Sunday Schooled
Apr. 8th, 2009 03:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonSanta? The Easter Bunny? Jesus?
Believe me, man I learned the hard way that all three were real.
See back when I was a preteen in Yonkers (the only city I’ve ever lived in that sounded like a bad sound effect going off or perhaps something a cartoon character might bellow out when surprised – “Yonkers, Scoob… it’s a ghost!”) I had a lot of what you might call ‘free time’ on my hands… which is the best spin I got on saying I had no friends. N-O. Zip, zero and nada. When Spring Break rolled in I had roughly two weeks to spend drifting around the neighborhood doing nothing but pretending to be Hawkeye (Avengers not Last of the Mohicans) or Han Solo or whoever it was I needed to be instead of me. This resulted in me walking up McClendon Avenue in a sort of trance state, muttering to characters only I could see and occasionally weaving my head as I dodged enemy fire. It was odd - looking back on it now – I realize while I was never completely transported to another world by the power of imagination, I did end up having another world overlap with mine. I summoned supervillains and stormtroopers to mount ambushes from behind parked trucks, rally for the attack around the corner of the pharmacy, lining up kill shots along every rooftop. Now while a few thousand years ago this ability to interact with ‘the spirits’ might have put me on the fast track to Shaman School (“My son the Witch-Doctor”) in 1980’s New York however, it marked me for future Street Crazy (“Hey Kid-Rorschach keep it down willya, I’m tryin’ to think over here!”). This was all fine by me. Between the babbling marches across the lost afternoons, the rumor that my house was haunted (which was kinda true) and the widely held belief amongst the PTA that my mother was a witch (also kinda true) the other kids in the class gave me a wide berth.
So anyway, it was Easter Morning and I was on my traditional Sunday pilgrimage: walking up to the store to buy mom cigarettes. Since the brand she smoked at the time was More Light 100’s and obviously not the sort of brand a thirteen year old boy would be smoking to look cool, no one at the counter never ever gave me any problems. On Sundays only the Korean Deli was open and I was about a block away when I noticed a large man with the head of a white rabbit leaning against the brick wall of the old funeral home. He was smoking a cigarette and wearing a rumpled burgundy suit.
Now while seeing someone who wasn’t there wasn’t an unusual occurrence… seeing someone I didn’t summon definitely was. I kept walking closer, trying to see if maybe it was a mask or a trick of the eye but nope… pink eyes, white fur, floppy ears, the whole nine yards.
When he saw me approaching he flicked the cigarette into the street and advanced on me, snapping his fingers before pointing at me menacingly.
“Hey, hey… you Jack?” gravel grinded against the boom of his voice and his ears began twitching wildly to the side of his temples.
“Um…” I stopped in my tracks and began looking around nervously.
Big Bunny began rummaging through his pockets, spilling empty cigarette packs and condom wrappers around his feet. Finally he found a quartered sheet of note book paper which he began to unfold and read from: “Lessee here, white-afro, check. Big-belly, check. Jam-stain on shirt, check and oh, just to make sure… who’s faster Quicksilver or the Flash?”
“Pfff… The Flash!”
“Yep… your our boy. So tell me kid, do you know why today is special?”
“No…”
“It’s Easter… how come you ain’t at church like the other kids?”
“My dad says it’s just a watered down fertility rite for the rubes and my mom says we don’t observe the rituals of the Slave God in our home.”
“Is that so?” the man leaned down until he was inches away from my face (breath of menthol and chocolate). “Well I got someone I want ya to meet.”
With that the Rabbit-Headed Man stuck two fingers in his mouth and shrieked out a ear-splitting whistle.
Just then the longest stretch-limo I ever saw pulled up. Row after row of car doors sailed by me, the sun bouncing off the seemingly endless procession of mirrored windows until the last door finally arrived as the limo braked soundlessly.
The final window rolled down.
Jesus leaned out the window. He was dressed 80’s Wall Street chic from what I could see, with his long hair was pony tailed back and a pair of expensive mirrored glasses reflecting me back in stereo.
“Him?” he asked the Rabbit-Headed Man softly with a lyrical accent.
“Yeah, boss…”
“That’s the mother-fucker!” a jolly voice boomed from behind Jesus, a car door slammed on the other side of the limo and a big fat man with a white beard flecked with cookie crumbs and the residue of some kind of white powder around his nose came barreling around the ride. He wore a stained red business suit that he seemed to have fallen asleep in and it reeked of liquor enough that I could whiff it out off the closing distance between us. The Big Man moved faster than would seem possible and in a blink he was on me before I could register what was going on.
“This lil’ shit right, here?” Big Man loomed over me and jabbed me in the chest with a bulbous fingertip, “Nothing a good ass-kicking and some coal in the stocking won’t solve!”
“Hey, hey, hey… ” Jesus lunged from out of the limo and pulled him off of me, “I got this, alright? Just be cool, Baby… let me do my thing.”
The big man eyed Jesus then nodded in a manner that said ‘if it was anyone else, I would kick your ass just for touching me’ and then stepped back.
“My son…” Jesus smiled beatifically and crouched down so we were face to face.
“You’re not my dad…”
“… why have you forsaken me?”
“Pfff, ‘forsaken’? You?” I snickered, “You’re not even in Deities & Demigods!”
“I see” Jesus nodded gently, resting a hand on my shoulder in a manner I still find inappropriate to this day, “But there’s something you haven’t realized.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” I asked impatiently. If I didn’t get back soon with mom’s cigarettes it was my ass.
“This is my day, Bitch!” and he stood up and snapped his fingers. The Rabbit-Headed Man and the Big Man grabbed one of my arms apiece. I struggled to break free but years of Atari and Little Debbie’s had taken their toll on my endurance.
Jesus then proceeded to crouch down and deliver upon me a series of cow-punches to the gut. The left and right fists pummeling with a great speed against the drum of my belly, while I gasped and fought for breath.
“My day…” he panted and stood up adjusting his tie, “… and don’t you forget it! C’mon… we’re done here boys.”
The other two released their grip on me and I fell to the pavement on my knees.
Fixing his tie back into place Jesus got back inside the limo. Then he looked out at me, made the sign of the cross and centered it with a middle finger before the window rolled back up on him.
The Big Man ho-ho-hoed and before giving me a solid kick in the ribs added for good measure: “Congratulations… you just made the list, mother-fucker!”
I groaned in pain and rolled over on the sidewalk. My eyes were tearing up and what little breath I could purchase came at the price of searing waves of pain.
The Bunny-Headed Man crouched down, went through my pockets quickly and produced the five dollar bill mom gave me for smokes.
“Tell yer mom thissis fer the ‘Slave God’ tax, ya fat-bastard” he sneered and the two men walked around the limo laughing before getting back in. I rolled over on my side and heard the limo peel down McClendon.
A half hour later I was able to get back on my feet. A few people passed me by but if they noticed they didn’t say anything. I shuffled back to the house, down Croatan Trail and tried to come up with a valid excuse for losing the cigarette money. The best I could offer my mom was that I lost it. I expected the worst but instead she gave me another five and told me to go back to the store. She also pointed out that the five was going to come out of my allowance next week.
Fucking Slave God tax!
So off I went back to the store, one eye peeled for Jesus’ limo and the other peeled for any rabbit headed folk that might be waiting for me. Eventually though I got bored half way there, finding myself vanquishing my foes in a barrage of explosive trick-arrows and witty one-liners.
Believe me, man I learned the hard way that all three were real.
See back when I was a preteen in Yonkers (the only city I’ve ever lived in that sounded like a bad sound effect going off or perhaps something a cartoon character might bellow out when surprised – “Yonkers, Scoob… it’s a ghost!”) I had a lot of what you might call ‘free time’ on my hands… which is the best spin I got on saying I had no friends. N-O. Zip, zero and nada. When Spring Break rolled in I had roughly two weeks to spend drifting around the neighborhood doing nothing but pretending to be Hawkeye (Avengers not Last of the Mohicans) or Han Solo or whoever it was I needed to be instead of me. This resulted in me walking up McClendon Avenue in a sort of trance state, muttering to characters only I could see and occasionally weaving my head as I dodged enemy fire. It was odd - looking back on it now – I realize while I was never completely transported to another world by the power of imagination, I did end up having another world overlap with mine. I summoned supervillains and stormtroopers to mount ambushes from behind parked trucks, rally for the attack around the corner of the pharmacy, lining up kill shots along every rooftop. Now while a few thousand years ago this ability to interact with ‘the spirits’ might have put me on the fast track to Shaman School (“My son the Witch-Doctor”) in 1980’s New York however, it marked me for future Street Crazy (“Hey Kid-Rorschach keep it down willya, I’m tryin’ to think over here!”). This was all fine by me. Between the babbling marches across the lost afternoons, the rumor that my house was haunted (which was kinda true) and the widely held belief amongst the PTA that my mother was a witch (also kinda true) the other kids in the class gave me a wide berth.
So anyway, it was Easter Morning and I was on my traditional Sunday pilgrimage: walking up to the store to buy mom cigarettes. Since the brand she smoked at the time was More Light 100’s and obviously not the sort of brand a thirteen year old boy would be smoking to look cool, no one at the counter never ever gave me any problems. On Sundays only the Korean Deli was open and I was about a block away when I noticed a large man with the head of a white rabbit leaning against the brick wall of the old funeral home. He was smoking a cigarette and wearing a rumpled burgundy suit.
Now while seeing someone who wasn’t there wasn’t an unusual occurrence… seeing someone I didn’t summon definitely was. I kept walking closer, trying to see if maybe it was a mask or a trick of the eye but nope… pink eyes, white fur, floppy ears, the whole nine yards.
When he saw me approaching he flicked the cigarette into the street and advanced on me, snapping his fingers before pointing at me menacingly.
“Hey, hey… you Jack?” gravel grinded against the boom of his voice and his ears began twitching wildly to the side of his temples.
“Um…” I stopped in my tracks and began looking around nervously.
Big Bunny began rummaging through his pockets, spilling empty cigarette packs and condom wrappers around his feet. Finally he found a quartered sheet of note book paper which he began to unfold and read from: “Lessee here, white-afro, check. Big-belly, check. Jam-stain on shirt, check and oh, just to make sure… who’s faster Quicksilver or the Flash?”
“Pfff… The Flash!”
“Yep… your our boy. So tell me kid, do you know why today is special?”
“No…”
“It’s Easter… how come you ain’t at church like the other kids?”
“My dad says it’s just a watered down fertility rite for the rubes and my mom says we don’t observe the rituals of the Slave God in our home.”
“Is that so?” the man leaned down until he was inches away from my face (breath of menthol and chocolate). “Well I got someone I want ya to meet.”
With that the Rabbit-Headed Man stuck two fingers in his mouth and shrieked out a ear-splitting whistle.
Just then the longest stretch-limo I ever saw pulled up. Row after row of car doors sailed by me, the sun bouncing off the seemingly endless procession of mirrored windows until the last door finally arrived as the limo braked soundlessly.
The final window rolled down.
Jesus leaned out the window. He was dressed 80’s Wall Street chic from what I could see, with his long hair was pony tailed back and a pair of expensive mirrored glasses reflecting me back in stereo.
“Him?” he asked the Rabbit-Headed Man softly with a lyrical accent.
“Yeah, boss…”
“That’s the mother-fucker!” a jolly voice boomed from behind Jesus, a car door slammed on the other side of the limo and a big fat man with a white beard flecked with cookie crumbs and the residue of some kind of white powder around his nose came barreling around the ride. He wore a stained red business suit that he seemed to have fallen asleep in and it reeked of liquor enough that I could whiff it out off the closing distance between us. The Big Man moved faster than would seem possible and in a blink he was on me before I could register what was going on.
“This lil’ shit right, here?” Big Man loomed over me and jabbed me in the chest with a bulbous fingertip, “Nothing a good ass-kicking and some coal in the stocking won’t solve!”
“Hey, hey, hey… ” Jesus lunged from out of the limo and pulled him off of me, “I got this, alright? Just be cool, Baby… let me do my thing.”
The big man eyed Jesus then nodded in a manner that said ‘if it was anyone else, I would kick your ass just for touching me’ and then stepped back.
“My son…” Jesus smiled beatifically and crouched down so we were face to face.
“You’re not my dad…”
“… why have you forsaken me?”
“Pfff, ‘forsaken’? You?” I snickered, “You’re not even in Deities & Demigods!”
“I see” Jesus nodded gently, resting a hand on my shoulder in a manner I still find inappropriate to this day, “But there’s something you haven’t realized.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” I asked impatiently. If I didn’t get back soon with mom’s cigarettes it was my ass.
“This is my day, Bitch!” and he stood up and snapped his fingers. The Rabbit-Headed Man and the Big Man grabbed one of my arms apiece. I struggled to break free but years of Atari and Little Debbie’s had taken their toll on my endurance.
Jesus then proceeded to crouch down and deliver upon me a series of cow-punches to the gut. The left and right fists pummeling with a great speed against the drum of my belly, while I gasped and fought for breath.
“My day…” he panted and stood up adjusting his tie, “… and don’t you forget it! C’mon… we’re done here boys.”
The other two released their grip on me and I fell to the pavement on my knees.
Fixing his tie back into place Jesus got back inside the limo. Then he looked out at me, made the sign of the cross and centered it with a middle finger before the window rolled back up on him.
The Big Man ho-ho-hoed and before giving me a solid kick in the ribs added for good measure: “Congratulations… you just made the list, mother-fucker!”
I groaned in pain and rolled over on the sidewalk. My eyes were tearing up and what little breath I could purchase came at the price of searing waves of pain.
The Bunny-Headed Man crouched down, went through my pockets quickly and produced the five dollar bill mom gave me for smokes.
“Tell yer mom thissis fer the ‘Slave God’ tax, ya fat-bastard” he sneered and the two men walked around the limo laughing before getting back in. I rolled over on my side and heard the limo peel down McClendon.
A half hour later I was able to get back on my feet. A few people passed me by but if they noticed they didn’t say anything. I shuffled back to the house, down Croatan Trail and tried to come up with a valid excuse for losing the cigarette money. The best I could offer my mom was that I lost it. I expected the worst but instead she gave me another five and told me to go back to the store. She also pointed out that the five was going to come out of my allowance next week.
Fucking Slave God tax!
So off I went back to the store, one eye peeled for Jesus’ limo and the other peeled for any rabbit headed folk that might be waiting for me. Eventually though I got bored half way there, finding myself vanquishing my foes in a barrage of explosive trick-arrows and witty one-liners.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2009-04-08 04:21 pm (UTC)Beaten up by Jesus and Pals... I love it.
no subject
on 2009-04-08 04:21 pm (UTC)