I was showering on Thanksgiving Day when I had the strange and sudden compulsion to call a long-lost ex-girlfriend. I have no idea what brought on this impulse. I occasionally suffer from arresting moments of submersion in murky, dank nostalgia, smelling the lingering scents of the past on everything I handle. It's not a desire to go live in those bygone days, but the wilting awareness that no force of nature or technology can reach back to those younger selves and warn them of the catastrophic changes to come. No Morse-code messages from the future can persuade them to pay attention and stop letting things slip by them unnoticed. Their world as they know it is doomed, and I can do nothing to help them survive the damage.

Old love relationships are particular lightning rods for such moments, since they represent periods of uncluttered happiness and apparent stability before terrible events tore through our lives. Now, there's just the random titillation and discomfort found in the remaining debris: a familiar breath of perfume in a crowd, or music that carries unfortunate associations with energetic sex, or cozy photographs scattered at the bottom of a drawer. Each fragment bears the warning -- Watch Out. Time flies when you're having fun. What feels like life right now can be transformed into a bunch of ticket stubs, grinning flash-bright faces, and dwindling memories in a depressingly short period of time.

That moment, standing there with safety razor in hand, was not such a poignant interlude. It was more matter-of-fact, like someone had handed me a "While You Were Out" stub telling me to call her back. Some of you may remember that in a moment of curiosity I actually dialed the phone number of this ex about a year ago, and hung up moments after she answered the phone, realizing that there was really nothing to say. I could hear her children screaming in the background. I thought about how she had once called me, years after we broke up, to tell me she was pregnant, that the pregnancy wasn't planned or particularly welcome, but that she was getting married in a few short weeks. She assured me that everything was all right since she'd discovered Jesus Christ. Even back then, there hadn't been much to say beyond that.

Old friends of mine have an odd habit of embracing fundamentalist Christianity, the kind of olde-time religion that rejects Evolution and other realities. It's kind of a terrifying trend. I'm reticent about keeping in touch with old pals and loves for fear that I'll hear about yet more friends who've joined the army of Christ. It suggests that there is more going on back there in the mystery of the past than shows up in my drawers full of photographs. I wonder what was going on in those pictures and lives that I never understood while I was there, and may not ever come to comprehend.

One of my best friends while growing up, Ian, just resurfaced to announce his engagement and invite me to his wedding. Ian and I were almost inseparable for a while during our young lives. We even looked alike, and were often mistaken for brothers. In our first year of college, I went out to see him on my way to New Orleans, and he informed me that he had joined Jim Bakker's church (members simply call it "The Church", being in their estimation the One True Church). Furthermore, he had embraced religion after suffering through a protracted addiction to major drugs, much of which had taken place under my oblivious nose. I was floored. I stayed up all night talking to him about it, then blearily boarded a plane to the Big Easy, where I drank almost nonstop for five days. I would scarcely have been more shocked and dismayed if my old friend had decided to sacrifice himself to the alleged deities in a live volcano.

This was largely how I felt when the former girlfriend, with whom I lost my virginity one pleasant summer's afternoon years before, let me know that she too had surrendered herself to this jealous god. At that moment, I wanted to punch Jesus in the face and tell him leave my friends the fuck alone. He was like some kind of sick stalker. And he kept getting closer.

Who knows why I stopped for a moment to consider the born-again ex-girlfriend for a moment while getting ready to join my family for Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe Jesus floated by and peered in the window to watch me, nude as the day I entered this world, with a thrill of voyeurist's guilt. Maybe he scribbled an ominous rune in the dust on the sill, marking his intended victim. That Jesus, the seducer, kidnapper and bully, doesn't scare me. It's the one who opened sheltering arms to my brother and my lover, who fulfilled and adored them boundlessly in a way that I never could -- that is the Jesus who is still at large.