GUY

My favorite religious dude was GUY. And GUY is what I knew of NYC before
I ever visited the burg, let alone took up residence. Guy was a
commodities trader, or some such money guy on Wall Street, an investment
banker or who knows really. One day GUY had a vision and walked out of
his umpteen story office building onto the sidewalk, took off his tie,
took off his jacket, took off his vest, took off his shirt, took off his
pants, etc. you get the picture, and stood there smiling and stopped
talking. He must not have been that well endowed or he would have very
quickly brought notice of authorities and his life gone another way. By
the way, GUY did not talk for another five years, the end of which we
will get to short or long as the story goes.

GUY standing on a street corner in lower Manhattan with hardly any
clothes on and not talking about it was considered some sort of miracle
by a group of drugged up rich kids with nothing better to do with their
lives after college than move to a commune in the woods. So they took
GUY with them. They built GUY an ashram with a whirlpool. They all
stopped talking. They grew vegetables and baked bread and made babies.
They invented their own sign language, which they used when they went to
town... where they were tolerated with amusement and wonder. There is
just something about people who do not talk, but can talk if they want
to, that gets people going. It is not quite the same if you simply
cannot talk because you cannot talk, you will only be tolerated,
ignored, or employed to pass out slips of paper on the subway... the
wonder is in the deliberate act of not talking. Human silence is a
miracle beyond comprehension.

So, our commune used to gather around GUY in the evenings at the ashram.
Everyone would sit on a concrete floor in lotus posture and not say
anything. I mean, you could not say, "Damn, this floor is cold and my
cornholio hurts." I think this is where the religious experience began.
Not being able to say anything about normal and ordinary stuff makes it
very extra special. Remember that. Eventually, a few seconds before any
of us could keel over from the exhaustion of silent boredom, GUY would
dart bouncing into the room, skipping along in his multi-colored macrame
shawl -- which at least shows that some progress was being made in
keeping the guru clothed. GUY would sit down on his pillow, a very large
and brightly colored plush pillow goose down with gold frills, and look
back at us with a smile... er, sort of a grimace of grace -- this may be
more accurate of a description, needless, you always had to feel that
something extra special was about to happen. And it did.

After about an hour and three quarters of eternity and very suddenly
GUY's twitching hand would peek out from his shawl, "Hello!", his arm
would extend outward in a flash of movement, a projectile would be
launched across the room, and you would be struck in the forehead, or
the breast, or the left eye or the shoulder, or lower, or lower... don't
say anything, hold your tongue... by the arc of mass in movement and
then a thud of an aluminum foil ball filled with peanuts and raisens and
chocolate bits.  GUY would then, after another eternity of smiles and
after the packet of holy food, nestled carefully and with sanctimonious
piety in your hands, had had plenty of time to melt, retire back to the
solitude of his hut in the woods and listen to the AM radio. This may
have been considered a night's entertainment, though nobody I know ever
talked about it.

One night, late at night, when only miracles can really happen, GUY was
listening to the radio when suddenly he heard Jesus talking. Now, I once
knew of a man that went insane after Jesus stepped out of his television
and told him to stop abusing himself, but this was not the case with
GUY. GUY jumped up, started yelling at everyone at the top of his voice,
which, admitedly, was a bit rusty, ran around the commune, ran into the
woods, ran through the creek, ran out into the road, ran back into his
hut, grabbed the car keys with the aluinum foil keychain, proclaimed
that he had found Jesus and had been born again, jumped into the front
of the 1966 black commune Cadillac and drove off to Alabama to meet up
with Jesus. There was not very much that anyone could say as he left so
quickly in the middle of the night.

][<en Follett