In Hoc Signo Vinces

I.

Some people can’t handle the holidays: I don’t understand them, for I have always loved Christmas. For instance, I was walking along in my neighborhood a few days before Christmas and I saw this old sour-faced woman: she had that pinched expression that some old ladies have, you know the one, the one that says that they disapprove of everything, that everything has been a great disappointment since your father died and the Negroes were allowed into the same stores and that nothing today is right. A sneer that negates everything, that is haughty not with power or lineage, but just itself, just being a snotty old grandma. I thought her expression, which I only saw for an instant, contrary to the spirit of Christmas. So I hurled a rock at her. Actually, it was more like a chunk of concrete, all jagged on one side. It was rather pyramidical, like the mountain in the Allstate logo.



II.

Another thing that gets me is that it’s Christmas, dammit. It’s not a holiday, it’s not a season, it certainly not a winter festival it’s CHRISTMAS. I was having the best time with this little dark haired girl. we were getting along great, really getting to know each other on Christmas Eve mind you, and she makes motions she has to go somewhere, but I know she’s no place to go (like the song), and I joke about this and she laughs and says she has to go and wishes me a happy holiday and I just told, all I did was tell her that it’s Christmas get it? Christ fucking died for you on a cross, he bled to death and they beat him like in that Mel Gibson movie, they put a crown of fucking thorns on his head and he was the Son of God and could have done or been anything he wanted to in life, but instead he chose, he fucking chose just to hang there on piece of wood and let shits like you just stick him with a spear, a fucking spear, Crystal, do you get that, and he did it for you, for you and people like you and you laughed and kept stabbing him already. Crystal got pretty upset and Rico and the other bouncer came over and made me leave, even though I had paid my two drink minimum.



III.

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that maybe Crystal was Jewish and that my remarks could be misconstrued at blaming the Jewish people for Christ’s murder. While this is historically true, it is not really my point. My point is that we are all guilty, of everything, all the time. This is meaning of Christmas and my reason for recording these remarks.



IV.

If you really want to meet the cast of “Left Behind” just go to a Chinese Restaurant on Christmas Day: you will find it full of heathens, infidels, Jews, Buddhists, Christ-Deniers, people too lazy to cook, hopelessly friendless loners, dedicated onanists who have taken time out from their perverted vigil gazing at the well-oiled Venus of Willendorf, model plane enthusiasts, solar power advocates. These people are laughing at Christ’s wounds and filling up on Chicken Chow Mein; they live in Roman present of fish eggs and soft serve ice cream, pepper beef and chicken wings, oysters and snow crab legs (limit two). These insouciant orgiasts, these Pelagian heretics, these evolutionists, I weep for them because they do not know the good promise that begins today. I am here because it is all I can afford.



V.

But they did not understand, nobody understands, I’m forgiven, I’m saved. You will never know how he helped me. You will never know what he whispered in my ear. You will never know how he carried me. You will never know how he held my hand. He set me all above you. You all think you’re so great. But you have no idea what it is to be saved, to be really saved. To be saved you have to have feelings, real feelings. And you have to know you’re a sinner, know it from your soiled jeans and your ratty-ass shoes and the things you’ve done and denied. You have to know you’re a sinner. And you have to ask to be saved. And you have to be willing to wait in the desert and go without water and you have to cry and scream and curse heaven and still want to be saved. None of you are shit. You all can suck my cock. I see you and I see pride. How do I know? Look at the world, man, it’s yours. You did this. You did this to me and to everyone like me. You’re happy to do it to me. When you can’t get enough of fucking doing it to me you get on a fucking plane and go on over there and do it to some other people. Because: you like the way it feels. Because: it makes money. Because: it makes your children smile. I know all this. And I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. But you all can suck my cock, seriously.


not you, dear reader


TURN #93: WEEK 79; WORDS: 89,062
NEXT BY 27 DECEMBER 2006