Let Us Pray

So there’s Old Lady With Rhinestone Cap Reading “High Maintenance,” Post Office Worker Who Totally Looks Like Hiter, Old Guy With Nosetubes, Asian Lady Who Stares At the Ceiling, Really Cute Guy My Age Who Unfortunately Has a Wedding Ring, and Woman Who Sings Way Too Loudly.

These are my fellow Monday afternoon Mass-goers. I am Blonde Chick Who Remains Kneeling During the Our Father and Stays There So She Won’t Have to Participate in the Sign of Peace. We’re a weird lot, with our varying shades of senility, odor control, and fashion sense-- in other words, exactly the type of people Jesus wants hanging around.

I don’t belong to a parish. I sampled many churches when I first moved here; they all pissed me off so violently with their low ceilings and their tabernacles hidden behind drywall barriers that I am left to fulfill the Sunday obligation on Monday afternoons. Orlando is a new city, bursting from orange grove to Horrible T-shirt Capital of the World across the short span of a mouse’s ears. When Disney came, the churches followed—right in the middle of Vatican II. It shows. The city contains maybe two Mary statues, total, one of which is in my apartment. Weekday services at the downtown cathedral are all I can stomach.

Yesterday, somebody new showed up: Disgustingly Attractive Woman. She wore a perfectly sculpted nose, a delicate silver rose on her wrist, and smooth stockings beneath a form-fitting, completely non-slutty red dress.

I sat catty-corner from her and spent much of the Mass staring. There had to be some sort of physical flaw—a zit... a padded bra... please, God, some cellulite. Nothing.

The worst thing of all was, she wasn’t a bitch. She was there to be there: Interested nodding and slight smiles during the sermon, bunned head deeply bowed at all the right moments, manicured nails brushing flawlessly executed Signs of the Cross. So I couldn’t even hate her on a count of empty-headed gorgeousness. You just knew she was the type of girl who volunteered every other Saturday at the soup kitchen, ate lunch at outdoor cafes, and curled the edges of birthday present ribbons into perfect spirals.

So I got jealous, followed by a spate of self-hatred for being jealous, followed by further self-hatred for having self-hatred as a result of jealousy in the middle of Mass. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spending its lunch hour hating its fat thighs. Let’s all give me a big round of Good Catholic applause.