Word: rogerism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Relatives say that most in her family believed that she and Roger would eventually wed, but many thought it would take a long time. For their part, the couple say they never had any real doubts. Even so, it's fair to note that much about their relationship was unresolved before Sept. 11. Today Genelle sees any uncertainty between them as a function of not having Christ at the center of their lives. "I was busy partying," she says. "I didn't want too much pressure with my relationship...
...party-girl act showed signs of waning even before Sept. 11. Twice last year, Genelle and Roger--raised Catholic and Anglican, respectively--attended the Brooklyn Tabernacle. An 8,000-member evangelical congregation in a lavishly refurbished old cinema, the tabernacle touched Genelle with its message that if you only let him, Jesus can change your life and show you the right path. It was a narrower path, one that would require her and Roger to stop carousing, but she was intrigued. Roger was more hesitant...
...last summer, neither had joined the church. "You just feel so spiritual when you leave [the church], but then you get back to normal life," Genelle explains. By then she and Roger were living together at his place in Cypress Hills, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. The church frowns upon cohabiting out of wedlock--"It's fornication," Genelle says--but they weren't yet ready to marry. Instead they planned a party trip. "We had booked tickets to Miami Carnival for October," she says. "We were really, really looking forward to that...
...they are on the 13th floor (Pasquale believes they were actually about nine floors higher, but Genelle remembers 13), and she stops to take her shoes off. She loves shoes. It seems as if she buys a pair a week, so many that she hides them from Roger. She is wearing black leather heels today, and they hurt. It will be easier in bare feet. As Genelle is unstrapping them, she's holding Rosa's hand...
...recounts these things. She says she is fine, that last fall's spate of nightmares has ended, that she rarely has a bad day. And when she is depressed, she says, it's not about Sept. 11, but usually about some silly argument she has had with Roger. When she gets sad, she plays gospel CDs and cranks the volume. She weeps. She can sing along with one of her favorite songs, Yolanda Adams' Fragile Heart...