The Most Holy Turkey Sandwich

I was raised in the Catholic church and as such, was baptized as a baby, molested as a teenager and left the church as an adult (actually, only two of those three things are true). As a parent in the church, it is common practice to begin your child in a program called CCD about the same time they're old enough to begin first grade.

Every Wednesday night, all the young up and coming Catholics would be dropped off by our mothers and fathers outside of the church and we would gather in the auditorium of the Christian school which also doubled as one of the two Catholic churches in town, before our night classes would begin. It is here we would exchange stories regarding things we had stolen, pornographic magazines we had seen and fights we had gotten into that week. When it was time to go to our classrooms, we would all line up according to grade and shuffle slowly through the hallways, like Jesus with his cross.

Inside the classrooms they taught us how, no matter what, we would never be able to understand the holy trinity. They taught us Bible stories and showed us, what amounted to, the behind the scenes from "The Passion of the Christ". They explain to you the magic of communion and how the bread you eat is actually human flesh - legitimate human flesh. They tell you it is called transubstantiation and although the Bible strictly FORBIDS cannibalism, calling it an abomination, it was, apparently, okay to partake in the abomination as long as you were doing it with Jesus. In fact, they teach you all of the in and outs of being a Catholic except what CCD actually stands for.

At some point they (they being the parents and teachers) decided it would be just a fine idea to put on a PLAY! After all, children LOVE plays! They love to be in them, they love to watch them! Children just LOVE plays. "What should our play be about?" they asked one another. Jonah and the whale? How about Joseph and the technicolor dream coat? Noah's ark? The story of Moses? Jesus feeding 10,000? No, no and double no. "Let's do that great scene where Jesus is dragged through the streets and tortured and MURDERED!" "Yes!" they all cried. "Sounds fantastic!" others shouted. And thus our damnation was sealed.

Three weeks later, after several practices, I found myself standing in front of a packed house, dressed as a Roman guard. I had on a plastic chest plate that gave me wonderful 300-style abs and a short skirt that made me look like some sort of deranged transvestite. Dangling in my right hand was a little plastic sword I was instructed to use to, "poke Jesus with" while in my left hand I carried a toy whip. There were four of us being humiliated at once while my friend Josh played out the part of Jesus, wearing a white robe and carrying a giant cross on his shoulder. We poked him and prodded him, as instructed, UP one aisle and DOWN another aisle and back UP another aisle so everyone could get an eyeful of their stupid children playing stupid dress-up beating up the Savior of the world. Inside a church, what we were doing was okay. Outside a church and in your private basement, what we were doing was called child abuse.

Towards the end of the play, the four of us drug Josh / Jesus up onto the alter, shoved a rubber crown of thorns down over his crew cut, latched the cross into the little stand they'd made and then tied him to the arms of it. The director had instructed us on how to properly snap the cross into place. He had warned us that if it was done improperly, there was a great possibility that the cross could tip over and fake Jesus would be smashed on the floor in front of the masses. To me, it seemed a great risk to leave this up to a couple of seven year olds. We tried our best and lifted him up into the air, displaying him for everyone to see. I hoped for Josh's sake that he didn't get a boner.

Dim the lights, play some piano music, some people cry but most people are just happy it's over. We lower Josh and I get out of my stupid costume, absolutely certain that I will never be in another play or Catholic church the rest of my life.



There are a few big milestones in a young Catholic boys life; his first kiss, his first pube and his first Communion and all three of these things happen at about the same time - fifth grade. On the Wednesday night that my first communion was scheduled to take place, I arrived to the gymnasium wearing my nicest and most wrinkled white button up, a clip on bow-tie and, in true Brookbank family class, stone washed blue jeans and sneakers. While the rest of my classmates looked as though they were about to partake in something serious and intimate with their crisp shirts and ties, I simply looked like a complete mess. Half schoolboy, half pervert, completely out of place. The teachers are looking at me, probably wondering why I would bother putting on something as tacky as a bow-tie and then not even bother with the pleated khakis at the very least. Did I not own a pair of shoes nicer than mud caked British Knights? This was a holy tradition. Would I be wearing flip-flops and a top hat to my wedding?

Before ushering us down the halls and into the sanctuary, they explained the very last piece of information to us - the final piece of the puzzle. They tell us that there are two ways to take the holy eucharist and it didn't matter which we chose, but it would be considered in bad taste to steal it back to our pew and try to nibble on it the rest of the way through mass. We were allowed to either cup our hands and let the priest hand the wafer to us like a completely normal person or we were allowed to just stand there, arms hung limply at our sides, sticking out our tongues looking like some drugged up, slack faced, sex addict and let him place Jesus into our mouths. I never understood how anyone could be comfortable, as a child or as an adult, with letting a grown man feed you in public like some invalid.

I stood in line and tried peaking down the aisle of innocent meat lined up in front of the priest feeding us, attempting to see what everyone was doing. Were most people taking the bread or were they being fed like kids (baby goats) in a petting zoo? I couldn't tell. As I took step after step towards the front of the aisle, towards my turn, I imagined everyone watching me, staring at me, wondering how I would respond. Was the entire congregation judging us based on our response? What if I suddenly got a boner? Why was I dressed like this? Of course everyone was looking at me! I looked as though I had just walked out of the RV that my family most certainly must have been living in. People probably thought my parents couldn't come to my first communion because they were too busy inbreeding.

My nerves are shot, I'm at the front of the line, the kid next to me opens his maw and lets his tiny pink tongue dangle from his mouth like a landing platform for the U.S. Jesus. The priest places the bread on his tongue with steady, trained hands and then looks at me. I just hold out my hands, take the thing and shove it in my mouth, mumbling, "Amen".

Tastes like stale bread to me.

Years later I'm in a Baptist church with my dad and my wife, neither of whom have had the unsatisfactory experience of CCD. Inside the Catholic church, they do communion every single day no matter what. Outside of the Catholic church, it's done roughly once a month. The pastor informs us all that today is the day we will be having communion and that we can all take it no matter what as long as we love Jesus and have him in our hearts. My wife grips my hand because she doesn't know what communion is or what she should do. I tell her to relax.

We stand up and get in line behind my dad. Jade is nervous, she leans forward and tells me she thinks everyone is looking at her. She tells me she doesn't know what to do. She's trying to peak around me and see the front of the line. What is everyone else doing?

When I make it to the front, the set-up is a little different than what I'm used to. Instead of individual wafers, there is just a giant chunk of bread that you're supposed to rip a small piece from. It was sort of disgusting that everyone was picking it up and touching it, especially since only about 10% of people wash their hands after they use the restrooms (and that includes numero deuce) but it was also very communal and I think that made it okay. I watch my dad pick up the loaf and tear off the tiniest bit, about the size of his thumbnail. Next, I pick it up and do the same before following him back to his seat. I sit down and hold it in my hands and begin to pray. Once everyone has their piece and we're all back in our seats, the pastor will say a quick prayer about thanks and sacrifice and we'll all take our bread (not Jesus this time but rather just a symbol, just regular old bread) in thanks together, as a body, or, as I like to think of it, as a club.

In my hands I cup the tiny piece of bread and in my brain I'm thinking, "Thank you for dying on the cross for me, Lord. Thank you for helping me through my daily life and guiding me through all of my mundane problems. Thank you for my job and, even though I sometimes hate it, thank you for the health that I have and that I am ABLE to do the job that I hate. Thank you for -" there's a tap on my shoulder. I open my eyes and look to my left. It's Jade.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asks. I look down into her hand where she holds enough bread to make a turkey sandwich. It literally looks like she just picked up the loaf and tore it in half. "Well," I say, "you're supposed to eat about this much". I open my hand, showing her the penny sized piece. "I don't know what you're planning on doing with all that. Maybe you should take your canteen up there and fill it up with wine to wash it all down".