Captain Purplehead

I am in the middle of writing a post about an extremely irritating and somewhat unfortunately hilarious development in the ongoing issue with Kate O’Brien’s house but I have recently been reminded that the Cap’n is getting a little too serious so I thought I’d lighten the mood somewhat by relating to you an experience I recently had with a Catholic.
Let me start by saying that I no longer consider myself to be Catholic. If I had subscribed to a service while I was drunk or in a coma or otherwise incapable of making an educated assessment of said service, any court would consider my contract with that company null and void. I consider the same applies to the Catholic Church. I was subscribed while I was an infant so don’t give me any fucking bullshit about being a lapsed catholic or a non-practicing catholic. I am NOT a catholic. I was once considered to be a Catholic but at no time in my life did I buy that bullshit. Ok?
Right, that’s out of the way. Because of the smoking ban, I find myself outside of the pub more often than I’m in it. It is a piece of legislation I agree with and it has a surprising side effect: sociability. Yep, you end up having conversations with complete strangers and, once the initial couple of conversations have taken place, you wave at them as you pass, you become acquaintances. This can be a good thing but it can also be a catastrophically bad thing. Y’see all people are weird. You may think you’re normal but you’re not, you’re weird so accept it. Why am I saying you’re weird? Well because you don’t like the same things I do. That makes us kind of weird to each other. Yeah, weirdoes are fine but fucking freaks are a pain in the fucking nutsack.
You can tell a freak right off. The second you see one, although they may be trying to act normal, you know they are freaks because freaks simply can’t act normal. Normal to these fuckers is sitting in a twitching mass of anxious insanity, while attempting not to make eye contact. Now, before you start going on about mental health issues, let’s make the distinction here. These people have chosen to be freaks. I’m not talking about people with actual mental health issues so get the fuck off of that high horse straight away. Now let’s get another thing straight before we get to the point of this post; freaks are not cool. Ok? There’s a school of thought out there that says freaks are cool but it is a school populated by fucking freaks and NOT ONE of them is cool.
I met one such freak recently in the smoking area of a bar. It was around eight o’clock in the evening and I was enjoying a pint with a non-smoking friend. The second I walked into the smoking area, I saw this clump of flesh in the corner, eyes darting everywhere but in my direction. “Fuck”, I thought, “a freak”. Ok, so there are ways of dealing with a freak but you must first accept that there is no way of dealing with a freak so, therefore, the only effective way of dealing with a freak is to ignore the fucking freak. My method of doing this is to smoke my fag and look through my emails on my phone. More often than not, you get lucky and the freak just stays there, stewing in a fetid pool of their own madness but occasionally you get the pushy freak. Ignoring a pushy freak is like trying to tie a knot in a titanium rod. They will try, for a very short time, to respect your boundaries but will then suddenly remember that they are freaks and will approach you. This was one such pushy freak. I just knew it. He shifted uneasily in his seat as if my failure to engage him in conversation was causing him physical discomfort. Eventually, the pain must have become unbearable because he approached me. His opening line was this:
‘Have you got a light?’
Right, at this point it’s important to set the rules of the game that is about to take place. You don’t want to come across as ignorant but you can’t be too ready to engage in conversation. So I idly searched in my pocket while pausing to fully read an email I wasn’t really reading. I find 7 seconds to be an adequate delay in these situations, so I eventually started to hand my lighter to this freak when I noticed his cigarette was actually lit. I pointed this out to him and he immediately stubbed it out, took another one from its box and used my lighter to light it. I was, for the first time, witnessing that rare phenomenon; the particularly pushy freak.
‘Checking the oul textses?’ he asked and it was here that I made my fatal mistake. The rule here is to continue looking at your phone, respond with a “yuh” and hope the fucker gives you your lighter back. I didn’t do this because I’m given to occasional acts of utter idiocy.
‘No’, I replied, ‘emails’. I fucking knew the second I said it that I had just played into his hands. I had just rugby tackled Cristiano Ronaldo in my own penalty area and then took a piss on his head, before teabagging the ref. Yes, that is the breadth of the mistake I had just made, which was evidenced by the subtle but undeniably smug grin that crossed his face.
He took a long pull from his cigarette, exhaled loudly and said, ‘I don’t own a computer. Had one, got rid of it’.
Right, I had a chance here. If it was merely a pushy freak and not a particularly pushy freak, that is. He wanted me to ask him why he got rid of his computer so I nonchalantly replied, ‘Oh’. There was no interrogative inflection at the end of that “oh” sound. It was more of a grunt of acknowledgement.
There was a pause and he began to feel that physical discomfort again. He had to finish what he wanted to say so he pulled up a seat beside me and said, ‘Nope, never going to replace it, don’t miss it’.
At this point I did something I don’t normally do and just said ‘Ok, see ya’ and started to leave. Normally nothing would stop me from leaving but he unwittingly found my Achilles heel.
‘I don’t have a computer because I reckon they’re taking people further from the Lord’.
Ok, I can’t resist taking born again Christians, Catholics and other religious zealots to school. I fucking love it. I turned around, quickly assessing him, noticing the cheap looking Ferrari badge on the breast of his jacket and the Marlboro cigarettes on the table. This would be enough for an opening gambit, from which we wouldn’t recover. And so I lit another cigarette, turned to face him and said,
‘What?’
‘Computers’, he repeated, ‘they’re taking people away from God’.
‘Are you saying they are a tool of the devil?’ I replied.
‘No’, he said smiling, ‘they are a tool of man but they are taking people away from God’.
‘Which God?’ I replied.
‘There is only one God’, he replied.
‘No’, I said, ‘there are several different ones, depending on who you speak to. What I’m saying is, to which denomination are you affiliated?’
‘I’m a catholic’, he replied proudly, ‘Aren’t you?’
‘No’, I replied, I’m not a catholic’, and before he could latch on to that little gem, I quickly followed with, ‘So you believe that, when you die, you will go to heaven’.
‘Of course’, he replied, shocked that I should even hint that this just might be a bit of a ridiculous notion.
‘So why would you like to go to heaven?’ I asked.
He laughed, a very shrill and disturbing laugh that almost made me continue back into the bar but once I’ve started on Catholics, I have to finish.
‘What do you mean, “why”?’ he asked. ‘Heaven is heaven, bud. It’s paradise, full of joy and love and light and bliss and all our sins will be forgiven’.
‘Ok’, I replied, ‘you like Ferraris so I’m assuming you like fast cars, yeah?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’, he asked.
‘Ok’, I said conspiratorially, ‘I’m just going to say this and then I’m going back in for my pint but I want you to think about it. Don’t think about for a moment or even an hour. Take a few days and, when we meet again, tell me if you still want to go to heaven.’
‘Go ahead’.
‘Ok, there’s no point in having fast cars in heaven because you are immortal in heaven. There’s no risk so survival is no longer an option. There is no thrill because the thrill of a fast car comes with knowing that you could die at any second. Similarly there’s no sky-diving, white water rafting or bob sleighing. There’s probably bungee jumping but it’d rather pointless and boring, as is everything else in heaven. Ok, so that’s one of the joys of your life gone. When you consider it, that’s most joy gone.
But that’s just a small thing. I suspect you weren’t really expecting to have fast cars in heaven anyway but there’s more.
Human empathy is an evolutionary trait, imprinted on us to help us to survive and to prevent us from killing each other. Over the years we’ve learned to empathise with other people feeling pain. Empathy is a very scientific thing and is connected to our mortality. Therefore, there is no empathy in heaven because mortality isn’t in question. There is no pain or sadness so there’s no need for empathy and, without empathy, there can’t really be love because there’s nothing to really define it. You basically walk around smiling at everyone and that’s going to get on everyone’s nerves before too long because there’s no empathy or love in heaven. There’s no more murder because you’re immortal but that’s a pretty piss poor pay off.
So, there’s no love and no real joy and, without the awareness of the fragility of life itself, there’s no challenge or thrills or excitement. I mean, why would you get out of bed?
And that brings us nicely along to bliss. Bliss is kind of a subjective term but if you’re not loved, you’re not cared for, you’re not challenged or thrilled or excited, there can’t be much bliss about so the only real chance of bliss is via some narcotic supplement. And, why wouldn’t someone who presides over a loveless, boring place like heaven forgive your sins? I mean, forgiveness is a small return for all the shit you’re going to have to deal with.
So, to finish, there are places on Earth, in this town, that are exactly the same as heaven. There is no empathy or love or thrills there. The people who preside over these places couldn’t give a fuck if you’re a murderer, rapist or kiddy fiddler. They forgive all of your sins, once you have money, they sell a form of bliss and they can make you believe you are immortal.
In some countries they’re called opium dens but, in less exotic towns like this, they’re called crack houses. Now I’m heading in for my pint but, think about it, a crack house is really hell, isn’t it?’
At this point my rather more to the point friend came looking for me.
‘You’re one insulting, blaspheming fucker’, the freak said. I wanted to use Bill Hick’s line and ask him, as a Christian, to forgive me but my mate just said, ‘At least you don’t have to drink with the cunt!’ and shepherded me back into the bar.
Haven’t seen the freak since but I did enjoy his company.