Boys in Gilded Cages (12 page)

It was his mother.

He could sense that she didn’t know what to
say. She assumed that something must be terribly wrong, but she
couldn’t be sure. So she decided to do what she never did, and feel
her son out before deciding to get angry.

“
I couldn’t find the
house,” Jaime said quietly.

“
That’s the most
ridiculous thing I ever heard,” his mother said, also eerily
quiet.

“
Everything looks the same
out here.”

His mother considered that. “I guess it
does, doesn’t it?” She was trying to coax him into something, Jaime
could tell. “Well, it’s not that late, just 10:30. There’s still
some people I want you to meet.”

“
It’s 11:30,” Jaime
said.

“
Hon, you didn’t set your
clock back like I asked. Time zones, remember? It’s
10:30.”

It was only a few steps to the house, and
Jaime could feel his insides start to rumble. He started to sweat
again, and the skin on his chest was noticeably tighter.

“
Just breathe deep,” his
mother said, not looking at him. “You’re not used to the elevation.
It’ll give you a headache, breathing like that.”

They reached the house, which Jaime had
never seen at night. The enormous glass panels were glowing. Every
light was on in the dining room, and it bounced off the golden
paint. It was terribly bright, and though the color was soothing,
it made Jaime’s eyes damn-near dilate. He started to panic. He
tried not to let it show on his face, but he failed.

“
You look like you’ve seen
a ghost,” his mother said. “Relax, they’re our kind of people.
Nothing to be scared of.” He held his breath, and met the small,
smiling crowd of people.

“
Have you been hiking?”
Mrs. Masters observed the film of sweat under Jaime’s
bangs.

Jaime noticed that she had a few too many
teeth. When she smiled, their whiteness flickered light into
Jaime’s face like a disco ball.

“
Yes,” his mother said,
patting his forehead like someone would an infant. “He got lost.”
She gave the crowd of people a cutesy smile, and turned to Jaime.
“Not used to the outdoors, are ya’ honey?” She paused to see if her
friends were inquisitive enough to continue on that thought. As
predicted, she followed with, “Jaime’s in from Nashville.” Mrs.
Masters gave a polite “Ooh.” Jaime rolled his eyes, and his mother
looked pleased.

“
Well, welcome to our neck
of the woods,” Mr. Masters sipped from his mug and slightly
grinned. Jaime noticed a young man in the corner of the living
room. He was a few years older than Jaime, no older than
twenty-one. He exuded the plain wheat dullness that everyone else
seemed to, only a little bit nervous or bored, Jaime couldn’t put
his finger on it, and his presence seemed odd. He seemed
out-of-place.

“
That’s our son, Kevin,”
Mr. Masters chimed in. “Say hello, Kevin.” Kevin waved.

After making pleasantries with the Masters,
he went to the den to watch television and eat the store-bought
pastries he had stolen from the table in the foyer. He had hoped
that he would sit uninterrupted, but usually he hopes for too much.
He heard a light knock on the door panel, and he turned to face Ms.
Master’s congenial expression.

“
Do you know where your
mother might have gone?” She asked. “She kind of disappeared
and—“

Ms. Masters turned around suddenly as
Jaime’s mother touched her shoulder.

“
Oh! There you are. Have
you seen Kevin?” Ms. Masters looked perplexed and uncomfortable.
Jaime’s intuition told him that she didn’t fully trust his mother,
who was leaning a bit from several glasses of

wine and towering over Ms. Master’s perm.
Jaime wondered if Ms. Masters was the invitee or a guest of the
invitee.

“
Kevin walked home. Didn’t
he tell you?” Ms. Masters tried not to look at the vanilla-colored
fingernails that Jaime’s mother flailed while speaking. Jaime
agreed that they looked ridiculous.

As soon as that was settled, Jaime’s mother
rushed Mr. and Ms. Masters out of the door. “You guys should visit
more often!” she said, practically slamming the door on their
heels. A few seconds later, a shirtless

Kevin walked by the den and reflexively made
eye contact with Jaime.

He stopped, though Jaime could tell that he
didn’t want to. “Whatcha’ watching?” Kevin asked, stammering. Jaime
felt an intense cycling heat from his gut to his head and then back
again.

Usually in these situations, his brain fried
on an overdose of sweaty adrenaline like a crashing computer or a
dry-jointed machine. But in this instance, for reasons unknown to
him, he had a clear emotion— rage—and had a clear, smooth,
streamlined fantasy of redemption.

Perhaps the prospect of living in the abyss
known as Wyoming left him feeling like he had nothing to lose, and
made him impervious to anxiety. His sudden internal animation
surprised him, and pleased him. Realizing he should not waste this
opportunity, he explored his options carefully. Should he kick
Kevin’s ass? Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, Jerry Winkler
might feel it.

Should he kill him?
Kill
her
?

He was certainly mad enough to, and was
enjoying this emotion immensely. In yet another involuntary flash
of introspection, he wondered what it might feel like to thrust
this sensation to climax, Kevin’s shattered face leaving a
disgusting, satisfying mess on the marble.

He imagined Kevin begging Jaime to stop, his
scruffy goatee and long hair matted with blood. He imagined his
drunken mother’s snarl, her challenging him to do it, to pull the
trigger, he doesn’t have the guts. He knew how outlandish these
options were, as they would most likely solve nothing. Furthermore,
they wouldn’t go how he imagined they would; nothing ever did.

After he decided how he would handle this
situation, he gave Kevin a final, psychic signal to wipe that
stupid smirk off of his face; a dire warning. Kevin didn’t heed to
this signal.

Jaime’s blood boiled pure, and he looked
away from Kevin, waiting for him to leave, hoping to savor this
slow internal burn in peace.

When he didn’t leave, Jaime relaxed his
vocal chords to warn this cretin one last time.

“
If I ever see you again,
I will tell your parents. You will wish you had never been born. I
may hurt, possibly kill you, if you do not leave my sight right
now. Do you get me?”

Kevin laughed nervously as if he hadn’t a
clue what Jaime was referring to. Kevin had asked a simple question
about television, hoping Jaime would allow them both to pretend it
was a secret that he was

fucking his mother.

Jaime pointed his glare, with the intent of
making Kevin scared for his life.

“
Do you fucking get me,
Kevin?” Jaime growled demonically. Kevin left slowly, trying to
appear as collected as he could.

Jaime fell asleep in the black leather
swivel, after his spark had cooled. At some point in the night, his
mother removed his shoes and placed an old blanket onto his
torso.

When he woke, he felt hung over and tired
and immediately wanted to go back to sleep, but was sure

it was noon, at the earliest. He staggered
into the kitchen to find his mother asleep at the counter. There
were eggs burning in the skillet, filling the place with smoke. He
rushed them over to the faucet, the resulting smolder loud and
inconsiderate of the intense throb he had between his ears. His
mother woke clumsily, whipping her messy mop of hair from the
countertop, her eyes groggy and still covered in makeup, and her
squint evidencing a dull ache. This jarring image, to Jaime, made
her polished, detached demeanor look scuffed and raw. He saw how
fragile the woman’s equilibrium actually was. In one of those
flashes, he imagined how clingy a lover, sister, or daughter she
may have been at his age.

She was dependent on men and on love. She
fucks the breakfast up on purpose.

As she got up to make coffee, Jaime wondered
if she had the same disillusionment that he had, and he also
wondered if her behavior was a better way of dealing with that
disappointment. Most of all, he won-

dered why he never understood something so
obvious. If this had been simply shown to him, he may have rejected
it as babble. Getting a glimpse of his mother in this way made him
feel needed.

“
God, what time is it?”
Jaime’s mother slurred, focused only on not spilling the coffee,
her back to him.

“
I dunno,” Jaime said,
picking up the previous day’s newspaper. “Not too late.”

THE PROTEST

Profiles



The Lonely
Protestor


Bobby
Faust vs. Father Redmond of Hawthorn Baptist Church

By JP Andrews July 1, 2014

On August 19, 2013, Harold Redmond, pastor
for the controversial and increasingly infamous Hawthorn Baptist
Church, made a phone call to Bobby Faust. Bleary-voiced, but with a
sort of hopped up tremor at 1a.m. “We need you, Bobby,” Father
Redmond said, near sobs. “God needs you. I need you. Please come
back.”

The tiny town of Hawthorn, Missouri,
population 575 as of 2010, has never been so embattled as it is
now. Father Redmond is the mayor of Hawthorn, taking Bobby’s father
Jerry’s seat. This is the first time in over 100 years that the
mayor’s seat was not run unopposed. As Bobby saw it, the rural
Missouri church’s increasing public spectacle, coupled with what
Faust saw as a betrayal of his father—a family friend, became
grounds for resignation of membership. He said, “I never considered
myself a particularly religious person. In fact, these days, I’m
closer to an atheist. But in Hawthorn, church is family, and family
is church. You don’t hurt family.”

Faust is surprisingly cavalier about
defecting from the church that so many have labeled a cult. He
claims to not know much about the accusations of fraud and drug
operations, and suggests that his decision to leave was more
personal than moral. Although he is decidedly aloof regarding the
alleged corruption of Hawthorn Baptist church, he was a lifetime
member, getting Baptized there in 1987, at the age of two.

In spite of his casual cynicism, he has not
been silent. He recently blogged for ManChild New York—a sort of
op-ed for a liberal site, known for skepticism of media
conglomerates, politicians, and the establishment in general. It
tends to treat all public figures with the same fascination and
repulsion many people have for Hollywood actors. No one is spared
from gossip, and ManChild New York became interested in Hawthorn
Baptist Church shortly after its most famous member—troubled actor
Brandon Bennett-- disappeared briefly in 2009.

Bobby has since spoken with every media
outlet, from Fox News to the Huffington Post, who are mostly
interested not in Bobby’s story, but Hawthorn’s connection to
another controversial Midwestern church, the Westboro Baptist
Church. He seems to understand what they want, which is soundbytes
that are remarkably similar, and reflects on them with media savvy
that belies his objective stance on the church’s operations. “They
didn’t want to know about drug trafficking, they didn’t want to
know about the Church’s income last year, which was ridiculous when
you think about how small it is,” he said. “They hinted at it,
leading questions off with ‘with their alleged IRS-dodging
tactics,’ but mostly they focused on the gay-bashing and their
connection to Westboro. There’s a much bigger issue here, with
Hawthorn. But it’s like they’re building up to it. It’s like,
‘First America’s gotta know that Hawthorn exists, then we can break
the biggie stories.’ It’s kinda gross. It’s almost like they’re
working publicity for Hawthorn. The weird thing is, Father Redmond
always seemed to hate attention. But knowing him, there’s a plan in
place. He’s creeping up on you guys.”

Father Redmond is no slice of bologna.
Hailing from Nashville, Tennessee, his ex-wife is the head of Eye
of the Needle Music Group, a Christian Rock record label bought by
Capital Records in 2005. Before entering the ministry, he was CEO
of the company, and upon his divorce and resignation, was promptly
awarded an undisclosed settlement, which is rumored to be in the
low millions. He had a son, Eric, during his second marriage, but
many in Hawthorn quietly doubt that he is a product of either
marriage. “People talk, you know. Even in such a controlled
atmosphere. They talk,” Bobby Faust says. “And Father Redmond is a
known adulterer. That kid’s got problems.”

In his op-ed for ManChild New York, Faust
wrote, “Eric Redmond’s real mother was rumored to be a Nashville
prostitute ordered off of an internet dating site, and Eric has
definitely inherited his mother’s probable drug problem and mental
illness. Or maybe Father Redmond molded them himself.” Rambling
strangely, “I don’t want to get too specific, and in fact I’m
talking too much now, but I wish a real journalist would
investigate what Father Redmond has single-handedly done to the
once not-unpleasant town of Hawthorn, Missouri. It’s a town of
ghouls and zombies.” Father Redmond has only formally responded to
anything said about him in the media once—to this op-ed. “I don’t
know where to begin with Mr. Faust’s so-called article. If he wrote
it, you can bet it’s not true. This is a badly-executed retaliation
from a known liar, drug addict and reported homosexual.”

“
At first, I was surprised
he even read it,” Faust said. “He preached about the evils of the
internet many times. Hawthorn Baptist doesn’t have a website. But
now that I think about it, it doesn’t surprise me that he did.” As
for Redmond’s allegations, Faust simply replied, “Used to be true,
true, definitely false.”