Magnificent Vibration (6 page)

A
t fifteen years of age I am a card-carrying, moderately committed member of the MORMON Church. Thank Joseph Smith I finally got the name right!! Let me tell you, there were a few raised eyebrows when I first walked into their midst and announced I was here to become a Moron. I have been a Mormon now for eight long and peculiar months. Evan won’t speak to me. And Dracula, the seductive coquette who first got me caught up in this odd religion, has neither shown her brilliantly brimming breasts at the services I’ve been obliged to attend nor visited me at home to rest an encouraging hand on my vacant, plaintive thigh. I’ve been through the whole Mormon gold plates thing (written originally in “reformed Egyptian,” whatever the hell that is), the magic stone, and the hat, and I swear I did not laugh out loud even when they talked about their sacred skivvies (special underwear that’s supposed to offer protection against evil and temptation), so committed were my little heart and wiener to the hot recruiter I was sure I would see at a gathering at some point. And if I’d been wearing this super-underwear in the first place, I might have been immune to Drac’s religious-sexual come-ons and avoided this whole gonzo sect. But now, even at fifteen, when the seething hormones are pretty much resistant to anything that would knock them off their single-minded course, I am tiring of the chase. I have whacked the monkey almost nightly since I met this Mormon goddess, though I have seen neither angelic hide nor angelic hair of angelic her since. I have a severe rash on my wiener, from overuse of the old liquid soap in the communal bathroom, and a seriously deflated heart. Even at this tender age Woody has a direct line to my affections. I’m in the bathroom so much that my clueless mother is sure I have a terminal case of dysentery.

And the guilt! I thought the Presbyterians were tough on us chronic masturbators, but the Mormons take it to a whole other level. They refer to it, mainly at church gatherings of boys my age and older, as “the problem,” and drill it into our sexual-fantasy-filled noodles that the wiener is sacred and to be used only for procreation. I’m good with that—just let me begin
procreating,
then! But in lieu of the actual carnal act, I must resort to spanking frank or my head (and possibly my frank) will explode. Do these old guys who preach against self-stimulation-of-the-pork-sword even
remember
what it was like to be a teenager? It’s a survival instinct to think of nothing but SEX at this age. From back when we all used to croak at the age of nineteen, eaten by some saber-toothed tiger or other predator with a hankering for the easily caught, upright monkey-thing. “Get a baby into the world before a dinosaur makes you its lunch” is hard-wired into us young males. My brain is screaming to me, “Get laid, motherfucker! You’ll be toast soon.” How does one fight that? Certainly not by thinking of football. Or kneeling piously in teen-prayer. Not that I’ve tried prayer, mind you. I’m usually elbow deep into my third wank of the day before the guilt gets so bad I start to run the alternatives through my mind. Let’s see, “waxing the carrot” one more time or a little meditation and invocation. “Choke Kojak,” yells my reptile brain. So I do.

And then there is the truly bleak side of my life: my sister, Josie. Never far from my thoughts, except when my thoughts go south to Sexytown.

At home, she continues her sad downward spiral and hardly ever leaves the house anymore. She showers or bathes three to four times a day and walks around her fortress of a bedroom with her red raw hands still dripping water and soap from the thousandth scalding scrubbing. She touches no one and handles every single thing as though it were
riddled with contagion and vermin. The beautiful soul she once was is disintegrating day by day under the onslaught of her dark demons, and I am impotent to help her. I answer her repetitive questions when I am not at school, at Joe’s church, or going door to door with a “recruiter” so I can learn the difficult craft of increasing the Mormon congregation myself. Our mother is beginning to hint that Josie would do better in a “facility.” I’m not sure what type of “facility” she means, but her tone suggests to me that it wouldn’t be something my sweet girl would be terribly happy about. The three-pronged relationship I have with the female of the species at this point in my life is neither fully understood by nor completely lost on my young mind. (1.) My mother: controlling, shaming, at times loving, lethal (when it comes to dogs), and increasingly less tolerant (when it comes to my father’s infidelities.) (2.) Dracula, who because of her exasperating absence has caused my heart and Woody to grow fonder and has become the sole focus of my twisted pious/carnal longings. And (3.) Josie, my damaged angel of a sister whom I love with my whole soul, and who has been nothing but good and kind to everyone in this world but whose growing torment (that God has seen fit to allow) is the darkest cloud over my life.

Before I leave the Mormon-owned Church for the day I head to the Mormon-owned bathroom and crank the Mormon-owned casaba one more time (it’s a wonder it doesn’t drop off). I always have and always will get a special thrill from strangling the one-eyed milkman in an oppressed religious setting. Sorry. I know it’s wrong.

I arrive back at the house after yet another class on how to be a stormin’ Mormon. These people are taking increasingly more of my time and I have begun to give up on ever seeing the fantasy-inducing recruiter/bloodsucker again. In fact, I have an inkling she was just a hired actress
from Hollywood who they brought in for the job, to tempt and draft. She may not actually have been a Mormon at all. The real Mormon girls I am meeting are staggeringly uninterested in yours hornily and I am truly tiring of the whole freaking freak show, such is my lack of any real commitment to the cause. I’m beginning to think I was badly duped by Dracula the babe, the breast-heaving siren-witch from Tinseltown.

It’s not a short walk from the bus stop to our place, and I arrive at our humble home slightly out of breath; obviously I need to start doing some serious cardio. I enter the house to the sounds of an argument in full swing and stop just inside the door to try to get the drift of this quarrel before I have to join it. It’s my mother and father in another of what have become progressively frequent altercations.

They’re in the kitchen. She sounds hysterical. He sounds stoic.

I move further into the entryway by a few steps. He sounds culpable even to my untrained ear.

The volume is going up. I move closer, unsure if I should let them know I’m here and get involved or stay hidden and stay out of it.

There is the jarring sound of a dinner plate being thrown into the kitchen sink with great force. It smashes to pieces as silverware clatters around the tile floor and my mother cries out in anguish.

I sense this would be a good time to show myself or this is going to get even uglier. I appear at the kitchen entrance.

They both look like stunned rabbits on a railroad track as the train bears down.

“Horatio,” is all my mother says, and she bursts into tears.

My father brushes past me without a word, knocking me into the wall, and exits the house. I run after him, unsure why I am doing it exactly. Somewhere in me I know he is only adding to my mother’s pain by leaving. But he has driven away before I even make it outside.

At their bedroom door I can hear my mother inside, sobbing softly. I know there is a photo by her vanity mirror of them when they first married, and it flashes into view in my anxious mind. She looks happy. He looks sullen. I don’t realize until years later that she is trying her best to conceal a slightly Rubenesque pooch to her belly that is my dear and distressed older sister in the very early stages of her life.

I lean against my mother’s closed bedroom door for a minute or two, listening to her snuffle against a pillow. I have nothing to say. I’m a kid and I have no words. There is the clink of a bottle as wine is poured into a glass.

I think I hear Josephine crying as well, in the room across the hall. I’m sure she’s heard the battle. I tap on my sister’s bedroom door but there is no answer. I call her name so she’ll know it’s me but she still doesn’t reply, so I crack the door. She is sitting, slumped over on the edge of her bed, her once beautiful auburn hair a dull, tangled mess covering her face, used tissues scattered around her small, delicate feet.

“Josie, are you okay?” I try tentatively.

Nothing.

“They’re not going to argue anymore. Dad left the house.”

Still nothing.

“Do you want dinner? Have you had any yet?”

“Don’ wan’ dinner,” she answers. Her voice sounds thick and slurred. I know she doesn’t drink, so this puzzles me.

I enter her room, sit next to her on the bed and put my arm around her slender shoulders. Usually when I do this she rests her head on me
and we just sit until she feels a little better. But now her head only falls further forward.

She sniffs unhappily, takes a labored breath and begins to slowly talk.

“I know this’ll never leave me . . . I’ll have this crap for the res’ of my life. I can’t live on Luvox or Zolof’ and I’m not going into any . . . fucking men’al hospital . . .”

“I know, babe,” I reply, and I realize her unhappiness is not from the overheard argument. But there is really nothing I can say that will help when she is this low.

“. . . and I’ll never have a boyfrien’ or get married. Never have kids . . . all I ever wanted since I was li’l was to be . . . mommy . . .” her voice is heavier-sounding. I pull back to look at her but her face is still covered by her disheveled hair.

Her neck and arms feel clammy to me.

“I’m going to make coffee, do you want some?” I say to her.

“. . . coffee won’ help . . . took too many . . .”

“Took too many what?” I feel like I’ve missed something.

“. . . don’t worry . . .” Her voice is barely audible now. She is slowly falling forward. I pull her back upright. Her breathing is shallow.

“Took too many what, Jo?” I’m starting to get concerned.

“Mom’s osson . . .” she is slurring heavily.

“Mom’s what??!”

“Os . . . ossonn . . . ossa . . . ossaconen . . .” she can’t form words now. I look around and finally see the wineglass and beside it an empty prescription bottle. Alarmed now, I lay my sister down on her bed and grab the orange plastic container. OxyContin.

“Shit, Josie!!!!

I scream for our mother as I run to the phone, but I already know I’m too late.

M
y groin tickles. I feel a momentary surge of panic, thinking I could be peeing myself, such is the late hour. I look down to see if my crotch is dark with urine but it isn’t. It’s bright blue with modern technology. I meant to turn the damn cell phone off.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” asks Alice.

I hesitate, then retrieve the infernal machine and look at the caller ID. This ordinary cell phone has taken on extraordinary properties of late.

“It’s Doug.” I’m relieved to see it’s not Yahweh. “I’ll call him back. He’s a friend of mine. He should know better, I’m usually asleep by now.”

I look at the girl sitting next to me at the bar. It’s just not physically phucking feasible that she’s a nun. I begin trying to mentally picture her in a black-and-white habit, a small Bible, a crucifix, and prayer beads clutched tightly, reverently in her soft white hands. She’s a nun, for Chrissakes. A nun! Can we please stop where this is going? I imagine her in her robe, cincture, and scapular—I know all the sacred and appropriate terms. She wears a wimple, as torrid beads of sweat begin to pop out and encircle her flushed and almost flawless face. She’s on her knees groaning in ecstasy, her dark tunic hiked up over firm, round, pale buttocks. I am also on my knees, taking her from behind as Woody and I penetrate her untouched, unspoiled, extremely holy places and make her glad she’s a woman. Oh, my God, that’s terrible!
I turn off the fantasy in my mind as though it were a brilliant, award winning, super-cool, highly watchable, 3D TV show. Click!