate, or simply want to bone without signing papers, are SOL. Sure, my girlfriend could have been depressed for other reasons, but in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, not every SSRI prescription is traced to a chemical imbalance. She was thirty, single, and nowhere to mingle.

“He had cool socks,” she giggled. My friend climbed the steps of Machu Picchu. She went whitewater rafting and studied moose tracks in the snow-capped Canadian Rockies. After the Apocalypse, my friend would strangle zombies with her bare hands while Sock Boy shit his pants. She was a beautiful, daring, grown-ass woman reduced to an adolescent who doodles “Mrs. Socks” on her organizer, and for what? A lukewarm love connection who couldn’t make eye contact and was probably gay.

Jehovah’s Witnesses claim they have the “Best Life Ever”. This isn’t some grassroots motto, a genuine testimony circulated among insiders who have experienced the benefits of a set of specific religious tenets. It’s their trademark, like, “Just Do It” or “I’m Lovin’ It”, and this brand of spirituality is presented as indisputable fact. If my friend admitted to me—and herself—that a steady diet of cult rhetoric and busy work wasn’t enough to stave off her hunger for more, her desire for companionship and the freedom to find that companion elsewhere, our tagline wouldn’t have the same ring to it. Single or not, that’s a ring no one should settle for.

Am I the Only One? — The Dangers of Groupthink and Razor Burn in the Dallas ‘Burbs

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that anyone who disagrees with them is the enemy. Their leaders, collectively known as the Governing Body, demand unquestioning loyalty and obedience, even though they have repeatedly failed, lied to, and exploited their parishioners. They are the self-proclaimed gatekeepers of truth and mouthpiece for God, when their track record doesn’t warrant the reverence they receive. Unfortunately, Jehovah’s Witnesses live in an echo chamber, leaving anyone with even a whiff of doubt to think: Am I the only one who feels this way?

In a cult, you can’t express your doubts without immediate repercussions. There is zero grey area, or room for nuance, without your character suddenly being called into question. Here’s where it gets even more sticky. Sometimes, the group is not entirely wrong. Jehovah’s Witnesses, as a group, want paradise on earth. They want to eradicate injustice and inequality. This is a beautiful sentiment. But, they also want to achieve this by the most divisive means possible—eradicating anyone who isn’t a Jehovah’s Witness. This paradoxical logic means they want to usher in an unprecedented era of world peace through a wholesale rejection of anyone who isn’t exactly like them.

At first, I tried to express my concerns in a way that was non-combative and reasonable. Why do we shun people who leave? If you want someone to change their mind and possibly return, insulting and isolating them isn’t exactly going to make them receptive to what you have to say. Or, when I vocalized my distrust of the Governing Body due to their mishandling of child sexual abuse cases, their eyes just glazed over. One Jehovah’s Witness put it this way: “Even if the accusations are true,” they said, “this is still the best place to be.”

One afternoon in my early twenties, a girlfriend invited me over to swim with her at her apartment complex. The cool, chlorinated waters would be the antidote to my hot Dallas depression. As I changed into my swimsuit, I noticed I was a bit scrappier than I’d like to be. “You got a razor?” My girlfriend, a disciple of the Brazilian wax, rummaged through her bathroom cabinet when she pulled out something cheap, pink, and plastic. I held out my hand.

“I wouldn’t do that,” she warned, laughing at the one-blade relic. But, I insisted.

“Better than nothing,” I said.

Next, as we dipped our toes in the chilly pool and congratulated each other on how cute we looked, we agreed to jump in at the same time. I surfaced with a gasp. Holy shit, that burns.

It’s okay to have doubts, to not be so certain that you leave zero margin for error. Unlike the Jehovah’s Witness who tried to convince me that their haven for pedos was still morally superior, I don’t believe that defaulting to the group out of misplaced loyalty is the answer. As they fall back on sweeping generalizations and pressure their members to conform, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ rigidity will be their downfall. Is it possible that there are alternative viewpoints, or solutions, and why was I so confident that a rusty Bic was a smart move?

Sometimes, nothing is better.

But, They Had Turkey On Sale: When Jehovah’s Witnesses Covertly Celebrate Thanksgiving

Jehovah’s Witnesses are discouraged from engaging in extracurricular activities at school, associating with classmates or coworkers, even from attending college. This doesn’t include the hardline rules thou shalt not break: premarital sex, recreational drugs, and holidays, to name a few. That leaves two things to look forward to: booze and food.

This is the equivalent of feeding a toddler sugar and caffeine, then putting them down for a nap; Junior’s going to unleash unmitigated chaos in the nursery. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been denied so many pleasures that once they’re behind closed doors they secretly break the rules, or they gorge on whiskey and pumpkin pie (damn, that sounds good.) And, herein lies the irony—a Jehovah’s Witness can drink and drive, get lit and terrorize their spouse, but they can’t smoke a fatty, or enjoy a turkey leg once a year without keeping the blinds drawn.

Thanksgiving was created in the 1600s after a bunch of white people took shit that didn’t belong to them, then thanked God for their successful genocide of an indigenous people. Today, Thanksgiving is a Thursday off in November where we eat, spend time with family, maybe even volunteer. But, Jehovah’s Witnesses are forbidden from celebrating holidays, so they have to go underground. The whispers start, texts are exchanged, and before you can say “Butterball”, Jehovah’s Witnesses across America are ready to throw down in the kitchen.

In a moment of lucidity, I once asked my mother, “Isn’t this basically celebrating Thanksgiving?” Every year since I could remember, my mother invited at least a dozen people to the house for T-Day dinner with all the fixings, and we were not by any stretch the only ones. Whether you were hosting, or just bringing the yams, everyone in the congregation consumed bird that day. My mother, however, shrugged off our hypocrisy: “Sure, we could do this any time of the year,” she said. “But, they had turkey on sale.” The tastiest rationalization I’ve ever heard.

Let me be clear. I have wonderful memories of Thanksgiving dinner with my Jehovah’s Witness family, because that’s exactly what it was. Saying a prayer to Jehovah to give thanks for the food and company, and adding several inches to our waistline with one meal. Of course, there will always be those few Jehovah’s Witnesses who you won’t see at the table—they’re camped outside Best Buy to get a head start.

Disfellowshipped: The First Time I Talked to a Dead Guy

He wore a tan suit that looked like it came off the clearance rack at JCPenney. When he didn’t respond, I poked him again in the shoulder. “Hey, it’s me!” I waved my magic marker-stained hand in front of his face. But, his gaze fell downward, blank. I backed away slowly and shuffled over to my mother who was seated on the opposite side of the room. “Mama,” I whispered. “I said hi to Jamal but he didn’t talk to me.” My mother, draped in her auburn scarves and garnet earrings, craned her neck around. I watched as her eyes tried to locate him in the crowd. Then, leaning in towards me, she lowered her voice. “He’s disfellowshipped.”

Let me break this bullshit down for you: Jamal* was 17 years old. When he was a child, he lost his father in a tragic accident. Then, his mother suffered a traumatic brain injury. Jamal was my brother’s buddy, and was one in a handful of young Jehovah’s Witness men in town. No one cared about Jamal. His mom was kooky, and his younger sister was obese. His family didn’t bring any clout—or money—to the congregation. Then, Jamal got into some trouble and was excommunicated. At 17, a fatherless boy was ostracized by the only people he knew, and left for dead.

No, Jamal was not dead, but he might as well have been. I wish this were an exaggeration, but no one would know Jamal’s whereabouts unless they smelled the body weeks later. Through the naïve eyes of a child, I couldn’t comprehend why a bunch of grown-ups would do something so cruel. Whatever Jamal did, he didn’t deserve to be ignored in a room full of people, people who were supposed to love him and have his back.

Then, it happened to my brother. Like Jamal, my brother was “dead” for two years. “How’s your brother?” they’d ask me, knowing damn well they exiled a young man. Their smirk was a knife to my seven-year-old heart, and they took me for stupid. But, the funny thing about seven-year-olds is they don’t stay seven. They get older, they remember, and sometimes, they become writers.

My parents are devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I’ve brought them shame for speaking out against the Organization. But if I don’t say something, I teach them that shunning is okay. The Jehovah’s Witnesses traumatized Jamal, my brother, and continue to traumatize thousands more with their inhumane shunning policy. Jamal and my brother may be grown men now, but their wounds will never heal. They were forced to hang up their skateboards, dreams, and their dignity, their memory forever ossified as Prodigal Sons who crawled their way back into God’s good graces.

By the way, I’m dead now, too. I revoked my membership from the Jehovah’s Witnesses on New Year’s Eve, 2017, because I could no longer align myself with an Organization that has ruined countless lives. However, I’m only dead to my parents and former friends. In all other respects, I’m alive and well. The sun still shines on the wicked!

If you’re reading this, and you’re currently dead, I want you to know it gets better. Yes, it’s shitty for a while, but it does get better. And, if you decide to go back, I understand. Your family has put you in an extremely difficult position. But. I hope you’re honest with yourself as to why you’re going back, because anyone who would do that to you sure as hell doesn’t love you.

If you’re dead, welcome back to life.

*Not his real name.

Resources about disfellowshipping and shunning in the Jehovah’s Witnesses:

Jehovah’s Witnesses call disfellowshipping a “loving provision”:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150415/disfellowshipping-a-loving-provision/

A shunned Jehovah’s Witness mother kills her family, then herself:

https://www.freep.com/story/news/2018/05/18/keego-harbor-murder-suicide-lauren-stuart/620709002

Jehovah’s Witnesses pressure families to not communicate with disfellowshipped family members or friends:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20130115/let-nothing-distance-you-from-jehovah/

Check out JWFacts for more information and updates about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ shunning practices.

I Hope You’re Choking in Heaven

The Bible says, “look after the widows.” (James 1:27) Gladys* was an 82-year-old veteran Jehovah’s Witness. In the span of forty years, she completed several holy tours, preaching throughout multiple states and countries. After retiring from missionary work, she smelled like cat food and watched soap operas from her recliner. Gladys was a widow, and I quietly wondered how many years I’d get if I pushed her down the stairs.

Gladys was an asshole. She spoke over you and had a condescending stare as if she were waiting for a punchline. She was more Estelle Getty than Jesus; which would be awesome if it were her job to make people laugh for a living. (Not the case, pussycat.) Instead, Gladys believed she belonged to a select few destined to live in heaven with Jesus after they die. The Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to this VIP group as the “144,000”, a number they plucked from the highly-symbolic book of Revelation to support their skewed interpretation of the End Times. If Jesus were President, the 144,000 would be his administration; executives who vow to help Jesus rule over the humans. Gladys longed for heaven, so she could literally look down on everyone else.

When it comes to cranky old people, I’m of two minds. First, I don’t know what they’ve had to endure, so I should show compassion. The other half of me says, if you’ve managed to isolate yourself from everyone with your Bible-beating and inflated sense of self-importance, well, karma’s a bitch. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other far-right evangelicals, are stocked with cranky old widows like Gladys, because this environment validates and reinforces their narcissism. Of course, there’s something to be said for making it that long, for having a sage perspective that comes with decades of life experience. The catch is, if you’re going to come full circle and insist on behaving like an entitled toddler, no one’s going to stick around to change your diapers.

Yes, I’m going to be a widow one day. I’ve tried to force my husband to sign a pact that says we die together, holding hands in conjoined hospital beds. But, being that he’s ten years older, he reminds me that the odds are not stacked in my favor. Maybe this prospect scares me and I, too, end up cranky and distressed. Maybe I end up needing a home health aide. Maybe I wind up on a park bench talking to pigeons. At the very least, I don’t harbor some delusion of cohabitating with Christ to boss around future generations.

Gladys used to eat a pudding cup in the afternoons. One day, her tired granddaughter, who I happened to adore and who had an appointment she couldn’t get out of, asked if I would watch her grandmother for a few hours. Once we were alone, Gladys demanded I drive clear across town in rush hour to pick up more of her favorite pudding cups at the one grocery store that still carried them. I said, no.

“You’re a real piece of work,” she said, rolling her eyes. Then, she turned her back to me and headed downstairs to the finished basement where she lived.

Later, I heard a commotion somewhere in the house. I followed the sound to the top of the staircase to hear Gladys choking. Oh shit, I thought. I hoofed it down the stairs and stepped through the door which was already partially open. “Are you okay?” Before responding to me, she regained her composure and placed her pudding cup by the phone. Someone was on speaker.

“Hey,” she yapped into the receiver. “Let me call you back.” The other person didn’t hear her.

“I’m with you Gladys—” said the voice on the other end, “—she’s an idiot.”

Gladys died a year later. I’ve met my share of pious curmudgeons over the years, but Gladys takes the cake (or, pudding). In honor of Gladys, I raise my spoon: I hope you choke on it.

Amen.

(*Her real name. That’s how much she sucks.)

Kingdom Hoe: When Men Get Off in More Ways Than One

You’re sixteen. You had sex. Someone snitched.

Now, you’re sitting, nervous, at a conference table in the back room of a church. Three older men in suits are facing opposite you. One is the head honcho. Two are hunched over a yellow legal pad. None of them have been laid since the Dust Bowl. They proceed to ask graphic questions about your body and first sexual experience. You’re humiliated, and they don’t care. You’re denied the presence of a parent, or even another woman.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own judicial system run exclusively by male judges, and every trial ends the same way: you a hoe. If you’re a former Witness reading this, it’s no secret that women are disproportionately punished in comparison to the men who fuck them, then fuck them over. Whether he fessed up, moved on, or in the rare case, cares about her, seeing the guy publicly shamed and excommunicated for premarital sex is like a Bigfoot sighting—as elusive as the orgasm we know she didn’t have.

And, they don’t just target high schoolers. Girls who haven’t even begun to menstruate are told to cover their shoulders lest they lead grown men into temptation. Back in the seventies and eighties, married couples were chastised in front of the same tribunal of geriatrics for “unclean acts”, anything where he showed some love to the wrong hole. It’s a misogynistic tale as old as time, a system designed to control women and protect a line of perpetrators that start at the top.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have a chronic, systemic child sexual abuse problem. Eleven men, known as the Governing Body, or ruling board of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are complicit in the obstruction of justice. They are: Stephen Lett, Gerrit Lösch, Geoffrey Jackson, Samuel Herd, David Splane, Kenneth Cook, Jr., Gage Fleegle, Jody Jedele, Jacob Rumph, Mark Sanderson, and Jeffrey Winder. I imagine Jeffrey Epstein would’ve been a welcome addition. Like Epstein, I’m guessing more than one of these names are on the list of sex offenders that have yet to see the light of day, a database that has been amassed for decades.

In 2024, Taylor Swift wrote a song about another loser she dated, this time, a loser in “a Jehovah’s Witness suit.” I couldn’t care less who the guy is. I have zero interest in decoding the subject of her cryptic jabs. My only hope is the whispery hit ballad doesn’t encourage clueless, pubescent Swifties—in some counterintuitive twist— to crush on their own loser Jehovah’s Witness boy. It would have been nice to see the indisputable Queen of Pop use her influence to address a few of the scarier things about the Witnesses if she was already going out of her way to burn them. Maybe she could sing about the countless Jehovah’s Witness women who have been raped, then excommunicated for reporting it to law enforcement. Or, she could collaborate with Serena Williams—celebrity Jehovah’s Witness and ambassador for the Allstate Foundation’s domestic violence program, Purple Purse—to allocate funds to Jehovah’s Witness women who are being beaten, then coerced into staying with their abusers. Maybe on the next album.

Of course, there are men who are not immune to the trigger-happy whims of authority. One guy in my congregation—we’ll call him Scott—became a widower at thirty-five. After the death of his wife left him a single father with five boys to raise, Scott developed a heroin addiction. Instead of extending compassion and facilitate his rehabilitation, the elders disfellowshipped him. Young boys have been preyed upon and abused in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And, sometimes, women who are unhinged or calculated manage to get away with bad behavior; the congregation politics were such that the stars aligned in her favor, and when this sort of thing happens, you can bank on it that it’s a case of the elder having reason to protect his ass, not hers.

Young women around the globe continue to be subjected to purity culture and double standards. They were born into a world of criminals, men who have made it their goal to keep her sexually repressed and silent. To the young woman in that back room who had to sit there and eat it, you’re not alone. As more Kingdom hoes unite and courts lose patience, the only thing he’ll be eating is subpoena.

It’s Beautiful, Dammit: Why Blue Skies and Sunshine Made Me Want to Die

I’m driving home from the coffee shop when I look out the window. The neighborhood is bathed in a soft, early morning glow. Everyone is still asleep. Bursting cherry blossoms bristle in the crisp spring wind, the sidewalks peppered with the pop of purple coneflower. Suddenly, the sky yawns, big and blue and beautiful. As I soak in the view, I feel slightly unsettled. Fingers coiled around the steering wheel, I examine each passing house: the one with a brick porch that’s a different color from the other bricks. The one where the shutters have a half-moon carved above the slats. Espresso wafts through my Volkswagen as I coast down the lazy, bohemian boulevard. I notice if the front door has a screen, a brass knocker pinned at the top, or is propped open and ready to greet whomever may come moseying along. It’s going to be a perfect day for preaching, only I escaped the cult seven years ago, and I don’t have to knock on another fucking door for the rest of my life.

Every Saturday, I’d wake up at 7:30 am, begrudgingly, throw on a skirt, take a nervous shit, gather my Bible and a stack of dog-eared magazines, and haul ass to the Kingdom Hall. Granola bar hanging out of my mouth, I would relish the last bite of breakfast and moment of silence before heading in. Next, I would say hello (begrudgingly), sit through an obligatory pep talk about saving humanity, then brace for the heat or blistering cold, depending on what we were subjected to that month. On the way to the “territory”, I would jerk my car into a Quik Stop, take another nervous shit and dry heave. Twenty minutes later, I parked my broke (but enlightened!) ass on WASP country, with irritated stares already peering through their fancy blinds. Jehovah’s Witnesses infamous door-to-door ministry is a nuisance at best, certainly for the disoriented homeowner jostled awake by a religious zealot, but also for the one doing the knocking. I used to pray, not for salvation or world peace, but for rain. Please rain, I thought, and spare us all.

I grew up in Dallas, Texas, where most of the year is oppressively hot. Like a vampire, I recoiled at the sun, pining instead for cool, overcast skies. I rejoiced in a thunderstorm. I had been known to frolic in a puddle, or two. But most notably, rain meant those crazy people wouldn’t be out proselytizing. Rain was the sole qualifier, the one get-out-of-jail-free card we had where Jehovah’s Witnesses in suburban America wouldn’t be pressured to preach to strangers that day—at least not on foot. We also did ‘phone witnessing’, the Jehovah’s Witness equivalent of telemarketing. Hello, you live in a gated community, which is why I’m giving you my unsolicited religious advice through this method instead. And, we did ‘letter writing’: hand-scribbled junk mail punctuated with scriptures and stickers, letting grown women with a Lisa Frank obsession express their creativity in ways they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed to. I, however, risked the guilt trip that came with opting out of these alternatives, and went back to bed. Preacher on the streets, sinner in the sheets, indeed.

But, if it was beautiful outside, say, 65 degrees and not a cloud in the sky, you were screwed, destined to spend a rare, sparkling two hours now tarnished by the drudgery. No one wanted to talk to us, and if we were honest with each other, none of us wanted to be there, either. We descended on neighborhoods, uninvited, to arrogantly shove our brand of religion down someone’s throat on their own doorstep. At least a fraction of us knew this was wrong, but we were following orders; the door-to-door ministry was mandatory, and anyone who didn’t report for duty would answer for it later. People cursed, slammed doors, or would simply notice us from a distance and quietly head inside. I hated blue skies and sunshine because it meant I would be seen in the daylight doing something that, in fact, put me in a dark place. My religious life isolated me from the rest of the world, and preaching on a stunning, panoramic morning only served as a reminder of how lonely I really was.

Occasionally, I’ll get a faint hit of PTSD on a bright day, though it quickly subsides, replaced by a rush of relief—I’m free. Spring and summer are very different now. Lounging in my plastic Adirondack chair in a tattered bikini, I welcome the warmth on my cheeks. (My face, pervert.) I’m enjoying my little patch of land uninterrupted, happy to let my neighbor do the same. No more doors to knock down, souls to save, and if I take a shit, it’s for the pure joy of it.