copyright © 2001 Todd Ristau

Social Discourse, Religious Intercourse

6.1.01

[Four people sitting at Cafe, absuredly dressed, absurd props, like a giant martini glass with a lime on a chopstick for the olive. This cafe might be in Hell, or it might be in Iowa City. It is impossible to know the difference.]

Red Man: --and that, of course, is precisely my point. A parasite. You know that the first real symptom is rectal itch. The eggs, of this particular parasite, accumulate in the rim of the anus. Naturally. That is how the damned things spread. Scratch the itch and you have the eggs of the bastards under your nails. Millions. Millions.

Rodent: And your most recent infestation?

Red Man: Never had the problem myself....just a hobby of mine, this sort of study. Recreational science, not professional academic examination and experimentation. Not religious enough to pursue science with the proper zeal.

Green Man: More Wine?

Rodent: Not religious enough. Problem with a lot of people today, I can tell you that for nothing.

Red Man: You just did. Of course, you have missed my point entirely. Unsurprising. What I meant was simply this...if you put so much faith, the support for your entire belief system, moral attitude, concept of justice, and all the criteria by which you not only judge everyone else but your own behaviour as well -- and here I don’t mean to say that sin isn’t important! Without sin, crimes against your own beliefs, then beliefs that you have would have no way to measure their value to you. Everyone needs an internal criteria that is impossible for them to attain. Or perhaps I mean to maintain. But I digress, the point here is that people who have all that internal codification zealously defend it from any sort of attack. Science. True scientists, by and large, are content with science where their external tangibles lend credibility to their internal intangibles, but this is in conflict with the spiritually minded person who will then, by being threatened, take up science with a terrific zeal in order to prove science is less reliable than pure faith---or conversely supports biblical doctrine, a perverse contradiction--intercourse with animals and multiple partners has a scientific backing for the position that such matters are dangerous and lead to death--ergo, the religious person who hates science suddenly demonstrates the scientific support for so called biblical truths. God knows about muscle cysts, but people don’t. God just says don’t eat pork. Thousands of years later science tells us why. Are you going to finish that sandwich?

Rodent: No. But what about intercourse?

Red Man: What?

Green Man: I believe he was asking you for intercourse. More wine?

Lady: (looking up from a monstrous martini) I believe in Sex. Sex is real. It exists. Sex and Death are all that exists. They are so similar as to be the same thing. All part of one thing. Alpha and Omega, I feel that sex is so strong...So real....Its the most human thing there is and yet is the closest we can come to being God. Procreation. That’s what I am. I am Pro Creation.

Red Man: Waiter! Cut her off! (laughing to the others) She says she is Sex itself!

Green Man: But aren’t we all? Each of us represents at least one act of carnality. At least one Sexual Union.

Rodent: No no nonononononononnoooooo! You can’t think about it like that! It will drive you insane. (to the waiter) Can we get some more brown sauce for the mushroom?

Lady: I hate God. He gets in the way of good sex. And if the sex isn’t good how is the child that comes of it supposed to be any good? You can tell by looking at a person if their parents enjoyed making them. If they were in love, or hate, or lust, or pain. Each of us is the fulfilment of the moment of our conception. You can’t have a good child without good sex and so I’m looking for the best sex I can find and that will give me the best child. (dizzy now, another drink) But that is against God then, isn’t it? SIN. God is against making good children, only thing God thinks about is the luck of the draw...he’s playing black jack with our destinies and we don’t get to even sit at the table or fondle the deck.

Red Man: Please shut up. It is obvious to anyone with a brain that God does not exist. He is just someone that got made up to enforce the arbitrary laws we made up to reinforce our internal values and to explain why we all hurt so much.

Lady: He does too exist. (slurring) He’s a gambler, and he hates good children, and he drinks cheap whiskey in the daylight.

Rodent: If I might be allowed to examine the question from a theoretical angle--

Red and Green Man: Oh, look at the time! Well, we really must do this again.

[Red and Green Man leave. Rodent has a moment of desperate fear trying to decide which one to follow, and then follows neither. The Lady continues to stir her monstrous martini with a single finger and the lights dim to half as she starts to sing in a very gravelly voice like Marianne Faithful...]

Lady: oh I’m lame and blind in one eye

yes lord I’m lame and I’m blind

Ah I’m lame and blind in one eye

I’m lame and I’m blind

and I’m maimed and got just one hand

Lord I’m maimed, yes I’m maimed

Lord I’m maimed and got just one hand

Ahhh Lord how I’m maimed.....

All gods chilluns laugh at the cripple

When he bent, blind and lame

Lord they laugh at the cripple

When he’s bent blind and lame

And my blood run cold and chilly

Lord it sure is running slow

My blood is cold and chilly

And I’m afraid I gots to go........

But I got no love for chillins Lord

and I can hear that worm a turn

I have lost my love of children Lord

And I hear the fires burn.....

 

[lights out.]

"Social Discourse, Religious Intercourse" IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

"Social Discourse, Religious Intercourse" debuted June 1, 2001.

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