Wilde Amphigories

Eat, Drink and Sleep with Merry

Rummaging through the aisles of the corner deli with friend and cartoonist, Margo Mead, the artist of those peculiar prints in The Misadventures of Margo, I found myself again terribly and soothingly anticipating the dinner of all denominations.

Tonight was the night my wife and I had our monthly four hour meal with her Priest and my Rabbi on the Upper East Side of the Park, nearing territory that took me back to childhood. Of course, dining with such a plethora of miscasts such as my wife and our spiritual guides proved menacing. For my wife a menu of organics, Chianti has to be on the menu for her Priest, and my Rabbi, of course, demands kosher fare. At times I enjoy having someone to speak with and engage in conversation with the waitress.

On a recent trip to southern California,  I was informed by a food scientist that there is really no such thing as organic food or kosher either. The key to living well is over exercising, refraining from all food and consuming large amounts of wine. My wife and I tried it upon my return and both ended up in a coma simultaneously in New York Methodist Hospital in Park Slope. We didn’t have the immune system for such a natural way of life.

Looking over, I noticed Margo was filling up her gallon jug of organic plant tea which took on the striking resemblance of liquid feces. It ran down the sides of the jug and she painfully lugged it around the deli after filling it on the street. Not that my courtship was a cartoon, but Margo seemed enthralled in my open marriage to Merry and how we managed separate religions, apartments, sexual partners, and last names, yet shared a toothbrush.

As she consumed a dish of free samples, and then devoured some unpaid goods, she continued dragging her plant food, a la feces, and I attempted to explain the merriment of my marriage to Merry. She knew it took great strides for me to come back into the closet after being born homosexual. It took reading Hemingway and Kafka to understand I really was suppressing a great urge to fornicate with women. She wondered how I could painfully explain to my parents at eighteen that I was going back into the closet. I explained it was Kafka’s, ‘’Man in relation to God” not Hemingway’s, “Man in relation to Man” approach that confirmed my urge to be a devout hedonist.

“But your mother is a Muslim and your father a Jew,’’ Margo said as cookie crumbs fell down the side of her face. She then asked me to hold the liquid diarrhea she bought for her plants but felt sure her husband, an Episcopal would drink. His parents were Jehova’s Witnesses. I asked her what that meant; but she turned the conversation back onto me.

Having a terrible fear tonight’s dinner would lead towards sordid affairs without my involvement caused me great anxiety. I took a downer my analyst gave me as suddenly I became quite perplexed. Margo offered me a drink of her soil tea to wash it down but I declined.

“My husband drinks it all the time. It cured his cancer and he no longer bounces when he walks,’’ she said. “I hear it can aid those having unprotected sex or smoking.”

“Smoking is unprotected sex,” I informed her. “And speaking of which, my Rabbi has been looking at Merry the way I used to look at Merry before I got married and gave up having sex to her.”

Margo, a bit confused, gathered Merry and I agreed after marriage to only have sex with others and not each other. But now I felt even more anxious as I recalled the looks her Priest was giving me last month. I knew he had been with Merry on several occasions, but I wasn’t slightly interested in leaving a closet that was warm, cozy and filled with the neurotic, self-involved, over ambitious female Manhattanites I had been having relations to and sometimes with.

“Your wife is sleeping with her Priest and your Rabbi?,’’ Margo asked.

“Isn’t there some rule against that ?” Yet I had no idea, as she began sniffing the mint plant I had in my hand and wondered if she wanted her own.

“I don’t think so long as they take communion and remain drunk in the Catholic faith and stay kosher in the Jewish faith. Whatever she does is her business, but I don’t want her sharing her religious partners with me!” I explained. “I have morals now that I’ve been born again as a hetero.”

Margo explained I was far too old for her Priest to possibly hold any sensual feelings towards me, besides I had never been an alter boy or taken communion.

“Can’t these Spiritual leaders read the “wicked” signs.” Margo asked?

“They’re both illiterate, and from what I can tell very conservative. Her priest told me thinking is the work of the Devil.” I explained.

 She grimaced with a retort “It can’t get any worse.”

 “How so?” I asked.

“They couldn’t ask you both to leave the faith or worse yet force you to have relations with your wife.”

“No! They can’t do that. We’ve done nothing wrong,’’ I said, as we stood in line to pay for her two items.

Margo, noticing herself on the front of Cartoonist Humility Magazine in the check out aisle, looked at me and chirped, “I thought conservative people were illiterate?” and I shook my head in agreement.

That night I arrived at the table late, noticing a ménage a trois of heresy in the form of bruschetta and matzo soup being served with kosher tea and an aperitif. Without hesitation or regard, I slapped down my English version of the Koran and the gallon jug of soil tea for the soul.

“This stuff cures cancer,’’ I said as I poured it into each of their water glasses and garnished it with mint. “I don’t care for any. I had broccoli for lunch,” I gasped as chunks of brown, slimy dirt soiled the cup and tablecloth.  “Don’t worry, it’s organic and kosher and Father it is filled with alcohol. Drink it in remembrance of me.”

As the three of them got chummy over the delightful liquid planting soil, I opened my Koran and began reading. It was a divine read. They listened as I reaffirmed my faith.

And then in mid-chant my wife looked at me, planting soil dripping from her grill and said, “Honey if your life were ever to be written it would surely be read as an amphigory.”

Edited by Angela Goughnour

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