The Passion of the Man Sitting in front of us
at a showing of The Passion of the Christ.

When the movie The Passion of the Christ was in theaters, my sisters, my girlfriend and I went to go see it on the big screen. We were all raised Catholic, but we don't go to church...we don't believe in organized religion and we try to sin on a regular basis.

Anyway, we get into the movies and my sister wants us to sneak in. I don't know much about church or Mel Gibson movies, but in my heart I knew that God & Mel would NOT approve of that. I told her there was a line to get into the movie and there was no way we could do it without getting caught. She is going to hell and not dragging me down with her.

We get into line and we notice that people are in cliques. Mostly church groups, english majors and republicans. Then there is us...the lesbian couple with sisters who want us to sneak in. Of course there is going to be a scene at some point...I could just feel it.

All of a sudden, the woman in front of us waves her arm up and says, "Over Here!". We look up and she is waving to her church group who are trotting towards us like a Catholic heard of sheep to cut her in line.

This peaved my sister Michelle a bit and when the group approached the woman she said, "Ohhh no....you are not cutting us, we have been waiting in line for a long time. Love ya, but you have to go to the end". I don't know if it was because they were church go-ers that she felt compelled to tell them she loves them. I still wonder about that.

We get into our seats and while we are waiting a man sits down in front of us with his little boy. The boy was like 7 years old, if that. The movie was rated R and it was one of the most VIOLENT movies I have ever seen. It put all the Freddy Kruger slasher movies to shame. The entire movie is in Aramaic and is subtitled so this little kid is basically seeing someone get the shit kicked out of him and he can't understand what they are saying.

This peaved my sister Carri. She happen to make a comment about it to me and the father overheard her saying, "I cannot believe he brought his little kid here".

The man turns around and says, "Why shouldn't I bring him here! He should see this! I asked my priest if it was ok and he told me that it was!" He was really hard core.

Carri says, "Well it's still just a movie and it's extremely violent."

The man also said he was going to drop his kid off at a boys "sleepover" at the priests place that night and that tomorrow he was going to jump off the Brookline Bridge.

I pretty much stayed out of the conversation for two reasons. One, I didn't want to offend any of the nice cult members...uh...I mean church go-ers that were around me. And two, I knew once the lights went out I could throw popcorn at him without him knowing it was me.

When the movie ended, I should have said to his son, "hey little boy, I'm a lesbian and hissed at him". I wonder what the father would have done. :)~