BANG OUT

A bit bored with the same old, Jesus wants to break a different kind of bread, share some laughs and conversation, a hopped-up pitcher of Northern California microbrew, a handblown peace pipe, whatever, as long as the connection is real. If sex factors into the party plan, fine, but he’s not looking for sticky-sweet kicks as much as that feeling of familiarity—i.e., you-get-me-slash-we-understand-each-other.

Jesus feels like lately there’s too much noise. He could blame Dimebag Darell. He thinks, yeah, Pantera’s awesome and everything, but 24-7? He knows the angels are quietly seething, praying for some old-school castrati ballads, a Mozart chamber concert, even Selena, anything to break the power-chord monotony. But he realizes, of course, that Dimebag deserves the same respect as all the others cut down in their prime—and him, on stage, no less—so a longer leash than most perhaps is justified. Compassion, he reminds himself. Respect for individual differences. Still, it’s loud up in here.

After much hand-wringing, he opts out of indulging yet another self-imposed existential meltdown, complete with months-long depression, overmedication, irritable bowels, chronic fatigue, erectile dysfunction. No, not again, never again, he assures himself. He will be assertive this time. He will handle his business. Before the next chorus of “Cowboys from Hell,” he will connect in a meaningful way.

Jesus flips open his laptop. Facebook.

Despite his maxed-out friend list—he never checks his bulging-to-bursting fan page (too creepy)—and all those cellphone pics with their arty-art appropriations and celebrity doppelgangers, he can’t find anything to like. There’s nothing he wants to share or comment on either. It’s not that his pals—all God’s creatures great and small—aren’t interesting or involved in really interesting stuff. But how many new babies or books or Kickstarter projects can he thumbs-up before he starts feeling like an ingratiating prick? No, FB’s too much like heaven: joyful noise, one might argue, but noise nonetheless. Twitter then, he thinks.

There was a time when the e-bluebird’s chat stream brought giddy relief from his endless numbered days. Kicking back with a case of PBR—breakfast of champions for the great unwashed (admit it: who among us washes before tweeting away the hours?)—Jesus would click through every How-to, Top-10, Best-of, Must-see link and slap his thighs hot pink from all the OMFG LOL humanity of it all. Always a first adopter, the Lord can reasonably say his followers now are legion. The embodiment of a giver, he auto-follows back everyone with personalized welcome notes. “Hey Jude! Thanks so much for thinking of me.”

Snapshot, spew, loogie, atchoo… tweet-tweet?

What better way to know thyself, he used to tell Peter (or Paul). After all this time he still mixes up those guys, calling each of them P-Diddles to save face. If only they’d trim their goddamn ZZTop beards. But Jesus understands. He used to rock the whiskers, too, until Yul Brynner dared him to take it way tight. He never looked back. His favorite T-shirt now, custom-inked on Zazzle, says Facial hair is so B.C.E. Yet while Jesus does prefer a clean-shaved cheek, he’d never lift a razor to his chest. That’s self-abuse, he’d often tell Alec Baldwin back when the eldest B-bro was bedding Kim Basinger. Alec would simply say, “9 ½ Weeks, dude.” “Yeah, yeah,” Jesus would say. “Good luck with that.”

There are few surprises when you know all. Which is why, in part, Jesus seems to have lost interest in his tweeps. That, and he feels ridiculous with these new reading glasses, staring at his reflection in the laptop screen. Eye strain is no LOL, though. There’s always free porn, Jesus thinks.

Why do his thoughts, not to mention his cursor, invariably lead to sex whenever he’s bored? Heaven’s IT specialist, Saint Isidore of Seville, attributes it to a flaw in the cyborg operating system. She’s the one who had to unstick his keyboard the last time his online activities slipped out of hand. It was embarrassing for them both. He was also called on the carpet by Mary (Magdalene, not his Holy Virgin Mother, you perv) for failing to meet a man’s minimum obligation in the bedroom. She went off on how it wasn’t her responsibility nor her forté (among many many others, she added) to raise the dead. Jesus knew she was right. He couldn’t meet her eyes, and he promised never again. No porn, then. Right. So…

What to do, how to connect? Jesus is at a loss. There is no know-it-all, he tells himself, wiping away his sniffles with the hem of his Lady Gaga “Monster Ball Tour” tanktop. But this much I do know: I need…

Unable to complete his thought, Jesus clamps his eyes shut, grits his teeth and opens his email. Though the backlog’s deep, he figures he might as well get down to it. Maybe one of these countless notes from his closest friends, business associates and faceless petitioners will put a smile upon his face, grace him with an intimate connection, if only for a moment. Besides, he thinks, there’s no use putting off today what you’ll put off tomorrow, or something like that.

He catches his breath at the number of digits in bold next to INBOX. The universe at a glance, he tells himself. Zeroes and ones, ones and zeroes, human nature, zeroes and ones, human need, ones and…

They’re all the same, he concludes. We’re all the same, he revises.

He sees one way out. A simple app developed by the Holy Spirit, who jokes how it’s his most inspired intervention yet. DELETE ALL. Jesus says it out loud: “Delete all.” His cursor hovers like a mallet about to Whac-A-Mole. Delete. All.

Click.

Breath.

Thank God.




Copyright © 2011, Jesús Ángel García