Viewmaster

by Ferdinand Stowell

That evening, Tip, my herald angel, called to give me glad tidings of guests come unto us, born of that day our daily bread and describing their arrival in the language of the bible is entirely appropriate given their proclivities and the importance one of them, Maxine, would have in my life.

  It wasn’t until the next morning after they’d had a good night’s sleep that I got any inkling of this. I heard them coming down the stairs and went out to give them one of my heartily feigned ‘good mornings’.

  “Good morning, ladies. How did you sleep?”

  “Very comfortably. We’re almost ready to face the day.”

  We traded banalities, me questioning them about their plans, they questioning me about the quickest way to the usual landmarks.

  After they seated themselves at breakfast, they began praying – loudly. Uh, oh, I thought – Must. Keep. Contact. To. Bare. Minimum.

  “Now we are truly ready to greet the day.”

  I excused myself.

  About ten minutes later I heard vigorous knocking and ringing coming from the front door. I went to open it and was knocked over by two guys coming at me like angry concierges storming the Bastille. I didn’t even have time to tell them this was Lenora, my prison, not theirs, before they began shouting at me.

  “You are a fucking pimp,” one of them yelled.

  “We want our dad back now!”

  I knew who they were fast enough, but I thought their rage at me was a little misplaced.

  “I am not a pimp and I don’t have your dad. And if you don’t get out of my house right now I’m calling the police.”

  “Yeah, go ahead, we’re on to you, creep.”

  “Fucking creep!” the other one yelled.

  “You’re life is going to be miserable until we get our dad back. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know where your dad is. Your dad is an adult – sort of – and I’m not responsible for him. This has nothing to do with me. Get out of my house,” I yelled.

  “You’re not going to have a moment’s peace,” the other one said and then they both barreled out the door. It’s disturbing to have your home violated like that; suddenly Homeland Security didn’t sound like such a bad idea. I was flushed and disoriented and leaning against the wall.

  “Honey, are you ok?” It was Maxine, whose large breasts now seemed to be a motherly beacon guiding me to safe shores.

  “Yeah, I’m ok. I’m sorry about that, ladies. My neighbor has embroiled me in a scandal.”

  “Come sit down here at the table with us. We need to talk.”

  Four score and seven minutes ago I wouldn’t have given her the time of day, but something had changed. I sit down with them.

  “Why don’t you tell Maxine your troubles?”

  I could think of a million reasons why not but with my thin veneer of service industry friendliness stripped away, it hardly seemed the time to spurn sympathy.

  “My married plumber Porky lives next door. I had a really bad plumbing problem, which he fixed, more or less, but in the meantime he falls in love, or lust, with one of my guests, so they had a little fling. Now he’s run off to go find her and declare his love. Obviously I’ve been implicated in this sordid affair and the family is now wrongfully accusing me of instigating this whole thing.”

  “Oh, that poor dear.”

  “That poor dear?! You mean Porky?”

  “His wife! That poor thing, to be left like that.”

  “Yeah, and what makes it worse is that she’s the sweetest person you can imagine and I haven’t seen her for two days.”

  “We have to pray for them right now.”

  “I really can’t do that,” I said, but she began praying without me, didn’t even try to coax me, which kind of hurt.

  “Lord, help this wayward lamb to return to the fold and lift his self up from temptation and his wife from her loneliness and hurt. Lord, reconcile them, join them again in love. Amen.” I thought it was a pretty prayer and I was touched.

  “You have no religion?” Maxine asked. Except for a sweetly uttered ‘Amen’, Janey had nothing to say.

  “I mean no offense (I was still punched in), but I just see a lot of hypocrisy in religion.”

  “So, what do you believe in?”

  “Well, I do believe people need to find meaning, so they look for it everywhere and where they look for it they find it, you know, even in places completely devoid of it.”

  “There’s no such thing as a place devoid of meaning.”

  “Well, I agree in the sense that people are the ones who put meaning there. You know, like these wealthy people who say they’re Christian and see all their money as a sign that they’re among God’s elect – like those rich TV preachers. That just seems really screwed up to me.”

  “Cadillac Christians,” she says with a knowing and not unsympathetic nod.

  Bible bib

  You gotta hand it to that Bible, sometimes it really knows what it’s talking about. ‘It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven’, it says in the Bible. Tell that to wealthy Christians, especially those fundamentalists. Boy, does that go over like a lead balloon in the back rooms and broadcasting studios of power.

  “What were you raised in?” Maxine asked me.

  “An internment camp.”

  “I mean your religious faith.”

  “Well, in as much as you could say I was raised in any faith I guess it would be Catholicism.”

  “You venerated Mary?”

  “Well, not personally, I would never do that to any woman, least of all Mary.”

  “You can evade my questions,” she said with a smile “but you cannot evade the Lord. What did you believe as a practicing Catholic?”

  “Well, that’s just it, I practiced but never got the hang of it.” Maxine was being very patient with my little ‘fetch the schtick’ routine.

  “Why, Janey, I do believe we’ve got ourselves a genuine, real live heathen. This could get interesting.”

  Janey just smiled and counted stitches.

  “I don’t know who you think I am but just because I got nice clothes and have a peck of fun with Jesus, doesn’t mean I’m to be trifled with. I don’t send no money to those TV preachers and I don’t care about Darwin this n’ that. It’s faith darlin’, can’t be argued, or rationalized and I ain’t even tryin’. I don’t get hung up on the whether or not this or that thing in the bible happened for real just like it says. Those wing nuts don’t bother me and I ain’t afraid of ‘em neither. I surrendered with strength to Jesus and I do it over and over again every day of my life; nothing scares me but the wrath of God and a ten pound box of butter creams.” I stared at her, registered her beam and chortle and realized I was looking at the pious female version of Emil ‘Porky’ Flores. Maybe they should hook-up, booty-call style, I thought.

  “Now I’m not one of those fundamentalists but I do believe the word of the Bible. All of creation started with the Word, spoken by God. Whether it was ten thousand years ago or ten billion doesn’t make a lick of difference.” She paused and then took up the subject again with even more gusto.

  “The bible is alive!” she said with out-sretched arms. “It’s livin’ and breathin’. It ain’t a corpse on ice, it’s kickin’ and screamin’ ‘n callin’ out your name. You gotta have ears for God.”

  “Wow, you make it sound so athletic, so James Brown/World Championship Wrestling-ish,” I said.

  “That’s it exactly. The Lord is wrestling with the Devil for your soul and you’re ringside. And you got to let the lord know you’re there, that you know what he’s doin’ for you.”

  “Huh. You know we should probably be just a little bit quieter because of the other guests, I think they’re still sleeping.” She didn’t quiet down, instead she bumped it up a notch.

  “I’m loud about the lord! And when my body’s layin’ in the ground my soul’ll be laughin’ and singin’
by his side, top of my lungs. Wake up darlin, it’s a new day, every day of your life.”

  We looked at each other and laughed. I was a little bit pissed that I liked her so much, because I loathed everything she stood for.

  “Wow, I’m exhausted just listening to you. Where do you get the energy and all that time for God?”

  “Darlin’ we don’t have time, there’s no such thing. I don’t have energy for God, God is my energy. There’s just you and me and the lord right now in this moment and your soul is blue.”

  Janey stopped her knitting and gave a slightly cross look to Maxine.’

  “I’m sorry, Janey, honey. I meant you too.” Janey resumed her smile and her knitting.

  Maxine was obviously taking the long view. Eternity. Meanwhile, I excused myself and took a long hard look at my spiritual situation.

  An inquisition

  One should never discuss religion, pro or con, with the public, especially the pushy ones like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Jews, Christians and Muslims are all cut from the same cloth and really that’s the issue; they’re all squabbling over the same God; it’s the same damn religion and there’s never enough to go around!

  I know this for sure: turn over a Muslim fundamentalist and a Christian one will wink at you. They’ve both got their heads so far up God’s rear end that they’ll never see the light of day again – let alone those one thousand virgin bloody marys – but hey, they have each other and that’s what counts.

  Oliver Cromwell had this to say: “I beseech ye, in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.”

  Fundamentalists have fun thinking that they’re following the letter of God’s law, but when you start ticking off the long list of Biblical do’s and don’ts they pay no mind to, they pooh-pooh them as irrelevant. Let’s face it, since they obviously never will, they’re standing in line at the Christian Cafeteria just like everybody else and they’re fussy eaters.

  Although it’s always seemed a tad presumptuous, even blasphemous to me, they speak for God as though they were his legal counsel or like they’ve got him under a seven-year contract. I’m glad they’ve figured out exactly what God wants, because He sends such mixed messages that I for one have never been able to make heads nor tails of them.

  Some of those fundamentalists are real hot heads but they’re just aping their God; they see ‘Him’ as armed to the teeth and pissed off. Like those godhatesfags.com people – I certainly wouldn’t want to run into their God in a dark alley!

  If their God is so angry and vengeful why would I want to get closer to him? Most of my ex-girlfriends are like that and I go out of my way to avoid them, so, what, I’m going to distance myself from a bitter ex-girlfriend but not an omni-potent God whose ability to cause havoc in my life is infinitely greater?

  I can’t take most Christians seriously. Anybody that isn’t vowing poverty and ministering to the outcasts of society is basically just going through the motions. It’s pretty obvious what Jesus wants for us and it’s not sports cars and condos in Aruba.

  Frankly, all said and done, I’d rather have a monkey in my family tree than one of those born-again Christians.

  Fresh grinds

  With that in mind, I came back out with fresh coffee for Maxine. She had a puzzled look on her face and had obviously been thinking.

  “How could there be no God?” She asked. “I mean look around you. How could all this have come into being without His agency?” It sounded like something a talent agent might say to an ungrateful client.

  “But even if you believe in God, you still haven’t solved the problem. Who or what created God? I don’t think we’ll ever unlock the mysteries of existence and that’s ok with me.”

  “Ah-hah,” said Maxine “you and I share a belief in the mystery of life, the sacred unknown.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess you’re right. That makes me feel better, knowing we share something.”

  About ten minutes later I opened the back gate and they pulled out of the drive giving me friendly waves goodbye. A little plastic religious figure above the steering column caught my eye. You can stick Jesus on the dashboard, they say, but it ain’t gettin’ you to heaven any faster.