the sanctity of a virgin hippo

It was one of those rare occasions when my family actually managed to persuade me to sit through a Sunday service. It was my aunt’s birthday. We had been invited by her congregation to do this birthday tribute thing during their church service. Since I haven’t seen her in months, I agreed.

I settled on the last pew at the back, trying to look like a meek, saintly parishioner like the rest of the flock. With an idiotic grin plastered on my face, I shooed away obscene thoughts and switched on my holy mode. I had gotten the the-holy-ghost-spanked-my-ass look down pat ages ago. But I’m getting rusty at it now, having no occasion to practice it in. If I remember it right, it’s something akin to looking as serene as a virgin hippo while suppressing a stiffy. It’s great to play holy once in a while, which is probably the only thing a lot of churchgoers are good at.

No sooner had I put on my best hippo face than tirades against sinners and decadent bastards came shooting from the pulpit like disgruntled fireworks. For a while, I thought the pastor was directly speaking to me. How about telling me something I don’t know yet? I’ve been told countless times that I’m gonna burn in hell with fire and brimstone and all that shit. And then good old Lucifer (or Lucy, depending on his mood), dressed in a satin teddy and Winnie-The-Pooh slippers and with a pound of mudpack smeared on his face, would just watch while quaffing vodka from a cup fashioned from Hitler’s skull and, gasp, he won’t even offer me a sip! Now that’s scary. Imagine an eternity without vodka—that’s torture only Job can endure. I should make friends with the devil now to ensure my endless supply of booze in hell. Oh, but I digress, I’m supposed to look holy. Suppress the stiffy; hold back the shit. Virgin hippo look.

The pastor was now mouthing something about faithless but highly educated people being fools and about how screwed up this society is because we are now more accepting of homosexuals, pre-marital sex, and progressive thoughts; and about how worldly the world has become (duh?) and about the Bible being an indubitable source of all wisdom and Catholics being idol-worshipping pagans; and so many other unprintable assertions. The pulpit is perhaps the only place I know from which bigotry can emanate unchallenged. That diatribe was something only people like Pat Robertson would be delighted to hear. Or was that Pat’s avatar talking? I heard his dildo-wielding spawns are walking the earth, clandestinely making their way to Venezuela to murder its president by butt-fucking him nonstop with high-powered vibrators the size of Bush’s missiles. Could one of the spawns have found its way here, and somehow took on the body of this pastor to spread Mr. Robertson’s gospel? Creepy. This world is really fucked up big time.

Spawn or no spawn, I found myself checking my pocket calendar just to be sure if it was still 2005 and not 1105. Sitting through that sermon and thinking about Pat Robertson’s dildo gang made me feel like we slid back to the Middle Ages. That may not be such a bad thing—if they already had vodka back then. Which reminds me, I should give Lucy boy a call. Now where did I put that bitch’s number?