Clearly, the forces of evil are aligning against me. Or at
least the forces of extreme inconvenience. They’re compelling me to do all
kinds of things I’d never do in a million years if I didn’t, like, need the
money to pay rent. Like Edgar Allan Poe, I meet doom and paranoia, black birds
and white lightning, in every corner. I’m consumed by the idea that failure and
poverty will team up to crush me like the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff
launching off the top rope, arm in arm, to choke me out/strike me
down/what-have-you with a double Russian sickle to the Adam’s apple. I’m up all
night thinking, What the fuck am I doing
with my life? Or maybe I’m thinking
about eating the shit out of a pulled pork sandwich because I went to bed
without dinner again and my stomach is squealing like a stuck pig. It doesn’t matter. What matters is, I can’t
sleep.
Who ya gonna call?
Papa.
We sit up late into the night, Papa and I, sipping red wine
and contemplating the cosmos. Papa doesn’t say much, but he’s an excellent
listener. He nods politely while I detail my hopes, dreams, and the vast
conspiracy theories that I feel guide the trajectory of human history. Occasionally
he shares a personal anecdote—that one time in the back of the hearse with
Ghuleh, hooo daddy—or corrects a date
I have misremembered. Yet I am convinced that he listens to two monologues
simultaneously: My own and one that only he can hear. Perhaps it’s the voice of
the serpent that spoke to Eve in the Garden of Eden way back when. Maybe it’s the voice from the burning bush in
Moses’ fabled mountaintop hallucination. Also, Papa might simply be schizophrenic.
The jury is still out. Between the papal robes and the hail-Satan routine, it’s
tough to say. One thing’s for sure: he is a seriously talented motherfucker.
Insightful, too: Papa tells me things in the night. He says
Beelzebub is watching all of us, like some cloven-hoofed Santa, minus the
reindeer and, like, beer gut. He knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
Doles out presents accordingly. The wrapping is what you might call
non-traditional, but the gifts are timeless: Syphilis and the power of supreme
oratory. Liver failure and killer riffs. Plagues and laser eyes. Dry heaves and
hundred-dollar bills.
We’ve been on tour for nearly a month now. Ghost and Ides Of
Gemini have come to an understanding. Many understandings, really, but the most
important is this: Papa calls the shots. He is, how you say, the Big Kahuna. El
Jefe, if you will. And even if you won’t. If Papa says we’re having rotisserie
chicken for dinner, we’re each expected to eat an entire bird. Even the
vegetarians. No running to the vomitorium like an anorexic sissy, either. Man
up—even the women, he says—or burn alive for eternity in Lucifer’s fiery, swollen
hellhole. Papa says this hellhole is not unlike the Sarlacc pit from Return Of The Jedi. Which, he is quick
to point out, was based upon George Lucas’ paralyzing fear of Carrie Fisher’s vagina dentata. I have no idea if this
shit is true, but one gets the feeling that Papa KNOWS THINGS. It’s unsettling,
to say the least.
Obviously, we’re having chicken tonight. Maybe later Papa
will whisper some sweet nothings in my ear so I can get some shuteye.
