| chip off the old Cock |
[Oct. 19th, 2009|12:23 am] |
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Dad and Religion
by Comedown Gilb
[Taken from Chapter 8 of Things Dad Kept Hidden]
Around 1986 my father found himself caught in a spiritual crisis. His first wife had left him, his muse had left him, his passion had left him, and, for some unknown reason, he no longer liked fromage frais. But he kept reading his books, nonetheless. I recall stumbling into his study one day, pissed off my tits, finding him looking at his usual dusty tomes.
"By Christ, I've found it!" he said, pointing excitedly at some archaic page.
Drunk from the night's drug-fuelled craziness*, I crashed into the desk, pulling down a selection of papers over my head. I passed out, awakening the next morning to see him muttering "Allahu Akbar" under his breath. He rose, and marched out the door.
"Where are you going?" I demanded.
"I am the reincarnation of Mohammad," he answered. "I am going to visit Mecca."
"Fetch some bread and milk while you're out."
Sure, he was deluded, insane perhaps, but at the time it all felt perfectly normal. That was how it was to be a Gilb. Being like any other mental twenty-year old, I spent my time drifting around our countryside mansion believing I too was the reincarnation of several historical figures. Each room was allocated to a figure. For instance, my bedroom was where I became Joan of Arc. Tired of having to wear a bald wig in bed, I shaved my head and took to wearing hairwigs outside the room, only realising later that meant I would be wearing a hairwig more often than not. Once I stumbled to breakfast bald, and my father remarked drily, "You must have a head for heights." Looking back, I realise it wasn't witty at all but rather the blatherings of a confused man unsure whether his daughter was a lesbian, or worse, or feminist. But that's perspective for you. For Christmas that year, in a bid to feel more authentically like Joan**, I asked my father for chain mail and, bless his coccyx, he got it for me. I slept in chain mail for several years, only discarding it when I found out my father had stolen it from a local museum.
The pipe room was where I became Sherlock Holmes. Costume was simple - hat and pipe. Sometimes I wore nothing but the hat and the pipe. I recall nearly choking to death on Old Toby one year and having a terrible vision of being found dead in a state of nudity bar the hat. Following this incident I took to wearing a smock, excusing the inaccuracy by justifying it to myself via the proposition that Sherlock Holmes was in fact a secret transvestite.
The lounge was where I became Emily Dickinson. During my father's absences, most of which were for months, I would spend my time aping her poetry, creating what I thought were works of art but which turned out just to be pieces of paper with words on it. Example:
I sit - here -
and wait - for -
the postman to come -
before realising that -
he is not ocming - [sic]
The months passed, and I nearly left the house at one point, but luckily we had enough supplies left to keep me going. I began to run around on the grass, leaping about in the rain, stumbling around the moors, hoping to get buggered by a farmer. There were no farmers, only Zuul. Zuul, you say? Yes, Zuul. I had begun to read my father's oldest tomes, some dating back to about 6000 BC. According to these scriptures, Zuul was a demigod and the gate keeper of Gozar the Gozarian. She took the shape of a large demonic dog. She was the counter part to Vinz Clortho, the keymaster. I roamed the moors, convinced that Zuul the hellhound would come bounding up to me and tear my throat out. It didn't. Only later did I found out my father had been the victim of a schoolboy's hoax. I cried slightly before regaining my nerve. Upon later viewing of the film Ghostbusters I laughed and laughed until I realised I might be scaring my partner, who had taken to crouching in the corner.
One day, exhausted from the futile gambolling and cavorting with myself on the moors, I arrived home to find my father slouched on the sofa with a posse of multicoloured women around him.
"Evening, father."
"Evening, daughter. I suppose you want to ask me about the women."
"Your wives, I expect."
"How astute of you. But to be more precise, they are all kinds of wives. Rita here is my concubine, Pam here is my bit on the side, Lucille here is my mistress, Deborah is my harlot, Erika is my courtesan, Louise is my kept woman, and the other one is my wife."
"What's her name?"
"Forgotten."
"Alright, father. Good. I'm going to bed."
But no. He and his wives kept me awake all night jabbering in their numerous tongues about his misadventures. It seemed he had been to all four corners of the globe: peach, strawberry, cherry, and blackberry. After trying them all out, he flew to Mecca and told everyone he was Muhammad incarnated. But, in my father's words,
"... after I said the word 'Muhammad' they kept saying the word 'pub' to me. I retorted that the pub was less important than listening to their spiritual leader, but they explained it was 'pbuh' which meant 'peace be upon him'. Mistaking the word 'peace' for 'peach,' I told them I preferred strawberry flavour to peach. They kicked the shit out of me."
Continuing to pursue himself, he renounced Islam and moved onto Christianity, convinced that he was the reincarnated spirit of Adrian IV, the first and only English Pope. His justification?
"Whilst stumbling around pissed in the hotel, I looked at a drain whilst thinking about Police Academy IV and realised that a drain is like Adrian and, well, the whole IV thing is obvious, really."
He swiftly flew to Vatican City. He wasn't allowed entry and so went to Rome instead, where he spent the next month walking around blessing people in the street, asking random gits to kiss his hand. He even tried to buy a Pope hat from a shop in Rome, but, unable to remember what the Pope's hat looked like, could only ask for "the most stupid hat available". The hat-seller, unable to understand him, only shrugged. My father took to acting like an idiot, making monkey noises. Undeterred by what appeared to be a racist, the hat-seller threw a carton of milk at my father, who stuck it to his head, spending the rest of his time in Italy wearing it for a hat.
He moved to Germany, birthplace of Lutherism. My father decided he would become the reincarnation of Boniface "just for the hell of it", and took to punching any Christmas trees he could see lying around.
Tiring of this venture, he moved into America, where he took up Mormonism, a religion as exploitable as a "rubber duck". Applying Mormonism to suit his priorities, he set about trying to convert the state of Georgia by means of seduction, hoping to pick up groupies on the way. Most chaps told him to buzz off with nothing but a wiggle of their moustaches and a muttered "See that ah don't throw you out, suh." Understanding this language, he bowed and went on his way. Everyone was so sophisticated, so educated, so cultured. There was only one solution: find lots of undereducated women. So he made his way to Harlem.
He acquired more wives during this time, as well as the odd husband, before getting confused and blurting out during one drunken night, "Hey, man, wait... If I'm married to a husband of one of my wives, am I like, married to myself?" before running around dementedly as if he had just picked up a Donkey Kong hammer. Despite the numerous husbands' protests (and wi've's' of husban'ds' protest's), he threw them out, claiming they "were all cosmi-molecular pseudo-reflections of myself, only with bigger dongs". Recent documents have been unearthed claiming this statement was in fact misreported, and that what he really said was a simple "get the fuck out".
Moving onto the East, he decided to try his hand at Buddhism. During this period in his life, he drank and ate a lot. Within seconds of landing in Tibet he realised he had already achieved his goal and so came back to England.
"And that is why I am here now, me and my wives."
I took a sip of sake and decided to confess my omphalos.
"Father. Because we are sitting in the drawing room, I am the reincarnation of Virginia Woolf."
He sighed. "Gone a bit mental, eh?"
"Yes."
He brushed a dismissive hand to his women, who left, but not before stealing all his chandeliers.
"I suppose I should have been more attentive. In my absence, you've clearly betrayed your Gilb gene; and will, I suppose, grow up to be as wayward and unstable as me."
"Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic."
"You are not philanthropic. You spend your time smacking things about with bunches of flowers."
"Only in the Morrisey room. And anyway, for most of history, Anonymous was a woman. So there."
"You're not making these up, are you?"
"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women? Eh?"
"How soon until you run out Virginia Woolf quotes?"
"Now. Damnit."
I fell silent and went to my room.
I later found out that the document prompting him to think he was Mohammed was a picture of a Thundercats toy on page 21 of the Argos catalogue.
* I drank alone in my room.
** of Arc |
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