Raisin’ A Praisin’

THE BRIEF YET EXCRUCIATING TALE OF A STRANGE AND WEIRD JOURNEY INTO THE TWISTED WORLD OF SAVAGE, BEER DRINKING, PILL POPPING PSYCHOTICS HELL-BENT ON WORLD DOMINATION THROUGH THE CULT OF PERSONALITY BASED ON THE WRITINGS, ORATIONS AND APOCRYPHAL ATTRIBUTIONS OF THE MILWAUKEE MESSIAH

 

The Alonzo Porter Auditorium was heaving with a seething mass of humanity baying at the lone, slight figure on the stage hard at work doing his limited best to persuade the excited throng to calm down before the main event could commence.

"People, please! Please, people! Brothers and sisters, I beseech you," he bleated into the microphone, "I implore you. I request you in all humility with all the properly vested authority. Please, calm down; please quieten down! Y'all just relax now, settle down in your seats. We cannot go on with the proceedings until you are quiet, peaceful and can contemplate properly what you are about to experience..."

His wispy, amplified voice floated into the farthest reaches of the room like the long dead soul of Tinkerbell looking for a last resting place. The three thousand exuberant souls congregated in front of him refused to heed him. They were here to party and by goddamn they were going to party!

This was the opening day of the United Trinity Gospel Church of the Wayfaring Pilgrim Flesh-to-spirit Actualization Seminar and Thanksgiving Ceremonial. The congregants had arrived here from all points of the compass, from humble trailer parks to upper crust gated residential enclaves, all united in one purpose, one goal, one ultimate higher aim: to gather together in this vast auditorium, to worship under one roof and to hear the inspiring words of the great prophet, and to give thanks for his blessed presence here, in this hall today, and on this blighted, sinful earth where he remains out of duty and not merely pleasure.

His presence had blessed the event much as it had already blessed their lives. The happy initiates wore T-shirts with screenprint images of his face, waved little flags emblazoned with the church's symbolic rooster, chanted the words of the prophet's own personal gospel, as translated into fifty international languages, and growing by the day. If he was not everywhere at once in the physical sense then his holy spiritual presence at least had spread across the globe. There was no place on earth that had not at least been touched by his sanctified spirit.

But spiritual presence by and of itself alone is not completely satisfactory. The crowd had gathered to experience a touch of physical togetherness, with each other and also with the prophet who was scheduled to make one of his increasingly rare personal appearances on stage here tonight. He might be a distant, small figure at the rostrum, especially to the people right at the back in the farthest corners of the room, but his mere presence in the room, his corporeal materiality right there, in front of their eyes, right here, right now, would validate the entire life journey they had embarked upon, would be the culmination of a vast sea change in their various lives. Up until now they had read the words, perhaps listened to the audio tapes, definitely eagerly viewed the video tapes, but very few had actually been anywhere close to the great prophet himself, none have had the pleasure of touching his hand, or just the hem of his robe, none have heard his voice in the flesh as it were, none have had the experience of visiting with the prophet even if only from the distance of the seats of this hall.

Hell, no! The crowd was in no mood to be quiet, peaceful and contemplative. They were in the mood to kick up their heels with joy, to burst out in chants of praise, fainting spells, speaking in tongues, to raise a little sanctified hell.

The compére gave up. He could recognize a hopeless situation when he saw one. He retreated to the side of the stage, disappeared behind the curtain.

The crowd whooped and hollered, danced in the aisles, pranced like veritable Dionysian billy goats in anticipation of the grand celebratory feast.

From my vantage point right at the back of the hall -- close to the exit, just in case there was a spontaneous stampede for the streets inspired by a single, mass urge to convert this entire nation right this very minute -- the atmosphere was unlike almost any similar gathering I had ever attended. Sure, Baptist Holy Rollers really had the knack of seriously getting down in their churches when the spirit moved them, and boy did the spirit move them often enough! But somehow this scene was even more extreme. The spiritual fervor coursing through these Wayfaring Pilgrims was probably as sanctified as any Holy Roller's and I guess they were seriously devout and holy in their own right; yet somehow I sensed a bad craziness in the air, a mood that was dangerous not merely for the tangible fanaticism but also the hysteria that was palpably visible and audible in front of me. The dancing was not pagan, as if dancing and religion could ever be identified with each other, the chants were not satanic in any manner or form identifiable by cultist observers, nobody called on ancient tree spirits or Aztec gods, or anything as clearly weird and beyond the white Christian pale as that.

It was just that ... somehow, I could not really pin point it, at least not yet ... somehow, there was an evil afoot here, a dangerous masquerade of menace and threat.

Maybe these people were all drugged to the gills with a potent, yet poisonous variety of speed.

I decided I should have to get some too.

My very survival, my spiritual survival definitely but probably also my physical survival, could very well depend on the quality of the drugs I could chase down.

I bent over and addressed a small, excitable, middle-aged woman to my left who was doing a close approximation of an Irish jig whilst yodeling a high, keening tune of ancient Bornean origin. Or something.

"Excuse me, sister," I hissed, "but can you tell what you're on? Have you got any more? I could really use some extra refreshment."

I did my best to look like a long lost, despairing soul searching only for salvation and a better after-life.

"I'm gone!" she shrieked happily, not quite meeting my eyes and continuing her whirligig dance, "I'm gone! I'm gone and I ain't coming back! What's that you said?"

"Have you got any more of what you're on?" I pleaded with the sinking feeling that this was not the way to true happiness. I would almost certainly have to seek out the main source.

"Get your own, brother! Get up off your lazy ass and get your own!" she shouted at me, spittle flying from her thin, sneering lips, all signs of merriment gone now. She was a harpy, a demoness, transmogrified into a creature of hate and loathing. And all just because I had asked her for something nice to ease my way through the night! Clearly in her eyes charity did not begin at thy neighbor.

The Pilgrims around her looked equally as unpromising as contributors to the cause of slaking my great thirst for the strongest possible synthetic stimulants known to man or beast.

"Damned! You are all damned!" I cursed them, once more with feeling. "Damned and doomed! You ugly, stupid, evil, selfish swine! May your semen putrefy in your testicles! May your unborn babies rot in your wombs!"

Jesus Christ, my Redeemer! Did I just say that? Was it me who uttered these vile remonstrations, spewed out these base pejoratives? Surely not. It could only have been the inner voice of a lonely, desperate man psychically starving from the lack of chemically induced good cheer amidst the horde of orgiastically celebrating religious fanatics. Yes, indeed. That was it. It was not really me; I had simply been driven into the arms of the slavering, erotic goddesses of craziness, madness and irrationality.

Pursued by these demons and hounded by ever circling, destructive vulture-like hallucinations, I ran out of the hall into the lobby still decorated with banners, double life-size posters, balloons, slogans, tables stacked with commemorative programs, T-shirts, badges, CD's and all the other paraphernalia of the international media crusade and public relations hype.

The street outside was strangely empty. No passing cars, no strolling pedestrians.

I hesitated for a few moments, wildly swiveling my head from side to side searching for the familiar figure of a dealer in long leather overcoat and hat brim drawn low over the eyes, skulking on a street corner, not quite in the shadows, not quite standing in the bleak yellow circle cast on the damp, dirty sidewalk by a solitary street lamp.

No one. Not here, not now. I was desolate, lonely, lost. Was ever a man so utterly out of synch with his need and the reality of the lack of supply?

I sank down on my knees clutching my throbbing head. The faint, far-off sound of a lone trumpet snaked sadly into the melancholy darkness of the city night. That guy on the horn was feeling the blues too.

This was a defining moment. A moment when the earth stood still, the moon ceased to move and all the stars stopped blinking.

"Oh no!" I cried in my utter misery. "If there is a God in the sky beyond Uranus, let him comfort me! Let him reach down and lay his touch on my soul and give me succor!"

Or some good speed.