During the mass in the Roman Catholic Church, there are three readings from scripture, at least this is what I recall. I must confess - pun intended - that I have not been inside of any church for well over a decade, and I am certain that if I do venture into a church, the unfortunate parishioners would see crosses falling as swarms of locusts and frogs inundate their poor heavenly venue. You just cannot take the Lord's name in vain as many times as I have in the past ten years and expect to avoid being visited by a few of the seven plagues. In any event, there are three readings from scripture during the Catholic mass, and two of the three readings are performed by loyal parishioners, while the last reading, and usually the most poignant, is performed by the priest. When their time has come in the course of the service, the lay readers solemnly climb the altar, stepping slowly to the lectern, and then they recite their lines from the Bible with all the vim and vigor that you would expect from an afternoon reading in the geriatric ward of a hospital. After the readings are finished, the service continues on through the blessing of the sacraments until it reaches a crescendo as the priest bestows the sacraments to the members of his parish. Grace thus obtained, the parishioners then go on their merry ways, drinking and sinning for remainder of the week, until Sunday dawns anew, and the entire process starts afresh. This is, at least, what I can recall.
It is Sunday morning and it is entirely too early for me to be up. In fact, I only just went to bed a couple of hours ago. I am eighteen, and I have candles that I am blow-torching at both ends. I shall sleep when I am dead, and for now, sleep is simply a minor annoyance that occurs between nights out with friends. Last night was just such a night. I spent it exactly as Father Patterson warned me not to spend it - drinking and carousing. I do not drink much (yet), but I love to carouse; in fact, I am a first rate carouser, much to Father P's dismay. Last night's carousing was especially fine, but now I am paying the price. It is 8 a.m. on Sunday morning and I have arisen with a throbbing headache, and my mouth tasting like the insides of my old Chuck Taylors. My brothers and I, however, come from good Catholic stock and like most Catholics of our age, we have a drug problem; that is to say that on every Sunday, hungover or not, we are drug off to mass. This morning's mass is duly critical as my father Larry has recently become a lay reader and is reading from the scripture. So with obligatory grunts and groans ringing in my parents' ears, we are off to mass on this warm summer morning.
The church is stiflingly hot this morning. The five ceiling fans that adorn the chapel are whirring mightily, but at sixty feet up, they are butterflies flapping in a hurricane. I am fidgeting, red-faced and sweating, while my brothers, each on either side of me, are elbowing me in the ribs. They know they have me on the ropes this morning, and they know, too, that as the oldest of the three, I probably won't elbow back, not until I get them back home. I have resigned myself to fidget and shoot them dirty looks. I am also shooting equally dirty looks at the damn pathetic ceiling fans, inwardly grumbling about the relative utility of bulls possessing tits.
After an excruciating 20 minutes or so, it is Larry's turn to read. He stands up, full of pride and solemnity. Nearing 50 years of age, he cuts a fine figure of a man in his prime, resplendent in a beige leisure suit. His dark hair, greying at the temples, is pressed just so, and he reminds me of Starsky, or Hutch, I can't remember which this morning; whichever one had dark hair. He makes his way slowly, up the altar and then to the lectern, pausing for dramatic effect. He clears his throat with a soft "ahem" (not to be confused with "amen"), and he begins to read his passage from the gospel of St. Luke. His voice is warm and rich, his reading commanding attention. I can hear pins dropping as he pauses between each verse.
There is a funny thing about the particularly version of the Bible we are using that year, especially this particular passage from St. Luke's gospel. Although the version is highly readable and has been refined so as to be extremely relevant, the redactors have included a few tongue-twisters, and Larry is confidently approaching one particularly tricky passage. The line reads, "... and he shall sit at the right hand of the Lord." The human mouth is capable of uttering a myriad of sounds, and although no one has been able to chart the breadth of just how many sounds we can summon, there is something rather difficult about correctly pronouncing a word that begins with "sh" followed directly by a word that begins simply with an "s". Larry was to have read about an exalted man beaming as he is sitting at God's right hand, but instead, Larry's bloke defecated. After reading the verse, Larry pauses... and I can hear a pin, or perhaps a small turd, drop.
I am suddenly fighting not against my jostling brothers, but against an avalanche of laughter suppressed. I cannot get the image of a man in a white robe, beaming and squatting, out of my head. I imagine Larry is continuing on with his reading, but I am in the midst of a titanic battle against the forces of Satan and their demonic sense of humor, and I am losing. I am going to burn in hell, I know it, but this is funny as shit. Larry finishes and walks ever so quickly back to the church pew. All is quiet. As he sits at my mother's right hand, I lose my heavenly battle, letting loose with a squelched laugh which rattles the roof of my mouth and echoes throughout the church. My brothers follow suit.
Afterward, I recall only this: my mother and father sitting tensely next to three teenage boys, shoulders shaking, fighting in vain against violent surges of demonic laughter. We gave church a miss the next week.
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