It’s actually Angela, the twelve-year-old beauty queen from the Church of my Holy Twisted Childhood, all grown-up and ready to have a crack at producing some healthy babies with yours dementedly. Okay, it’s not really Angela, but this girl certainly has a similar look, although her dark hair is cut short and slightly spiked. Her eyes have that same almost violet color and they seem to be smiling without the rest of her face joining in. If we all have a “type” that we settle on early in life, I would say that this girl is hitting about 90 percent on my checklist. What the heck is she doing talking to me, let alone initiating the conversation?
“Can I buy you a drink?” I’m stunned that I can’t come up with a better line. I’ve just spoken with God, for godsake, and I’m still working from the same sorry script.
She answers appropriately. “Well . . . I’m either looking for a dog or a boyfriend. I haven’t decided if I want to ruin my carpet or ruin my life.”
“Okay. Sorry. You just reminded me of someone. Two people, actually,” I say as I sign off and turn back to trying to distract the lazy bastard bartender from his basketball game.
“I’d like another beer here, please!” I yell, but of course it falls on deaf ears.
“I think you need a cup of coffee,” I hear her say.
The fact that I’ve just heard this exact phrase from another quarter (specifically, the bathroom—more specifically, my cell phone) a few moments ago sends a fleeting shiver down the back of my Cleveland Spiders (world’s worst-ever baseball team) T-shirt. But things have been a little off-kilter lately, so why would it stop now? I get a sudden, paranoid, frantic thought and spin to face her.
“God?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. My hands literally reach out to try and grab the word back before it reaches her ears, as though it were an errant loogie I had accidentally hocked up at some passerby and was hoping to arrest in its flight before it embarrassed both of us by landing on her lapel. But land it does. With a mucusy plop.
“What did you say?” She is smiling with her lips now as well and even adds a small giggle at the end of her question.
“Sorry. That was . . . sorry.” I’m embarrassed that she didn’t just ignore it as you would some old lady who’d farted in church.
“Did you just call me God? With a question mark at the end of it?” she persists, seeming pretty amused by my discomfort. There is interest in her eyes, though I am lost as to the reason.
And of course jerky-boy picks this moment to leave the ball game and bug me.
“Somethin’ else I can get ya?” he condescends.
I turn to him. “Hang on.”
I turn to her. “Just a second. Don’t go anywhere.” I turn to him, “Can I order a . . .”
But he’s gone, and with him all hope of that pizza.
“This guy must get paid really well, because he isn’t surviving on his tips,” she says, and I don’t even know who she is.
“I’m Bobby,” I say, extending my hand in the prescribed, time-honored, and incredibly asexual I-don’t-need-to-get-laid manner.
“Alice,” she replies. She doesn’t take my hand but raises her drink in acknowledgment.
That was dumb of me, I think to myself, not to notice she already had a drink. In my head I am already blowing my end of the conversation. Never had the gift of the gab.
“So, were you asking me if I was God just now? Because it sure sounded like it.” Obviously she’s not going to let it drop.
“Ah . . . yeah, I think I may have,” I answer. She’s still hanging in there, and for some reason it seems to make more sense right now to go with a version of the truth rather than dance around and deny it. She is sharp. And she’s waaaaaay too pretty to be talking to me. Again suspicion clouds my clouded mind.
“Are you going to tell me why?” asks Alice of the violet eyes.
“Your name’s really Alice, right? This isn’t God messing with me again?” I sound like a nut. No, I sound like a total loon bag.
She frowns, but with a slight smile, still. If the roles were reversed I’d probably be putting as much distance as I could between the two of us right now. But she’s still here.
“Okay, that sounds really creepy and weird. Sorry. I’m a pretty normal guy. I mean, not that normal, but then I guess no one is really normal normal. And not ‘boring’ normal either. I’m kind of a ‘fun’ normal—with a little ‘depressed’ normal occasionally on the side, if we’re being honest, which I assume we are, but I’m probably the most normal, in a ‘harmless’ way, guy in this whole room right now . . .” I stop. I’m babbling like a fool, again. And she is still sitting at the bar with me, looking quizzical. No real hint of fear that I can discern. No fight-or-flight urges battling inside her.
“I don’t get out much,” I offer as explanation.
She thinks for a second or two and then opens her mouth to speak. “You seem really genuine. And the reason I’m not running from this bar at top speed is because there’s something in your eyes that’s kind of hard to deny. Not to mention the white lightning bolt in your hair is very Charlton Heston. You know, from The—”
“—Ten Commandments, yep,” I finish her sentence.
“I’m not saying that you’re not a wingnut, but I sense you’re not a dangerous wingnut,” she finishes.
I’ve been staring at her lips. They’re curved up at the ends, which makes a really hot, dimple/crease thing happen in the corners of her mouth when she says certain words and . . . Whoa! Did she just say I might be a wingnut?
“No, no, I promise you I’m not a wingnut,” I blurt out. I’m totally shooting from the hip here, fairly certain that I’ve blown this already by focusing on the wrong damn thing at the wrong damn time again. Screw you, ADD. “It’s just that I’m pretty sure God called me on my cell phone just now and I’m still shaken up by it because it was so bizarre and he/she sounds like he/she’s a bit of a freak, and if that’s who’s watching over us then we are all hosed.” The words just hang there as charged as a racial slur yelled in Harlem at midnight. Or so I imagine. I have no idea how she will react.
Alice is now frowning without the smile. “God called you . . . on your cell phone.”
“Sorry, I know it sounds completely freaky.” I can’t back out now, although they say you can, but you really can’t most of the time, and this is definitely one of those times.
“Yes. God called me. On my cell phone. It sounds stupid, I know, but he did. Or I think he did.” There. I said it.
I wait for minute or two, or what feels like a minute or two but in situations like this is probably more like six or seven seconds. She hasn’t moved. I’m actually amazed. And then she speaks. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m kind of caught up in this, and I’m leaning more toward thinking there might be a truth in it rather than arguing that you’re spinning me a line so you can abduct, kill, and eat me.”
“What??”
“Maybe it’s my line of work, or maybe God is trying to reach me, but I think I’m supposed to hook up with you in some way.”
Her line of work? Hook up with me? What is she saying?
“Are you . . . you’re not a hooker, are you??” I am clearly and seriously out of my depth now and have no idea what part of the outfield she’s batting to.
Alice gives me a look.
“No, I’m not a hooker. I’m a sister.”
Not what I expected, so I answer, “Well, I think most of us are brothers or sisters of someone. That’s not so unusual. I myself . . .”
“I mean a religious Sister. A nun.”
Woody and I are all ears.
Ronan
He is an old man now. His wife is gone these past six years and Ronan Young, who jokes at the local pub that he is now Ronan Old, still takes the Bonnie Bradana out on the great Loch every now and again to wet her keel. He no longer plies his fishing trade and has been relegated to the ignominy of dependence on the local volunteer “Meals on Wheels” for his own personal sustenance: those helpers who are so
effusive and well-meaning in their ministrations yet will never wish to comprehend the depth and breadth of his life. Nor, he understands, should they. Each generation centers on itself. We learn very little from the generation before us and absolutely nothing from the generation before that. Ronan worries that there will be no one to care for his “girl” once he is gone. The Bonnie Bradana is a local legend, but people have their own lives and responsibilities. He has no children or extended family that would take on the care and upkeep of his beloved craft. The Bonnie has been a part of the community since Ronan’s father built her and christened her into Loch Ness many a long year ago. Evelyn had called her Ronan’s “second wife,” so much a part of their lives was this vessel. And he has told no one of his encounter that lonely winter evening on the Loch, almost twenty years before. Not even his Evelyn. But the Bonnie Bradana knows. She was there and brushed against the dark, sleek skin and broad, powerful back of a myth as it passed by. A once-in-a-lifetime moment shared with the protectors of this powerful place. Ronan understands that he is one of them. Chosen. He would protect this land with his last breath and final splash of blood. The great creature knows this too and shows herself only to the faithful. An honor that is unspoken and buried with the few who are blessed enough to truly bear witness. When he is able, Ronan slowly walks the shores of this ancient lake and dreams of the encounter that has begun to define his remaining years. He sees her shadow in the dark, cold waters; he sees her spirit in the chipped and whittled mountains that ring this Loch. He feels her power brimming at the very surface of the tarn. It is palpable. How could he have missed it for so much of his life, and why did she wait so long to reveal herself? But he understands somewhere in his soul that perhaps he was not ready before this. Her pneuma, her vital spirit, the one thing that has enabled her to exist these many eons, has gathered wisdom and knows where and when to show and not to show herself. And to whom. She is beyond age and beyond reasoning. Ronan now understands that there is much he cannot fathom. So much he will never comprehend. The great cities of the earth and their people are even more removed than he from the truth of this spirit world. They exist so confident in their bright, clear knowledge and the crystal-cut understanding of how their universe works that many will not reach his level of comprehension in their lifetimes. They are in the grip of the tyranny of logic—the false diamond that seduces their beautiful and brilliant minds. They still believe that the more they read, the more knowledge they possess, the more information they amass: the closer they are to the truth. But they are not closer. Their astute minds accept only what is written, accepted, perceived, deduced. They miss entirely the path of the earth’s soul. Ronan has always known this, though he never “understood” it. He understands it now. It has taken years. And a committed path. The ones who seek their way through knowledge and who chose spiritual doubt as a way of life are akin to those who use vacillation as a path to commitment. But such language drowns in deep lakes like this. It washes away like a child’s chalk drawings on the sidewalk when the hard rains come. A sand painting that has taken weeks to create and seconds to blow away in the wind. The great creature has neither knowledge nor understanding nor time for such things. She is waiting. For one who was born here eons ago and has, through the cycle of birth and death, forgotten that they belong here, that they can communicate with spirits in this ancient place. She is waiting. For the one.
Horatio
At fifteen years of age I am a card-carrying, moderately committed member of the MORMON Church. Thank Joseph Smith I finally got the name right!! Let me tell you, there were a few raised eyebrows when I first walked into their midst and announced I was here to become a Moron. I have been a Mormon now for eight long and peculiar months. Evan won’t speak to me. And Dracula, the seductive coquette who first got me caught up in this odd religion, has neither shown her brilliantly brimming breasts at the services I’ve been obliged to attend nor visited me at home to rest an encouraging hand on my vacant, plaintive thigh. I’ve been through the whole Mormon gold plates thing (written originally in “reformed Egyptian,” whatever the hell that is), the magic stone, and the hat, and I swear I did not laugh out loud even when they talked about their sacred skivvies (special underwear that’s supposed to offer protection against evil and temptation), so committed were my little heart and wiener to the hot recruiter I was sure I would see at a gathering at some point. And if I’d been wearing this super-underwear in the first place, I might have been immune to Drac’s religious-sexual come-ons and avoided this whole gonzo sect. But now, even at fifteen, when the seething hormones are pretty much resistant to anything that would knock them off their single-minded course, I am tiring of the chase. I have whacked the monkey almost nightly since I met this Mormon goddess, though I have seen neither angelic hide nor angelic hair of angelic her since. I have a severe rash on my wiener, from overuse of the old liquid soap in the communal bathroom, and a seriously deflated heart. Even at this tender age Woody has a direct line to my affections. I’m in the bathroom so much that my clueless mother is sure I have a terminal case of dysentery.
And the guilt! I thought the Presbyterians were tough on us chronic masturbators, but the Mormons take it to a whole other level. They refer to it, mainly at church gatherings of boys my age and older, as “the problem,” and drill it into our sexual-fantasy-filled noodles that the wiener is sacred and to be used only for procreation. I’m good with that—just let me begin procreating, then! But in lieu of the actual carnal act, I must resort to spanking frank or my head (and possibly my frank) will explode. Do these old guys who preach against self-stimulation-of-the-pork-sword even remember what it was like to be a teenager? It’s a survival instinct to think of nothing but SEX at this age. From back when we all used to croak at the age of nineteen, eaten by some saber-toothed tiger or other predator with a hankering for the easily caught, upright monkey-thing. “Get a baby into the world before a dinosaur makes you its lunch” is hard-wired into us young males. My brain is screaming to me, “Get laid, motherfucker! You’ll be toast soon.” How does one fight that? Certainly not by thinking of football. Or kneeling piously in teen-prayer. Not that I’ve tried prayer, mind you. I’m usually elbow deep into my third wank of the day before the guilt gets so bad I start to run the alternatives through my mind. Let’s see, “waxing the carrot” one more time or a little meditation and invocation. “Choke Kojak,” yells my reptile brain. So I do.
And then there is the truly bleak side of my life: my sister, Josie. Never far from my thoughts, except when my thoughts go south to Sexytown.
At home, she continues her sad downward spiral and hardly ever leaves the house anymore. She showers or bathes three to four times a day and walks around her fortress of a bedroom with her red raw hands still dripping water and soap from the thousandth scalding scrubbing. She touches no one and handles every single thing as though it were riddled with contagion and vermin. The beautiful soul she once was is disintegrating day by day under the onslaught of her dark demons, and I am impotent to help her. I answer her repetitive questions when I am not at school, at Joe’s church, or going door to door with a “recruiter” so I can learn the difficult craft of increasing the Mormon congregation myself. Our mother is beginning to hint that Josie would do better in a “facility.” I’m not sure what type of “facility” she means, but her tone suggests to me that it wouldn’t be something my sweet girl would be terribly happy about. The three-pronged relationship I have with the female of the species at this point in my life is neither fully understood by nor completely lost on my young mind. (1.) My mother: controlling, shaming, at times loving, lethal (when it comes to dogs), and increasingly less tolerant (when it comes to my father’s infidelities.) (2.) Dracula, who because of her exasperating absence has caused my heart and Woody to grow fonder and has become the sole focus of my twisted pious/carnal longings. And (3.) Josie, my damaged angel of a sister whom I love with my whole soul, and who has been nothing but good and kind to everyone in this w
orld but whose growing torment (that God has seen fit to allow) is the darkest cloud over my life.
Before I leave the Mormon-owned Church for the day I head to the Mormon-owned bathroom and crank the Mormon-owned casaba one more time (it’s a wonder it doesn’t drop off). I always have and always will get a special thrill from strangling the one-eyed milkman in an oppressed religious setting. Sorry. I know it’s wrong.
I arrive back at the house after yet another class on how to be a stormin’ Mormon. These people are taking increasingly more of my time and I have begun to give up on ever seeing the fantasy-inducing recruiter/bloodsucker again. In fact, I have an inkling she was just a hired actress from Hollywood who they brought in for the job, to tempt and draft. She may not actually have been a Mormon at all. The real Mormon girls I am meeting are staggeringly uninterested in yours hornily and I am truly tiring of the whole freaking freak show, such is my lack of any real commitment to the cause. I’m beginning to think I was badly duped by Dracula the babe, the breast-heaving siren-witch from Tinseltown.
It’s not a short walk from the bus stop to our place, and I arrive at our humble home slightly out of breath; obviously I need to start doing some serious cardio. I enter the house to the sounds of an argument in full swing and stop just inside the door to try to get the drift of this quarrel before I have to join it. It’s my mother and father in another of what have become progressively frequent altercations.
They’re in the kitchen. She sounds hysterical. He sounds stoic.
She:
“Who is she? Why was she calling here? How did she get our number?”
He:
“I’ve no idea.”
She:
“She said she was a ‘friend’ of yours.”
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