It first hit home that THEY, the Happy Crappers, had wormed their way into just about every niche of Society, unheeded, when I found myself profiled and prejudiced against in the most innocuous of places. I was in the queue to buy tickets at my favourite movie-house, one I had patronised every Friday night for the last forty years. The woman ahead of me was sweet-talking the teenage boy behind the ticket counter. She was quite ugly, with seven chins and a pot belly, but he'd probably never had his wick wet and she was batting her eyelids at him, giving him smarmy smiles and him giggling and wetting his pants at her every word. All the while she was presenting him with twenty-five coupons, each worth a dollar but which she's been given as some crappy door-prize at a church social. For each one handed over she had to type a series of numbers into an electronic gizmo where usually credit cards get swiped.
Each token took several minutes to be typed in so the process was taking forever and my movie was about to begin. When she got to number fifteen coupon I groaned, my movie had now started and she still had many bits of paper to go. She kept flirting with the white glory-boy and he lapped it up, they came across as two of a kind and seemed to know each other, like they belonged to the same milquetoast club.
I could handle it no longer and blurted, "Come on, my movie's starting, how many free tickets does she have to present?" The boy looked at me, took in my queer countenance and grimaced, he'd profiled me as the ultimate undesirable, not worthy of consideration, a poof. He turned back to her and gushed more insipid compliments while she continued to press numbers on the gizmo. I lost it further and spoke up, "All these movies are supposed to have no free tickets and yet you're favouring her with this endless nonsense typing in numbers while we who are paying are made to wait!"
Now his pallid, milksop face creased into a frown as he turned it on me and snarled, "You say one more word and I'll have you kicked out of the cinema." He looked to be one year out of high school, I was seventy and a retired palliative care nurse who'd been in charge of many hospital wards. To have this little prick abuse me so disrespectfully threw me for a sixer. "How dare you talk to me like that you uneducated brat, you should show respect to your elders. Just because you want to flirt with her while you give her free entry we have to wait and miss our movie!" At this he snarled, "Right, go away, I refuse to sell you a ticket!" I spluttered, "You can't do that, I've been a loyal customer for forty years and you probably only started here last week. Go get your manager, I want to complain about your rude behaviour!"
While he trotted through a side-door the blond frump had finished with her coupons and clutching her free ticket ambled past me with a prim, smug smile as if to say, "I've fucked you fag face."
After seven minutes the young nazi came back followed by another milksop, a young woman maybe a year older than the uptight brat. She obviously wasn't the manager but a fellow compatriot, sneaky clean, could've come off an assembly line like him. She gave me a wishy-washy look of concern and without ceremony said, "You have been rude to a cinema employee, if you don't leave now I will call Security to escort you out!" The little arsehole behind the ticket counter sneered at me, as if to say, "I've got the power dickhead and you're trash!"
I spluttered and gulped, "But I've been a loyal customer for 40 years. Who are you? You both look like you've just broke out of a cheesy Pentacostal Sunday School. I've got cash, don't you want paying customers any more?" She gave the blank look of the true uncaring bureaucrat and spoke into her walkie-talkie, "Security, we have a problem at the ticket box." I wanted to slap both their window-mannequin faces but instead turned my back on them and left.
Though fuming over this and swearing I'd never go back to that non-event cinema again, (and I never did), I would've forgotten about it except I met yet again the same stone-faced, department-store Gorgon dummie a week later. I went to my chemist where I'd been a customer for thirty years to get a bottle of cough syrup as I hade a sore throat. Out of the drug-cabinet came a blond, Aryan Better Homes and Shops magazine model, perfectly groomed, about 21 years old and seemingly fresh out of pharmacy school, possibly a week in the job as I'd never seen her before. She had not a hair out of place, so pretty she'd have most men dropping their pants but not me, she reminded me of a Nazi in a Leni Reifenshtal movie, with the blue eyes and the vacant stare of a brain-washed Christian soldier.
She immediately profiled me, queer junkie from the back alleys of Kings Cross, and refused me the syrup suggesting I'd become addicted to the codeine in it. She tried diagnosing me as if she were a two-cent shrink and I informed her she was not a doctor. For my audacity I was told to "Get out and not come back" by the floor-scrubbing harridan who usually stacked the shelves. She took it upon herself to be the protective guard-dog and she looked like one, albeit wearing lipstick.
It hit me that these religious zealot types were infiltrating all walks of life, inhabiting many niches in the body politic, to enforce their medieval superstitions and influence policies with their bigotry. I couldn't go anywhere but found these smarmy-faced zombies lurking, ready to push their religious agenda upon the unwary. Centrelink, the check out at the super-market, the doctor's office, the motor registry, the post office, the schools, the police force, they had wormed their way in everywhere. They'd even taking over parliament for there were several in the ruling party's front cabinet, including the Prime Minister himself.
They had an ultimate goal called "The 7 Mountains of Influence" which they were determined to achieve:
1) Family. 2) Religion.
3) Business (The Economy, Finance.) 4) Politics (Government.)
5) Education. 6) Media.
7) Arts, (Entertainment, Sports and Culture.)
These they believed mold the way people think and that influence everybody's daily lives. And that's what they wanted, to control what we think.
Somehow they had to be exposed and stopped in their tracks. The politicians were easy to critique: posters, flyers, videos, media exposes detailing their crazed religious crusade and misdemenours could be shared by all and the public thus informed. But the foot soldiers, the grim ordinary folk, were much more difficult to pin down, they hid behind good citizen guises, they blended in with the workforce and recruited other mealy-mouthed robopaths like themselves who toiled behind every desk, counter and machine. How to unmask them was the problem, if only they had a brand on the back of their neck to identify them, such as 666 or a scar where an alien parasite had entered to devour their souls, as in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
I decided to infiltrate their organisation pretending to be as straight-laced and mind-controlled as the rest of them. I got my hair cut into a short back and sides, neat daggy do. I wore clothes that any Sunday school teacher would approve of, nondescript, boring, in fact fashion violating. I went to their main temple in Seven Hills, smiled moronically, bowed and scraped when confronted, filled out the paperwork efficiently, donated all my life's saving which really made their eyes light up with greed, and was admitted to their biggest seance and worship hall. I waved my right arm about in a nazi salute more briskly than the most zealous of them and when it came to speaking in tongues I pretended to go into a trance and blabbered, spluttered, hissed and muttered like the rest of them, a talk-show host having an epileptic fit frothing at the mouth more copiously than their adored parson who screamed like an idiot from the stage.
Indeed, I threw myself on the floor and threshed about as if I was being exorcised of the holy ghost and this impressed the crowd mightily. I was carried up to the front of the congregation where I kicked, growled and shrieked more gruesome than Linda Blair so that the drooling head honcho had to come down and bang me on the forehead with a wooden crucifix to snap me out of my delirium. All this ham action had me glowing like a fleuro Jesus Christ in their dumb minds so that I was soon ushered into their inner sanctum as a special acolyte to be inculcated into the technique of being able to hypnotise and part gullible fools from their money, all the while ululating and calling on God.
After some weeks of this nonsense they truly trusted me and I marked in my mind's eye the identity of all the horny ringleaders, avaricious ministers and earnest brides of Christ. They relaxed their vigilance and I was able to wander at will throughout their labrynthine temple complex. I took on the tedious job of accountant and was able to go through their books, photographing with my phone all their names, addresses, records of criminal activities and the moolah donated to the cult by bastards hoping to curry favour with the ever-growing church.
I noticed many of the dignatories, on special holy days, disappear down a corridor hidden behind a huge sculpture of Adam and Eve being tempted by the serpent. They whispered earnestly to each other as they scurried along and to me it seemed they were attending some nefarious, secret ritual not open to the lower ranked, braindead flock. Curious, I followed them surreptitiously.
Down winding stairs, deep, deep into the bowels of their monolithic edifice until finally they crept into a huge subterranean cave with an altar down one end above which hung an upside down black crucifix. A giant brazier burned with evil green fire on either side lighting the scene in nightmarish hues. In front of this was a podium upon which a black robed patriarch, wearing a blue baseball cap with a many-toothed shark printed on the front of it, was swinging incense and waving a golden sceptre. He had a repulsive smirk on his face as if his power was unassailable. A crowd of hierophants in sheer, white gowns were swaying and clapping hands, smiling moronically, mesmerised and flapping their tongues in incomprehensible incantations. When the patriarch banged his sceptre upon a gong the crowd dropped their robes to stand stark naked before their Master.
A young woman and man were led forth naked and clasping each other erotically as they climbed the steps to him upon the podium. They were the spitting image of the two pallid movie theatre nazis that had first initiated my entire sordid misadventure. To a hypnotic chant from the assembly of naked maniacs they fell upon the floor and had torrid sex, the boy penetrating the girl while she screamed with lust. As he fucked her he bit her on the neck and while her blood flowed coppiously he licked and slurped it up in a frenzy. He tore her wounded throat horrendously so that her blood sprayed like a geyser and covered their white flesh in scarlet streams.
The priest rushed forward with a golden cup to channel much of the blood into it, then he sprang up and howled like a werewolf, guzzling the blood with relish while the crowd shrieked and gargled with uncontrollable desire. I shuddered and realised the origin of the near albino whiteness of the cinema freaks, they had been regularly drained of their blood! My skin crawled in terror of what might happen next.
After more ballyhooing the crowd parted in well rehearsed discipline and two prim priestesses led a small child down to the altar, the congregation now erupting into an hysteria of ardour. As the child was handed up onto the podium I recognised him as the very infant who had gone missing and whose image was on the front pages of every newspaper and video screen in the country in a desperate search for him and his kidnappers. The Pope of Improbity snatched up the crying child and immediately slashed at his writhing little body with a golden knife while the insane mob happy clapped and crapped themselves upon the floor, then slid about in the muck.
The child was torn to pieces and then his flesh was thrown to the baying mob who snatched it into their greedy maws, grunting and slavering, blood and gore spraying over each other. I could contain myself no longer and screamed in horror, "No! No! You disgusting, ghastly beasts!" As one they turned on me, spat the bloody flesh upon each others crooked bodies and shrieked like much offended demons.
The last vestiges of their milquetoast, goodie-two-shoes disguises transmogrified monstrously, their bloodshot eyes bulged, their hair stood scraggily on end, their teeth jutted out in cruel fangs, their backs hunched and they growled and snarled like rabid dogs as they rushed towards me. Before I could escape I was snatched up by many clawed hands and dragged down to the altar and laid prostrate before the demonic leader of this satanic coven, his mouth still dripping with bloody gore. He leaned over me with his golden knife upraised and I pictured the razor-sharp blade severing my head and it bouncing down the steps of the altar as the orgasmic climax to their hellish, sacrificial ritual. And they all screamed in unison, "Let the Rapture begin!"
As the knife descended towards my throat I looked in desperation to the side of the stage and within reach was the base of the brass stand holding the burning brazier. I tugged my arm away from the creep kneeling upon it and grabbed at the brass column and pulled it towards me. It tipped and the flaming green Sulphur rained down upon the patriarch, his smirk changed to a scowl, his eyes rolled back in his head as his blabbing in tongues turned into shrieks of agony. As my captors sprang back in surprise the boss priest was set alight and he rushed about in a panic, a human torch burning green. I scrambled off the podium while his acolytes rushed to his aid and tried to put out the flames but they too caught fire as the brazier's fuel was akin to napalm, adhering like incandescent glue and spreading like wildfire.
The three burning arseholes ran into the shrieking naked crowd flinging the searing napalm upon every body they clutched at and soon the entire congregation was burning like a forest of gum trees in an uncontrollable bushfire. Unseen by the howling mob, from the very beginning of this black mass, I had been videoing the unnatural proceedings with my smart phone, tucking it into my underwear when the herd of wolves, shedding their sheep clothing, pounced upon me. I pulled the phone out and again videoed the ensuing holocaust, burning monsters rushing to and fro, trying to slap out the flames but only increasing their severity.
Leaving the incendiary mob in a conflagration I rushed through a black curtained doorway behind the altar and staggered up the ten thousand bloody steps that led back into the temple proper. Acrid smoke, smelling of charred human flesh, billowed throughout the religious dump and the peasant acolytes milled about, choking and grimacing in disbelief. I pushed my way through them and eventually found my way out into fresh air and sunshine. Oh the beauty of the natural world after that inferno of religious horror.
As I marched away I looked back and witnessed the entire complex going up in devilish, green flames with a few worshippers running from the grounds, their hair on fire. Again I videoed the brilliant drama with my smart phone. Some good friends of mine were pirate hackers who could dump the entire bloody dirt opera into every television broadcast and online social media site for the enlightenment of the entire population. Let the spin doctors try to explain that evil contretemps away. One battle with the happy crappers was won, now to tackle the war.
If you want to read more existential drama about "the violence of poverty" read my latest book, "Punk Outsider": it's a mash-up of social realism, political pamphlet, queer confessional, artist's manifesto, pulp crime, horror movie, dark comedy, rock music journalism and desperado's diary. Order it from tobyzoates@hotmail.com
or buy it from The Bookshop on Oxford Street Darlinghurst
or from Pass-Port Store and Gallery, Oxford Square Darlinghurst.
