The First Time
I Went to Church

by Rory Perkins

The first time I went to church, they kicked me out for bad behaviour. Well, technically the police kicked me out, and it wasn’t so much bad behaviour as multiple thefts caught red-handed, but really they should have let me hide out there. House of God and all that.

The second time I went to church, they said I was forgiven. I said they were full of shit, which didn’t go down too well, and then they said I was forgiven for that, too. For swearing and being a general fuckup, as if I’d been waiting for their permission.

The third time I went to church, I was off my head on coke. Apparently, I tried to fight the priest while he was giving a sermon. Yeah, I know what sermons are now. Sometimes I went in just to laugh at them. To listen to the guy in the funny dress go on and on about pacifism and turning the other cheek. On those occasions, I wanted to ask if he’d ever been in a dust-up outside the Carpenter’s Arms downtown, and how many cheeks he would turn then.

The fourth time I went to church, I had just run away from the rehab place mum forced me into. One minute she’s at my door telling me how much I’ve disappointed her, promising to drive me somewhere to eat, the next I’m sat in a circle of crackheads listening to stories of overdoses and broken families. At church, I told the priest I wish my mother was dead. I didn’t mean it, just wanted to see what his reaction would be. He waved a hand over himself, drawing a cross, but didn’t ask me to leave. I told him that I’m two days sober, then told him that’s a lie. Nothing. I took out a bag of coke and did a line off the pew. Said religion is a bunch of bullshit, that I’d die before I believe there’s a bloke up there floating on a cloud telling us not to fuck each other. Nothing. The priest just smiled at me. Put a hand on my shoulder and said something in one of those dead languages I didn’t understand. In English, he said, “It’s okay, you can stay here, my son,” and I did. 

Rory is a writer of things that sometimes turn out to be stories. He is from the UK with a 40kg greyhound and has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam‘s The Face Project (forthcoming). He can be found at @rperkinswriter on Bluesky.