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I don't have a magic answer. I've never minded heat; I grew up in the Jurassic Era, Texas was a breeze compared to the weather brontos liked. The real corset, which I tried once, was too much. The rest wasn't so bad, once you got used to it.
So how I did it was easy. As to why… I don't know. I liked the feeling of getting into all that stuff in the morning. It felt like becoming someone else, which seemed a good idea since the self I'd been lately kept doing foolish things.
"It makes it easier to write for my paper if I dress for the part," I finally told him.
"Yeah, what about this?" he said, brandishing the copy of the Texian at me. He ran his finger down the columns. "'Farm Report,' in which I'm pleased to learn that Mr. Watkins' brown mare foaled Tuesday last, mother and daughter doing fine. Imagine my relief. Or this, where you tell me the corn fields up by Lonesome Dove will be in real trouble if they don't get some rain by next week. Did it slip your mind that the weather's on a schedule in here?"
"I never read it. That would be cheating."
"'Cheating,' she says. The only thing in here that sounds like you is this Gila Monster column, at least that gets nasty."
"I'm tired of being nasty."
"You're in even worse shape than I thought." He slapped the paper, frowning as if it were unclean. "'Church News." Church news, Hildy?"
"I go to church every Sunday."
He probably thought I meant the Baptist Church at the end of Congress. I did go there from time to time, usually in the evenings. The only thing Baptist about it was the sign out front. It was actually non-denominational, non-sectarian… non-religious, to tell the truth. No sermons were preached but the singing was lots of fun.
Sunday mornings I went to real churches. It's still the most popular sabbath, Jews and Muslims notwithstanding. I tried them out as well.
I tried everybody out. Where possible I met with the clergy as well as attending a service, seeking theological explanations. Most were quite happy to talk to me. I interviewed preachers, presbyters, vicars, mullahs, rabbis, Lamas, primates, hierophants, pontiffs and matriarchs; sky pilots from every heavenly air force I could locate. If they didn't have a formal top banana or teacher I spoke with the laity, the brethren, the monks. I swear, if three people ever got together to sing hosa
Surveys say sixty percent of Lunarians are atheist, agnostic, or just too damn stupid or lazy ever to have harbored an epistemological thought. You'd never know it by me. I began to think I was the only person in Luna who didn't have an elaborate, internally-logical theology-always (at least so far) based on one or two premises that couldn't be proven. Usually there was a book or body of writing or legends or myths that one could take whole, precluding the necessity of figuring it out for yourself. If that failed, there was always the route of a New Revelation, and there'd been a passel of them, both branching from established religions and springing full-blown from nothing but the mind of some wild-eyed fellow who'd Seen The Truth.
The drawback, for me, the common thread ru
Of the forty percent who claim membership in an organized religion, the largest single group is the F.L.C.C.S. After that, Christians or Christian-descended faiths, everything from the Roman Catholics to groups numbering no more than a few dozen. There are appreciable minorities of Jews, Buddhists, Hindoos, Mormons, and Mahometans, some Sufis and Rosicrucians and all the sects and off-shoots of each. Then there were hundreds of really off-beat groups, such as the Barbie Colony out in Gagarin where they all have themselves altered to look exactly alike. There were people who worshipped the Invaders as gods, a proposition I wasn't prepared to deny, but if so, so what? All they'd demonstrated toward us so far was indifference, and what's the use of an indifferent god? How would a universe created by such a god be any different from one where there was no god, or where God was dead? There were people who believed that, too, that there had been a god but he came down with something and didn't pull through. Or a group that left that group who thought God wasn't dead, but in some heavenly intensive care unit.
There were even people who worshipped the CC as a god. So far I'd stayed away from them.
But my intention was to visit all the rest, if I lived that long. So far my wanderings had been mostly through various Christian sects, with every fourth Sunday devoted to what the listings called Religions, Misc. Some of these were about as misc. as a person could stand.
I had attended a Witches Black Mass, where we all took our clothes off and a goat was sacrificed and we were smeared with blood, which was even less fun than it sounds. I had sat in the cheap seats in Temple Levana Israel and listened to a guy reading in Hebrew, simultaneous translation provided for a small donation. I had sloshed down wine and eaten pale tasteless cookies which, I was informed, were the body and blood of Christ, and if they were, I figured I'd eaten him up to about the left knee. I could sing all the verses of Amazing Grace and most of Onward, Christian Soldiers. Nights, I read from various holy tracts; somewhere in there, I acquired a subscription to The Watchtower, I still don't know how. I learned the glories of glossolalia, going jibber-jabber jibber-jabber right along with the rest of them, no simultaneous translation available at any price, no way to do it without feeling foolish.
These were only a few of my adventures; the list was long.
They could be best summarized in a visit I paid to one congregation where, midway through the festivities, I was handed a rattlesnake. Having no idea what I was supposed to do with the creature, I grabbed its head and milked it of its venom. No, no, no, they all cried. You're supposed to handle it. What the fuck for? I cried back. Haven't you heard? These suckers are dangerous. To which they had this to say: God will protect you.
Well, why not? I just hadn't seen the harm in giving Him a hand in the matter. I knew a little about rattlesnakes and I hadn't seen a one that showed signs of listening to anybody. And that was my problem. I always seemed to de-fang the serpent of faith before it had a chance to canker.
Possibly this was good. But I still didn't have anything else going.
Sourdough, shortly before his death, had given me a beautiful delft pitcher and basin set. I filled the basin, added some rosewater, a little Oil of Persia and a dab of What The French Maid Wore, then patted my face with a damp washcloth.
"Everything's a struggle in here, isn't it?" Cricket said. "I find myself wondering where the water came from."
"Everything's always been a struggle everywhere, my boy," I replied, letting down the top of my chemise and washing my breasts and under my arms. "It's just that different people have struggled for different things at different times."