The Unlikely Disciple Part 19

Last night, when I went into Jersey Joey's room to watch TV, I found him at his computer, looking through a girl's Facebook photos. The girl, a tall, thin, Eva Mendes look-alike, was wearing a small red bikini and making the college-girl kissy face.

"This girl is trouble, Rooster," he said.

"She's cute," I said.

"I know. She's hot as b.a.l.l.s. She knows me from high school, and she just sent me a message saying that we should hook up when I get back to Hoboken."

For the past week, ever since he read Ecclesiastes in one sitting, Joey has been test-driving his Nice Christian Boy persona. He prays more these days, and he's been doing things like kicking his friends out of his room at midnight so he can do his Bible reading in solitude. But his reform attempts haven't been entirely successful. He still curses, he's still playing pranks on our hallmates, and he hasn't been able to stop smoking cigarettes. Last night, he started to worry about losing his virginity.

"I should probably turn this girl down," he said. "I need to hold on to my v-card for a couple more years. But man, it's not gonna be easy to say no."

These days, when Joey tells me about his summer plans, he gives me two scenarios: what he wants to happen and what's going to happen. He wants to turn down party invitations, but he knows he's going to accept them. He wants to avoid going to hookah bars with his friends, but he knows he's going to give in to peer pressure. He wants to keep his virginity, but he's going to sleep with the hot Latina from Hoboken. He's not proud of his moral foibles, but he doesn't particularly feel like fighting them, either.

My friend Paul is having similar woes. For the past few weeks, Paul has been repairing his relations.h.i.+p with Lauren, his no-longer-bis.e.xual girlfriend. Through scripture reading and prayer, Paul was able to convince Lauren that she wasn't truly attracted to women, and he felt confident enough in her heteros.e.xuality to continue the relations.h.i.+p. That problem solved, Paul has focused his worries back on himself and his spiritual life.

"I'm scared that I won't be able to keep this up over the summer," he told me earlier today.

By "this," of course, Paul means his religious transformation, which has been enormous even by Liberty standards. When I remember the Paul I met on the first night of school--a sarcastic, womanizing football player who struggled to say "Lord" during prayer groups--it's hard to believe today's Paul inhabits the same body. His is the ultimate Liberty success story, the kind of thing Dr. Falwell must have dreamed of when he started this school thirty-six years ago. One semester at Liberty, and Paul has a marriage-track Christian girlfriend, he reads the Bible furiously, and he's begun sharing the gospel with his secular friends. But he's scared that without the presence of a strong religious community, he'll lose all the growth he's undergone this semester. The "summer slide" is a frequent topic of conversation among Liberty students, and it's a widespread joke that the first few weeks of the fall semester are spent repenting for the things that happened during June, July, and August.

These summer slide conversations with Joey and Paul raise another one of the big questions I've been mulling all semester. Namely, what happens to Liberty students after graduation, when they leave the safe confines of Bible Boot Camp and move out into the messy, sin-filled secular world? What happens when there's no more "Liberty Way" to keep them on the straight and narrow?

Like everything else about Liberty, I suspect it depends whom you ask. For Jersey Joey, who wants to work as a firefighter someday, graduation will be a glorious emanc.i.p.ation. I'm sure he'll be a lifelong churchgoing Christian, but it's probably unreasonable to expect that he'll stay devout when he's not being prodded into piety by his cla.s.smates. People like Max Carter, the student body president-elect who wants to go into Republican politics, have already recognized that they'll need to make their faith more private to be taken seriously by a community that includes non-evangelicals.

On the other hand, Liberty students who are committed to a Christian career--missionary work, church planting, getting a seminary degree--may not feel much of a change at all. Zipper, my next-door neighbor, is in this group. He wants to be either a youth pastor or a Christian camp director when he grows up, and last night, when I asked him how he planned on keeping his faith strong in the secular world, he told me, "Look at it this way. A Christian's best friends should always be other Christians. Jesus didn't shy away from nonbelievers, but he had his twelve disciples as his core group. Of course, we need to be going out into the world and acting as the salt of the earth, and I'm excited to do that, but my core group of friends will always be Christians. I need that support system."

Most college students, myself included, talk about entering the real world with a certain level of wariness. But I suspect Liberty students have more reasons to worry than I do. When I'm no longer in college, I might be surprised to discover how hard it is to make a living wage or raise a family, but Liberty students going anywhere outside Lynchburg's city limits will soon find their whole cosmology shaken. They'll meet people who believe in evolution, people who don't believe in Jesus, people who mock them for having attended Jerry Falwell's college. What's more, they'll see that those people bear no resemblance to the heathen ma.s.ses they learned about in their GNED cla.s.ses. For Liberty students who have spent four years hearing from their professors about how unfulfilled, relativistic, flimsy, and hedonistic the real world is, meeting hordes of happy, principled, morally sound non-Christians will come as a shot between the eyes. And to be honest, I'm not sure how they'll take it.

Last night, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, I asked Zipper how he thought he was going to fare in the world outside Liberty.

"Well, it's not going to be the same, that's for sure," he said. "I know things are never going to be as easy as they are here. I mean, I guess there's only one thing I can do, and that's rely completely on G.o.d. I think he'll . . . well, I hope hope he'll help me out." he'll help me out."

Test Me, O Lord, and Try Me

Tuesday night, Dorm 22 holds its last hall meeting of the year. As always, we sit along the walls facing each other while Fox and Stubbs pace back and forth in the middle of the hall.

"We're doing white gloves this week, gentlemen," says Stubbs.

Everyone groans. In a white-glove inspection, the RAs don pairs of latex gloves, run their hands along the baseboards of your room, and tell you to keep cleaning if the gloves come up anything less than spotless. It doesn't sound all that hard, but if you're dealing with a year's worth of built-up grime, polis.h.i.+ng a small room to a s.h.i.+ne can take a few hours.

To cheer us up, Fox and Stubbs announce that they have special certificates to give out--the Dorm 22 Gag Awards.

"First up is the Sister Dorm Award," says Stubbs. "This one goes to the guy most likely to marry a girl from Dorm 33 . . . Mark Mitch.e.l.l!"

Everyone chuckles at the joke. Mark, a shy math major from Memphis, almost never hangs out with the girls from the sister dorm--or any girls, for that matter. He's as likely to marry a Dorm 33 girl as I am to be picked in the first round of the NBA draft. Mark blushes as the guys cheer and catcall him, and then responds with a gag of his own: "Stubbs, I didn't know your mom lived in Dorm 33."

The rest of the meeting is filled with more funny awards and frat-boy repartee. The Honeymoon s.e.x Award goes to Brad Miller, who is getting married in July, the Biggest Deuce Award goes to a freshman named Toby who allegedly forgot to flush the toilet last week, and the Dorm 22 Man of the Year Award is given to Rodrigo, the kindhearted soph.o.m.ore from Mexico City.

When the last award is given out, Fox sighs.

"Well, guys, that's all we've got. It's been a great year."

"We're really going to miss you guys," says Stubbs.

An announcement is made that James Powell, this year's Spiritual Life Director, will take over as an RA next year. About half of this year's residents are coming back to Dorm 22, and among the half who aren't, some are graduating, some are switching dorms, and some are moving off campus. Then, there's me.

"As most of you guys know by now," Stubbs says, "Roose is leaving Liberty."

Jersey Joey puts on his best mock-agonized voice and wails, "Say it ain't so, Rooster!" "Say it ain't so, Rooster!"

After the laughs die down, Fox says, "Roose, we'll miss you, buddy. We're sad you're leaving, but we're happy that the Lord is taking you where you're needed."

Last week, I wrote an e-mail to my family. In it, I said that I was 85 percent excited to be done with my time at Liberty and 15 percent sad to be leaving. But in truth, it's more like fifty-fifty. For lots of reasons, I'm looking forward to leaving Liberty. I'm excited about seeing my Brown friends again, living in a laxer environment, and getting some semblance of my old life back. But for every reason I'll be glad to leave, there's another thing I'll miss. These hall meetings. Late-night conversations in Joey's room. My prayer group. Fight Night. The list goes on and on.

Earlier today, a dozen guys from Dorm 22 went out for lunch at T.G.I. Friday's. Over lunch, Fox the RA announced that just for kicks, he wanted to hear everyone's confessions from the year. He promised us amnesty in exchange for our juiciest rule-breaking tales.

The first few confessions were relatively tame. Steve, a junior from Pittsburgh, confessed that he went dancing with a girl last semester. Tony, a soph.o.m.ore from Miami, said that he faked absence slips for convocation and watched R-rated movies "almost every night." Six or seven guys admitted to having snuck out after curfew. Eventually, the confessions got more sordid, and even the RAs got involved. Fox admitted that he had gone to the Smoker's Hole to share cigars with his friends. Stubbs confessed that he hadn't exactly followed Liberty's rules about guy/girl contact.

"I can't count on my fingers how many times I've kissed my girlfriend this year," he said, laughing. "A hundred? Two hundred? I don't know."

As funny as it was to hear the secrets of my Liberty friends brought out in the open, the confession lunch made me feel a little guilty. After all, I had an actual confession to make--the big confession about who I am, what I believe, and why I came to Liberty. But I couldn't bring myself to make it.

All semester, I've made peace with my Christian facade by telling myself that I needed to keep it up in order to blend in here. And a lot of the time, it wasn't that hard to stay silent. After a month or two, when my hallmates stopped asking about my faith and when acting like a Liberty student became second nature, I sort of forgot that I was hiding anything. But now, with a week and a half left in my semester, I'm starting to panic. Should I tell them everything before I leave? How will they react? Will I be run out of town? Will Dr. Falwell condemn me from the pulpit? Will there be a GNED exam next year that reads, "Kevin Roose can be best described as (a) a fraud, (b) a Tartuffe, (c) a tool of Satan, or (d) all of the above"?

I hope not, but I'm honestly not sure. I've gotten in pretty deep on this hall. Yesterday, Fox the RA told me he considered me a "true man of the Lord." Before he knew I was leaving Liberty, Zipper asked me if I wanted to be a Prayer Leader next year. I don't know how, but I think I managed to convince most of these guys that I was a strong, faithful evangelical. And while solid fakery on my part might have made my semester more successful, I also realize that I'm setting these guys up for a big disappointment.

I didn't expect to care so much about the people I met at Liberty, but I had no choice. For all their foibles and all our differences, my hallmates are an amazing bunch. I hope I'll find a way to let them down gently, and I hope, in time, they'll forgive me my trespa.s.ses.

Of course, I won't miss everyone at Liberty. For example, I'm really looking forward to leaving Henry, my angry twenty-nine-year-old roommate who, as of this writing, still thinks I'm a h.o.m.os.e.xual.

I admit, I'm still holding out for a fairy-tale ending to the Henry saga. Things have been tense ever since Henry brought my s.e.xual orientation into question, but I keep imagining a final heartwarming turn of events, a rapprochement that erases all his animosity toward me. In my mind, it goes something like this: after a heated argument, Henry stares at me, I stare back, his face softens as he recognizes a spark of human unity between us, and he bursts forth with a final, made-for-TV line. Like, "You know, brother, maybe we're really not not that different." Or maybe, "Well, we're that different." Or maybe, "Well, we're all all just struggling to make it in this crazy world, brother." Something involving brothers. just struggling to make it in this crazy world, brother." Something involving brothers.

The semester is almost over, though, so I've had to kick my efforts into overdrive. Luckily, I've gotten some help from fate. Earlier this week, while getting a soda out of the vending machine, I accidentally pressed the wrong b.u.t.ton. Instead of the Diet Pepsi I was aiming for, out popped a Mountain Dew. Aha! A sign! Mountain Dew is Henry's favorite drink, and this was just the olive branch I needed. I brought the bottle upstairs to Henry, offering it to him with outstretched hands.

"Henry, I bought this Mountain Dew by mistake," I said. "Here, I want you to have it."

"No thanks," he said.

"You sure?"

"Yep."

Having failed at outright bribery, I tried a simpler approach. I started saying h.e.l.lo to Henry every time he entered the room. I hoped I'd show him by sheer persistence that I wasn't content to remain on his bad side.

For several days, he ignores my greetings. But today, when I say hi, he stops in his tracks.

"Why do you always talk to me?" he asks.

"Just to be nice," I say.

The face he's making is one of genuine puzzlement, like he simply can't understand why I'm still making an effort to repair things between us. Is he softening? I think so! Here it comes! The moment of reconciliation! Brotherhood!

"Well, save it," he growls.

Henry shuffles over to his desk, thumps down in his chair, and pulls his curtain tight across my sight line, mumbling something that sounds a whole lot like "f.a.ggot."

After failing in my last attempt to befriend Henry, I sit at my desk wondering why exactly I still care what a nasty, intolerant fundamentalist thinks of me. The problem obviously lies with him, since I don't think I've done anything to provoke his ire. So why bother mending fences? Is it because the Quaker in me wants to make peace with my enemies? Is it because I didn't want to be on his bad side if he snapped? It's probably some of both. But most of all, I think I saw a friends.h.i.+p with Henry as the last frontier of empathy--like, if I could just get along with the angriest, most outlandish fundamentalist at Liberty, I'd have done my job this semester. I'd have bridged the G.o.d Divide right in my own room. Of course, that never happened. And with a week left in the semester, I don't think it will.

In an odd way, having Henry as a roommate has probably been good for me. Whenever he went on a vituperative, unprovoked rant against h.o.m.os.e.xuals or feminists or Al Sharpton, I was forced to step back and remember: oh, right oh, right . . . . . . this is Liberty University this is Liberty University. It was a constant reality check. I felt the same emotions when talking to Henry that I feel whenever I see the footage of Dr. Falwell's 9/11 remarks or when I hear my hallmates condemning non-Christians to h.e.l.l. It's my reaction to a certain kind of arrogance I've seen among Liberty students--and religious fundamentalists of all ages--who claim to have all the answers.

At the same time, it was rea.s.suring to see how the rest of my hallmates reacted to Henry. When I got to Liberty, I a.s.sumed that a guy like him would fit right in. Weren't Liberty students all angry, ranting ideologues? Well, no, it turns out. And what's more, a guy like Henry has a hard time making friends.

The approaching end of the semester has made me want to encapsulate my Liberty experience in tidy, feel-good morals, and I put my finger on a good one today while thinking about Henry. Namely, one of the most humanizing things I've learned this semester is that even at Liberty, personality trumps ideology. Ask even the most conservative, hard-line Dorm 22 resident who he would rather hang out with-- a grouchy, misanthropic evangelical like Henry or a funny, kindhearted atheist--and he'll pick the atheist without blinking. Liberty students like being around fellow believers, but not at the expense of everything else. When it comes down to it, no matter how pious or like-minded he might be, a Christian jerk is still a jerk.

I almost missed convocation on Wednesday. I've been nursing a head cold, and I was close to hitting the snooze b.u.t.ton, rolling over, and going back to sleep. I'm glad I pulled myself out of bed, though. If I had skipped, I'd have missed the highlight of my semester.

During his sermon this morning, Dr. Falwell said, "A young man from the Liberty Champion Liberty Champion, Kevin Roose, interviewed me last week."

I jerked up in my seat. Me? A loud cheer went up from the rows around me, and heads snapped in my direction.

"Kevin wanted to know personal things," Dr. Falwell continued. "He asked how many red neckties I had. I said somewhere between forty and fifty so I can wear a red tie every day of every month. And then he asked me questions about my practices--what I do and how I do it."

The weekly edition of the Champion Champion came out today, with my profile of Dr. Falwell inside. The editors gave it a two-page spread with sidebars, jumbo-size photos, and a giant headline: came out today, with my profile of Dr. Falwell inside. The editors gave it a two-page spread with sidebars, jumbo-size photos, and a giant headline: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE BIG MAN ON CAMPUS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE BIG MAN ON CAMPUS. The article has only been out for a few hours, but it's already caused a minor sensation on campus. I've gotten stopped in the hallway a few times by friends and acquaintances, and my e-mail inbox is full of congratulatory messages. I never expected Dr. Falwell to mention me in convocation, though. He almost never singles out individual Liberty students by name, and when he does, they've usually done something spectacular, like broken a state record in the 1600 meters. But me? All I did was write an article, and not a very good one at that. I've known all along that the Champion Champion gets vetted for unflattering content by a Liberty administrator, so I had to write my profile with kid gloves, describing Dr. Falwell in terms like "a decision-maker and a thinker" with an "uncanny" business sense. I felt a little traitorous, but I couldn't very well back out of my a.s.signment, so I gritted my teeth and wrote. And apparently, it turned out well enough for Dr. Falwell's taste. gets vetted for unflattering content by a Liberty administrator, so I had to write my profile with kid gloves, describing Dr. Falwell in terms like "a decision-maker and a thinker" with an "uncanny" business sense. I felt a little traitorous, but I couldn't very well back out of my a.s.signment, so I gritted my teeth and wrote. And apparently, it turned out well enough for Dr. Falwell's taste.

After convocation ended, my hallmates swarmed me.

"Oh my gos.h.!.+ Jerry said your name, man!"

"What was it like to talk to him?"

"How did you get him to like you?"

The strangest development in this whole Champion Champion saga is that in my last official week as a Liberty student, I'm becoming known as a journalist on campus. All day, students have been coming up to me, slapping me on the back, and saying, "Hey, Roose, I didn't know you were a writer!" The first few times that happened, my breath shortened and my pulse spiked to two hundred beats per minute. Then I realized: saga is that in my last official week as a Liberty student, I'm becoming known as a journalist on campus. All day, students have been coming up to me, slapping me on the back, and saying, "Hey, Roose, I didn't know you were a writer!" The first few times that happened, my breath shortened and my pulse spiked to two hundred beats per minute. Then I realized: ohhh ohhh, they're talking about the Falwell Falwell article. article.

Since the article came out, it's become harder for me to keep my two ident.i.ties neatly compartmentalized in my mind. It's all blurring into one secular/evangelical/journalist/student amalgam. Usually, I never take notes in public, but tonight at Campus Church, I wanted to write down a few details about the sermon, and I figured, "What the heck. If they ask, I can just tell them I'm working on a story." So I whipped out my notebook and jotted down a few sentences. I got away with it that time, but I'm starting to worry that I'm getting too cavalier.

After curfew, I'm playing video games with Jersey Joey, and he brings up my article.

"You had never written for the Champion Champion before?" he asks. before?" he asks.

"No," I say.

"And they let you interview Falwell?"

"Yeah."

Joey stares at the wall, squinting in deep thought.

"So . . . wait. You're leaving Liberty after one semester, and you're going back to Brown. Are they even going to accept your transfer credits?"

"I don't know," I say. "Probably not."

"So you just wasted an entire semester basically."

"I guess you could look at it like that, yeah."

Joey glances up at the ceiling, then shoots me a suspicious, sideways glare. Oh no. I know that look. I've been afraid of that look since the day I got here. That's the look of a guy who is putting together the pieces of a puzzle. Right now, Joey is thinking: student journalist . . . came to Liberty from secular school . . . scored an interview with Dr. Falwell . . . leaving after one semester . . . student journalist . . . came to Liberty from secular school . . . scored an interview with Dr. Falwell . . . leaving after one semester . . .

"You know, Rooster," he says, "I almost feel like you're a mole, and when this semester's over, you're gonna go back and write an article in Rolling Stone Rolling Stone about being different at Liberty." about being different at Liberty."

I laugh--an involuntary, nervous laugh--and stammer, "What . . . do you mean . . . different different?"

"You know," Joey says. "Gay."

This semester, Joey has called me gay approximately ten thousand times, but this time sounds different. He's not exactly serious, but I don't think he's joking, either. It's as if "gay" is a placeholder for some other descriptor he can't quite put his finger on. Part of me wants to tell him that he's right, that he's figured me out as an outsider. The other part of me knows that the semester isn't over yet, and that I need to squirm out of this somehow.

"So . . . are you?" he asks.

"Gay?"

"Or a mole."

We stare at each other for fifteen seconds, tension filling the s.p.a.ce between us. Head spinning, gut churning, I spurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

"You got me, Joey. I'm a gay mole. Actually, I work for Elton John. He sent me here to recruit innocent Christian kids for his army of h.o.m.os.e.xuals. He told me to become friends with the Liberty students who seemed like closeted gays, and I picked you. Want to join us?"

Joey laughs. "Suck my b.a.l.l.s."

He turns back to our video game, chuckling, apparently convinced of my innocence for now. Five minutes later, he looks at me again, shaking his head.

"Man, Rooster, you are one weird b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Liberty's final exam period is officially under way, and campus anxiety is running high. This morning, when Zipper and I went to the prayer chapel for our usual session, we found the place jam-packed. Thirty or forty people were squeezed into the pews, all of them praying for their exams. One girl, a leggy brunette with a pink scrunchy wrapped around her ponytail, kneeled on the floor with her back arched and her arms extended straight overhead, in the I-just-won-Wimbledon pose. "Fill my head, Lord!" she pleaded in audible whispers. "Fill my head!"

I had my first exam yesterday, though I didn't know it at the time. You know that cla.s.sic anxiety dream where a student goes to cla.s.s one day and is informed that the final exam is being given, even though by some freak miscalculation, he hasn't even begun to study? Well, that happened to me. Yesterday afternoon, I walked into my History of Life cla.s.s a few minutes late and noticed that everyone was sitting silently in their seats, pencils at the ready. I asked the guy seated next to me what was going on, and he shushed me.

"It's the final, man."

I thought he was kidding, but sure enough, as soon as I sat down, Dr. Dekker began pa.s.sing out our final exam, a multipage monstrosity as thick as a piece of French toast. How could this have happened? It's not even finals period yet! As the exams circulated through the rows, I remembered something I'd heard Dr. Dekker say earlier in the semester: since History of Life is a two-credit course (most courses are three), its exam is held a week early.

I was apparently the only calendar-challenged idiot in the cla.s.s-- everyone else went right to work, scribbling their answers to questions about the scientific cla.s.sification of Neanderthals, questions that used science-speak like h.o.m.o ergaster h.o.m.o ergaster and and h.o.m.o rudolfensis h.o.m.o rudolfensis. I did my best, recalling what I could from Dr. Dekker's lectures, but it wasn't pretty. By the end of the test, I had left about a third of the questions blank, and I was sympathizing with the Australopithecus Australopithecus, an ancient hominid whose brain capacity was one-third of that of the modern human (and who, according to young-earth creationists, was not a human ancestor at all).

Today, I get a tough exam of another sort. After lunch, my phone buzzes with a call from Pastor Seth, my spiritual mentor.

"Are you free this afternoon?" he asks.