I was sitting at the front of the church with a couple dozen or so other kids who’d survived Sunday school with me, and I had the body of Christ dissolving into mush in my mouth while trying to figure out how to discretely spit out the Son of God without anyone noticing.
The communion wafer had been in there for maybe ten minutes already, possibly fifteen. Been slowly chewing it like gum, working it around with my tongue, feeling it break down into something increasingly disgusting while my nausea built in waves. The logical solution was to spit it out. But where? Into my hand? Onto the floor? Into my suit pocket? Every option led to getting caught, and getting caught meant… what exactly? Divine punishment? Adult fury? I wasn’t entirely sure which scared me more, which should tell you all you need to know about where I was spiritually at that moment.
So, I kept chewing, kept trying to work up the courage to swallow this thing that sat in my mouth like a masticated wad of paper, all while sitting on a folding chair trying not to vomit in front of God and everybody.
Let me back up.
I’d woken up feeling like absolute shit. Whether it was the flu coming on or my body’s last-ditch effort to create some plausible excuse to if not evade then at least postpone this sham of an event, I’ll never know. But I was nauseous, feverish, and had that heavy feeling in my limbs that meant my immune system was fighting something and currently losing. The rational move would have been to stay in bed. My so-called family, however, had other plans and those were the only ones that mattered.
Food was the last thing on my mind since my stomach had been warning me about what would happen if I dared swallow anything containing calories so I refused to eat that morning. This annoyed people and I was warned not to complain about being hungry later on since I wouldn’t have the chance to eat anything after leaving home until the ceremony was over which would last at least a couple of hours. Simply thinking of food made me queasy so I was perfectly fine with that. No one would be hearing me complain about hunger I promised. Skeptical but seemingly satisfied with that answer, everyone proceeded to get their coats.
It was at this point where I made a slight tactical error. I asked to speak with my father alone and told him I didn’t want to go.
This requires some context. My parents weren’t living together at this point. My father had been largely absent from my life in any meaningful way, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him attend church. Not once. He wasn’t religious like my catholic lunatic mother, but he wasn’t an atheist either, just a regular old hypocrite who’d presumably decided that religion was something other people had to do but he was somehow exempt from. So when I mentioned not wanting to go through with the communion ceremony, I thought maybe, just maybe, this non-religious guy might take my side.
His response was immediate and stern:
“What!? What do you mean you don’t want to!? Oh, you’re going!”
Said in such a way that there was no need for him to add ‘or else’ to the end of that statement for emphasis. He didn’t bother asking why and I could see he didn’t care.
So, that was it. The conversation was over. I was going to my first communion whether I believed in it or not, whether I wanted to or not, whether I could stand upright without feeling like the world was spinning around me and I might collapse. None of that mattered. The performance had to happen. The show must go on.
I didn’t know about the suit until that morning. It just appeared, like so many things throughout childhood that appear without explanation or warning. I was expected to put it on and that’s exactly what I did. I went through the motions and got dressed. To my surprise, the suit actually fit although the shoes that went with it were a bit snug.
My father happened to show up during the middle of this whole getting ready process.
He arrived dressed in his own suit, carrying a camera, and for a moment I thought I might be hallucinating from the fever. I hadn’t seen him in a while and wasn’t certain if he’d actually make an appearance. But there he was, suddenly materialized as if he’d been a regular presence in my life all along, ready to document this important spiritual milestone with the enthusiasm of a man who gave a shit.
He’d make me pose for pictures before and after the ceremony. Multiple pictures until the roll of film had been exhausted. He was smiling and acting like a proud father. But it seemed to me like he was simply putting on a show for the other people there.
“And today .. playing the role of proud poppa .. is New York’s own .. Joe Blow!”
His name wasn’t actually Joe Blow if you’re wondering.
So the performance wasn’t just mine. He had his own role to play: Devoted Father at Important Religious Ceremony. Never mind that he’d been absent and never shown any interest in being an actual father. Never mind that he’d never demonstrated an ounce of religious conviction. Today he was Dad with a capital D, and I was supposed to be grateful for the documentation.
I resented him for it. I still resent him for it even though he’s been dead for nearly forty years.
My mother and father barely interacted during any of this, which honestly would have been typical even if they’d been living together. They only acknowledged each other when absolutely necessary, two people bound by the offspring produced in marriage, that from my point of view seemed like it could have been arranged at random, but nothing resembling truly meaningful connection.
The ceremony itself was interminable.
We sat in a special section they’d set up to the right of the priest, almost like bleachers, a couple dozen kids or so in uncomfortable formal wear, all of us fulfilling our parts in this ritual most of us didn’t really understand, which we’d never admit to of course, and some of us were already beginning to doubt (Hi, my name is Jeff and I’m “some of us”). The other kids seemed genuinely into it, for the most part, or they were incredible actors, or I was just terrible at reading people. Probably all three. A few of them noticed I looked terrible and when asked about it I told them I felt like absolute crap and they seemed genuinely sympathetic, but regardless we were all just kids doing what the adults in our lives had told us to do and expected of us.
The nausea came in waves. I’d feel okay for a few minutes, then a surge of sickness would hit and I’d have to concentrate on not throwing up. It made me start doing something I hadn’t done much before and haven’t done since: I began praying. Like ACTUALLY praying. Not the rote memorization from Sunday school or the nightly prayers my mother had made me memorize as soon as I started saying words, but genuine desperate bargaining with God.
“Please make me feel better. Please understand this isn’t my fault. Please forgive me if I vomit during communion. Please.”
At that point in my life, I still believed. I took faith seriously, well, as seriously as any child can, even as I was surrounded by people who clearly didn’t and were somehow unaware that I could tell or perhaps didn’t care if I could. People who weren’t good but pretended they were good every Sunday. The same people who would be quick to scold me and condemn me to hell for minor infractions while demonstrating daily that church attendance had done nothing to make them decent human beings.
Seeds of doubt had been planted, watered by hypocrisy and fertilized by some basic initial education about history and how religion had done very little to prevent atrocities or ameliorate human cruelty. But I still believed enough to pray. Enough to bargain and think that maybe God would take pity on a sick kid who hadn’t asked for any of this.
Then came the communion itself.
All the kids lined up in the center aisle in two rows and began receiving their portion one by one. I stepped up when my turn came, opened my mouth so the wafer could be placed on my tongue, made the sign of the cross and then walked back to my seat in the “bleachers”. I was supposed to let it dissolve on my tongue, this thin disc that represented the literal flesh of Christ according to the doctrine of transubstantiation I’d been taught to accept without question.
But I couldn’t just let it sit there. I was too nauseous. The texture was wrong. The whole situation was wrong. So I started chewing it, working it around my mouth like gum, and that’s when I got stuck. Because now it was becoming this disgusting mushy thing while my nausea was building, and I realized I needed to get rid of it but had no idea how.
I thought about spitting it out. I looked for opportunities. But there was no discrete way to do it. We were sitting in front of the entire congregation. My father was out there somewhere with his stupid camera. The priest was a few feet away. Other kids were on either side of me. Where exactly was I supposed to deposit the body of Christ?
So I kept chewing. Slowly, and as covertly as possible. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. I don’t know exactly how long, but it felt like half an hour. The wafer broke down further and further until it was just this blob of paste in my mouth, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore and just swallowed it the way I’d learned to swallow gum in school. One gulp, and it was gone, sitting in my stomach like a pebble.
The rest of the ceremony happened around me while I concentrated on keeping everything down. The prayers, the rituals, the standing and sitting and kneeling, all of it blurred together into an endurance test.
Don’t throw up. Don’t embarrass everyone. Don’t ruin the performance.
Eventually, it ended.
Afterwards, after another tedious round of picture taking, surrounded by adults who were thoroughly pleased with themselves, it was decided that we’d go to McDonald’s.
I drank some soda and that’s it. It was all I could handle. Which prompted someone at the table to observe “I guess he really doesn’t feel well.” Not “sorry for forcing you to sit through a multi-hour religious ceremony while you had the flu” or “maybe we should have listened when you said you felt terrible.” Just acknowledgment of the obvious fact that yes, I was actually sick, followed by everyone dispersing to their lives to do whatever it was they were going to do for the rest of that day.
My father disappeared back to wherever he’d come from, his photographic evidence of good parenting secured. My mother went about her business after we got back home and I went to bed early, the body of Christ still sitting in my stomach like an accusation.
There were no apologies. There was no discussion. The production had been completed successfully, and that was all that mattered.
That day was a perfect distillation of everything that would eventually drive me to atheism.
It wasn’t the theology that broke me. At nine years old, I couldn’t have articulated sophisticated philosophical objections to Catholic doctrine. What broke me was the hypocrisy and the forced compliance. The prioritization of performance over reality. I was learning that virtue didn’t actually matter to the adults in my life enforcing these rituals. My father didn’t believe or barely believed or pretended to, not sure which, but I had to participate anyway. The ceremony was more important than my physical wellbeing. The appearance of devotion took precedence over everything.
So there I’d been, sitting in front of a congregation, nauseous and feverish, chewing the body of Christ like gum and trying not to throw up while my estranged father documented the moment for posterity.
The seeds of doubt that had already been planted found extremely fertile soil that day.
From the church’s perspective, what I was feeling during that ceremony would be satanic influence. The doubt and the resentment. The irreverence of chewing the communion wafer and thinking about spitting it out. All of it would be evidence of the devil’s work in my young soul. But here’s the thing: at least Satan doesn’t pretend to love you while forcing you to engage in rituals you don’t believe in. At least he doesn’t demand worship while offering nothing but hypocrisy in return.
The real deception that day wasn’t coming from below. It was coming from the adults who enforced this meaningless performance while pretending it was of utmost importance. From a father who never demonstrated faith but demanded my compliance and a system that cared more about obedience and the appearance of belief above all else.
I completed my first communion for whatever that was worth. And for an nine-year-old kid who still believed enough to pray for relief while simultaneously learning that prayer changed nothing and performance was everything, that was enough to start a thirty-plus year journey toward understanding that sometimes the most moral position is to reject dogma entirely.
The wafer eventually dissolved in my stomach. The lesson it taught me never did.
