The Religon Room

This is a short story I wrote about a month ago.

   There are one million of them, and one of you. So what is a man to do? Some will say, ‘One on one, it is a fair fight.’ By that, the odds are against you. So what is a man to do? Choose a course of action, but do not think twice, because this is not a test.

   There are men who choose to be religious. Regardless, a God (the representation of a God, the mind’s eye’s vision) is only a symbol; just as any person that one views is a symbol, just as any color that one views is a symbol, they all may be real - but you see only symbols, because what else can you see. To see or to talk to someone does not necessitate the existence of your friend, your brother, your lover. So then the God you pray to, it is not a God, it is a symbol. Some people pray to their symbol on their knees, just as I search for my symbol on these keys, as each key is stroked, there are then as many choices for my next key as there are keys on a keyboard. In this way, I create the possibility tree for what words and sentences I can express using this machine; and perhaps these possibility trees, these algorithms I see in my head, these are my Gods, they are the symbols I have searched for since I kneeled at the altar and begged forgiveness from a God for not believing in Him, as a priest chanted over my head and confirmed me in a way I felt hollow.

   We each in turn, turned our backs to one another in the small room. I quickly looked over my shoulder, that fellow, to my left, he looked at me funny. There was a sense of unease as we all pulled from our pockets our various symbols and said a small perfunctory prayer to them. We were all so painfully aware of the others in the room saying their own foreign prayers, and though each prayer was different, they all were hasty, made hasty by us since no one could stand being in the room with the other. Because religion is like sex, in that everyone does it but no one feels comfortable performing it in front of others. They are the things that are said when eye contact is quickly broken, and those old nervous twitches come back involuntarily. Myself, I will tell you that my nervous twitch is a bouncing of the knees while I’m sitting, people who are close to me can notice it immediately (if of course, they are the sort of person who would care to notice such a thing). With our prayers done, we quickly put our things away so we could be relieved of our burden.
   As each walked out the room, it was if a weight was lifted off our shoulders. I was glad when the fellow who was on my left engaged me in awkward small talk, and I quickly responded so that he would not be put off. He is from India, and was a manager in a small business firm. Now on the bus ride, we talk happily about the state of things across borders, and in outer space. I am happy, because nothing is more comfortable to me than talk of business. That small room where I must pull out and look upon my small symbol (that I carry in my pocket. Got it at a corner store for $7.99. God will take my life, but I’ll be damned if he’ll take my pocketbook) is torture to me. But a talk of business is a comfortable talk, and I can tell the Indian fellow is a bird of a feather, because as his demeanor was threatening and large in the religion room, here on the bus ride to the gateway he is a jolly mountain of a man filled with amusing anecdotes about the micro-computer industry and the lunar conferences. As the bus pulls into gateway station C, I tell him this is my stop, and he squeezes his large frame into the crowded aisle to let me pass. I tell him Good Luck on his presentation with a knowing tone to my voice, and he laughs at my tone and responds in the same.
   Outside on the station platform, the air is hot, and a million times hotter to me, as the weather is to any foreigner. The gateway is in the distance, and for a second, I miss the religion room. I wonder if I would rather have met the Indian on the bus (as I did) or back there in the religion room (with the symbols well worn in each man’s hands to each man’s hands). I take the stairs down to the entrance, and these thoughts were pushed to the back of my mind. But I knew that even if the gateway took me farther away in distance than my mind can imagine, that thought would remain in the back of my mind, and would always haunt me.