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Don’t Bend Over

by Sal Perritano

as typed and punctuated by Dave

Ya know, Dave, it’s worse than what you’ve seen in your parish. Here at Holy Innocents- Blessed Sacrament Church or “Wholly BS’” as we call it, we are still largely an Italian parish, but the music ranges from African to Peter, Paul and Mary to the Haiphong Top Twenty. We’ve got black families and Cambodian families and Vietnamese families and what with all the languages, Bruce, the choir director, often feels compelled to come down from the altar before mass and teach us some new verse of a song in his lisping version of English. Bruce has a portable mike he doesn’t know how to use and he keeps popping all his consonants with his rubbery lips slurping the mike, giving me a headache. You’d think he’d get electrocuted. You wish. I really want to shove it up his ass, but if you check out his mannerisms, I suspect he might enjoy that way too much. He stood before us and unfolded a small piece of paper one morning and said something in what sounded to me like some sorta Indo-Chinese, so I turned to Pho Pot the dry cleaner and asked what he had said. “He received a request,” Pho said with a straight face, “but the mike wouldn’t fit.”

Now, I can play some wicked blues guitar but I can’t sing. So I don’t, without some kind of lubrication. The priest, Father DuJour, likes his Labatts Blue and I think he gets schnockered before the services and he often flies into a fit of his native French Canadian dialect. I sometimes find myself wondering, as we sit down after the Gospel, which planet this week’s sermon will come from. But that’s OK, now that the Vatican has given us permission to believe in UFO’s.   If earthlings are the best that God can do, boy! are we really foookayed.

Dont even get me going on the lesbian nuns and the bumper stickers on their car. Or their haircuts, which remind me of Moe, but without getting poked in the eyes. They’re in the choir, too. One sings so bad she couldn’t carry a tune if they tatooed one on her ass. The other one, Curly, creates her own solo in every song. Her voice is so shrill that when she hits certain notes my balls actually hurt.

Then there is the convicted pedophile who got thrown out of his church across town. You would probably recognize his name because he seems to continually out himself in public. He writes signed letters to the newspaper to complain about being a registered sex offender and having his name appear in the paper!   He must think that complaining proves his innocence. On Sunday mornings here at Holy BS he’s part of the song fest, sitting on the altar steps, playing a cello that’s pressed tightly in between his legs, weird smile on his face. And when he sings along with his sliding bow, I know I’ve had a year’s reprieve from purgatory, if it still exists. Maybe that’s where they park the UFO’s now.

My nephew is in the choir. I told him that if he drops something during choir practice, between the choir director and the pedophile, let it lie there and don’t bend over for any reason.

I get more spirituality from a day in the woods, hunting or fishing or wandering. And when I get   home after a day afield, I can cross my legs without anything hurting.

copyright 2008 by Corner