The bad kind of Lutheran

Readers who followed the recent story about the apprehension of the BTK killer in Kansas might have noticed that the man who was nabbed for the crime spree was not only a good Lutheran but had recently been elected president of his congregation council -- a position equivalent to chairing the board of a small nonprofit. At the time, I think I just made a joke about this to Cris and then forgot about it.

But on Monday night I had occasion to bring it up when I was being interviewed by a reporter about being both a churchgoer and an erotica writer. (I'll link to the interview when it gets posted.) The reporter asked me whether people at church knew about my sex writing and whether I'd gotten any shit about it, and I said no, it's pretty hard to shock people in San Francisco, especially at a church that's two-thirds gay and on the edge of the Castro District. I then brought up the BTK killer, who was said to snoop around town trying to catch people in minor infractions, and my father, who seemed to have a similarly judgmental and suspicious attitude about everything. He embodied something typical about the conservative brand of Lutheranism I was raised in -- suspicious, critical, quick to see the negative side of everything.

Well, my father's been dead for several years, but I guess all this talk about him brought him back in my mind, because last night I dreamt that I was about to show him some stuff I had drawn -- some kind of big comix that were funny and satirical -- and I felt very nervous because I feared he would be judgmental and condemning as usual. I never actually got to show him the comix and see his reaction, however, because Cris's alarm went off, waking me up and ending the dream.

My father was very much a mid-20th century person. He worked hard all his life and never strayed; in that, he was a good man. Sort of like the BTK killer. He did a lot to take care of his family. But he wasn't emotionally caring or encouraging, and he hated my loose-cannon creativity.

Yet I retain a lot of those suspicious, critical traits too. When Cris suggests some project to change something in the house or the garden, I always see the disadvantages first and am quick to voice them. So while it's sad that my main memory of my father is so negative, it's even worse that I retain some of the traits that I myself found oppressive. That's really one of the main reasons I don't have children: I hate the idea of passing these negative personality traits along from generation to generation and being helpless to prevent it.

And in fact, I am doing the same thing with this post: focussing on the melancholy side of things. I can't say this trait has been bad for my writing, however; the sadness that so many people remark on in my sex stories -- a sadness I don't intend as such -- is one thing that makes them interesting. Aside from all the fucking.