It may be difficult to believe given the embittered old agnostic I have become, but when I was very young, I enjoyed going to church. This had little to do with matters liturgical and much to do with the Freshen Up gum my grandmother distributed when she met us there. My family always sat in one of the front pews, an incomprehensible choice considering how rowdy my brothers and I were—but at least I can boast that all eyes were on me when I whipped out the hand-made guitar my father had fashioned out of plywood, electrical wire, and bright blue paint. In its short-lived heyday, I would accompany the folk group with an apocalyptic twang that rattled the stained-glass windows and made the plaster saints weep with despair. Later, after I learned how to read, I occupied myself by fact-checking the hymnals.

This was not your Mel Gibson Catholicism. Sunday School was a whimsical catechism of art projects and interpretive dance. We were taught that Jesus was our best friend who sometimes disguised himself as a fluffy lamb; I was in seventh grade before I knew what a monk was, and the alerts about priests who might touch you in a bathing-suit place came long after my eighth-grade retreat with the overly huggy deacon who enjoyed walking around naked after a shower.

The result of all this was an engaging but fanciful mythology that began to fade from my mind with the disenfranchisement of Santa Claus, was further eclipsed when we studied the sexier Roman pantheon in school, and finally burst like a soap bubble the first time I saw a “God Hates Fags” counter-demonstration at a gay rights march.

I occasionally miss my naïve youth, before the cynicism filled my mind with an echoing ring that drowned out the church bells, and I would still believe anything I was told. I try to recapture it some nights as I drift off to sleep.

It tastes like Freshen Up gum.