Like yeah it gets cold and hot at the “wrong” times if you’re some kind of child prince whose gonna cry to daddy if you don’t get snow when you go skiing and sunshine when you step foot on your yacht (HA HA HA bite me). You want wind in your sails, fucko? I can tell you ALL about the wind! I had sex with this guy in a parking lot one night and something broke the sound barrier right as he climaxed and it was just as likely some freak Climate Event off the fucked up ocean as it might have been a super-sonic cum-fart (it was so cute though, he was like “what” and “are you okay?” which was sweet of him and we didn’t exchange names or anything too personal but honestly it’s good to know there are still some GENTLEMEN around here). It’s summer and it’s freezing and sometimes the clouds pick up debris or something falls from a drone or a plane or whatEVER is happening up there and there are heavy metal balls of sleet or oily raindrops that catch fire as they fall. Bon voyage!
I had a PREMIUM spot near that parking lot, too, and everything was FINE until clearly someone snitched and an autoplow swept on by and took ALL MY STUFF AWAY atop a rolling conglomerate of rubble like a garbage fairy’s trash sleigh off to deliver bad luck to all the world’s ugly children. My cover was blown and I could only sleep in the stock room at Fatima’s Psychic Emporium And Tee Shirts between clopening shifts, so yes, I did EVENTUALLY have to stay in a church for a while but I AM STILL A WITCH.
Our Lady of Good Voyage had a stupid mandatory intake process with this whiny-ass support group. The facilitator’s name was either Apollo or Olive Garden. We went around and did our little introductions but it escalated into feel-good therapy shit faster than any street hustle and I wanted nothing more than to get kicked in the teeth listening to it. Everyone talked like they’d invented feelings. This one person was so hung up on not suffering enough to feel like they could REALLY call themselves marginalized and Apollo or Olive Garden was all “blah blah I affirm that your identity is valid” and I said, “EXCUSE ME but if anyone would like to make ME feel valid I will be passing around this fully-compostable coffee cup I found for direct donations!” Apollo or Olive Garden told me to “step back” (i.e. SHUT UP) so I called them all tourists and kicked over my folding chair and TRIED to escape.
I was making to leave like, “fuck it, fuck this, fuck you, I’m flinging myself into the sea, she can fucking have me,” and they took it SO SERIOUSLY that this priest got involved blockading the exit and asking if he could “help” me in that way store security always ask if they can “help” you when they think you’re gonna steal something. The facilitator was all, “where do you think you’re going?” and I shouted, “TO GET KICKED IN THE TEETH. WHY NOT? IT’S FREE AND IT BEATS JOINING THIS COMA COLLECTIVE!” So the priest made me go to his office with him and I was like, “WHAT, ARE YOU GOING TO GIVE ME DETENTION? DOES THIS GO ON MY PERMANENT RECORD, FATHER?”
He just smiled like a little lap dog and said he’d been “called by God to serve where the need was greatest,” and I said, “That’s what I’ve been TRYING TO SAY: I HAVE A LOT OF NEEDS.”
He LAUGHED. “Yes, I can see that!” He was short and swarthy and sort of hot? Dude had very hip, canary yellow glasses and these eyebrows for days and WAY too tidy a beard for an ostensibly celibate heterosexual. His office door said FR. GASPREN in an extremely serious font and inside there was a human skull on his desk (which really took me back) and a television with a wrestling match on mute and a framed print of the praying hands emoji on the wall, and that’s when I was like, ohhhh, he’s a Cool, Accessible Priest. Okay, SURE.
We had a little chit chat about my situations and he had the sheer audacity to say, “That sounds awful.” It was that practiced, calm, do-gooder, care-worker voice I hate. Fake as hell. If you want to witness my anger then GET ANGRY ALONGSIDE ME!!!
Father Gaspren kept asking me things like “What does community mean to you, Anthony?” and I said, “Isn’t that YOUR job?” I knew about group solipsism and infighting and cults and love quadrangles and underground scenes and mutually assured annihilation but I did not know this “community” queen. Never heard of her!
“Now, more than ever, is the time to join our community of mercy and compassion through Christ,” he said. “You don’t have to lie to Him or to me. There’s no gatekeeping here, no shareholders, and no research study. No academic thesis. You get help no matter what.”
I called BULLSHIT. It was not exactly my first time dealing with priests. I look like the exact type of person who gets excommunicated, and I enumerated my MANY good reasons to be suspicious and how I ran away from Sunday School and became a gay transsexual WITCH.
“Well, we don’t refuse any type of person,” he said. Then he slipped right into the scam: I could stay in the on-site dormitory for “free” in exchange for a bunch of chores and also I had to come to Mass on Sundays but there were donuts and coffee. I asked him if the donuts and coffee were also free and he gave me this satisfied nod and I realized that by asking a follow-up question, I’d admitted defeat. God had me in xer clammy hands once again like some huge cosmic joke but I was also impressed by the power move of the whole thing, which only goes to prove I am the pervert they always said I was.
But there is ALWAYS a catch.
“However,” he added, and I gave him every non-verbal way I have of saying: called it! “If you expect relaxed attitudes about sexual ethics, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. There will be no ‘cruising’ or ‘turning tricks’ or ‘back alley’ activities tolerated.” He gave me that swollen look like he wanted to do some random acts of kindness at me which is a thousand times worse than any rival witch’s evil eye. The REAL creeps in this world are optimists.
He took me to the dormitories and I guess it made sense to have us do chores because nobody there was about to fill the coffers. The group bathrooms and makeshift kitchenette with all the knives and matches in a locked pantry and the sweaty asbestos musk of old linoleum floors meant I just KNEW without asking that I was going to be told when to eat and sleep.
The bedrooms were gender segregated but FOR SOME REASON I ended up sharing with the only other transsexual even though we were going different directions (the reason was transphobia). She was this tall beautiful butch with stone gray eyes named “Bert, short for Roberta,” which she said in one breath with no inflection. She told me that she was a trucker even though there are only ex-truckers. I said I was a witch and she snorted and asked, “what, like with the pointy hats?” and I said “yes” even though I do not physically own any kind of hat because it was still emotionally true.
The Church always gets its cassocks in a twist about witches but witchcraft has all the props I do like about religion that I first acquired in church anyway:
1. singing and chanting in dead languages,
2. lighting things on fire,
3. impractical headgear.
“Ain’t spiritual, ain’t agnostic, ain’t open minded,” Bert said. “Don’t wanna hear about no gods or masters or mystical woo-woo. Ask me my sign and I’ll never talk to you again.”
“Oh, I would never ask,” I said. “I know how Scorpios need their privacy.”