A Story by James Gathings

The following story was written by James Gathings. James has been the leader of our small writing group over the past few weeks. He calls the following tale "Revelations."

At last he awakens. He begins to stir and rise up slowly. He looks around the small motel room, as if searching for something. He sees me and asks what time is it?
"6:00a.m.," I reply.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Over twelve hours at least.You were passed out when I arrived."
He looks at his arm, then his chest. He then looks under the blanket.
"Where are my clothes?"
" I don't know, you were passed out naked on the floor when I came in. You left the door open a little too."
He looks at me with empty blue eyes and says," Thank you for taking care of me."
I remind him that friends look out for each other. He looked out for me when I needed it.
"You okay?"
'I feel like shit, but I'll live. I'm sorry you had to see me like this, especially after I said I would quit."
"How much did you smoke?"
"A couple of joints and drank a few beers."
I wanted to ask why he did it, when he said, "Sometimes it's like the greatest feeling in the world. Sometimes it helps to deal with the past."
He stands up and falls back to the couch. Looking at him, I thought to myslef, you'd never know he'd been in there 14 years. I help him up and into the bathroom. As he urinates, I turn on the shower. I help him in and wait for him to finish and dry off. We walk into the kitchenette and he finds his clothes in the refridgerator.
"Fuck. I must have been out of my mind."
We laugh and he goes to the dresser and gets a clean pair of boxerbriefs and puts them on. He stands there and stares at me.
"What?"
"Nothing,it's nothing."
Then he says, "I need to tell you about what I experienced. After a few joints, I saw myself floating out of my body. I was moving through this weird tunnel.It was very psychodelic. I ended up in this all white room,when this brightly glowing figure appeared before me. I don't remember much about what happened next, but I think I met GOD. You can't imagine what it was like to be in his presence. I felt so warm and so loved, but naked and exposed. It was like everything i had ever done or said or thought or felt was visible for everyone to see. I was so happy and so scared, I cried. Then you appeared. You were an angel surrouned by this heavenly glow. I remember you lifting me up and guiding me back to my body. It was,It was...."
He hugged me and began to cry.
"Thank you. Thank you."
He looked at me with tearry eyes and then pulled away from me.
"It was all bullshit. I hallucinated the whole fucking thing because of that goddamn drug. The greatest feeling in the world and it's all shit."
I start to reach out to help him, but I hesitate.
"Oh GOD, what do i do now? What is wrong with me?"
I tell him to try to get some rest. As he lies down, I can't help but wonder, was it all a drug induced dream?.
Maybe this was GOD's way of getting his attention. Or mine?

By James Gathings

CINCO DE MAYO

Foots has big feet, size 15 or something. He's hoisting the pinata here. It was a duty he performed with an air of patriarchial pomp and ceremony. One part of the ambiance that you can't see is the Jose Alfredo Jimenez ranchero music blasting in the background that at least emotionally put us closer to Chihuaha than Charlotte. What brings drug dealers, latinos, 40-year old children of the street, retired volunteers, and a couple of 20-something college grads together at 2 in the afternoon like a pinata at the Urban Ministry Center? For a half an hour or so our family really functioned well. And when blind folded Rose Crank's curved whip of the stick and the trajectory of the pinata's repeating half-lunar sway coincided, we were all covered in a unifying cloud of white powder, scrambling for pieces of candy on the ground, scrambling more to be a part of the scramble than to hoard the foil packaged sweets at our Foots.