First Mooning — By Maxim Volk
artwork by Lucy Jackson
A gaggle of evangelicals stand on a street corner, spewing hellfire and brimstone through a megaphone at seven in the morning, shrieking promises of eternal damnation to any who might listen (and those who would prefer the lake of fire to hearing some scrawny teenager preach). Ostensibly, the objective is to win the masses to Jesus without the need to lure them into the sanctuary. In reality, it is self-flagellation. The young Christian debases himself (“him,” here, because women are not allowed to preach, of course) by disturbing the peace and drawing valid rage from the crowd so that he could say he was being persecuted for his beliefs. If the young Christian is fortunate, he may even receive a citation for misdemeanor disorderly conduct, a badge of honor to display to lesser believers who could not be bothered with waking early and humiliating themselves for blessings from God.
That is where I found myself on that cold Saturday in May, my lips to a megaphone, yelling out some half-baked story about how I found Jesus before I was old enough to use a toilet. It had become a regular occurrence to go out on a Saturday to attempt to win the masses. It was not enough that we were made to attend services several days a week already. Now Saturday street preaching was expected, and when the doors of the church were open, you went. This particular Saturday in this particular location was especially egregious because it was the weekend before final exams, and we were preaching on the street corner across from a college dorm. In hindsight, I would not have blamed any one of those young students if they marched out onto the street where I sputtered into that megaphone and throttled me where I stood.
“Even when I was a toddler, I was a sinner,” I was stuttering, my speech impediment that no one had ever bothered to drive out of me causing my preaching to be unintelligible. On the top floor of the dorm, a half-dozen young men laughed and pointed as I condemned them all to hell. As I began to provide them a way out, telling them of the love of Jesus, one of the men, a diminutive redhead turned away, pointing his backside to the window. Then he bent over, dropped his shorts, and displayed his asshole for everyone, including poor, closeted teenage me, to see. Blood rushed downwards as the denouement of my sermon slipped from my mind. In that moment I did not care about winning souls. I wished my mouth was nestled in that posterior instead of spitting into that megaphone. I knew God wanted me to look away, but I could not bring myself to do so. I ended my sermon quickly and handed off the speaker to someone else to tell their own tale of finding Jesus as a toddler, and for the rest of the morning, I kept my eyes trained to that window, praying the young man would once again reveal himself to me.
Maxim Volk (they/he) is not in a cult anymore. Now they write things. Terrible things. Things that are sure to make God regret dropping Adam and Eve in that garden with no pants on. Their first book comes out in June 2026 through Slashic Horror Press.