It’s about 2:2o in the morning. I got into bed 90 minutes ago and in that time, I’m not sure how many times I’ve fallen asleep and woken up. All I know is that every time I open my eyes, I look over at the clock glowing in the darkness and I wonder how it’s possible that so little time has passed.
I’ve resorted to turning on the TV. Late at night, Channel 27 stops showing old episodes of Cops and starts showing infomercials. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, it’ll be a good infomercial like the one for the shakeweight or one of those Songs By People You’ve Never Heard Of music collections. Tonight, however, our infomercial is for Peter Popoff, a loud and shrill preacher who apparently can heal the sick by touching them. Even more importantly, if you call him, you can get “free miracle spring water” along with what is described as being a “faith tool.” I’m not sure what the tool is but apparently, if you get it, you can supernaturally cancel your financial debts. That’s what the man claims.
Much of what Popoff says makes no sense, on either a logical or a theological level. Popoff screams, “God wants you to be rich!” in between footage of some old woman jumping out of a wheelchair and dancing. “Oh! OH!” Popoff screams, “she’s dancing! SHE’S DANCING! SHE’S GOING TO DO A LITTLE DANCE!”
Peter Popoff -- HEALER!
I hit mute because Popoff’s shrill voice is starting to give me a headache. I watch as Popoff now silently yells and more people jump out of wheelchairs and toss crutches to the ground. I notice that almost everyone in the audience is black yet Popoff is very, very white and I wonder why I feel guilty about spotting this.
Graphics flash on the screen. “Cancel your debt!” they announce. Men and women — almost all of them black, almost all of them old — are now silently giving testimonials on the TV. The closed captioning kicks in and I watch their words flash across the screen. “I had lost everything…” scrolls across the bottom of the screen.
Suddenly, Peter Popoff and a woman I assume to be his wife are both on-screen. Popoff is waving around a piece of paper. I have to look away because I feel like I’m staring at the devil.
From what I’ve seen, Peter Popoff’s claim is that God wants you to be rich. And who am I to say he’s wrong? I’m a fallen sinner, after all. I was raised Catholic. I grew up wondering if I would ever be strong enough to take vows of silence, chastity, or poverty. (And the answer turned out to be no for all three.) Who am I to judge this ranting, scary-looking, lumbering creature who clams he can heal and who claims he can magically erase all of my problems? Who am I to disagree with a man who buys airtime just so he can claim to be God?
Peter Popoff and friend
I’m nothing but a doubter and late night television infomercials have no use for the doubter or the skeptic. No, infomercials are all about celebrating the fact that people will believe anything as long as it’s on TV.
It’s hard for me to believe that there was a time before I become a doubter. This was when I could still look at a priest without wondering if he was going to be arrested on sex abuse charges. This was when I still believed that men and women were capable of doing things out of their kindness of their heart and nothing more. This was back when I still believed that mom and dad would be married forever and that neither of them would ever leave me behind. This was back when I believed that happiness was something more than just an interval between pain. In my heart, this feels like it was a very long time ago.
And back then, I so admired the men and women who chose to devote their lives to serving God. I admired them because, unlike Peter Popoff, they served God with the knowledge that it would mean being poor and that it would mean sacrificing everything that spoiled little girls like me took for granted. I looked at them and I wondered how can they be so strong?
And, today, I just look at them and I wonder if they were all just Peter Popoff in disguise.
I look back up at Peter Popoff. The closed captioning informs me that Peter is telling us that God wants us to be rich. You cannot serve God and money, I think, that’s from the Gospel of Saint Luke. Chapter 16, verse 13.
Enough of this. Searching for my last faith isn’t going to help my insomnia. I pick up the remote and lift it towards the TV, just in time to see that Peter Popoff is finished.
Instead, Peter Popoff has been replaced with a new infomercial, this one for the Strap Perfect. The closed captioning tell me that “Strap Perfect is the perfect solution for your bra strap problems. Stop wrestling with stubborn bra straps…”
I point the remote at the TV and quickly turn the volume back up.
As Seen On TV
As she stepped onto the crowded train, she could feel the eyes on her. All of the male eyes and, yes, a few female eyes; they were all looking her over and passing judgment. They were all passing their verdict on the end result of 25 years of existence.
We know you, those eyes said, you are a whore.
And she knew they were right. After all, hadn’t he just told her that to her face not more than half an hour ago? Maybe he didn’t use the word whore. No, that was her aunt and all the other old ones talking. They were the only ones who used words like whore without irony. No, this was 2011 and people only said whore if it was being delivered with a smirk.
No, what he had said was simply this: “I love my wife.” And when she had broken down and demanded, “What about me?”, he had coldly replied, “You know why we were together.” It was the were that hit her. Past tense. He’d referred to her in past tense. Nobody had asked her if she was ready to become a ghost; a lingering phantasm of the past. It didn’t seem quite fair.
You know why we were together.
Oh gee, I guess I’m just dumb because I really don’t know. Why, oh why, were we together? Enlighten me. Fill my pathetic little head with knowledge. Show me the light. Ram your wisdom deep into me.
You were a whore and you were only there to be a whore.
She glanced down at her shoes. Black high heels. She almost laughed out loud. What was she thinking wearing black high heels? How was she going to get around the city in black high heels? How was she going to fight the suffocating, poverty-reeking denizens of the rush hour commute in black high heels?
If this was one of those grindhouse horror flicks that she loved so much, you would be sitting out in the audience and taking bets on just how long it would take her to twist her ankle in those high heels and end up graphically gutted for the amusement of bitter virgins everywhere.
Black high heels! For a commute on a train? For an afternoon in a motel room with a rock hard mattress, no cable, and no room service? Black high heels to carry her over into the past tense. What the Hell were you thinking, bitch? What the Hell is wrong with you!?
It was, she figured, the type of stupid thing that a whore did because everyone knew that whore’s just weren’t that smart.
What was it Dorothy Parker — a woman who she once imagined herself to be — had said? You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.
She clutched onto the pole dividing the car as the train lurched to a violent start. Looking at all those people on the car, knowing they were passing judgment on her — look at her with that red hair, with that obsessively starved figure, with that short dress, with those high heels, She may claim to be an intellectual but she’s obviously just another whore! — She felt a sickening hatred rising up within her. She hated that feeling, that bitterness, that anger. It was a side of her personality that her constant smiles and vapid flirtations were supposed to hide. But that hatred was there and it was never stronger than on that day. She hated everyone on that train. She hated everyone who prayed for her. She hated him for thinking she was a whore. She hated you for thinking she wasn’t. She hated everyone she had ever seen. She hated them for having lives to go to, for having families to love them, for having anything that brought them any sort of comfort or happiness. She hated them for not being hurt, for not having tears forming at the sides of their eyes, for not being her.
For not being a whore.
1
Saturday night. 9:00.
Like an angry infant, a phone shrilly demands to be answered.
She answers.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hey,” a male voice somewhere else says.
“Uhmm…yeah?”
“Hey, babe, where you at?”
“I’m…out.”
“But you’re in the town, right?”
“I guess. Do I know you?”
“So, sweetheart – you ready to do this thing?”
“Do what?”
“You know what.”
“Who is this?”
“You know who this is.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
“I do.”
Click
2
Saturday night. 10:00.
Like an angry infant, a phone shrilly demands to be answered.
She answers.
“Yes?” she says.
“Did you do it? Is it done?” a male voice somewhere else asks.
“Is what done?”
“You know what.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
“I do.”
“Is it done?”
“It is.”
Click.
Long and Luscious
Slow and slick
Growing Desire
Love and Passion
Light and flicker
You are my favorite sin
(Last night, I had a dream where I saw myself walking down a foggy street in Victorian-era London. I eventually reached the run-down boarding house where I lived and I stepped inside and it was only as I stepped inside that I realized that in my dream, I was Mary Kelly, the final victim of Jack the Ripper, and that, by stepping into that house, I was essentially walking to my death. Anyway, needless to say, that was enough to wake me up.
As for the historical Mary Kelly, she was a 25 year-old, redheaded, Irish Catholic, just like me. She died on November 9th, 1888. 97 years later, I was born on November 9th, 1985. Mary haunts me because she was so brutally murdered yet her murderer — to the best of our knowledge — was never captured and never punished. Like far too many women who have failed to live up to the standards of her society, she wasn’t given justice and she’ll never receive it. Instead, the man (or woman) who victimized her is a household name yet Mary Kelly remains forgotten.
Anyway, spending time thinking about this dream led to me jotting down the words below.)
Mary Kelly
A disengaged mind
Walking dark streets
Preying on us all
Listening for sounds
Of softly muffled cries
Hanging in the air
The dying of the light
You opened Pandora’s Box
You pulled out all I had
I lay on top of my bed
Lost in my sanctuary
The world entered my room
And stared inside of me
In the beginning I wanted you to think I was beautiful
my earrings
my diamond pendant
the sheer silk panties under
the tight weave of my dress revealing more than it hid
as the flashing warmth of my thigh
in a firm
lonely curve of disdain
brushed against you as we spoke
I wanted to hold
that soft unique quality
of a stranger’s bed after sex
just before the guilt
and the doubts creep into the shared
intimacy of false love
to live for a while in the immortal terror
of our dreams
It was a moment I wanted to savor
but you couldn’t wait
and it was over too quickly for you
With my clothes on the floor
and us against the bed
adjusting our hips
locking out everything but the sensation
With your mouth on the back of my neck
Your chest against my spine
Your breath on my right shoulder
Coming in quick bursts
as my body jerked violently trapped in your arms
So hard that it hurt
As your fingers dug into my flesh
So sharp that I hid my tears
You splashing me with your scent
through the communion of idolatory
The stale air starting to fill my lungs
And I shuddered
With you trapped inside
Shuddering in fiery rapture
My eyes closed shut
as you spread through me
And I wished that time could be forced
To give me an answer
On how to tell you
Why I am what I am
Why I am not what you think
Why I am more than just this
Why you should love me
And I wished you could say
That I am not what I know I am
But it was over too quickly
And the hateful satisfaction on your face told me everything
In a silent voice that spit venom
Lisa Marie Bowman
Where the Nightbirds Settle 