Read I'm Not High for Free Online

kids a few years older than me milling around Jefferson Avenue, but they weren’t part of our core gang.
    If I said, “We’re going to be Mets fans,” we were Mets fans.
    If I said, “We’re only going to listen to Judas Priest,” we only listened to Judas Priest.
    But like all kids we got into arguments. Mostly our disagreements were easily solved or forgotten, mindless bickering about rules to games or whose turn it was. One time, though, Tommy’s twin cousins wandered over from their house about a mile away and took things to a deeper place.
    They were probably about nine years old. One twin had dark olive skin and was roly-poly with glasses and the beginnings of a starter mustache. The other was blond, white as a ghost, and frail. They both thought they were world-class athletes. In reality, they were both little punk know-it-alls who’d always challenge us to games and refuse to quit no matter how bad we were beating them.
    Their family was pretty religious. Catholics. One day, maybe out of frustration from getting trounced in a stickball game, one of them started ragging on me, right in the middle of the street.
    “So, Breuer,” the light-skinned one said. “I heard you never go to church.”
    Before I could even answer, his darker-skinned brother chimed in. “Yeah, are you even baptized?”
    My friends quietly circled, waiting to see how I’d respond. It was no secret that I never went to church. It wasn’t anything I bragged about, but I wasn’t ashamed, either. Up until now, no one had given it a second thought. Tommy must have told them about it and they thought they’d use it against me somehow.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Big deal. I never go. But I love God.”
    “It’s impossible to love Him if you don’t go to church,” the light-skinned cousin insisted.
    “Listen ...” I started to explain before I was interrupted with another question.
    “What’s Corinthians 11:14?” the dark-skinned one asked, pushing up his glasses.
    “Who gives a shit?” I said indignantly.
    “It’s a Bible passage, which you’d know if you weren’t going to hell,” the light-skinned one said.
    “You’re always cursing,” the dark-skinned twin added. “That’s the kind of stuff you have to say Hail Marys for.”
    “Why?” I asked. Was it really possible that these twins were more annoying arguing religion than they were losing at sports?
    “You say them to get forgiveness,” he said.
    “No, you say them to get forgiveness,” I said. “I just ask God for his forgiveness without doing some goofy drill. It’s like doing push-ups or something.”
    They simply continued on, deaf to my reason.
    “Oh, you’re so backed up on Hail Marys, it will take you’til you’re sixteen to even get caught up on them. And that’s if you stop swearing now forever.”
    “I don’t need to say any Hail Marys,” I said. “What you little retards don’t know is that I talk right to God. I don’t need church or commandments or any little made-up Bible stories. You should try just talking to him sometime. It’s pretty freakin’ simple.”
    “But only priests can do that,” the light-skinned cousin said.
    “Bullshit,” I said. “You bananas are morons. Let me show you something.”
    And then I looked up at the sky and just started talking.
    “Hey, God,” I said. “Can you believe these goofballs? You love me, right? And I love you. And I don’t walk around judging people for how they worship. Isn’t that whole don’t-cast-the-first-stone thing in the Bible? Can you believe people would waste energy arguing about you when they could just be talking to you?”
    “That’s not how you do it!” the light-skinned one yelled.
    And then Phil raised a more important question. “So,” he asked, clearly bored by it all, “we gonna play stickball or anything?”

    Jefferson Avenue was lined with simple residential houses up and down the block, and at one end of our street was the border between Nassau County