So, it looks like I’m to tell again how the nude beach frenzy hatched in Key West. It started last April (2009), as I recall, at the end of spring break. Holly, one of the Baristas at Sippin’ Internet Cafe on Eaton Street just around the corner from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, loudly complained about the bikini contest that she had wandered into the day before on Duval Street, which is the center of the action in Key West. In fact, it is the action here. Feeling somewhat provoked and also a tad devilish, and prodded further by a street vendor, I told Holly she should have entered the bikini contest herself, even as the notion began to foment in my fertile mind that we needed a nude beach. The notion already had been seeded at a Higgs Beach Committee meeting the month before, when some Naturists showed up to start proselytizing Key West having a clothing optional beach, or as they called it, a naturist or free beach.
By and by, I received notice of Hometown PAC!’s first Call To Candidates, which would be held at Salute Ristorante at Higgs Beach in early May, as I recall. Somewhere in all of this ferment I met a young woman whose spiritual engery nearly caused me to go into cardiac arrest; she was nicely put together, as well. We started having talks about stuff I don’t talk much about with many people, and I became convinced that she was about as pure an emanation of the Divine Female, Eve if you wish, as I likely was ever going to come across. She was very much in favor of nude beaches and living au naturale, and she had some young friends, it turned out, who were like-minded.I told my young friend that I wondered if, because she was so interested in Key West having a ”legal” nude beach, if she would just show up topless at Hometown PAC!s shindig at Salute and dance for a nude beach? She said she’d have to think about that; it wasn’t the same, she said, as going skinny dipping. I said I’d speak with the Chairman of Hometown! PAC, who was a good friend of mine, and also with the owners of Salute, also good friends. She said okay. Alas, the Chairman of Hometown PAC said he didn’t think it would be fair to the other potential candidates, if I had a lovely damsel come out there and dance naked, or nearly so, for a nude beach. The fellow who owned Salute with his wife said he it might be too risqué for his business. So I gave up the idea and told my young friend what had happened. Shortly after that she left town and headed for the Bahamas.
The night before the shindig at Salute, she showed up at Sippin, said she’d been back in town a few days. We talked about a bunch of stuff, but nothing about Hometown PAC’s Call To Candidates. When the do happened at Salute the next evening, I told about all of this as part of introducing what would become the most well-known part of my campaign platform — I was running for mayor. I said maybe Hometown! PAC’s Chairman and the owner of Sippin’ had done me a favor, as maybe I didn’t have enough digitalis to survive what I had suggested to them. I was the next to last speaker, having followed the incumbent mayor, Morgan McPherson. The last speaker was a novice in politics, Craig Cates, the then announced third mayor candidate.
A minute into Craig’s debut into politics, I saw my friend and one of her girlfriends arrive on their bicycles near the public bathrooms a short distance away. Then I saw Aphrodite pull off her tank top, which caused me to lose my breath and squeal to Craig and anybody else: ”Look!!!” Craig turned around and didn’t see anything and continued his debut ”speech.” Next thing, my friend and her now equally topless girlfriend were easing by the side of Salute in plain few on their bicycles. My friend stopped her bicycle, preened some, then hollered, “Nude breaches for Key West?” Momentarily stopped the show, until she slowly pedaled away toward the sunset, followed by her girlfriend.
Of course, I got blamed for it right away, even though I’d had nothing to do with it. My friend, now I was thinking maybe she was Aphrodite, came back about a half hour later, with her top on, and plenty of people, and not just men, wanted to meet her. She later told me that something had seized her and made her come to Salute. She didn’t know it was the day of Hometown!s shindig. But when she got there and saw the people, she said to herself that must be what Sloan had talked to her about. Next, she was seized to yank off her top. It was then that I learned of her and her friends going in the buff at Rest Beach.
This was when Aphrodite told me that she and her girlfriends had recently started riding around Key West at night naked on their bicycles. Then they, and some of their young men friends started going over to Rest Beach next to 1800 Atlantic Avenue and stripping down all the way and sunning and swimming in the shallow water there. People came out onto the west-facing balconies of 1800 Atlantic, saw the kids and waved, then went inside and came back out with cameras and took their pictures, I suppose to share with their dearly deprived friends back home. The rest was history, including the soul drawing of Aphrodite I was moved to make, which begins this post today.
Later, I wrote that it was the Holy Spirit that grabbed Aphrodite and her girlfriend and made them do what they did at Slaute. Even as people continued to blame me, or perhaps even the devil, for putting them up to it. I had never spoken with the second damsel about it, although I knew her well. She is a popular singer in Key West during the season, and I had met her the year before, after she first made the scene here and started astounding people with her singing at Willie T’s. Leah is her name. Aphrodite’s human name is Aimee. I wish she was older and I was younger. As is, there isn’t enough digitalis to protect me. As is, she thinks I’m old enough to be her father. Actually, I’m a bit older than that; my youngest daughter, Alice, is ten years older than Aphrodite.
Oh well, are we starting to have fun yet? Here’s the next and last chapter of HABITAT FOR HUMANITY.
CHAPTER 9
FUN
All work and no play makes God a dumb boy, right?
You see, that’s the problem. Christendom, Judaism, Islam, all have God wearing male gentiles, er, genitals. Where do you ever read in the Bible of some king or warrior going off and slewing women and taking their foreskins? Well, some parts of Islam seem inclined in that direction — female circumcision. As if human beings know better than God what kind of equipment works best on women, and what kind doesn’t. Pretty arrogant, huh? Modifying the very human body God created. Would you call that arrogance? I wouldn’t. I’d call it insanity.
Well, I’m not going to poke Islam too much. If this book is ever published, hope I’m dead by then, but if not, no telling what Inman or Ayatollah will issue a death sentence aimed at me, make me the sole target of a jihad. What a cute little boy invention, jihad. Reminds me so much of its Christendom brother, crusade. Let’s go out and get them godless Saracens, and while we’re at it let’s sack all of their libraries and burn all of their books. No worries, in two generations they will have forgotten all about it and will only be worried about screwing each other out of their camels, while we, America, led by our fearless leaders rid the world of Evil.
Although that might not be quite as big a deal as ridding the world of God, it’s still a pretty big deal, ridding the world of Evil. So big a deal, in fact, that whoever came up with that idea should have been taken to the state mental, locked up, and the key not thrown away but melted down into molten nothing and then thrown away, just to make sure that if anyone ever found it and somehow figured out what it once was, there would be no way to use it and let the lunatic out again. One has to wonder how the lunatic ever got let out the first time? Did God will it, to play some kind of joke on America? The rest of the world didn’t fall for it, obviously. But plenty of God-fearing Americans fell for it when the lunatic stood before a national television camera and said the person in history he most identified with philosophically was Jesus.
Bet that sure was news to Jesus, who had been saying for years that he never knew the lunatic. Bet it also was news to Jesus to see the US of A change the Pledge of Allegiance around the time the lunatic was reaching puberty, to say the US of A was “under God.” As if saying you are under God makes you any different than you were before you said it. As if America even had God’s permission to make that change to the Pledge of Allegiance, which went though a number of changes after it came into being following the War Between the States, one man’s effort to bring the then existing states back together. Not once, though, did he use God’s name in the Pledge, though. Not once.
The irony is, the US of A really is under God, but it is not the one nation under God. It is in the company of all nations, all of which are under God, in the sense that God presides over everything, even nations that don’t even acknowledge God’s existence. As if what nations or people acknowledge has any effect on God. As if people can make God in their own image, although they sure have spent a lot of time and effort trying to do just that. Talk about insanity, there you go: a human being trying to define or describe God, something not even an archangel can do. But no matter, human beings are smarter than archangels. Smarter even than God, judging by the way they think and behave.
No darn wonder the real people are leaving this world to the mutants. Who in right mind would want to live in what has become a world-wide insane asylum? But then who, in right mind, would argue that Adam and Eve were the first two people, when it says very clearly in that story that they had two boys, Cain and Abel, and after Cain killed Abel because God liked Abel’s meat products better than Cain’s vegetables, he went off to the Land of Nod to find himself a wife. Of course, if you are a real smart Bible person, you know the simple answer to that dilemma; you know Adam and Eve had other children not mentioned yet in that tale, and some of them were girls, and they moved to the Land of Nod with some of their brothers not mentioned in that tale yet either, and started having at it. And, well, yes, Cain went to Nod and found one of his sisters, or one of his sister’s little girls, and married her.
Thus began the insanity, brothers were fucking their sisters, sisters were fucking their brothers, that’s how it was done back in those days. I know this because a Bible literalist told me this is how it was back then, leaving out the fuck word. I had to give him credit; he had spotted the flaw in the literal ointment in God’s perfect scheme: if Adam and Eve were the only two people, in the beginning, how did Cain find any people in the Land of Nod? Pretty creative, don’t you thing? The literalist coming up with the notion that God knew nothing about genetics and saw to it that Cain had went and fucked his own sister, or his sister’s daughter. Sure straightened me out, because I had it figured that either there were other people the Adam and Eve story didn’t tell about, or there weren’t other people but it maybe was monkeys or apes, or maybe even wild sheep, that Cain went over there to Nod and had himself one, or maybe two or three. And thus maybe began men having harems and women being, well, livestock?
What I came to think really happened was it got boring as shit in heaven, boring as shit. So the angels got together, maybe God put them up to it, maybe not, and created this world and made some people and put them here just to watch what all they would to with this place and with each other. Sort of like going to the theater, or maybe a movie. But there was no prior script, it was being all made up as it went along. That way the angels, and if God was involved, or even interested, which might be one of those big time ASS-U-MEs, it was interesting to the audience because nobody watching knew what in the hell was next going to happen. I mean, how do you predict what crazy people are going to next? Well, how do you?
Maybe if I keep this up, I’ll get the Salman Rushdie award and the Vatican or the Southern Baptist Convention will clandestinely hire the KKK to tie me to a cross and burn it and me in some Mullah’s front yard in downtown Mecca. Not meaning to pick on Islam, but how in hell could Mohammed have known God, when not even Archangels know God?
Presents quite a dilemma, don’t it? Not even Jesus, the Son of God in the Gospels, said he knew God. What he said was he knew what God had revealed to him, which might not have been a whole hell of a lot. In fact, it might have been a hell of a lot less than that, in the big scheme that God is, which not even Archangels can fathom. They told me so, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, probably to get me down a ways off my high horse before I fell off and landed on my head and busted it wide open and my brains spilled out and ran on the ground and were slopped up by a herd of passing pigs headed to the nearest cliff to jump off into the sea.
Jews didn’t like pigs in Jesus’ time any better than Moslems came to like pigs after Mohammed banned swine to the outer darkness. That’s why Jesus put the prodigal son, who was himself once upon a time, into a pig parlor, slopping pigs and eating their food, until he woke up one day and decided he’d be better off, if it could be worked out, sweeping out the stables on his father’s cattle ranch. So home he headed, hoping against hope, and sure enough, his father was delighted to see he had come to his senses and threw a big barbeque (beef barbeque) for him. Alas, that really pissed off his older faithful brother who had never left home, or learned anything much to speak of, and by the end of the story he was really mad and his prodigal brother was really happy. Makes you wonder, don’t if, whether all that staying home and being true and good is really worth it, don’t it?
Of course, another way to look at this story, if you have the ability to see double or even triple, is to view the prodigal as Lucifer and the older brother as Jesus, or maybe an archangel, and it was Lucifer who finally woke up and went home and got the big party thrown for him, and you figure out who was all upset about it, if you want to go there. Hard for lots of religious types to imagine God loves Lucifer as much as God loves any other angel, or person, but that’s how it is, because that’s how God is. Me, I’ve still got quite a ways to go before I can love like that. How about you? If you are having trouble answering that question, maybe you can identify which of the two brothers you would rather be at the end of that tale? Me, I’d rather be the prodigal, because I don’t want to end off all pissed off, maybe permanently, because I never left home and had some fun. Not that I’m having much fun these days, but occasionally a moment like this one comes along and I jump on it with both feet J.
Maybe I’ll write about Barack Obama next. But then, maybe I should leave that up to the pastor — Jeremiah Wright — God assigned to try to straighten Obama out before he became the Anti-Christ. That’s right, George W. Bush once was put in front of me, back when he was still Governor of Texas, moving toward gaining the Republican nomination. As I look back, it seems the point of the exercise was to show me the futility of my aspiration (my own ignorance and arrogance) to get through to someone already taken over unawares by Lucifer. Perhaps also in play was my initial entry into politics unawares, and my seeing just how gullible and blind Americans truly are, maybe because they want to be gullible and blind.
Sloan
P.S. During the night an unfolding series of dreams, it always seems to have to be a complicated code, a riddle that I, the idiot, have to try to decipher, left me with the fairly strong impression that this here book is finished and is to be published to goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Makes sense. I don’t know what else I could write that would matter (if I wrote it all, it would take maybe 3,000 pages), and 9 is the number for completion in my line of work (this is Chapter 9). I didn’t even want to write the book in the first place, but I’ve learned that what I want seldom has to do with what God wants. I suspect there are some typo and other glitches I didn’t catch, and I hope that didn’t cause you too much grief — there’s plenty enough grief in this tale already.
Cheers!
P.S. For those who read this far and still are shaking their heads and thinking to themselves, “Surely he made it all up, or at least most of it . . . surely he misunderstands God . . . surely God wants it to be easy for us and for us to get what we want in life,” connsider Rumi’s poem about his own travels with God. Then pack your bags and head to Key West, and get naked! I mean, aren’t we all naked before God? Well, aren’t we? Wouldn’t we all still be naked, without any complaining from God, if Adam and Eve hadn’t taken it upon themselves to get into the fig leaf business? Well, wouldn’t we?
The Chickpea
| A chickpea in a pot leaps from the flame, out from the boiling water, Crying, “Why do you set fire to me? You chose me, bought me, brought me home for this?” The cook hits it with her spoon into the pot. “No! Boil nicely, don’t jump away from the one who makes the fire. I don’t boil you out of hatred. Through boiling you may grow flavorful, nourishing, and united with vital human spirit. I don’t inflict this suffering out of spite. Once green and fresh, you drank rain in the garden; you drank for the sake of this fire. |
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God’s mercy precedes His wrath;
by God’s mercy the sick ones suffer.
It has always been so; this is how God creates all that exists.
Without pleasure, no creatures would come into being.
Without creatures,
what could the burning love of the Friend consume?
Such sorrow may come that you might wish
to be free of this life.
yet the Grace of God will overtake His wrath,
once you are washed clean in the river of suffering. Chickpea, you fed in the springtime;
now pain has become your guest.
Entertain him well, that he may return home grateful,
and speak of your generosity to the King.
Instead of your vision of good fortune,
the One Who Bestows Favor may come to you;
then all true blessings may be drawn to you.Just as Abraham commanded his son:
‘Lay your head before my knife
I see in a dream that I must sacrifice you,’
lay your head before God’s knife,
that He may cut your throat like that of Ishmael.
He may cut off your head,
but only the one that is immune to death.
Such submission is the fulfillment of God’s purpose
— seek this submission.
Chickpea, continue to boil in suffering,
so that no self may remain in you.
Though once you laughed in the garden of earth,
you now are the rose of the garden of spirit,
you now are the eye of spirit.
Once you are torn from the garden of water and earth,
you may become food, and thereby enter the living world.
Become nourishment, strength and thought!
Once you were sap; now become a lion in the jungle!You were born from God’s attributes;
return eagerly to them.
You came from the cloud and the sun and sky,
then scattered and ascended to heaven.
You came as rain and heat;
you will return into the Divine attributes.
You were part of the sun and the cloud and the stars.
You became soul and action and speech and thoughts.Our victory after the checkmate of death
gives truth to the words,
‘Verily, in being slain there is life.’
Action, speech and sincerity become food for angels;
they climb this ladder to heaven.
A morsel of food becomes food for humanity,
rises from its inanimate state and obtains a soul.The caravan of spirit travels constantly between earth and heaven.
Join it gladly and freely,
not bitterly and full of hatred, like a thief.
I speak bitter words to you so you may be washed clean of bitterness.
The frozen grape thaws in the cold water
and leaves its coldness and hardness behind.
When you endure bitterness,
your heart will fill with blood like the grape,
and you will be freed from all bitterness.
A dog not kept for hunting wears no collar;
the raw and unboiled are nothing but insipid.”
| The chickpea speaks, “If this is so, then help me to boil! By this boiling you elevate me. Hit me with the spoon; delight me! Like the elephant, strike me and brand my head, that I may not dream of the gardens of Hindustan. Let me gladly submit to this boiling that I may be embraced by the Beloved. Men and women, imagining themselves free, grow insolent and hostile, like the dreaming elephant. When the elephant dreams of Hindustan, he disobeys the driver and becomes vicious.” |
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The cook says, “I was once like you, part of the earth.
I drank the fire of self-discipline, fasting and prayer,
and became worthy and acceptable to God.
I boiled long in the world of time, and long in the pot of this body.
From these boilings I grew capable of strengthening the senses;
I became animal spirit, and then became your teacher.
While inanimate, I said to myself,
‘You are running about in agitation
so that you might be filled with knowledge
and the qualities of spirit.’
Now that I have become animal spirit,
let me boil again and pass beyond that state.”
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Pray unceasingly to God that you might not be misled by these words, and that you might arrive at your journey’s end. For many have been misled by the Qur’an; by clinging to the rope of words, many have fallen into the well. The rope is faultless, O perverse ones — it is you who lack desire to reach the top. |