Friends of a Seattle atheist report he has been rendered virtually catatonic after accidentally witnessing the popularity of church-going during a recent visit to Bellevue.
Roommates of 32-year-old Rich Gawkins say he’s been couch-bound in their Capitol Hill apartment for the last eight days, softly muttering Nietzsche quotes while subsisting solely on spoonfuls of peanut butter.
“Churches … so many of them … people in them,” Gawkins muttered while staring unblinkingly at the ceiling.
Before his visit, Gawkins reportedly had not left Seattle in months. Roommates and friends speculated he’d gradually been lulled into thinking the rest of Washington state or at least the nearby metro area was inching closer to the kind of secular culture that rules Seattle, on record as the most atheist city in America.
Gawkins’ tenuous atheistic bliss all came crashing down, however, after he bussed into the Eastside city to meet a friend who swore to God there was a sandwich spot across Lake Washington better than Honeyhole.
“We just hope he understands he doesn’t need to go back out there anytime soon if he’s not ready for that,” said roommate Tom Heath before he covered a shivering Gawkins with a Bernie 2016-emblazoned blanket. “You can stay right here, buddy.”
At press time, Gawkins’ roommates had upgraded his condition from malaise to ennui.
