The Televisionary Oracle (60 page)

“Because we’re the only soldiers in the world entertainment war,” Jumbler sighs with a soupçon of boredom, “that blaspheme our own deities. Now come on, let’s wrap this up and go meet our blind date with destiny. Pray with me.”

I follow Jumbler down as she kneels and prostrates her forehead on the scummy floor. As if aware she’s a participant, Yo Mama Death unleashes a nicely timed raucous shriek.

“O Persephone, Great Cackling Goddess,” Jumbler intones, her voice muffled by the proximity of her lips to the concrete, “You Buzzard-Lipped, Bottom-Feeding, Garbage-Gobbling, Puke-Drooling, Beady-Eyed Slimebag: We pray that you give us the wisdom to always pretend we mean the opposite of what we say as well as what we say.”

“O Musty Queen of the Dead,” I continue, “You Overseer of the Underworld’s Grotesque Cornucopia, You Weirdo Purveyor of Lipstick and Bullets and Glamour and Poop, You Creator of the Stagnant Water and the Funny Words We Thought of While We Were Standing Knee-Deep: We dare not claim the hubris to burn anyone else’s flags or spit on their fetishes unless we’re willing to burn and spit on our own.”

“O Sacred Gargoyle of Beauty and Truth,” Jumbler chimes in, “You Dumb Fast Infinitely Plump River of Electricity, You Sluggish Smoldering Lump of Angel Fat Left Over from the Big Bang, You
Ingeniously Seductive Maggot Who Loves Inventive Tragedy and Sophisticated Superstition, You Cool Furnace That Incinerates the Props of Our Nightmares Much Too Slowly: We pray that You will always break us open with juicy secrets about how to die a little now so we don’t have to die a lot later. Shatter us with moist clues, Goddess, about how to slough off what worked for us yesterday so that we may conjure what’ll work best for us tomorrow. Turn us inside-out with terrifying opportunities to kill the phallocratic model of death and foment the menstrual model.”

“Halle-fucking-lujah, comrade,” I say, lifting myself from the floor. “Let’s go careen.”

Carrying Yo Mama Death and our grail of dragon’s blood, Jumbler and I slink out of the bathroom into the atrium of the Catalyst—just as we did in the Drivetime University class five years ago. Out here, recreating that prophetic adventure perfectly, are hordes of revelers packed wall to wall, spilling out into the street, waiting to join us in the celebration.

We push our way outside, then boost ourselves up on the lead float of the funeral parade. Stretched between two maypoles on the back end of the float is a clothesline from which hang many pieces of freshly consecrated sacred lingerie and a banner that reads “Kill the Apocalypse with Love.”

Two richly adorned beds surround a gold casket, which is open, revealing the contents: a replica of “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; a loose-leaf notebook which contains xeroxed copies of the prophecies of Nostradamus and the Bible’s Book of Revelations; a television with a giant band-aid on it; a bumpersticker with a quote from Jung, “The present world situation is calculated as never before to arouse expectation of a redeeming supernatural event”; a foot-tall sculpture of Jesus crucified on the cross, blood dripping down his face; the “Armageddon Bra,” a lingerie item which has built-in sensors to warn of fiery objects falling from the skies (missiles, asteroids, UFOs); and a totem pole featuring the faces of Julius Caesar, Columbus, Napoleon, Stalin, Charles Darwin, and Dan Rather.

Lingerie-clad female models are lounging on the beds. Though a couple of them are voluptuous young things, most have rather ample asses and abundant body hair and less-than-perky breasts. I know and
love all of these beauties well. Every one is a member of the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail.

My favorite model, of course, is my ancient mother Vimala, face as old as the Mona Lisa’s great-grandma. She’s wearing purple cowgirl boots, a lacy red bra, and a purple leather mini-skirt. Over her shoulder-length grey dreadlocks, there’s a tall crown of inflated pink and purple balloons tied together in the shape of a vulture.

“Hi, mommy,” I beam, patting her on her crown. “How’s your bad self?”

“My bad self is positively sparkle-dark,” she replies. “And by the way, I love your latest creation.”

She’s pointing towards the giant Televisionary Oracle screen which is set up on one side of the float. It reveals a panorama I finished programming only yesterday.

The view is from a flock of vultures, as if the camera were mounted on the belly of one of the birds. For a while they fly uneventfully over an eight-lane highway on which no traffic moves, though there are numerous abandoned vehicles everywhere, including cars, ox carts, tow trucks, baby buggies, catapults, fairy godmother coaches, chariots, milk wagons, and even a Trojan Horse. Winding as far as the eye can see, always remaining inside the “walls” formed by the wreckage, is a thick train of men trudging doggedly towards the setting sun. Each is pushing in front of him a wheeled version of the golden casket that appears on the lead float of our parade.

The vultures veer away from their path over the highway and spiral down towards a field just to the north. Now we see a labyrinth cut out of a vast field of waist-high grass, at the center of which is a stupendous oak tree with a door in its trunk. The birds maintain a holding pattern just above the top of the grass and beyond the reach of the tree’s longest branches, wheeling clockwise.

As they pass the door, we can see a sign on the front which reads:

The labyrinth is constructed in the fashion of the sacred labyrinths of old. That is to say, it’s not a maze rife with dead ends and confusing
turns. Rather there is just one unambiguous though convoluted path to the center. Everyone who enters will eventually reach the center if they walk patiently onward.

Now here’s my favorite part: I’ve designed this Televisionary Oracle in such a way that anyone who beholds it sees a likeness of himself or herself meandering through the labyrinth.

As this part of the program comes around, there are a few gasps from audience members who’ve been watching attentively.

“Whoa. How can that be?” someone calls out.

“Fucking amazing. How do they do that?” another voice mutters.

This is a tease. The scene stops here and begins again with the vultures soaring over the marching men. Later, when the funeral parade reaches the graveyard, I’ll let this sequence continue with the rest of the story.

I turn away from the scene, gratified at its craftsmanship. I like to think it’s entertaining despite the fact that its message is covertly sacred—and covertly sacred despite the fact that it’s entertaining. In other words, it embodies the esthetic ethic that has been my obsession these last five years.

Standing up and stretching, I grab my cordless microphone from a mike stand. I’m ready to get this show on the road.

“How are your bad selves today, beauty and truth fans?” I bellow. The response is more a swell than an explosion, so I try it again, gazing up into the azure sky and beckoning to the crowd.

“I said, how are your underworld selves today, beauty and truth and garbage and death fans?” This time a pleasing roar billows up.

The sea of faces is not yet as vast as I’d hoped, though. While there are growing numbers along the procession route ahead of us, I see very few people back along the line of vehicles that snakes down Pacific Avenue towards the beach.

“You ready for the immortality cheer, everyone? Ready to chant the mantra that gets you in the mood to live forever? Let me hear you say, ‘I die daily.’ Shout it with me now, sex and death fans. Celebrate it with me. I die daily. I die daily. I die daily. I die daily.”

The hair on the back of my neck sprouts as hundreds of voices join me in intoning the prayer I’ve only heard in the privacy of my meditation
chamber or the bed I share with Jumbler.

I wait a moment after the last echoes die away, then resume my address.

“Welcome to the party that will launch the murder of the apocalypse!” I shout as I slowly turn three hundred sixty degrees. “Today, we begin imagining the canny actions that’ll crush the pandemic of pop-nihilism. Today we start creating a world in which prophecies of boom and zoom will be more fun and interesting than conspiracies of doom and gloom.”

People are looking at me quizzically. What I just said was not perhaps the most entertaining way I could have conveyed what I meant.

“We bring you glad tidings, beauty and truth fans,” I continue, still half-improvising. “The archetypes are mutating. All the flips are about to flop. Very soon, YA YA will actually be YA YA. YA YA will no longer be NYAA NYAA. Very soon, you’ll know exactly how to ask the Greatest Mystery of All what the fuck it wants from you—and you’ll really get an answer.”

“Why am I so handsome and talented but I can’t get a girlfriend or a job?” some male voice heckles loudly, enough to rouse ripples of laughter from those close enough to hear him.

“Have faith, love and justice fans,” I continue. “Have delirious, orgiastic, perverse faith. I promise you that compassion will become an aphrodisiac. There’ll be feminist supercomputers that can talk to the Goddess. Your daily wage will be directly tied to how much beauty and truth you bring into the world. Best of all, there’ll be a global network of menstrual huts and dreamwork salons for that cranky time every month when you know you’ll just die if you can’t go blissfully mad.”

This last spiel goes over much better. Confusion has given way to amusement in the faces I can see.

I congratulate myself for being so sensitive to the mood of the crowd. The meditation exercises I’ve done with my acting teacher Gail have slowly but surely fine-tuned my raw charisma. (I like her definition: A charismatic person is not just someone who has personal charm, star quality, and animal magnetism, but who also is interested in other people and makes them feel good when they’re around her.) My Drivetime
University lessons with the showman shaman Madame Blavatsky have had a lot to do with my growing skill in playing with group energy, of course, as have the performance art shows I’ve been doing in the Waketime under various disguises.

There has been another influence in recent months as well. I’ve had the benefit of studying the live shows of a certain local rockstar, the chief boohoo of the World Entertainment War band. Whether he’s the best entertainer in the world, I don’t know—probably not, since he’s not monumentally rich and famous—but his techniques for captivating the imagination of an audience resonate with those I aspire to master.

“Kill your own death!” someone shouts brightly from the crowd, providing me with the gratification of hearing one of my own slogans mirrored back. I imagine that she is among those who read the two newspaper articles about the Menstrual Temple that appeared in the days before the event.

“Exterminate the apocalypse with unconditional love!” screams a male voice, offering a variation on the theme that I couldn’t have said better myself.

I signal to my driver Sonia, and our float begins to creep slowly forward. The crowd’s hubbub swells in response.

“I’m your host, Rapunzel Blavatsky,” I say to the crowd, “and I’m proud to announce that this is a perfect moment. At this perfect moment, one hundred trillion lascivious feminist vibrations are beginning to pour through each and every one of you like a permanent orgasm, annihilating all blockages to your divine charisma and jostling loose an abundant flow of creative ideas. Sooner than you think, your unique genius will be unleashed, allowing you to express all of your true potential!”

An electric wave of gleeful cheers erupts. Five floats back in the parade, the Menstrual Temple’s house band, Feminist Orgy Network, begins the opening strains of “Soundtrack for the End of the End of the World.”

I should confess that I stole one—well, actually two—of the lines in my last spiel from the guy in World Entertainment War.

I gleam over at Jumbler as I draw the mike away from my mouth. Then, grabbing her hand, I initiate our famous “water-buffaloes-making-love”
rhythmic grunt, which she takes up too after a moment’s hesitation.

I can’t imagine even being alive today, let alone presiding over this grand opening, without the presence of Jumbler in my life.

She’s the only one who busts me in the ways I need to be busted. Everyone else is a little too enslaved to their belief that I’m a divinely inspired superstar to be of much use to my project of continual self-dismantling.

Ever since I returned from exile four and a half years ago, my mothers have done a great job shedding their fixations about me. But it’s just not within their power, I’m afraid, to critique me with the fierce ingenuity I need in order to die every day. It really helps to have a collaborator who’s adept at homing in on the exact deaths I need.

Not that Jumbler is a non-stop debunker of all things Rapunzel. What makes her so credible in purging my bullshit is that she’s equally adept at recognizing and drawing out my idiosyncratic brilliance. These seemingly contradictory skills, which I have never known any other person be able to wield, have been my privilege to enjoy from the first days of our relationship. And they have been crucial in my ability to become myself—to fulfill the promise of my self-abduction.

But it’s not as if I have merely sucked up Jumbler’s contributions with regal narcissism. One of her great gifts to me has been her ability to arouse my passionate, reverent attention to
her
needs. I’m devoted to serving her devotion to herself, just as she is to mine. In this way, I’ve overcome an imbalance in my psyche that made it easy for me to be the beloved one but hard to treat another flesh-and-blood human as the beloved. (I’ve always been a master of paying homage to Persephone.)

I’m grateful, too, for the psychological skills Jumbler has helped me cultivate. Dealing with difficult feelings has been at the heart of our “radical intimacy” all these years. Not only do we not hide or manipulate; we grow closer through our difficult honesty. I tell her the godawful truth about my dark toxins and she listens with equanimity. It’s the same going the other way. Shadow-stalking, we call it. We’ve toyed with collaborating on a book by that very name.