Magnificent Vibration

To the memory of my good friend and boyhood bandmate: Darryl Cotton

M
y first memory: at the callow and impressionable-as-warm-wax age of three I’m sitting on the floor of my parents’ bedroom gazing at my mother as she dolls herself up on what must have been a Sunday morning. I’m vaguely aware that her destination is a place she calls “church,” but I’m too young to comprehend the judgmental, exclusionary, and ironically un-Christlike aspects of her particular tribe of Christians. So I’m enjoying watching her play dress-up.

Strange and beautiful birds I later recognize as doves hoot plaintively just outside the window while she tricks herself out for Jesus. Translucent nylon hose crackle and sizzle with static electricity as they are drawn up over still-firm thighs. Her “good” dress seems to dance with her as she shimmies into it. She applies wine-red lipstick with stunning skill (I can’t even keep my crayons inside the lines yet) and layers row upon row of faux pearls deftly around her slender throat—a throat I will eventually want to wrap my hands around and squeeze until her bouffant explodes, which I’ll resist doing only with the utmost self-restraint.
She sings beguiling hymns while she primps, as my toy robots and I watch openmouthed and spellbound from the floor.

My little soul is pining for the day when I am “a big boy” and she will allow me to accompany her to “God’s house.” I’m thinking it must be a pretty sweet place to make her whip out her party dress. It probably has a pool. With a slide.

So this as-yet-unsullied goddess becomes my earliest paragon of sexuality and organized religion. I’m still years away from understanding the scope of its hold on me, and I don’t realize I could go to Hades-for-ankle-biters just for having amorphous, erotic notions about my own mother as she ardently tarts herself up for the Lord. But it’s no surprise that this powerful memory is the first one my baby brain grabs hold of. It’s clearly a keeper.

The scorching intersection of sex and religion will remain a potent one for me—a mash-up that will drive me to my inevitable destiny in the years ahead . . . possibly. Did God set me up? Or did I arrive at my ultimate future under my own steam? Free will or fated? It’s a tough one to call. All I can say is that at this stage of my currently imploding adult life, the last person I ever expected to have a direct line to was mom’s superhero, Big “G,” little “o,” “d,” who, until recently, has seemed content to sit out the duration of my life, ignoring my occasional eleventh-hour invocations and foxhole prayers—almost daring me to become an atheist. But one dark, lonely night, that is exactly who I find myself calling. Literally. On my cell phone.

And so it is written:

1-800-Call God

(Beep, beep, beep, beep, blippity, beep, blip, beep, blippity, blip, beep!)

“Hello?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Helloooooooo
!”

“Uh . . . yeah,. . . .
God
?”

“Yepper.”

“Oh, great—God says ‘yepper’? What is this? An 800 number that sells salvation for five easy payments of nine ninety-five?”

“Ixnay on the amscay.”

“ ‘Yepper’
and
Pig Latin? You sound like a geek. I’m betting there’s a bad haircut and a
Star Trek
T-shirt on your end of the line, yes?”

“You lost me.”

“Ditto. So I’m supposed to believe this is God’s personal line?”

“Probably not. But there isn’t very much you believe in at this point in your life, is there?”

“That’s a pretty large claim, considering you don’t even know who I am.”

“I know who you are.”

“Well, that just sounds creepy. Like you’ve been spying on me or something.”

“Trust me, you walking to the corner Starbucks every night to buy a ham-and-Swiss panini and a grande chai latte is hardly surveillance-worthy.”

“The
fuck
 . . . ?!”

“And that barista is
married,
dude. You don’t stand a chance.”

“Wha—Who the hell is this?”

“You should know. You called
me.
”

“How do you . . . ?”

“How do I . . . ?”

“Is this somebody I know?”

“I like to think so. Shall we move on?”

“How . . . okay . . . so, God, what’s up?”

“Certainly not your prospects. Hence the call.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What can I do ya for?”

“Wait a second . . . Doug?”

“It’s not Doug.”

“That’s totally the kind of thing Doug would say.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“And how would
you
know that?”

“I’m omniscient.”

“This
is
Doug?”

“Not Doug.”

“Who the hell is this?”

“You’ve already asked me that. Do you want something?”

“Yes, I want to know who this is. If I’m actually talking to God, prove it.”

“Look,
you
called
me
, and you’ve just wasted a minute-eighteen of your time and mine. Do you have an actual question?”

“Yes. Prove to me you’re really God.”

“That’s not a question. It’s more like a command.”

“What
is
this? What’s the point of this phone number?”

“A minute twenty-six.”

“This is bullshit . . . I’m hanging up.”

“Okey-dokey.”

“You know what’s weird? I actually called with half a hope that this number was . . . real. Isn’t that funny? Joke’s on me.”

“I’m not laughing. You’ve come this far. Sort of. Why not play along?”

“Play along . . . yeah, okay. I’ve got no one else to talk to tonight, what the hell? My life’s in the crapper anyway and ready to be flushed. I’m done. I was going to off myself but I’d probably screw that up too. Wind up a vegetable. Bok choy in a bed. So I was hoping, if maybe this hotline was real, that God might be persuaded to whack me.”

“Whack you?”

“
Yepper!
Whack me. Or
smite
me. His call.”

“Has life gotten a bit tough for you, little buddy?”

“To put it freakin’ mildly, yes.”

“Boo-hoo.”

“Well, whoever you are, you’re doing a pretty good riff on God’s general disregard for me and my life.”

“Hang on, let me go get my violin.”

“Yeah, I’ve often thought if God does exist he must be a bit of a dick, anyway.”

“A dick?”

“What kind of God would sit back and let the world be as fucked up as it is?”

“Let me guess . . . a
dick
?”

“Exactly. So if God’s too apathetic—”

“Too much of a dick.”

“Stop interrupting. Too much of a dick to put me out of my misery for my own sake, why can’t He just smite me for my sins? I understand He
loves
doing that.”

“Whoa, so backing up here, you want God—who you believe is responsible for the effed-up state of your planet—to now smite you for your sins?”

“That’s what God does, amigo.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Well, yeah it is.”

“Well, no it’s not.”

“Then what’s all that ‘thunderbolt and lightning’ stuff in the Old Testament?”

“Did you just quote Freddie Mercury?”

“What?”

“Skip it.”

“I think we’re getting off topic.”

“Why don’t you
try
switching your own motor off? Just give it a shot, so to speak. Thousands of unhappy customers have and done it quite successfully.”

“What kind of advice is that, if you’re supposed to be God?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question.”

“Now you just sound like my mother. This isn’t my mother, is it?”

“Your mother’s dead.”

“How—Who the . . . ?! This
is
Doug, you bastard! How are you doing this?”

“Again, not Doug.”

“Who is this? . . . How do you know me?”

“I know you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah-ha.”

“Na-ah.”

“Yeah-ha.”

“You sound like some kid in grade school.”

“Thank you. I love kids.”

“This is going nowhere. I think I’m gonna jump off.”

“A building?”

“I’m afraid of heights. So, what, you write this number all over town to see how many suckers will call? You must be pretty lonely. We’re just two lonely, depressed people, whadya say?”

“Is that what you think is going on here?”

“Pretty much.”

“You need to widen your view. Remember when you were thirteen and you hid in the girls’ locker room and watched the volleyball team while they were changing? It shifted your perspective a little, didn’t it, and—”

“Holy shit! God! . . . Whoa! How do you know about
that
?!”

“Did you just say ‘Holy shit’ and ‘God’ in the same sentence?”

“How could you
possibly
know that? I never told anyone. Okay, you got my attention.”

“Yippee. At last.”

“Wow.”

“Took you long enough.”

“How could you know all this?”