My inner being delights in the law of God. But I see a different law at work in my body – a law that fights against the law which my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner of the law of sin which is at work in my body. What an unhappy man I am!
– the Apostle Paul
There is just enough Christ in me to make me feel almost guilty
– Van Halen
It’s called a Gothic Toe Pincher, which sounds about right.
It looks like one of those coffins you see in Halloween cartoons, whose sides – studded in this case with large pewter-finish swingbar handles – gradually angle inward from the crown to the foot of the corpse (or vampire, if you will.)
But this sleek black mahogany envelope, handcrafted and custom-made at Bert & Bud’s Vintage Coffins upstate ("Don’t be caught dead without one!"), has room for neither the dead nor the undead. The coffin itself is lidless, and fitted inside its plush cream lining are two Boss subwoofers, pumping out spirals of high frequency bass from the George Thorogood in the cassette deck.
The cassette deck ... because 1969 Cadillac DeVille hearses didn’t roll off the line with disc-changers.
– I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
– A brand new house on the roadside, and it’s a-made out of rattlesnake hide
With the music so loud, he can actually think. Thinking’s hard going these days – the constant white noise between his ears is like the roar of an angry sea slamming waves against the shore and it tends to ambush his thoughts, eating them head-first. Loud music helps, lightly coating the exposed nerve. So does fiddling with the blue pillow case he keeps in his lap, its corners now almost black with his worry ... as if the roar in his head is somehow bleeding ink through the pores of his thumb and index finger.
– Got a brand new chimney put on top, and it’s a-made out of human skull
– Come on take a little walk with me baby, tell me who do you love
He swallows warm beer as he applies a little more weight to the pedal, pushing the needle just past the 70 mark. He pulls a face – his bottom lip is split and the beer stings. But mostly he winces because there’s more blood than suds going down his throat. He probes the inside of his mouth with his tongue and discovers, for the first time since stumbling off yet another battlefield a thousand miles ago, that either his eye-tooth or the one right next to it in the left side of his jaw is smashed away at the gumline. No pain there – just blood. The rest of his body is a canvas of unattended wounds and bruises. One hand gripping the steering wheel, the other now a dead spider curled around the near-empty tallboy of room-temperature Natural Ice (itself partially wrapped in the pillow case in his lap), he drags his eyes away from the dark empty road and
glances into the overhead rearview. The DeVille’s dashboard lights are green, setting the instrument panel and the whole cab of the hearse in a low, swampy glow. The glow turns the face staring back at him from the rearview into a macabre George Romero mask, stark, pallid, as bruised as the body floating in its leather duster below it. Suddenly he grins. A film of dried blood all but covers his left eye. He looks like he is
screaming.
– Oh whooooooo do you loooooo-wooooo-ooooooooove!
He pushes the needle further. The DeVille’s engine struts and growls, blast-capping all eight cylinders. The road ahead, with flat desert on either side, continues to stretch out beyond the sweep of the headlights, disappearing into a curtain of night so seamless and final in its blackness that it might very well be the mouth of Eternity.
Except it isn’t, because he knows that about twenty or so miles from now there is going to be a break in all that coal-black perfection. A very large break. A city that isn’t so much a city as it is a fortress. It will be bright. It will be dazzling. It will also be a lie. Nonetheless, he is surprised he has yet to see the deceptive glory of its signature, that the blinding brightness of its golden spires even from this distance has yet to pierce this portrait of a night so complete.
– Around the town I use a rattlesnake whip
– Take it easy baby don’t you gimme no lip
– Whoooooo do you love
He’s drunk. It mutes the pain of his war wounds so he can focus. The passenger seat floorboard is an aluminum nest of empty Natural Ice cans vibrating with the bass. A few spent packs of unfiltered Camels thrown in for ornamentation. Otherwise, his noisy sanctuary is clean and empty ... if you’re not counting the few splotch-stains of blood here and there. And of course the three items lying in the passenger seat.
Two of these items are guns. Big ones. Silver, 16-clip semi-automatics each bearing the formidable label Desert Eagle. They have special names, too. Carved in the brass-plated grip of one is the word "Justice"; carved in the other, "Mercy." The irony is not lost on him. In fact, it’s an irony with purpose.
The third item is exactly three sheets of yellow legal paper rolled up and secured with a rubber band. Each page is hand-written. Together, they form his "manifesto," which says the following:
Hello, Christians, this is your brother – a sibling in the faith, one who believes as you do, that Jesus went to the Cross to pay the debt we incurred with our first trespass in Eden.
I’m also an asshat.
Simply another term for "hypocrite".
Because the following, Scripturally speaking, is the exact opposite of how I’m supposed to address those of you in the faith to whom this little rant actually applies.
Are we absolutely clear on this, brethren? Because it’s very important you understand, before I go on, that the only reason I’m justified in calling you on your hypocrisy is because you’re nothing but a walking mirror of my own.
You give Jesus so much empty lip-service one would think He was John Holmes with a revolving bouquet of schlongs. I make no apologies for the graphic analogy, because that’s the size and scope of it ... Only your actions exemplify a Christ no one outside your toxic sphere of influence wants to know – he or she will be too afraid of becoming another you. Instead of humble, meek and mild, you give ‘em Conan the f***in’ Barbarian! By Crom, I heal you wenches! Here’s a Bible -- now go and sin no more!
You don’t know when to shut up: Satan’s in this person, Satan’s in that person; Satan controls the abortionist and the homosexual and the church you don’t attend and the tree-hugging heathen next door whose dog keeps pissing on your front lawn and blah-blah-blah :::::giggling madly::::: Lemme tell you what Satan’s really doing: Nothing. Not a damned thing – you’re doing all his work for him! His fat flaming red ass is parked comfortably in a recliner; he’s maxin’, relaxin’, sipping margaritas and enjoying the view above ... because the view above is a scene of delicious irony: You, marching forth across the land under the banner of all that is holy in crystalline HD-SurroundSound perfection, repelling the lost left and right as if you were sweat-lathered socks ripening in dirty gym locker. You take the sweet, simple Message of Christ and corrupt it to the point of blasphemy before bearing it like a shield against a world we were not meant to save. It’s not the Devil’s hand in the proverbial cookie jar – it’s your own. You come like thieves in the night in mockery of the One who is to come before us, assuming His direction and pace even as you steal His eyes and authority. You forsake humility – the very core of what should constitute Christian faith in action – to accommodate your collective pride and prejudice and to project your own kaleidoscopic mudstorm of fault and insecurity onto others. When outsiders and even fellow siblings desire compassionate correction, you give them judgment. When they desire mercy, you give them bruises. When they desire understanding, you give them ignorance. And when they desire love – love, dammit, love! Consult Webster’s, you illiterate bastards! – you give them hellfire.
You call yourselves Christians, but you’re really asshats.
Just like me.
Christ warned that we as professing adherents to His teachings will be "judged for every useless word."
:::::chuckling:::::
Looks like you and I are in for one hellish beating.
Pun either not or most certainly intended.
Sincerely,
Your Fellow Hypocrite In Christ
It is this little diatribe that has put his mind and body in such a state – but that’s only because his target audience has not been receptive to the message, as he fully anticipated prior to the wounds and the bruises.
No matter. He is either a righteous man or a misguided sadomasochist. Only time will identify which.
His next destination, this city of false brightness. At its golden center sits the Church, all denominations and disciplines united under the same professed banner of the Lion and the Lamb – of the White – under one magnificent steeple. And white will be the very first thing that comes to his mind when he sets his eyes upon those spires before shielding them with his sunglasses, for now stashed in the glovebox.
– I’ve got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind
– Just twenty-two and I don’t mind dyin’
He will penetrate the "White" (He cannot even begin to fathom that word in this dreadful context without quotation marks around it.) The gate to the city itself will be guarded, of course, but he will get past that little barricade with help from a little "Justice" and "Mercy" and a few magazines loaded with pure rocksalt Scripture.
Once inside, he will make his way to the Church. He will not, however, enter the Church. No need. He’ll simply do what he always does: pull a Martin Luther and nail his little "Thesis" to the door.
He will not interrupt their service. Let them enjoy it.
– Snake skin shoes baby put them on your feet
And fume at his words after.
– Got the goodtime music and the Bo Diddley beat
Bleeding and grinning, he guns the pedal.
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