Sunday, October 07, 2007

Purple Cat Big Heist Caper! Praising Lord!

For more background and Halloween hijinx, go here!

My mother found Jesus the way a Peterbilt truck finds a raccoon on the highway-sudden, hard and messy. At first it was a positive thing...for a short (and rather confusing) time, she went from being God's miserable hemorrhoid to being Jesus ' little sunbeam. Was this my mother? Smiling?
Anyway, for a variety of reasons I may go into at another time, I found myself an unwilling participant in what rapidly became my mothers religious mania, going to what were termed 'Charismatic Catholic' , Born-Again style prayer meetings three evenings a week.

Lemme digress a bit. Catholicism in white, working-class America isn't remotely ecstatic. Catholicism in white, working-class America is in fact about as exciting as attending a talk at the public library about Gypsy moth infestation, except with more kneeling and a light snack towards the end.

Understandably, then, Catholics did not do the charisms, or 'ecstatic religiosity' very well. These prayer meetings tended to be rather shy and restrained things until the very, very end, when people got that 'now or never' feeling and suddenly went belly-flopping awkwardly into the deep end. It was essentially two hours of quiet prayer with upraised hands followed by a half-hour of crying, speaking in tongues, falling, twitching, and singing loud songs with accompanying gestures while hopping up and down.
Yes, really. Barney the Dinosaur meets Jesus.

Still, I honestly think the greater part of the people in attendance were sincere, if misguided. Unfortunately my mother, being who she was, got drawn into the lunatic fringe.
Eventually she was running buddies with this unbelievably odd bunch of Jesus-groupies. All of them were garden-variety unfulfilled Catholic women...morbidly obese 50-year-old virgins, glum married lesbians in brick-wall denial with six kids , borderline (and not-so-borderline) psychotics, rage junkies, low-norms who smelled like pee and beat-down throw pillows, mostly. All of them could have been case studies in a book called 'Women You Should Never, Ever Be Like When You Grow Up'.
And I took note, yo.

One evening there was a new member in attendance, a thin, trembling fawn of a woman draped in scarves and ethnic fabrics, like an aging ballet dancer with a thyroid problem. Her buggy eyeballs never stopped scanning the room. She smoked with a strange metronomic regularity, sipping at the filter and blowing steadily until the cigarette was one long ash drooping gracefully down over her red bony knuckles. She sat at the edge of the group drawn up into a knobby heap on the metal folding chair .

The Fringies were instantly enthralled. The poor thing, let's go be friendly!
Poor thing indeed.
Soon she was in the middle of a circle of chairs filled with a whole bunch of terribly friendly, sympathetic fat women listening raptly to her 'testimony'.

This stuff was usually pretty gross, so I went outside and lit a smoke.*

I was joined by one of my moms' friends a short while later. "You'll never believe what happened to this poor woman," she said.
She was right.

According to 'Bambi', she'd grown up in a wealthy family, her father was a very well-known public figure who she was afraid to name, all of them were against her and they wanted her to stay married to a man who was beating her. They had been drugging her for years and had finally poisoned her with a mysterious substance in an attempt to 'keep her quiet'. She was also being chased by a cult, by organized crime and by an ex husband, and all of them were trying to kill her while at the same time plotting to have her committed to a mental institution. This was why she was hiding out on the streets and in homeless shelters AND living in her car and also why nobody could know her real name.

Man, I was 16 and I smelled this shit a mile away, even secondhand. The woman breathlessly recounting all this to me was 56. You could tell she thought this was the coolest, most glamorous and interesting thing that she had ever heard EVER.

Once I'd finished my cigarette I went back inside. 'Bambi' was being prayed for.

Now, in an ordinary setting, this might mean that people were, you know, sitting, maybe kneeling, hands folded, praying.

In this group it meant that everyone present stood and placed one hand on the person being prayed for and raised the other hand high into the air (presumably to get better reception) closed their eyes and made bossy demands on the Lord. "Jesus! See this woman! Jesus, help this woman! Yes! Jesus, help her bear this burden! HEAL her! Heal her now! Jesus heal her! HEAL HER NOW! IN JESUS NAME! LIFT HER BURDEN! LIFT THIS BURDEN FROM HER!"
They typically did this in turns, getting louder and more vehement until the whole group was crying, moaning, and speaking in tongues. Just another typical Friday night.

The thing was, they were all on the downslope of middle age, and they couldn't stand for very long without getting tired. They started to droop and lean on one another after they'd been at it for a while. From a distance this looked like a bunch of people peering at something down a well while signaling to passing aircraft.
And as I knew from personal experience, the person in the middle, the one being prayed for, bore the full weight. Poor waif- like Bambi was nearly bent double.

We heard a lot from Bambi in the passing weeks. Bambi threw off a group praying for her with 'supernatural strength'. Bambi had 'spoken in an unnatural voice and cursed God'. Bambi had 'accepted Christ and suddenly become ill'.

Clearly, Bambi was under demonic attack.

Consequently Bambi became very, very popular. Everyone had Bambi over for dinner. Everyone took Bambi out for coffee after the meetings. People fought over who would drive Bambi back to the shelter. The group took up a collection and got Bambi out of the shelter and into an apartment. Everyone listened raptly to Bambi's stories about being raped by shadowy figures on orders from her family, receiving threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, Bambi finding her belongings had been gone through by the Mafia, Bambi seeing demonic messages appear on the ceiling above her bed at night. The 'let's pray for Bambi' session at the end of every meeting became the main draw. You never knew what would happen, and something dramatic always did. Attendance was never better.

One evening I was smoking outside in the garden when one of the Fringe came out to get me.
'We need you to come help us! Do you think you could be a prayer warrior?' she said breathlessly, clutching my arm.
" Well, let me finish my smoke first," I replied. "What's going on?"
"Bambi's apartment is haunted!" said the Fringie. "That's what's been at the center of all these disturbances!"
"You mean her new apartment she just moved into?" I asked.
"It's not new," said the Fringie. "It's in an old house. And there were people who were drug addicts and Satan worshippers living there before she moved in. And they had orgies."

I'd like to say that I laughed in her face, but no. Whaddya gonna do; it's how I was raised.

Now how drug-dealing Satan worshippers had managed to move into a place owned by one of this Christian groups' leaders and live there, holding orgies, drugging and worshipping away for a matter of years, was never explained. What I accepted without a thought at the time** was that Milwaukie, Oregon was simply raddled with Satan-worshipping, orgy-holding druggies, and that that kind of thing called up demons and opened a PORTAL TO HELL.

And I was being asked to help cleanse it! I was being asked to help cast out demons, to help a fellow Christian and to bring the light of the Lord into her home! Well fuck yeah I'll help, are you nuts? An exorcism? I am A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL! Color me there!

We all piled into the Mystery Mobile-I mean, the former prostitutes' car- in an excited, bible-toting heap...the grumpy lesbian, the vindictive Jap-hater and the former prostitute that nobody was supposed to have figured out was a former prostitute in the front seat, and the 55- year-old morbidly obese virgin, the sixteen-year-old smoker, and the smokers batshit-nuts mother in the back. We zoomed away, praying and holding hands. When the traffic lights changed we prayed for the traffic light to turn green.
Some of the ladies in the front seat started getting a little excited. Unknown tongues began creeping into the mix.

"Don't get carried away by the Spirit,' called the former prostitute as she drifted a corner on two wheels "I don't have any insurance!"

We prayed for her to get a raise so she could buy insurance at the next light.

We caromed through downtown Portland and over the Powell Blvd. bridge. Smokers' Mother had the brilliant idea to roll down the window so that upraised hands could poke out.

We passed the Poulson House, a grim Victorian I was secretly in love with. 'That's a Satanic looking place,' said the Jap Hater darkly. "I've always hated it."

We prayed holding hands over the back of the seat, all the way up McLoughlin Boulevard and down River Road until we drove up to the house, the house of evil, and stopped. We prayed a little more before we climbed the stairs.

We prayed before we went inside.

We went inside, and stopped to pray in the foyer.

Bambi was already there, looking pale and twitchy in the bare overhead light.
"Where's the disturbance?" Demanded former prostitute.
"I don't know", breathed Bambi. "It's the whole place, I think.."
We all joined hands and began to....guess?
Pray.

The whole group moved in an awkward clump into the first room off the foyer. Speaking in tongues began in earnest. Then singing in tongues. I got mashed into a wall by 55-Year-Old Virgin's huge ass and there I remained. Trembling hands reached out and touched the walls. The furniture. The pictures. The telephone. "You never know," said Jap Hater. "Oh! Good idea!" they agreed.

The clump shuffled down the hall and moved to the next room, lead by Bambi. An overhead bulb flickered and she screamed. "It's here!"
The praying gained volume.
I got mashed into a door by the 55-Year-Old-Virgin.
We entered the kitchen. The kitchen was tiny.
Closet doors were opened and prayed into. Someone started swaying, and the whole group started rocking back and forth in unison. I was mashed into another wall at this point, and resigned myself to simply trying to draw breath while the others did the heavy battling with the demons infesting the cabinets. "It's here! I can feel it moving! It's running before us!" various people commented. "Where's it going? It went past me! I felt it!"

The whole group moved as one, in a clump. A couple of the women were already reduced to panting, barely able to gasp 'Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus' by this point. Nobody'd told them that Satan would be wearing track shoes.

"It went in here! cried Bambi. The group surged forward.
'Here' was the bathroom.
A very tiny, tiny bathroom.

The group pushed forward and found that not all of them could fit into the claustrophobic, closet-sized room at once.
Satan had obviously chosen the venue for this final showdown with care.

The group decamped to the entry and considered. Bambi twittered and meeped in the background like a nervous gerbil with a bad nicotine habit. I noticed that there wasn't one single place on the floor that didn't have a cigarette burn.

Suddenly "I found it!" cried the former prostitute. She was a tiny woman, and had wormed her way to the front of the group. "Come look! I found it! Here it is!"
Everyone crowded forward.

Ever heard of Masonite? It was marketed as a waterproof, decorative material for tub surrounds in the 60's and 70's...kind of a cross between Formica and wallboard. The smooth 'space age' material it was coated with supposedly*** rendered this material moisture-resistant and easy to clean. This coating was often printed with designs...flowers, snowflakes, geometrics...
This tub surround was printed with a tropical island scene.
Straw huts, palm trees, coconuts, ocean waves.

And Tiki god statues.

"I knew it! I never felt comfortable in there! I always felt like I was being watched!" exclaimed Bambi.

Grumpy Lesbian was crammed against the sink. Former Prostitute was seated on the toilet. Jap Hater had what floor space there was in the center of the room.
I was crammed into the bathtub, by now utterly mortified, with Smokers' Mom and the 55-Year-Old Morbidly Obese Virgin.
'Now everyone put their hands on the wall and pray!" Former Prostitute commanded.

And they prayed. Please, God, deliver this house from the clutches of Satan. Please, God, drive the presence of demons from the images on this bathroom wall. We refute thee utterly, Satan, and all thy works, and thy leering image of thyself as rendered in driftwood and dogs' teeth by the Polynesians and the DuPont Corporation in gold glitter paint.

Oh yeah... there they were. Jesus' little prayer warriors. Standing in the bathtub.

Exorcising the wallpaper.

Amen.



___________________________
*one of the first things I found out about being a charismatic catholic was that the typical unfulfilled adult catholic woman had really good reasons for being that way, most of them horrifically gynecological. also, that it takes very little provocation for your typical unfulfilled catholic woman to explain the exact nature of her particular problem at length and in excruciating detail.

**also the subject of yet another story. lucky you!

***masonite is bullshit. one scratch and the stuff swells up with black fungus like the black plague. god i hate masonite.

32 comments:

  1. I'm waiting for John Cassevettes and Mia Farrow to walk in.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You gotta feel sorry for Jesus. He always gets all the nutters - either them or those with (no pun intended) wholy un-Christian outlooks on life.
    I feel doubly sorry for him because my mother claimed about 10 years ago that she had found him. Poor bastard! He gets nailed to a tree for gigging without a licence, goes into hiding and then a mad bat, cramming for her finals, goes and discovers him lurking in her cloakroom in Devon.
    My mother, being my mother, however, fell out with him because he wouldn't machine gun the Pope - how unreasonable can a deity get?
    Me? Well I think the best thing that can be said about God and his lad is that they are under-achievers. The choice, supposedly, is to end up on a cloud, playing the harp, dressed in white while praising the Big Man or going somewhere warm, where they drink, fuck and smoke all day while watching re-runs of Monty Python. It's a no-brainer, when you think about it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did the praying work? was the apartment cleansed of evil spirits???

    ReplyDelete
  4. charismatic churches are a trip. accidently went to one on easter sunday with the pirate's brother. won't be doin' that agin.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous3:55 AM

    Brilliant brilliant writing!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow. That is trully a scary-ass Halloween story! Religion in our household was always a kinda mixed affair as mum was a Scottish Protestant and dad was an Irish Catholic......I tend to avoid all things 'hand clappy and feet stompy religious'......I get to do that when I go to the gym for crying out loud!

    Poor you though, being squished so many times!!!!

    I have to ask.......was the wallpaper successfully exorcised or did the bad decorating demons come back?

    Brilliant story telling skills hun, hurry up with more tales!!!!!!!!

    ps congratulations to Your biker on the promotion, very cool!!!!!!!
    xx

    ReplyDelete
  7. I just love the way you write. Great, great story. Things that ridiculous just shouldn't be true.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Describing Holy Communion as "a light snack" is positively precious. Wouldn't you know? My current post is also about the Catholic church...and a punk band.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous9:41 AM

    apparently, these women were of the catholic/pentecostal faith. i've never heard of catholics doing the whole "heal!" thing. reminds me of the jim baker/jerry lee lewis' cousin whose name i can't remember thing.

    ReplyDelete
  10. i echo mutha. the "light snack" crack was inspired. also the cat/truck analogy. pure gold.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Ha Ha Ha what a great story.
    I have a vision of obese and embittered ageing paranormal Charlies Angles.

    Like the rest I am left hanging , did it work , was the demonic wallpaper put to rest???? was Bambi healed ??? Did the grumpy lesbian get any 'tongue' action ???

    ReplyDelete
  12. Yes, the whole world wants to know - was she saved? Did the demon devil give up his bathroom? I was expecting the punchline about the bathtub full of Jesus praying women falling through the floor.

    ReplyDelete
  13. mj: always loved what olivia dehaviland said about sinatra marrying her...'always figured he liked little boys.'

    reg: anywhere cleese ends up is where i'm going.

    frobi: all will be revealed, rattus mine.

    cb: oh COME ON! you GOTTA post about it!

    handrix: i remember a time certain guitar-playing cats would write brilliant brilliant things....*sigh*

    punkie: oh dang, you had 'The Troubles' home version! tune in next time for the thrilling finale!

    christine: that's exactly why i started this blog...i HAD to get these stories out of my head.

    mutha: you POSTED? *FAINTS*

    pink: they weren't very good at it, either. it was kind of sad.

    cb: my blushes! hoonas!

    beast: patience! *tosses beast a raw steak and runs a baton up and down his bars*

    joevegas: dude, i'm suprised it didn't. the sad thing was, it wasn't bad wall paper, either. not my taste, but dang. wilco.

    ReplyDelete
  14. just read the opening 2 paragraphs to my mom (recovering middle-class white catholic) and my dad (outspoken atheist). They thought it was hysterical. dad says to say "hi" and he loved the bit about the light snack.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Best. Story. Ever.

    I started seriously cackling at "From a distance this looked like a bunch of people peering at something down a well while signaling to passing aircraft." I didn't stop the rest of the way through.

    I have a double-wide buttload of tiki tchotchkelehs at my house. Do you think that caused my unfortunate accident? Or maybe my lesbianism?

    The family praying up a storm for my hospital roommate didn't seem to cure me. Then again, when they got to hollerin' at Jeebus too loudly it reminded me of an exorcism, and I hightailed it out of the room for a spell, gaping wound, Percoset high and all. Maybe I'M the evil spirit!

    ReplyDelete
  16. My mother found Jesus the way a Peterbilt truck finds a raccoon on the highway-sudden, hard and messy.

    ____

    I am trying my hardest--I SweAR!!!!! TO MOVE past this!!!

    ReplyDelete
  17. "they were all on the downslope of middle age,"

    It's strange how people get older,
    They waddle and drool
    and eventually moulder

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. I don't even know where to begin as this post was jam packed with so many golden lines, I couldn't even quote. Brilliant! Bravo! And so effin funny! I just scouled at the phone when it rang. WTF? I'm busy here.

    As I read about the upraised hands and the lights changing and the people crammed in various places, I couldn't help but set it to the tune of Alice's Restaurant. Try it - it works.

    Kudos.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous1:05 AM

    Marvellous stuff! I was wondering whether, after laying on hands, the group were then going to lift Bambi, chair and all, into the air using only their little fingers.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I'm late in commenting, but this is fantastic. I love this story, however wish that my Catholic upbringing was so exciting. It must have been pentecostal, cause we certainly didn't have this shit where i went to church..

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous12:52 AM

    LTGSL6 Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Anonymous11:01 AM

    2cnUYi Thanks to author.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous12:15 PM

    Good job!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous12:33 PM

    Please write anything else!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous12:12 PM

    actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous1:05 PM

    Good job!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous7:41 AM

    actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Anonymous11:11 PM

    Magnific!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous2:25 AM

    Please write anything else!

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous6:18 AM

    Wonderful blog.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous11:27 AM

    gpqsWY Wonderful blog.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous11:58 AM

    actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.

    ReplyDelete