Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 5 "Krazy Klown Komedy"

Koqteese had just turned Detective Lobster’s car around when a small, slightly comical looking Ford Fiesta traveling in the opposite direction erupted into a ball of flames. The crappy lime green Fiesta lifted off the ground and tumbled through the air like a child’s toy. As it spun through the air a handful of people spilled out onto the blacktop.

People in baggy trousers and enormous shoes.

“Holy shit,” Koqteese said. “I have just forgotten all about taking you back to your apartment to get your glasses!”

“Glasses!” Lobster shouted. “What are you even talking about!”

Koqteese managed to steer their car out of the fireballs bouncing trajectory.

“You know,” Lobster said. “Ford makes one helluva basketball…”

“It is bouncing pretty high,” Koqteese said in agreement.

“Oh Jesus,” Lobster said as the flaming Fiesta hurtled past his window. “That’s not a basket ball, that’s a fucking flaming car!”

Koqteese decided to pretend like she hadn’t heard him—this would be her new way of dealing with Detective Lobster’s many short-comings. This was the same method employed by Lobster’s mother and father, as well as his first two wives (Rebecca and Sayshauna Ann).

“Pull over, we gotta see if there’s anyone left to pull outta that wreck,” Lobster said, banging his hand against the dashboard dramatically as he spoke.

“Whatever,” Koqteese told him as he slowed their car down.

Detective Lobster didn’t wait for the come to a complete stop—he was so badass that he leaped out of the car when it was still rolling to a stop. He’d seen that done in the movies and had always wanted to give it a whirl. Of course, what they don’t tell or show you in the movies is the wear that this tends to put on the souls of ones shoes. Detective Lobster could suddenly feel the pavement through the bottoms of both shoes.

“It was time to get a new pair, anyway,” he said as he stomped over to the wrecked Fiesta.

Though it was smashed against a streetlight, and consumed with flames, Detective Lobster could tell that this was no ordinary sub-compact. The rear fender was shaped like the backend of a goose, and the front of the car was bent to look like an enormous bird bill. Clearly this was some kind of bird-Fiesta hybrid.

Not that it mattered. The flames danced along the green paint job, licking away the frivolity like a fat kid licking an ice cream cone on a balmy July afternoon when the air conditioner is broken and he won’t shut up about being so fucking hot so his mother gives in and gives him an ice cream cone even though he’s just developed Type II diabetes and the State is going to take him away because she’s let him grow so enormously fat that it’s become a sick kind of child abuse.

It was kind of like that.

“Hey!” Lobster screamed into the flames. “Anyone still in there!”

“H-h-haaa!” a shrieking clown laugh sounded from somewhere inside the burning wreck. “H-h-haaa! This haahahahaha, this hahahah burns…”

Then there was a series of strange honking sounds. It wasn’t like the honking of a goose (which would have kinda made sense) but rather, it was like the sound of a deflating bicycle horn.

“Oh my gawd!” Koqteese said, shoving her heaving bosom against Lobster’s back. “There’s a clown in there! He’s fryin’ like a piece of succulent cod!”

“Take it easy,” Lobster said. “I’m canceling this fish fry.”

Without thinking, which was pretty much how he always operated, Detective Lobster dove through the flaming (broken) windshield and reached down to grab a hold of the burning clown.

“Hahaha…don’t try to save me…I’m done for,” the clown coughed. “Hahahaha!”

By this time the other clowns, the ones who’d fallen out of the Fiesta as it tumbled through the air, were limping towards the burning wreck.

“Chuckle-chuckle! Garsh, we gotta save Mr. Giggle-Pants!” one of the injured clowns said as he limped to the burning car.

“Stay back!” Koqteese said. “Detective Lobster will save your friend.”

“Well I couldn’t save him,” Lobster said as he leaped out of the burning Fiesta. “Poor bastard wouldn’t stop laughing…I couldn’t get him to leave the car.”

“That was Mr. Giggle-Pants,” another of the injured clowns said. “Always laughing…right up to the end.”

In the distance there came the sound of sirens.

“The fire department can handle the rest,” Lobster said, wiping the soot from his pants. “Let’s spilt before those bananas show up and start making trouble.”

“Hey mister,” one of the clowns said. “Did you say bananas?”

“Do you know about this gang of vicious, killer banana bullies?” Koqteese said, pursing her lips in a way that reminded all of the clowns, as well as Detective Lobster, of that fat boy licking his beloved ice cream cone.

“Those rubber heads have been muscling in on our territory,” the smoking clown said. He wasn’t smoking a cigarette; his clothes were singed and giving off little trails of jet black smoke. It was really distracting.

“The bananas are doing kids parties?” Lobster said skeptically.

“No, no, we’re cocaine smugglers,” the sort-of-still-burning Clown said.

“I should have known,” Lobster said. “That explains the red noses…”

“Those bastard bananas must have slipped a bomb under our Klown Kar,” the clown explained.

Lobster frowned.

“Why did you say it like that?” he asked the clown.

“Say what like what?”

“You called your clown car your ‘klown kar,’ that’s really very stupid,” Lobster said. Detective Lobster was a very good judge of stupid. This was because of Einstein’s famous theory of “Takes One to Know One.” This rule applies to a lot of people, in a lot of instances.

“I guess I was trying to add a bit of levity,” the clown said. “To a terrible situation. You see, that ‘s what we clowns do—we add levity to a terrible situation. That terrible situation is called ‘reality.’ You see, the world is full of chaos and pain, there’s nothing I can do about that. What I can do, however, is try to make both you and your voluptuous friend smile by wearing baggy pants…and calling my car a ‘klown kar.’ Is that so wrong?”

Another of the dazed, and injured clowns nodded in agreement and said: “We also sell cocaine…to help with all that suffering and shit…honk-a-honk-a!”

Detective Lobster grunted in disgust and turned away.

“Come on Koqteese,” he said, heading back to his car. “Let’s leave these Klowns to their Krime scene.”

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

DOES DETECTIVE LOBSTER PLAY POOL WITH AN UMBRELLA?

OR

DOES DETECTIVE LOBSTER DIG A REALLY DEEP HOLE WITH A SLOTTED SPOON?

VOTE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION!!!

Natalie Burroughs: Sex Detective

RUSSELL: Um, hello? Miss Burroughs, are you in here? Your receptionist told me to come on in.

NATALIE: Yes, I’m Natalie Burroughs, Sex Detective. You must be Russell Muddige. You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. I almost gave your appointment to a young woman convinced her boyfriend is sleeping with his science professor.

RUSSELL: Sorry. I hit traffic on the 101.

NATALIE: Well, now that you’re here, we can begin. Why don’t you step across my spacious, ornately decorated office and sit in one of the brown calfskin chairs in front of my impressive but not quite boastful glass desk.

RUSSELL: (confused) Why are you talking like that?

NATALIE: I apologize. Sometimes I lapse into talking like I’m giving narrative details. It only happens occasionally.

RUSSELL: To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here. I saw your late-night commercial after an ad for a phone-sex chatline. I’m not even really clear on what a “sex detective” does.

NATALIE: Some people prefer the term “sextective,” which may clear things up.

RUSSELL: Not really.

NATALIE: Mainly we specialize in helping concerned spouses or significant others uncover whether or not their partners are having … um … undisclosed relations. When the situation is more internal and no infidelity can be proven, we try to get at the root of what the couple’s problem is. I take it something’s not right with your relationship and that’s why you’re here.

RUSSELL: (defeated) It is. I think my wife may be having an affair. She’s been distracted lately, and we haven’t made lovey-doves in almost three months.

NATALIE: Is that what you call it? “Lovey-doves”?

RUSSELL: (refocusing his attention) Yes. Why, does that mean something?

NATALIE: (deadpan) It just means that I’ve cracked a case in which a young man tried impregnating a cat repeatedly and you still take the trophy in my WTF competition.

RUSSELL: I suppose it does sound a little … cutesy. (pause) Oh god. You don’t think I’m the reason my wife’s out having an affair, do you?

NATALIE: Well, we can’t even be sure that your opposite sex life partner is actually having an affair. It’s too soon to jump to any conclusions. But, to answer your question: Yes.

RUSSELL: I can’t believe it. I mean, I figured that things, you know, in the bedroom might have been strained because of the long hours I work and my freakishly misshapen penis, but I didn’t realize that something so simple as a phrase could snuff out our love dumpling noodle time.

NATALIE: I’m staring at you, incredulously and with a hint of disgust.

RUSSELL: More narrative detail talk?

NATALIE: Sorry. It sneaks up on me.

RUSSELL: If I really am the cause of all this, what can I do to fix things?

NATALIE: First of all, you need to retrain the language center of your brain to not sound so … hmm, what’s the clinical phrase … “fucking retarded” when you’re talking about sex. We women like a man who isn’t afraid to plow it like it’s harvest time, if you know what I mean. And the same thing goes for the way you talk about getting freaky under the covers. Don’t shy away from terms and phrases like “skanky ho,” “cum-hungry pig,” and “I want to fuck the shit out of you.” They’re scientifically proven to trigger the affection regions of a woman’s brain mass.

RUSSELL: (repeating, as if to remember) Skanky ho. Cum-hungry pig. I want to fuck the shit out of you. Got it. And you think that this may help rekindle things between me and my elementary schoolteacher wife?

NATALIE: I think it’ll be a start.

RUSSELL: Thank you, Miss Burroughs. I really think this might just be the turning point in my marriage. I don’t know how you do it, but you’re something wubby-bubby-snubby-lubby indeed.

Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 4 "Not Much Happens Because Jason Is Getting Burned Out (the second to last installment)""

Willie Lobster started up at the banana thug. The thug's mouth trickled blood. The blood was red. The redness reminded Lobster that he had a weapon hidden under his divan.

The divan was a ratty-looking piece of furniture that Lobster kept for sentimental reasons. Most of these reasons had to do with his bitches. Lobster had, over the course of his life, had several female dogs...they'd loved the divan. They were gone now (just like poor Daniel) but Lobster kept their memory alive with the divan.

Lobster groaned and rolled towards the tattered divan.

"Hey!" one of the banana thugs shouted.

"Get him!" another shouted.

"Mu mufth!" the one with the bloody mouth said.

Detective Lobster stuck his hand beneath the divan and groped frantically for the weapon he'd stashed underneath--because one never knew when one was going to be attacked inside one's home by a rang of bananas.

"Get back! Stay back!" Lobster said, whipping out his secret stashed weapon. "I don't want to...but I'll use this if I have to."

The banana thugs stopped dead in their tracks.

"An apple?" one said.

"Yo, am I trippin' or is that dude holding an apple?" another asked.

The banana thugs were not seeing things, Detective Lobster was indeed brandishing an apple. He'd thought he'd left a 9mm under the divan, but apparently he'd moved it to another (presumably more secure) location.

Instead, Lobster had found nothing but a moldy apple.

"What?" Lobster said. "This is a fucking gun."

He looked at the grimy apple in his left hand. There was a generous dusting of dog hair and dust bunny remnants upon the apples mushy flesh.

"Ha! Ha! This muthafucka is nuts!" one of the banana's said.

"Grab 'em!" the banana leader said, spitting blood onto the floor.

As the thugs descended upon him, Lobster thrust the nasty apple in their direction. The first thug to reach the desperate detective got a face full of moldy apple mush.

"Gah!" the blinded banana shouted, frantically wiping the offensive gunk off his face.

The blinded thug's flailing smacked the second thug, whose gun went off.

Detective Lobster, who'd grown up in a bad neighborhood, wasn't fazed by the gunshot and jumped to his feet and raced towards his front door.

"Oooooawwww!" the lead banana thug screamed. "Youf -hot me! Youf -hot me inna mouf!"

"Oh man...I am so sorry, man."

The trickle of blood pouring out the lead banana thug's mouth was now a geyser of gushing crimson death. This banana's problems were now bigger than a few popped stitches.

"Dude, we gotta take you to the hospital..."

Lobster, meanwhile was racing out the door and down the steps of his apartment building. As he neared his car, he saw that Savanna Koqteese was sitting behind the wheel. Her face was a mixture of concern and constipation.

"Go! Go! Go!" Lobster shouted as he leaped into the car.

A true lady of action, Koqteese didn't question him--she just got them the hell out of there.

"I heard the gunshot and decided to get the engine warm for you," she told him after they'd gone a few blocks.

"You're one helluva woman, Koqteese," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"Shady Street, to see DeJesus's cousin, DeMoses," Lobster told her. "I'm getting to the bottom of this mess..."

"Fine," she said. "Could you do me one favor?"

"Anything, sweetheart."

"Put on your seatbelt."

Lobster, who was never a fan of mandatory safety devices, reluctantly reached back and grabbed his seatbelt.

"These bananas are driving me nuts," Lobster said gravely.

"Did you get your glasses?" Koqteese asked.

A thousand thoughts had been racing though Lobster's razor-sharp mind. Where was his 9mm? Who were these bananas? Why were they trying to kill him? Was Koqteese really a cock tease? Were DeJesus and DeMoses Catholics?

He was thinking about everything...everything but his glasses.

"Damn it," he grumbled.

"What?"

"We gotta go back," Lobster told her. "I forgot to get them."

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

DOES KOQTEESE DRIVE THEM BACK TO LOBSTERS APARTMENT?

OR

DOES A CARLOAD OF CLOWNS EXPLODE NEARBY, MAKING BOTH OF THEM FORGET ALL ABOUT LOBSTER'S GLASSES?

That Which Has Led Me Here Before You

“I’ve never really been opposed to the idea of slaughtering animals.  Now, taken out of context, that statement can sound kind of bad.  But hear me out.  Before, when I was growing up, my parents never owned a farm.  They never plowed fields or woke up at some ungodly hour to trudge through the rain or snow to collect eggs from a chicken coop.  We didn’t live anywhere remotely city-like, but our shoes didn’t smell like chicken shit.  Oh, sorry, Your Honor.  Excuse me, ‘chicken poop.’  My experience with livestock came from the TV and a single trip to my aunt and uncle’s house in the country, one time when I was seven.

“Their farm wasn’t the biggest, and it was certainly nothing to bring in the big bucks.  Nothing more than a couple cows, a litter of good-for-nothing cats, and one pig that went by the name of Lucas Pembroil.  I’m talking, Your Honor, about my cousin, a fat little boy a couple years older than me, who decided it would be hilarious to show me the chickens.  See, it was his job to feed them each day, and on one of my family’s trips to see his parents, he brought me outside, out to the hen house.  They had a chain-link fence to keep the chickens penned up, but it was the most ramshackle thing ever laid eyes on.  The birds always got out and ran amok, bringing dogs and coyotes around.  It was Lucas’s job to get them back in the pen and fix wherever they’d managed to get out.

“So Lucas brings me to the chickens and tells me that they love to play.  ‘It’s sure fun trying to run and catch ‘em,’ he says.  And this, remember, to a little seven-year-old boy.  ‘Why don’t you try it?’

“And so I’m all full of energy from being stuck in the car for the ride there and then being inside while my mom and pop gab-gab-gab with my aunt and uncle.  So I go after this one chicken, a hen.  This little burnt red soccer ball of a thing that’s running around, jutting its neck out like it’s dancing.  Lucas, meanwhile, has a grin on his face that touches his scabbed ear, like my aunt smacked his mouth and sent it a couple inches sideways on his head.  And as I’m going after this chicken, he grabs this wooden pole, even taller than him at five feet.

“All of a sudden this bird decides it’s had enough.  It comes after me, jumping, flapping its wings, losing feathers like money in the state lotto.  Surely you’ve seen chickens when they get agitated, Your Honor.  Well, I hadn’t seen such a thing, and I screamed like a girl when I felt that first spur cut into my hand.  She got me several times, and by the time Lucas had beat her away with that pole, my arms were scratched to hell and back like I’d just lost a fight with a rosebush.

“That event was a traumatization.  That’s what my shrink calls it, anyway.  I’m just a good old boy from Cornhole, Iowa.  Ha ha!  I’m just joshing; that’s just what us locals call it.  You all probably know it as Compton.  That’s where I was born and raised.

“Anyways, that moment stuck with me for the rest of my days, and it still wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes.  I’ll open my eyes to the dead of night, my hair matted with sweat, thinking that I’m surrounded by the prickliest feathers but which are really just the low thread-count sheets I bought at the Discount Decor over in Ridgemont.

“My parents didn’t have high hopes for me, and I guess maybe their lack of inspiration set me down the path that brought me here today.  I knew from a young age that the college education card got left out of my deck, and so I turned to mechanics in high school.  I thought about being an inventor, but I could never come up with something to invent.  ‘Well, think about something people need,’ my shop teacher would say.  ‘Try to fill a niche that hasn’t been filled.’

“Now that’s easy to say when you ain’t trying to invent things and you know what in the H-E-double-toothpicks niche means, but for me, the best I ever came up with was my own version of a clothes dryer for people who liked their shirts to smell like the outdoors.  You know that smell that comes with hanging clothes out on the line?  Well, this was a machine to get clothes dried fast but still get that outdoor-fresh scent, you see?

“Basically it was just a big vented metal tub attached to a motor.  It spun like the devil and dried things quicker than you could say ‘Kenmore can lick my — ’

“Well, you get the idea.

“After graduating I spent a few years moving from job to job, working as a dishwasher and a laborer and a few other little things.  But I never stopped thinking about how great it might be to invent something that people all across the country might use.  Something that would make me rich and give me what my shrink calls ‘validation.’  Ultimately, though, my parents kicked me out of the house when I lost my job as the high school’s facilities cleanliness specialist due to a marijuana addiction that I’ve recently gotten under control.

“I ended up heading back to my aunt and uncle’s farm, where I figured they could use a hand since Lucas had gone on to bigger and better things in the United States military.  Family, as they say, is the one place you’re always welcome.  So I helped them with the chores and duties they couldn’t do anymore, and they let me into their home until I could figure out what to do with myself.

“Corralling the chickens had to be my least favorite job, but I did it because I was grateful.  I swallowed the fear that had been my companion for all these years and took to those birds with my own stick.  After some time, I jerry rigged the fence around the pen, and they didn’t get out except for every once in a while.  Nothing like before, when Lucas had to take care of them.  Dealing with those chickens wasn’t so terrifying after that; feeding them was nothing like corralling them, but when my aunt decided to cook chicken for dinner it was my job to get one and pluck it.  It was bad enough having to get near them to feed them, but taking one in my hands was a whole other story.

“For months I had to go in that pen and hunt for the plumpest one.  Then, after the rigamarole of catching and killing it, I had to pluck the damn thing.

“My uncle had quite a workshop in an old shed out behind the house.  And one day I had an idea.  What if, I thought, I put that outdoor dryer to use?  So I went back home and got my dryer, and when I brought it to my uncle’s workshop I put little rubber spikes along the walls of the metal drum.  In my head I imagined that, if I put a bird in there and started the motor, the rubber pieces would catch the feathers, plucking them out with no problem at all.

“And that’s exactly what happened when I tried it out.  Sure, I had to use the hose to spray inside there to get that chicken clean.  And, yes, it made such a thudding, horrible noise that my aunt and uncle came rushing outside to check on what they thought was a derailed locomotive crashing through their yard, but that chicken came out naked as a Playboy centerfold!

“Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time was that putting a live chicken in there would be considered animal cruelty.  And that’s exactly what I did when I demonstrated my automated chicken plucker for the fine folks at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which has led me here before you fine folks and you, Your Honor.

“That’s about it, I guess.  That’s all I have to say.  My mouth to God’s ear, I am not one for treating animals with anything less than the dignity and respect they deserve.  Those chickens, however…”

Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 3 "A Familiar Fruit"

Detective Willie Lobster lived in an apartment over on Maple Avenue. It was a small, rinky-dink affair with just enough room for a a mattress, wardrobe, bidet, and hot plate.

Apartment 1313.

The neighborhood was diseased, a gathering place for those waiting to die and those who'd already done it. Lobster's next-door-neighbor had died a few years back, and no one had noticed for almost the month.

The stink was that bad.

Curling wisps of stream shot out of a number of crevasses on the sidewalk--no one asked what it was exactly that was leaking out of ground. All anyone could tell was that it stank. It stank like the apartment, the building, the street, the neighborhood, the borough, the city, the county, the State, the nation, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet...the whole goddamn universe.

"Everything stinks in the miserable city," Savanna Koqteese said.

She was sitting next to Detective Lobster. They were inside his 1971 Chevy Crapi. As you can imagine, it wasn't a very good car.

"Yeah, well..." Lobster grumbled, "It ain't so bad."

"It ain't so bad?" Koqteese said in disbelief.

"That's what I said," Lobster told her. "Now you wait here, I gotta run inside and fetch something..."

The word "fetch" reminded Lobster of Daniel, his fallen Spaniel.

"Get it together, Lobster. Get it together," he murmured to himself as he climbed out of the shit-bucket seat and oozed himself out onto the steaming streets.

The climb up to his apartment was long and arduous. In the winter, when there was snow and ice on the cold concrete steps, Lobster liked to pretend he was an explorer climbing some treacherous, far-way mountain.

Like Mount Kill-a-Man-orrow.

Lobster knew something was wrong even before he'd reached his front door. The "Wipe Your Fucking Feet" mat was slightly askew. As he approached his front door, he could see that it was part of the way open.

"Better check my piece," Lobster said.

He reached down and gave his dick a squeeze.

That was what he called his pistol--Lobster called it his "dick." He called his penis his "gun." The last time he'd tried to make love to a woman...well...you can see that there was a misunderstanding. Four hours and several phone calls to Sloan Whixler, his attorney, straightened everyone out (except his "gun" which was no longer very straight).

"Well, well..." a voice said as Lobster entered his apartment. "Look what the proverbial cat dragged in!"

There were five men lurking amid Lobsters meager possessions. These (the possessions) included: pizza boxes, empty tin cans, used tissues, discarded candy wrappers, a can opener, a TV Guide from 10 years ago, several dozen cardboard tubes (from paper towels, one never knows when one might need a cardboard tube), and a carton of milk--aged to a fine blue cheddar.

"A gang! Inside my apartment!" Lobster exclaimed as he reached for his gun, but he was confused himself and reached for his...well you know...which wasn't very helpful in this situation.

"Yo, check out this perv," the leader of the lurkers said.

All the men were wearing identical rubber banana costumes. There was something familiar about them...but Lobster couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"What the fuck are you doing in here?" he asked them.

"Okay, first off--we're not a "gang" we're a bunch," the leader of the lurkers said.

The rest of the bunch sniggered in approval.

"You lady friend, a Ms. Neverputt, she's a bit of a problem for us," the banana man said.

"What are you talking about?" Lobster said, wondering where his glasses were.

Lobster fumbled over to the light switch near the front door and turned on the apartments single dim-bulb.

"Like roaches," Lobster said as the bananas scrambled to avoid the light.

"Hey! Let's trash his shit 'an leave!"

"Let's bash his brains in!"

The leader of the lurkers huffed, "Nah man, we gotta rare opportunity to do a little one-on-five counseling..."

The banana thugs descended upon Detective Lobster in a loose configuration roughly resembling a crescent moon.

The Moon. It had been Daniel's favorite celestial body. He'd stay up all night a yawl at it, his furry paws occasionally swiping the air as if he could somehow...get at the moon.

"You're standing on Daniel's nest," Lobster sobbed.

It was true, one of the banana thugs was trampling on Daniel's circular puppy bed--Lobster had left it untouched in the dog's honor. Now it was soiled by the rubbed robed brute.

"Fuck you, Lobster...and your damn dog bed," the banana thug spat.

Lobster gritted his teeth and lunged in anger at the banana.

"I'll PEEL you! I'll PEEL all of you!" Lobster shouted as he transformed himself into a whirling dervish of hands, feet, teeth, and eyebrows.

Someone kicked someone else in the face, while someone smacked someone else in the knee cap.

It was all very exciting.

But in the end, Detective Lobster was no match for a gang of fruit-themed thugs.

"Hold 'em down!" the leader said, spitting blood.

The blood was from a recent oral surgery and not, as one might expect, all the excitement and scrapping.

"Oh crap, I popped a stitch. My dentist is gonna kill me!" the banana thug said. "Listen boys, wail on Detective Lobster until he knows better than to get mixed up with mysterious, provocatively-named dames."

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

WHAT FRUIT SAVES DETECTIVE LOBSTER?

APPLE?

OR

PEAR?

A Quick Message at the Mega Church

"... and that, my brothers and sisters, concludes this morning's sermon.

"Now, I want to take a moment here at the end of this, our first nationally syndicated service, to talk about something that's been plaguing my heart for days now.  I promise it'll only take a minute or two, so as we're not running over into time allotted for Travis Jones's Prayer Power Hour or whatever else fine programming the Cristian Broadcasting Network decides to air.

"Ha ha!  And, you, Sister Jones, don't you worry one fake feather in your sunhat that you won't make it to the Denny's noon lunch special!  Ha ha!

"Our church has seen its fair share of changes in its time.  Why, I've seen it grow from a twig to a tree in my fifteen-plus years here.  I remember it having just a few leaves -- like you, Sister Marsha, and you, Brother Marcus Levinson, who was just a young pup when we opened the doors and let the light o' God shine on out -- and now, we've got an entire tree full.  Some are smaller, and some of us are, well, bigger, if you know what I mean!  Ha ha!  We have over three thousand God-fearing, selfless people, to put things in perspective.  Several of you have known me for all of those fifteen-plus years.  Many of you have known me for nearly as long.

"I want to address something that's come up recently, something so heinous and unspeakable that I'm loathe to even broach the subject.  But I feel it's important to not let these ... rumors ... gain a foothold.

"As many of you have probably heard, a dear, dear member of our teen youth group, Brother Deshawn Clift -- who's eighteen -- has stated that there have been, between him and myself, certain ... indiscretions.

"Now, now!  I know it's hard to hear, but I want to talk about this and make sure we all know the truth of the matter:  Brother Deshawn is a, a troubled young man of eighteen -- which makes him legally an adult.  I don't know the movies he watches, what music he listens to, or whose company he keeps, but it is obvious that he's been taken over, his mind ... infected by the seed o' the devil!  His judgment has been clouded by Lucifer himself.

"One year ago next month will be the anniversary of the missionary trip Brother Deshawn and I took to Uganda, the month-long trip which our confused but good-hearted, green-eyed, athletic brother believes put the two of us in a compromising position with another young man who is not a 'prostitute' as some major news organizations have reported.  Mistakenly.

"Brothers and sisters, this troubles me deeply.  My job as pastor is to protect you all from the influence of the devil, and to have this filth slung up in our faces is ... is ... Oh, it just breaks my heart.  Now, as you all know, ever since the beginning I have taught that hommasexuality is a sin.  Plain and simple.  I've been married to my lovely wife, Denise, for almost twenty-five years, and although we don't have children -- for personal reasons which are entirely unnecessary to discuss here -- we have built for ourselves a wonderful, stable relationship impervious to the temptation to be unfaithful.

"Intimacy is a ... a sacred gift.  One that should not be taken for granted, even for husbands and the women to whom they're married.  Intimacy is something that should be kept for special occasions.  The secret, my friends, is to save it for ... once a year.  Maybe every few years.  As the Lord intended.

"Anyway, we need to pray for our dear Brother Deshawn.  Pray that God shows him the truth about what happened on that trip to Uganda, so that this veil of confusion can be lifted!  Pray that the Lord reveals to him the truth of my hired ASSISTANT and the fact that there was only one cot for the three of us to sleep on, as well as the reality of it being so hot in our tent that clothing had to have been shed so as not to suffer some sort of nighttime heatstroke.

"Pray that this disheartening, deceitful story goes back down to the brimstone it was written with so that we all can get back to worshipping Almighty God and our newly-inked television deal with the Christian Broadcasting Network does not suffer in any way from these falsehoods floating around.

"Thank you all.  Let us pray."