My Queer History: The Wood Song
Noah must have had a complicated relationship with God, no matter how the Bible tells it. Even a true believer would feel resentful after 120 years building a giant boat and then floating in a world-wide flood for 40 days and nights with a zoo aboard. But the story I learned in Sunday school was all about the animals, the ones that clambered into the ark by twosies, twosies. My mother led the children’s choir at our church. Standing in front of 25 kids, she waved her arms to the beat, while we sang-shouted about how the sun dried up the landy, landy. We were children of the Lord and happy about it.
Later, I got the full story of Noah: how he was the only righteous man left on the sin-streaked planet, so God gave him full responsibility for saving it, because the only option God had was to erase his creation and start over again. Only. Only. There was an olive branch and a dove and a rainbow — God’s promise never to flood the earth again, even though, soon after, wickedness crept over creation again like a shadow. The ark became a symbol of the church, a safe place for believers, who otherwise milled about with heathens and corruption in the outside world.
Then, the church was no longer my refuge, and like Noah, I walked off the ark to drink and lie naked beneath a tent. The liturgy still sang to me, still strummed along the hard bumps of my spine. But those words could not make me safe, would not protect me from God’s people. They loved me deeply, and they felt sorry for me, worried over my sin. I was not righteous.
No one gets to miss the storm of what will be.
Outside the church, the ark, I found myself with others. We clung together in a different boat, which was just as old, just as cramped. Sharon D., Tori, Judy, Camille, Sharon V., Sheila, Crystal, Kris, Susan, Dawn, Angela, Carol, Glanel, and those whose names I don’t remember — some of us came in two-by-two, others arrived alone and paired up on the ship’s deck, a few kept to themselves alone. We watched the water and the wide sky during the day, gathering below at night to discuss the thin horizon of a plan, whether or not it was built by a greater hand. We looked to the stars for guidance and held one another close to whisper stories of the past. We drank and then stopped drinking. We smoked and then stopped smoking. We read books and discussed them. We hosted blue-light, pot-luck suppers with plates of hummus and kale salads (before kale was cool).
My friends and I have had a tough time.
Not even Noah is spared hardship or trial. Even with God around, the weather cannot hold — God spun the clouds and water into a vicious storm and mass murder was the lesson. I can do without that story. On our ark, we were grieving, just like Noah must have — numb from loss — but we pulled people aboard from black water, only asking for their stories in return. How many bloated, floating bodies did Noah pass?
It wasn’t safe for us to leave the ark, even after the water receded, but we disembarked anyway. Our rainbow was science (water and sunlight) and pride. We had reached the other side, but just beyond the shore was another body of water. We had babies, bred poodle puppies, changed jobs, retired, bought mid-life motorcycles, broke up, met new lovers, moved. Without the old wood to keep us close, we drifted apart.
Love weighs the hull down with its weight.
I miss the close quarters, the ups and downs inevitable in a floating house. My heart is a tool I can use, and I wave to my old friends from across a different shore, leaning in to hear their hoarse, smoke-scarred voices: songs that kept me afloat when I lost God and found family in a flood of self-discovery.
—
Italics are lyrics from The Indigo Girls’ “The Wood Song,” Swamp Ophelia, 1994, by Emily Saliers
This essay is part of a series that explores my personal history of queerness through the songs of the Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Sailers. For details on the project and links to all of the essays, check out this introduction: “My Queer History: Me and the Indigo Girls.”
More from this series:
My Queer History: “Burn All the Letters”
My Queer History: “Dirt and Dead Ends”
