nine months after my first visit, not long after my first and last intrepid venture into other languages lacking grammar and name, when i had stumbled through the labyrinth of spiritual legislation and not been found wholly unworthy, sister gooch waited for me outside the men’s room.
brother judas, it is time we met and talked of your soul.
fine by me. what was one to say to the fat serpent of purity? we went down to jake’s and got two cigars and a pint of jack daniels and she led me to a rocky stretch by the lake where geese droppings strangled all living things but themselves and grey clouds spat curses at the earth.
you see this, brother judas? you see this desolation?
yes, sister.
brother judas, it is yours. it is the desolation of your soul.
how’s that?
you, brother judas, are a young man who contains the vigor of jesus. i knew this the moment you entered the fellowship. it was in your eyes. it was in your lips. it was in your flesh.
i gulped judiciously.
it has not left you, but rather it has been cast upon the water and increased tenfold, nay, even more. i and the people and rev. weal and the organist and i have all noticed it.
the organist has noticed me?
yes brother judas, but not in the way you desire. she notices your soul and this you know in your heart of hearts to be the greater noticing. the organist does not notice many souls, you should feel blessed.
yes, sister gooch. i felt thoroughly devigorated.
the senior elders met recently to discuss your soul. we met and prayed and spoke in the languages of the lord and sang and slept little a recent tuesday night on your soul’s behalf.
thank you.
we do not ask for thanks. we do it only from the deep joy and love of the lord, which rests outside the praise of men. i have been charged by the discernment of that night and the spirit of jesus to meet with you and share with you the discernment of that night.
it began to rain.
the vigor placed in you by the spirit is good, but you are like these geese, spreading their foul excrement without care or discrimination across the holy landscape. the excrement covers and grows and chokes all life and only those trained in hidden things can see the life that is buried below years of excrement and so desperately yearns to be free. the spirit is good to you; his vigor increases despite your carelessness. but with each increase so too your excrement increases. you are fighting, brother judas—a gram of excrement for each gram of spirit. you must let go. your withholding is of the devil, your release is of the lord. you must be a warrior united, hand-in-hand, with jesus. mighty things can then be accomplished and your life shall unfold according to his plan, the plan that was yours before the creation of the world.
the rain became torrential, turning the goose droppings into a viscous mulch. we drank and sucked on our soggy cigars and sister gooch stared into the impenetrable weather and saw visions peculiar to herself. her voluminous pink-patterned dress clung to her vastness; fat nipples stared at me like cerberus’ eyes across the styx’ fog, flesh cascaded, taming time.
she laid her many-ringed hand high up my thigh, kneading my young male flesh with weighty familiarity. the words of benediction were spoken while she delved and clawed me like some feline loosed from the menageries of hell and my organ pulsed with the music of whiskey and tobacco and the fire that created even god.
brother judas. there are many questions even the wise are unsure of, for the truth entire is only in jesus. but this i know. you are his and the promise of jesus is within you. but others who do not have half the jesus you do have progressed farther in his kingdom because they are diligent. diligent, brother judas. do you know what diligent means?
yes.
i mean spiritual diligence.
i think so.
you have cleaning to do. and she lifted her significant poundage and was gone.
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