PEOPLE SAY TO ME, “Why don’t you go on the lecture circuit, like so many others do, and rake in so many dollars a night while stirring vocal, even bodily, enthusiasm in auditors numbering into the hundreds and thousands right there physically in front of you, instead of sitting all alone like you do going ticky ticky ticky on an empty piece of paper rolled into a lonesome machine?”
I say, “Well I tried that.”
Sure. I used to go out there on the hustings, which is what those of us who were in that profession called them, in honor of Colonel Reece Hustings, who, in 1907, took his oration about galvanism and microdots (which he thought he had made up out of thin air; he didn’t live to see microdots become a reality, but then I don’t know anybody who has seen any microdots, you have to take them on faith) around to 117 different American cities and towns in 129 days.
I never threatened the colonel’s record, and I never developed the eloquence it would take to convince crowd after crowd, as the colonel did, that microdots were scattered like silica gel (something else he thought he’d made up, he just liked the sound) over every American’s skin and hair and could tune in the infinite. He never even had to move into galvanism many a night, he could go on about microdots alone to the great majority of hearts’ content.
What I did do, though, was get into Creationism very early on. I went from community college to community college at $200 a pop, telling groups of the credulous (and I don’t put credulousness down) that what we needed was not just Creationist Science but Creationist Football and Creationist Journalism as well. And Scientific Religion.
Sure, religion can be scientific, I made clear. Back with the ancient Greeks, religion was empirical. If you propitiated the gods, there wouldn’t be any of them swooping down and mounting you in the guise of a swan. And it worked. You could test it out. And by the same token today, if you believe that there is a Creator behind every snowflake, every war and decent TV show, it makes you feel better. Don’t it? It works.
But where I ran into trouble, I had a backup group, the Roylettes, behind me going, “So fine, so fine, so fine.” Three black women back there, gitting it.
And I had people come up to me after the show and say, “That’s racist.”
And I had to stop and think. Well, I guessed it was. I guessed I was implying, unthinkingly, that black people could git it better than white. So I engaged three white women. To tell the truth, they didn’t git it quite as well, but they got it pretty well.
And I had people come up to me after the show and say, “That’s sexist.” And I had to stop and think. Well, I guessed it was true, I was implying that women could git it better than men. So I got me three backup men. Called them the Roysters. They didn’t git it quite as well as the women, for my taste, but they got it all right. But then they’d get to fighting so bad. And then, too, some people came up and said, “Are your men all straight?”
And I said, “Well, I think so,” and I went off to the side and made them “Dress right, dress” and they looked pretty straight to me, but “No,” the people said, “we’re talking about you being heterosexist.” And I had to admit that I was implying, without meaning to, that straight men got it better than gay, so I made some changes and next time I was all ready to say, “The one in the middle is gay and the other two don’t mind at all,” but this time the people said, “You’re being age-ist.”
And I had to admit that I had been unconsciously implying that young people git it better than old, so I got three old men, one of whom was straight and one of whom was gay and one of whom was so old it didn’t make any difference to him, and they didn’t really git it as well as the young ones but they still added something, and the next show some animal rights people came up and said, “That’s speciesist.”
And I had to admit that I was suggesting that people git it better than other species, so I tried pigs. Well, first I tried dogs, but they got to fighting worse than the Roysters used to. I’d be pounding home a point and the Royotes, I called them, would be back there going, “Yark, yike, aroo, grrngrrIKE!” and chewing on each other. Then cats, but they were too independent, and threw up.
So, pigs. Pigs are smart. But they aren’t meant for a chorus. You’re on tour and your bus is getting lower and lower on the shocks and you come to realize it’s them pigs, the chorus, getting heavier and heavier. But I stuck with them and then one evening I was waxing up a pretty high sheen on Creationism and the pigs were back there gitting it, not too well but pretty well (you notice I don’t say “for pigs”), and somebody came up right in the middle of my talk and said, “That’s elitist.”
So, I put the pigs out front. Went along that way for a while—tried it with them gitting it out front while I tried to make the talk, and with me gitting it in back while they tried to make the talk. And one night a committee came up to the stage and said, “Is your man back there a secular humanist?”
And tell you the truth, I just tiptoed away and let the pigs deal with it. I decided if people couldn’t tell where I stood with the minority community, on the one hand, and with the Divine Presence, on the other, just from the text of my remarks, they weren’t ever going to be placated in my presence.
So now I do text exclusively. And I know in my soul, there are people out there finding me wanting on all kinds of ismic and istic grounds, but I can’t hear them doing it. I do miss having somebody going “so fine, so fine” behind me, but let me tell you one thing. Black, white, men, women, straight, gay, old, young, human, canine, feline, pork: they will all eat and drink up 4½ cents of every nickel you clear, and there’s not a blessed one of them that you can be safe in assuming is not hopped up on some kind of drug.