No More Need For Greenwashing
When my great grandfather died late in the night in Poland, we were pulled out of bed by our sobbing mother. Everyone quickly slipped into black clothes so we could comfort our immediate grandfather.
Twisting my hair into a ponytail, I spent half a minute in the laundry mirror carving the perfect side-part deep into my scalp and loosening the hair tie to fish out face-framing baby hairs. I opened 10 Snapchat streaks of pictures of walls and sent 9 Snapchat streaks of my wall and 1 Snapchat streak of my wall but also 1/8th of my spotty face. As I snaked my finger down the screen with the red digital pen, I could hear my mother crying quietly outside. This is when I knew I was evil.
I redid my ponytail, hair slicked back in the way I had always been told is really unflattering on my angular face structure. And, I left the iPad I got for my tenth birthday at home. At the very least I am redeemable.
It frustrates me that I am less good because I have to choose to be good. And before that, I had to choose to choose to be good. “Born sinners”, but me more than most. Thwarting this technicality has been my utmost concern for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I must get to Heaven. Hopefully, I am good enough that when I get there they will let me +1 my atheist DJ boyfriend.
Locking down the evil in me is like binding off an arm, my evil arm. The one that should be able to slap, stick up the middle finger, wank and litter. The very same that they cut off in medieval times for stealing a loaf of bread. I cannot repurpose this arm for good, it just hangs limp from my shoulder—dead meat—while only the hand that gives moves freely. With half the viable limbs, I do half as much as everyone else and at twice the personal expense. A lot of sore one-armed hugs and group selfies.
People ask that if Hell is where I can meet all of my cool secular heroes, why strive? Quite simply, I don’t think laps with Jim Morrison in the Lake of Fire exists. Surely, Hell is completely dark, no companionship, pain beyond articulation.
Heaven, I assume, is the body restored and perfected, a very literal, anti-abstract location. A country club surrounded by mansions and a thigh gap. Probably the ideal retirement village with bingo and pizza Fridays and the TikTok Beauty filter. As blissful and warm as dinner with your relatives and no mention of politics. Heaven is permanent eyeliner and acrylics that never grow out.
When I use enough force for my goodness to reach someone else, the effort winds me and I have to lie down a lot. My manager notes I am always leaning on whatever is near (because she cares, not because I am unproductive). I take deep intentional breaths and post-mix Coke instead of house lager because alcohol makes me weak and unprincipled. I am in bed before 10pm, a forever almost-cramp in my lower back. In my half-dreams, I get a low credit with no feedback on Canvas and my Substack is leaked to everyone at Freeman Catholic College. The class of 2022 stone me on the T80.
My teenage acne was a tell-tale sign that I had something rotten inside. The detritus of decaying sentiments were condensed into a thick impenetrable sludge, trapping my body-made toxins in the bottom of my fourth and final stomach. My large intestine must have been perpetually clogged, constipating me, and the shit was finding its way out through my skin.
Nothing got rid of my acne until I finally got a job and paid a dermatologist in Liverpool $230 to see me for six minutes. The pharmaceuticals gave me nosebleeds and cracked the corners of my mouth. I didn’t kiss anyone for two years but my skin was immaculate.
Now: The second coming of my acne. I am going back to the doctor who tells me he cannot prescribe me any more tretinoin or I will die.
He suggests I cut gluten, dairy, oats, refined sugar, FODMAPS, unfiltered water, seed oils, stone fruits, alcohol, cosmetics and porn completely and immediately. I have to burn my teflon pans and synthetic tank tops, unsubscribe from Spotify and subscribe to Apple Music or I will have acne forever.
My atheist DJ boyfriend massages borowina from Polish peatlands into my lower back. It warms the top of my skin, then the fat, then seeps into muscle below. I wonder if the peat heat could penetrate my heart if he lathered up enough in the right place.
My grandfather graciously gifted it to me. He is the one who has sent me a 39-minute video where an AI voice rhapsodises how the Book of Daniel is actually playing out in real time. The thumbnail is a generated image of Trump and Netanyahu arm wrestling, or maybe they are locked in the final throes of a determined secret handshake. I only watch the first 20 seconds so I will never know. I do know this much: the prophetic timeline is coming to a head soon.
I open the video and scroll through the comments. Infidel @women4christ posts: “No one knows the time, not even the Son. If anyone tells you the time, he is a deceiver." I thumbs down the comment with the anonymous Youtube account I use to subscribe to ASMRists. I listen to inaudible affirmations when I am following the cleaning roster or falling asleep before 10pm or when my atheist DJ boyfriend is massaging borowina into my lower back. A fat tongue slides over the pink folds in my brain, picking up dust and debris, and leaving it shiny, wet and clean.
In the following weeks, nothing new happens to me, but I happen to a lot of other people.
I park in the clearway and my Suzuki Swift is towed. I spend the money I saved for a house deposit on two separate luxury bags and a keratin treatment. I miss my turn on the cleaning roster. I go to a pub in Balmain and laud the convenience of Westconnex. I convince God that my boyfriend is actually an agnostic DJ. I slap, stick up the middle finger, wank, and litter in varying degrees. Through it all, I wonder if my great-grandfather ever got enough of kneeling on hard bags of beans for penance, and cut the line for a limited government-distributed pineapple in communist Poland or something.
Inner West art circles soft-cancel me but instead of moving back in with my parents I use my last $3k to book a one-way flight to John Paul II International Airport Kraków-Balice (KRK) and pre-hire a car to take me to the Orawsko-Nowotarskie peatlands in the Polish Carpathians.
Halfway, in Dubai, I hear trumpets. My fingers fumble to redownload Snapchat for the first time in years so I can send 9 streaks of the sky split open and 1 streak of the sky split open and 1/8th of my face.