Sexagesma Sunday AKA The Mass Destruction Prior To The Big Trip Of The Divine Mistress Disguised As A Christian Scientist

They sat together at the table drinking, Sid with his tea & Ted with his café au lait, respectively. Everything seemed to be in house order that is until Sid went back to the counter to get some more hot water for his semi-flattened teabag.

There standing at the counter, just one person ahead of him, was Christy, a rather tall shapeless vestibule of flesh and bones that had succumbed to the Asian Long-Horned Beetle. It was only months before that I saw Ted & Christy at an art performance. At that time, Christy was as energetic as a wide-eyed child on Christmas Day, but now she was packing for the big trip, the final leap of faith into the fiery pits of doomsville, the place where the Second Coming was outlawed forever. The place where the most unlikely of matches were made in Heaven, errrr, Hell, rather.

Time spent in hell was like a blind date, not knowing what would happen next. The cruelest, wickedest, most wanton, yet wildest and most fantastic adventure at your disposal. The only downside was that Hades was extremely hot in spots, while severely cold in other pockets. Imagine being frostbitten and sunburned all in the same day, within seconds of each other!
And the women! What a bevy of beauty and ugliness if there ever could be one! In other words, you could find love, break up, and settle down all within a matter of hours.

And the pairings of musicians, what a sight to be seen, especially at the all-star jam session on Saturdays at 12 a.m. sharp, featuring Fats Waller on stride piano, Slam Stewart on slap bass, Keith Moon and D. Boon on drums, with Allen Ginsberg on additional percussion, Phil Ochs on acoustic guitar, with loads of wordsmiths fighting for stage time, including Jack Kerouac, GG Allin, Easy “Mofo” E, Frank Zappa, Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan.

But what did Hell really consist of? Was it more of a stomping ground for restless souls who needed to work out their hardships and difficulties while having a good time with a guilty conscious in the process?

Or was it like a VFW hall where all of the worst veterans gathered, sat around cheating at bingo and poker, drank beer, ate fish, farted, sang “God Bless America,” seig-heiled the American flag after reciting the pledge of allegiance, whistled like ghostly steam trains at young women, berated and belittled their wives in public, collected their monthly military pensions, only to go and blow it on casino riverboats and in that order?

So, as Sid & Ted, went on drinking, out of nowhere, blowing like the wind itself, was Christy. Ted, being the nice person that he was, waved to her in a friendly manner, as she passed by our table. Out of respect and politeness, Ted posed two questions to Christy; “How are you?” and “What’s new with you today?”

As Ted looked into her eyes, a strange phenomenon occurred. Christy’s eyes turned crimson, with splashes of green and black in between. Her glasses fogged up. Her hair stood on end like a porcupine’s quills. Her body twitched and twittered like twisted branches. And her mouth filled, overflowed and dripped white and frothy saliva.

Her cheeks puffed up like a blowfish, ready to strike its enemy and spit out the poisonous venomous words…"Flip off! Leave me alone! None of your flipping business! Go to HELL," she screamed. She left us in stone-cold silence as she walked out the door, slammed her coffee cup down hard on a flimsy table, positioned herself on a plastic chair, whipped out a pack of smokes from her crazy quilt purse, struck a match and smoked her cigarette madly.

She chain-smoked herself through three packs within 45 minutes, averaging one cigarette per minute, per 15 smokes in each pack, while cursing and mumbling nonsensical jive.

In the background, over the café’s sound system, very faintly, but distinctly played music with corny, but oddly enough ironic. “Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette/Puff puff puff until you smoke yourself to death/Tell St. Peter at the golden gate/That you hates to make him wait/But you just gotta have another cigarette,” followed by squeaks, squabbles and bubbles from the bubble machine frequently used on all Lawrence Welk records.

And to think, she didn’t even say goodbye.