My Favorite F***ing Movie: Yes, God, Yes

Apologies for this month’s essay being a smidge late; my husband recently started a night job at Universal and I barely know what day it is lately. My birthday was in April and it had me reflecting on how much I’ve grown and changed, particularly in my past eight years living in Los Angeles. Moving to California was liberating for me in a ton of ways, and it helped me shed baggage I’d toted around for most of my life. April’s essay is all about shame, where it comes from, and how we stop listening to the scolding voice in our head.

My Favorite F***ing Movie is a personal exploration of sex through film, released monthly.

I’ve always related to women who have left their churches.

Technically, I was raised Episcopalian—or Catholic lite, as my mom referred to it. When I was very young, my parents would take my brother and me to church service on Sundays. (All Sundays? Most Sundays? I can’t recall, to be honest.) We were allowed to tote along a few toys or a book, as long as we sat quietly in our pew and didn’t disturb the more devout congregants around us. My parents wanted to expose us to religion and give us the option of pursuing it if we chose.

“But none of that original sin stuff, no confession,” my mom told me later. “What does a child have to confess?”

I have no real recollection of those days, except for a single, hazy memory of lying on the church lawn and playing with my new Puppy Surprise, a stuffed dog toy that had birthed three plastic puppies from its plush stomach earlier that morning. Two girls and a boy. I ended up losing the boy somewhere in the church that day, never to be found again.

God giveth, and God taketh away.

I’ve often heard the story of the time my mom and dad were watching Fried Green Tomatoes while I sat playing on the floor behind them. I was five, maybe. They assumed I wasn’t paying any attention, but then came the part when Idgie (played by Mary Stuart Masterson—this is a classic; if you don’t know what “Towanda” means please don’t get back to me until you do) was given the choice of going to church in order to secure her alibi in a murder trial or going to jail. I popped up and announced, “I’d rather go to jail than church!”

That was around the time we stopped attending regularly. My parents decided Christmases and Easters were probably enough… and eventually that stopped, too.

So you can see, I never really bought into the whole “capital-G-god” thing. I think my parents were just too liberal and too irreligious themselves to make it seem remotely plausible. But in the absence of religion, we find other gods to fear.

Boy, do we.

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