THE CHEERY VISION... A CONVERSATION...

B.�
“I’m thinking about becoming a priest.�
“I thought that you were holding out for a church that requires initiates to take a vow to fuck everyone?�
“I mean when I find that church, of course. Although in light of certain events, I may have to amend my vow to say that child molestation is not part of my cheery little vision – I’m talking Stranger In A Strange Land, not some freak-priest. Until I do indeed find the church of my dreams, all I have is my own personal religion. At least I think I do . . . damn it, I better look. I hate having so many pockets. Jesus could be in any of them, of course.�
“Of course, of course. Is this my lover?�
“Your own personal Bonobo, calling to prove that lovers always talk in tongues.�
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?�
“I’m going in a few minutes, though I’d rather stay here and paint. Dam.�
“What?�
“I’ve lost my religion, again.�
“Did you check all of your pockets?�
“Yeah, but I can remember laying it down somewhere and thinking, ‘You better not leave it here, or you’ll never find it again.’�
“Uh, oh.�
“I know, this could be bad. Damnation isn’t anything to fuck around with.�
“I’ll bet you left it in your ‘pussy-addled adolescence.’ Did you check there yet?
“Hold on a minute. Yea, you were right. I left it back when I used to jack off whenever no one was looking ‘directly’ at me. I was moving into a period of testosterone hyper-drive, just starting to surf out on my hormonal wave. A startling time of rapid changes in body and mind – the scary possession of a kid by a sex obsessed adolescent. It was startling. I mean, before that, I was very concerned about my soul. As a kid, I felt guilty squirming in Sunday school. I’m telling you, Bea, seriously, there was a time when a Dixie cup of grape juice hit my gut like the burning blood of Jesus. Boom! Up to that point, I pretty much assumed that I would spend my life doing whatever it took to travel from the squalor of my parents house to the Pearly gates, to some unimaginably gorgeous realm where I would learn the whys of the universe directly from the gentle voice of a long-haired god. And feel happy all the time, too. My plan of course was dealt a deathblow when I started sinning all the time . . . after I discovered that touching myself was a way to feel much more than better. I liked it a lot, though even then I knew that getting laid would be palm times one thousand. I couldn’t wait. In fact, deep in my heart, I knew that I would make a pact with a devil if it would in any way move my penis closer to this neighbor girl’s pussy.�
“I didn’t know that we could do this.�
“Oh, sure. I think the world is going to be a much nicer place when the soccer crowds start breaking out into unstoppable orgies, don’t you?
“The vender’s can hawk dildos and various flavored lubricants.�
“David, I just looked at the clock -- you better not be blowing off work.�
“Do you know that you can’t make it through an entire conversation without nagging me?�
“That should tell you something about the way you live.�
“I’m going to keep you on the phone until the exact second that I have to make a mad rush for the door. I have the time that I have to leave marked with a skull and cross bones.�
“On that nice clock that I bought you?�
“I’m just kidding. I seriously do need you to grant me a wish, though.�
�Okay, I’m summoning my fairy powers. My fingers are beginning to glow, my belly is warm, my pussy is juicy. Okay, go ahead.�
“I want to be born in a tribe that lives in a forest filled with tasty fruits and vegetables--all of which grow wild and within easy reach of any spot where we decide to lay about and loll. Our genes have no bloody history. No one on our planet has ever even conceived of violence, our brains simply don’t know how to make us fight. All we care about is sex, food, laughter, and heavenly worship.�
“You want to be reborn into a tribe of jolly, obese perverts who sit around all day talking about religion?�
“Well . . . I guess that is basically correct. But make sure that we have no negative connotations for obesity, or perversion either, okay? In fact, I guess that we shouldn’t have inner repulsion toward any pleasurable acts what so ever. Like catholic priests. We also have to be a people who have evolved a consciousness that believes our each and every physical movement requires the finesse of a priest carrying out High Mass. Everything is sacred to us. Every movement of our hands, every . . .�
“Even thumb twiddling?�
“I think it almost goes without saying that we should have a branch of scholarship entirely devoted to Thumb Twiddling.�
“Alright, I got it. There, your wish is granted.�
“Are you sure?�
“Yes, I am.�
“Nothing seems to have changed.�
“Well, of course, it wouldn’t, not to you.�
“What do you mean?�
“It’s your basic split-universe theory, Bub. You’re the consciousness that was left behind when I sent the real David to The Land of Word Drunk Jolly Fat Fuckers. Your existence started when I sent the other David away, so your consciousness is obviously based on his last memory. Duh. You seem to have lost a few I.Q. points this time.�
“Somehow, when you grant me a wish, I always end up doing something for you, and my wish is granted in someway where I don’t get what I thought I asked for.�
“It only seems that way to you because you’re a leftover. I’ve been through this with enough David’s to know a cure for your abandonment ennui.�
“Gee, after your cure for the common cold, I don’t know?�
“Didn’t you feel better after licking my pussy?�
“Yea, but the cold was still there.�
“You weren’t thinking about that cold when your come was shooting down my throat. C’mon, I always know the cure for your psychic woes, don’t I?�
“Somehow, they always work.�
“Okay, I’ll come out to Coopers during your first break and wait for you in your car. Don’t be alarmed, this sounds worse than it is . . . what I’m going to have to do is suck your dick with wild abandon.�
“I don’t think I’m going to bother getting a second opinion.�
“I’m going to get your little sperms all riled up into a frenzy, and then just when you feel like you’re back in the Big-Bang . . . I’ll have to stop, so that you don’t you come without pleasuring me, of course.�
“Of course.�
“I’m going to send those frantic sperm back into the plant with you, where they will remain, trapped and aching for freedom, until you can drive over here after your shift and pound them into my pussy. I’ll make even make you a sandwich . . . though, of course, I’ll only let you eat it after and if I am entirely satisfied with your performance.�
“Of course. You and your ‘make-the-best-of-it’ attitude, it makes me so fucking world-weary, I can’t tell you. I really do hate fucking work. If a penguin were forced to go through my average day, there would be hue and cry from all across the globe! People would be saying. “How can you do that to a penguin? Let him go free, so he can frolic.’ Congress might even pass a law against forcing aquatic waterfowl into slavery.�“You’re like one of those Salinger characters who sound deep because all they can talk about is angst.�
“Bea, all I ever asked was that you never, ever, under any circumstances, including torture unto death, criticize, J. D. Salinger.�
“You did make me sign quite a formal document . . . okay, I’m sorry.�
“Now, with this blow-job-I suppose there will be licking, too, eh? You’re always at it with the licking, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Answer me, Dammit!�
“I think you already should have left for work. You’re really going, right? You aren’t going to just keep painting, right? I can’t loan you anymore money.�
“I’m watching the clock with maximum paranoia. Right now I have two minutes and ten seconds. And now I have two minutes nine seconds. Now it’s two minutes . . .�
“Want to hear how I lost my religion?�
“Like you ever had a religion, Bea. You’re a re-known feral child.�
“No, this is true-as reported in The Enquirer, The Star and . . . I had a religion until all vestiges of my personal god were destroyed by satanic messages on Sesame Street.�
“It’s pathetic of you to make up a religion, just so you can appear hip enough to lose it. I guess that’s what comes from being raised by a loose knit community of garden-variety moles. Oh, Bea, why can’t you just embrace the culture of your feral roots? Someday, you’re going to just have to forgive those Moles for the mistakes they made . . . I tell ya Bea, those moles did the best they could do for you, under the circumstances. There were a lot pups in your brood. You should just forgive them and celebrate what was good about growing up in a mole hole, instead of hiding behind all your high-falutin’, pseudo-Freudian constructs.“
“I will let all this pass, for I know, sooner or later, you will understand, my dear fucker, that you are entirely mistaken. I did have a religion once, and Sesame Street is part of Hell’s advertising department, and they are indeed responsible for stripping me of my religion. I know all this for a fact. Actually, the show was even being protested by a group called the Madcap Christians. They wore these orange construction cones on their head, which they pasted pictures of Jesus on them, these cheap magazine shots. You could read the type from the other side through the glue. They had a web site and everything.�
“I would have heard about something like this, Bea . . . unless this has something to do with your beloved Zionist conspiracy?�
“I could be chastised for talking about that with a lowly gentile. You and your family would be killed, of course.�
“You never told me that talking about this would get me killed?�
“I was too worried about being chastised to think about anybody else. Now, really, there was a group called the Madcap Christians, and they did protest the presence of Satan on Sesame Street. You didn’t hear about them because before they could warn the people about the Dark Prince’s plan to destroy the religions of little kids, the Madcap Christians were all tracked down and medicated.�
“I’m sorry that I doubted you. This obviously makes too much sense to a lie.�
“I discovered Satan was snatching souls through Sesame Street all on my own, though. I found out about the Madcaps later.�
“Really?�
“Satan was hiding behind his usual cloak of clever. It was almost purely by chance that I saw him. He was on an episode about the differences between cartoon animals and real ones, which basically said that if you try to pet a wild animal, you stand a good chance of getting your finger bitten. I watched the episode just before I went to temple, where the teacher pulled out a big poster of a cartoon Noah petting all these wild animals. Well, I wasn’t buying the biblical version of truth that morning- -not after being mesmerized by the dark prince, anyway. No matter what our teacher said, I thought Noah was a lie. Later, I tested Satan’s words and I was bitten by a particularly vicious gray squirrel, a disgruntled ex-marine who never got over that his best buddy was killed by a little girl in Nam.�
“You chose a bunch of hippies singing it up about lilacs over the holy institution of the church?�
“I pledged allegiance to the television and that for which it stands. You should have already left for work.�
“I’m leaving now.�
“I’ll see you during your next break from the drudgery. I love you.�
“I love you. Bye-bye, baby.�









------------------------------------------------all work here is the sole property of John Scott Ridgway, Chicago Illinois, host of the elves attic reading, every Friday night at the Big Star Cafe.