Ugh... What had Esperanza eaten? Or drunk? Whatever it was, her mouth had gone sour and her stomach was threatening to heave. After a few minutes and a small glass of Sprite, the nausea faded. Morbidly curious, she wondered: would her newly minted oracle have something ready for her now, at the famous witching hour of 3:00? She started scrolling, her heart sank. Yes...
Damn! Did that girl ever sleep? She snickered. Of course not. Kids that age never slept if they could help it. She'd been young once; she knew. Sleep was something you only learned to appreciate at 35 or 40, when your metabolism slowed down and your joints started creaking. As she settled in to read, what she saw almost triggered a spit take.
Revelation 3:15-19: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent."
Great. Just the kind of thing an aging woman needed to hear after almost turning herself inside-out, though she supposed that the line about rebuking and chastening meant that there was still some hope... And what was the song this time? "Border Town" by Chuck Girard. Might as well get it over with...
Immediately she was put in mind of a spiraling descent as the guitars opened.
He was born in the South / The gospel in his mouth / With an outward kind of holiness around him / But it could never take root / 'Cause it didn't really suit him / And what should have been his freedom only bound him
Time and time again / He felt the pleasure of his sin / But though he knew it would not last beyond its season / It seduced him anyway / And he made his choice one day / And rejected everything he'd once believed in
He's livin' in a border town / He's livin' in a border town / His left foot in the Dark / His right foot in the Light / One person in the Day / And another in the Night / He's livin' in a border town...
Whew! Thank God for earbuds! She didn't want to think what might have happened if Damon had heard that...
Though he'd made the choice / His friends would never ever know / He was too weak to let his secret self be known to them / But the man they saw outside / Was just an act so he could hide / The inward man that he did not want exposed to them...
Yeah. Definitely not for his ears. Not yet, at any rate. But would she fare any better?
It is better to be hot / It is better to be cold / Than in the middle of a highway going nowhere / Darkness to the left of you, a magnet in the night / But a decision must be made to not go in there
Get outta that border town / Get outta that border town / Your left foot in the Dark / Your right foot in the Light / One person in the Day / And another in the Night / Get outta that border town...
Nope. And honestly, that was only fair. After all, she had known his spiritual condition from the word "go". That was a large part of what had drawn her to him in the first place: he was just like her in all of the worst ways. She had used his sins to justify her own. He may have been good at fronting, but he wasn't that good. Also, she couldn't help but appreciate the irony of having a white man telling her to Get Out. Still, message received. But what to do about it? How could she leave this Border Town, now that she had built so much of her life around it?