A Religious Experience, Part Two

With the crowd that populated the room as it darkened, it would have been easy to think someone had just urinated on a fuse box. This theory was quickly dashed when they immediately went silent, as if in some kind of Pavlov Dog response cultivated by weeks of attendance, and it was obvious something was about to happen. That something was a regular-sized man tearing out onto the stage on a Scott-sized motorcycle.

'Hellllooooooo, Church!' The greeting bounced around the room, a voice that sounded as though it was struggling its way out of a maze of senility and alcoholism. I don't know who this man was supposed to be, nor am I sure if anyone else did, but the fact that he was on stage and wielding a microphone seemed enough for them.

For the next fifteen minutes, the crowd was entertained by the mystery man yelling “Do we have any (insert nationality) here!?!' followed by the collective delayed cheering of a bunch of drunks realising that, holy crap, they were that nationality, and this man was acknowledging it. How awesome!

Not content with that, and obviously having been storing them up since his own family stopped inviting him to Christmas dinner after causing one too many scenes, Mystery Stage Man launched into a series of shop-worn jokes that have been kicking around since 1974. There was the typical 'New Zealanders have sex with sheep' variety, and really, the rest mostly consisted of him referring to a country, then going 'What a bunch of fuuuckwits!', leaving the crowd endlessly amused – not exactly a difficult task – and me entertaining the thought of sticking my head into the plastic bag that was currently occupied by cans of drink.

After finishing his...well, let's be generous and call it a performance, with some sort of repetitive drinking song that would take up residence in my head for several days to follow, one could only begin to wonder what sort of act could follow. Thankfully the wondering was short lived, because the baited breath I was waiting with couldn't hold out for long. Mystery Stage Man decided it was time he introduced, and thus confirmed, the one part of the Church myth that I was sceptical about. The one thing that completed its descent into outright seediness.

Oh yes, it was time for the stripper. And I warn anyone with a fragile constitution to turn away now and save yourself, because from here on in things get a little unsavoury.

The first thing you noticed when she – and I'm going to dub her Brandy, as I can't remember her name – made her way onstage was her age, which ranged from being anywhere between 40 and a member of the undead. With a face and boobs that spent their time comparing which had underwent more cosmetic surgery and skin that shared an uncanny similarity to leather, there was the faintest evidence showing that this woman may have actually been attractive once upon a time. It was just a shame that time was before calendars existed.

Inviting a man who appeared to be a more flamboyant member of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on stage, she began her performance, dancing and bending in a fashion that made her skin crease like a Mad Magazine fold-in. After taking his glasses, putting them down the front of her g-string and generally doing things with them I'm sure his optometrist hadn't intended, she sat the man down, where he – I'm sure living out a lifelong dream – got to serve as her human pommel horse. As she writhed and flipped over him, legs wrapped around his face and head resting on his crotch, I was very thankful for standing as far away from the stage as I was, yet still wishing I'd had more to drink. I exchanged glances with Brendan and Laureen to confirm that this was actually happening. Their eyes were begging the exact same questions I was.

With the stage strip spectacular ending in what I call Car Crash Nudity, in that I didn't want to look yet couldn't turn away, I turned to my only option to shake what I had just witnessed. It was time to funk.

Yet The Church was not going to be so generous to me just yet, with the Mystery Stage Man – having managed to not yet succumbed to the heart attack he looked constantly on the verge of having – returning to host a drinking competition, a group of New Zealander guys dressed as fairies emerging victorious.

Then it was revealed that Mystery Stage Man had a 'special guest' who just wanted to say a few words. It turned out he was referring to the guy standing to his left, drunk and dressed as a Dalmatian. I guessed he appeared special in a particular sense of the word.

The Drunk Dalmatian wasted no time, immediately addressing his girlfriend, 'I just wanted to say that I love you and–'

I took a drink. I blinked. I blinked again. Suddenly I realised what was about to happen.

No way. No. Fucking. Way. He was going to propose.

I turned to Laureen and shared my realisation. She stared at me, her eyes opening wide in a futile attempt to capture all the madness that was about to unfold.

'No! No, he wouldn't!' Considering he was on stage, drunk and dressed as a dog, I felt Laureen was being far too generous with her disbelief.

He called her on stage, he got down on one wobbly knee and with complete disregard for the story they may one day tell their grandchildren, he asked her to marry him.



She cried, the crowd cheered, Mystery Stage Man rambled something incomprehensible into the microphone and I tried to wrap my head around what I had just witnessed. My head didn't have that much give. Preceded by the stripper equivalent of one of the Golden Girls and moderated by a prime case for an intervention, there was no possible way this proposal could have been more ridiculous.

Turns out I was wrong.

After spending an extended period of time trying to devour each other's faces at the side of the stage while several drunken people fell over on stage attempting to step over a stick – part of a competition – they happy couple made their way into the crowd. Pats on the back and enthusiastic hugs from strangers overcome by the emotion, not to mention a bathtub's worth of beer, ensued. I congratulated them as they passed, having now had enough to drink to make my faux politeness seem almost sincere. Laureen took up the typical female line of questioning and asked the blushing bride-to-be to show off her ring.

'Oh, I don't have one yet.' She showed the ring finger, adorned with nothing but spilt alcohol.

Holy shit. This was almost too good to be true. He had not planned this whatsoever. He had put more thought into hiring his Dalmatian costume than he had his proposal. It was a decision fuelled by drunken logic and several plastic bags’ worth of canned beer.

At this point, with a mouthful of drink, it took every ounce of self control I had to not do a spit take. I turned away and prayed they moved along quickly, because I was waging a losing battle with my desperate need to burst out laughing. Then, as if to punctuate the romance of the moment, Brandy, the stripper made of cow hide, returned to the stage.

This was unexpected and unplanned for. While I'd had more to drink by this point, I'd also moved much closer to the stage. Such proximity did my eyesight no favours, with the leather of her skin looking like it had been left out in the rain too long and the creases in it slowly eroding into crevices.

Proving that she was an equal opportunist, this time Brandy dragged herself up a female from the crowd, sat her down and began to divide her time between dancing around the girl and fondling her in a way that in any other situation would have ended in a lengthy prison sentence. In the back of my mind I began planning what I'd wear to court if I was later called as a witness.

After leading the girl off stage, having left her with a series of mental scars and a delightful story to tell her parents as they shipped her off the therapy, Brandy invited another male on stage. It was soon to become glaringly apparent that she must have specified that his dignity wasn't welcome.

I was now growing increasingly suspicious that this stripper possessed some sort of mind control powers, because within minutes she had this guy lying on his back on stage, handcuffed, stripped to his underwear and wearing a gimp mask. She sat on his face; I became very grateful for not having eaten much that day.

But this was just the beginning of the systematic breaking down of any self respect this man may have claimed to once have, the existence of which having already been called into doubt as serious as the case of STDs he was soon sure to contract. Now having tired of using his face as a cushion, Brandy brought him to his feet, shuffled him – his pants were around his ankles – over to the chair that I was beginning to feel very sorry for and bent him over it. Lighting up a cigarette, she took a few drags before pulling down the man's underpants, gifting the crowd with a faceful of hairy ass, and placed the cigarette between his cheeks. A perfect anti-smoking campaign if ever I'd seen one. Then – because why stop there? - she proceeded to pull his underpants back up and let a hole be burnt through the back of them. Poor underpants, they never signed up for any of this.

Because it was readily apparent that everyone was now ready for dessert, Brandy produced a can of whipped cream. I was not sure exactly where she pulled it from and was doing my best not to dwell on the puzzle, fearing any solution I may come to. Stretching open the back of the man's underpants – as if they hadn't suffered enough – she began spraying whipped cream into them, proving she had a limited future in the catering business. Then, as the grand finale of one man's shame, she pressed on his ass and we all watched as the cream began to snake its way out of the hole left by the cigarette; a tiny, creamy worm making its break for freedom. Meanwhile, I was rapidly feeling the onset of lactose intolerance.

Done with the man and leaving him shamble his way off stage, as I hoped that he had a girlfriend he had to go home and explain an ass full of whipped cream to, it was time for Brandy to finish off her own performance. Tearing off what little clothing she was left wearing – literally tearing, it looked uncomfortable – she took a handful of whipped cream and slapped it between her legs with such force that you would be able to subsequently churn butter in her uterus. And with a bow and what I'm sure was the beginnings of some kind of infection, she was gone.

Looking around at Laureen, Brendan and Rob – he'd appeared at some stage – it was clear that none of us could quite comprehend everything we'd just witnessed. My thoughts were coming out as nothing more than babbled syllables and my mind was taking a time out due to an overload of madness. Sensing it was time to step in, my body took charge, leading me into and episode of funk now that the normal music had resumed.

I let my legs take the funky lead until the music stopped, informing us it was time to go. We hung back, waiting for the more intoxicated patrons to shuffle out, amused by the number that fell over attempting to navigate the obstacle course of empty cans and bottles that littered the floor.

That had been The Church. I couldn't figure out if my expectations had been met, or beaten into submission with a plastic bag full of Fosters cans. Nor could I be sure if I had just enjoyed myself or not. All I could safely say was that I had been entertained, and, as I said, it was an experience. If somewhat of a harrowing one.

Something told me I'd be back one day.

A Religious Experience, Part One

We interrupt this coverage of France to chronicle an event which simply won't allow me to type any further without detailing. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to my experience at The Church.

And “experience” is certainly the only proper way for me to categorise it. Not traumatic, not necessarily enjoyable and absolutely mind boggling, The Church is a beast unto itself, a product seemingly born out of the collective drunken mind power of the race of backpackers that Flood the London streets.

We'd heard rumours of not so much a bar, but a weekly event. Nothing but a figment during the week, something spoken of as if the hazy recollection people have of it was only a hallucination, The Church only shows itself in reality for four hours on a Sunday afternoon. From midday to 4:00pm, the story was that the inside of a former church – in what may well have been an attempt to see what happened when you combined blasphemy with sacrilege – was turned into a hovel of drunkenness, debauchery and dereliction. Where drinks had to be purchased in numbers of three - bartenders generous enough to provide patrons with -plastic bags to carry them in – people dressed in costume for no good reason and the floor was covered in hay.

In other words, it was something we had to witness for ourselves.

Dragging myself out of bed far too early Sunday morning for a man who had only befriended his mattress at 4:00am that same morning, my mind and body questioned what they had to make me hate them so much. In the hallway, Laureen and Brendan shambled past me in the manner of people defeated by their own morbid curiosity. All we could do was dedicate ourselves to the self-deception that we were doing this as some kind of social experiment.

Sitting on the Tube as it rocked me back and forth to ensure I didn't forget that I was hungover, I stared at the coffee in my hand, wishing it was at least ten times stronger and possibly made from Speed. My mind was spinning with ideas of what exactly I was to expect from this place. Though, admittedly, that may not have been the only reason for the spinning.

At any other time, disembarking a train to be greeted by the sight of a number of loud, obnoxious, costumed and drunken – impressively so, considering it was only 11:30 in the morning – would be cause to retreat back onto the train and ride it straight back into the world of self respect. Fortunately, this morning, like most others, I hadn't been burdened with such minor things as dignity, so all it meant was that we were heading in the right direction. And considering we'd arrived sporting a healthy lack of ideas in regard to where we were supposed to go, having people to follow came as somewhat of a relief, assuming they didn't decide to pass out in traffic on the way.

As we saw the line snaking around the building, it became hard to deny – not to mention far too late – that this was our destination, despite the depressing things it suggested about humanity. Scanning my eyes across its foundations, the building seemed to be doing its best to deny any knowledge that it was once a church, trying to avoid the shame that I had no sense of whatsoever. Nowadays it was disguising itself as a theatre, a venue for concerts and other stage shows during the week.

Finding ourselves at the back of a line that was longer than it had any right to rationally be, working itself around several corners and decorated with empty beer cans and morons, I engaged in the fool's errand of convincing myself I was much better than these people, despite the fact that I was following them into this black hole of a building. The results I achieved were less than spectacular.

Finally, a deep breath and in we went, my mind accompanied by the last fleeting thought that maybe I should have had all my shots before leaving Australia.

Would you look at that, I'd walked into the Twisted Arm megastore. I'd walked into a sea of multinational boganism, although from what I could gather it was primarily dominated by Australians. It was disturbingly familiar. But the Kiwis, South Africans and the vastly outnumbered nations of the UK were all making a show, drinking until they were all speaking one universal language – the intoxicated slur. And the rumoured plastic bags were making no attempt to conceal themselves, dangling from the wrists and belts of every other person, a small family of cider or beer cans contained within.

Disappointingly, one of the first things I had noticed – and I'd consulted the soles of my shoes to ensure I wasn't mistaken – was that the floor was completely devoid of hay. I ventured a guess that it was to avoid having the place likened to somewhat of a retard farm. I still made the comparison.

In the centre of the room, on the large expanse of floor that found its home in front of the stage, there was a sea of bodies. Some were dancing, some were swaying unsteadily and trying to pass it off as a dance, and some had abandoned the concept of rhythm altogether, instead choosing to jump up and down and yell at the ceiling. All manner of costumes peppered this sweaty, possibly syphilitic ocean – pirates, nurses, Indians, police, Ghostbusters, Jokers, gladiators – with a large number of them able to be prefaced with the adjectives 'douchebag' or 'slutty'. A video camera swept across the crowd, the images captured projected onto large monitors on the wall and proving that the one way to turn an idiot into an even bigger idiot is to put them on a screen. The camera also spent a lot of its leisure time zooming in on girls' boobs, as they turned away under the unconvincing guise of coy embarrassment, which, when taking into account they were armed with enough cleavage to demand your attention under threat of suffocation, seemed a little contradictory. As did the fact that the body behind the camera also belonged to a female.

Now sporting our own bag of canned booze – after all, if we were doing The Church, we were doing it right, regardless of the opinions of our stomachs, heads and livers – we stood and spectated the crowd. And for a good while, apart from it seeming like the womb from which every dodgy bogan pub I had been to was spawned, there seemed nothing special to the place. All these expectations of horrified awe had gone unfounded.

But then, with the dimming of lights and the revving of a small motorcycle engine, everything began to change.

To be continued...

Sacre Bleu! The Tour - Artistic Differences

If there is one thing I learnt from the Louvre, one tiny mental souveneir with which I emerged from its artistically endowed halls, it's that historical artists loved them their Jesus.

Narrowly beating out his fiercest competitors – naked people and a series of terrifying cherubs – in the popularity stakes, Mr Christ (as he is known in more casual circles) adorns the walls in such numbers that one could be forgiven for thinking that there had been a glaring area in the recounting of the story, and he had actually been crucified several hundred times.

Scan your eyes across the many, many walls of this artistic epicentre and they tell you in manner that would render denial a rather embarrassing act of stupidity that art, and the continued existence of it, owes an insurmountable debt to the religious world. Undoubtedly this is a fact long clear to the incalculable number of people with more knowledge on the topic than me – hardly a difficult task – but still, such a concentrated dose of evidence would leave even the most glaring personification of the modern artist stereotype, as they pleasured themself over the ideas of their own self importance and asthetic atheism, no choice but to begrudgingly agree.

It was day two in Paris, and having bribed our bodies back into compliance with a solid night's rest we had returned to the streets to gift passers-by with our mixed looks of awe and directionlessness that can only be properly assembled by the features of a tourist.

As it turns out, Monday is a day that has no affection for tourists in Paris, with the Musee D'orsay continuing its campaign against me by being closed, also recruiting the Catacombs into the cause in an attempt to wear down my enthusiasm. But with a stubbornness that often flirts with the appearance of stupidity, I was hardly one to be dissuaded by a city conspiring against me, so, dressed up in our finest looks of faux-intellectualism, we set off for the Louvre, careful not to let it know it wasn't our first choice as to spare its feelings.

We arrived early in order to make the best effort of avoiding the plague known as tourist groups – a group which, yes, we may have technically belonged to, but I was determined to feel unjustifiably superior to. Making our way through the glass pyramid and descending into the tomb of art that lay below, the windows of the surrounding building eyed us suspiciously as we went, curious to see the newest batch of voyeurs wanting to cast their eyes over what was contained within its walls. It seemed a little judgemental for something that's willing to let anyone enter it for just 9 Euros.

The building itself is a vast, four-storey labyrinth of rooms, some spacious and making no attempt to downplay their sense of significance, some barely noticeable, seemingly birthing themselves out of spaces in walls where no room has a right to exist, all of them filled with paintings, sculptures and historical artifacts fighting for their piece of personal space. The sheer overwhelming size of the place demands more time from people than some would be willing to give.

Noblemen, women and a large number of people comfortable with nudity watched us from within their intricately detailed frames as our feet led us from room to room. Meanwhile, Jesus was too distracted by the alarming number of times he was being crucified in this building to make eye contact. The cherubs may have also been watching us, but I was doing my best not to dwell on this idea for too long as I still wanted to be able to sleep soundly at night. I will say this though, some of the cherubs I did notice – between closing my eyes and denying their existence – had appearances that hinted at mental disability, so I have to give credit to the Cherubian empire for their equal-opportunity employment.

With the museum rapidly devouring the hours we spent roaming its halls, and having spent enough time admiring the works of more obscure artists to assist with that speriority I was aiming for, it was time to walk in the footsteps of many art groupies before us and check out the big names. And I find it very amusing that in a museum where you can get close enough to lick – if you were in the mood to get arrested – many pieces of art that would feature a conga line of zeros trailing at the end of their value, there was a grand total of only two objects that held the esteem that warranted any sort of restrictions in proximity.

Ms Lisa and Ms de Milo, queens of the Louvre and two women I wouldn't throw our of bed. I mean, come on, think of the bragging rights. Or course there would then be the series of intrusive questions as to how you managed to get two priceless artifacts into your bed in the first place.

For something the size of a smallish window, the crowd of spectators for the Mona Lisa could quite comfortably be referred to as ridiculous. People pressed shoulder to shoulder, trying to edge themselves just that little bit closer to the area that was roped off so that they could say they got to stand only a scant five metres away from the 2-inch thick glass that encased the Mona Lisa. I won't deny the fact the I was interested in seeing it and I'm glad I did - for a painting so renowned, who wouldn't be? But such a spectacle for something that is still, at the end of the day, a painting of a woman, is something my brain simply does not possess the ability to understand. Evidence in itself that I will never be a connesuir of the art world.

Also not doing my standing in the art world any favours is that fact that, after four hours, museum fatigue was setting in. The sense repetition in the works had begun to dawn on me and, although my brain was struggling to come to terms with the idea, it seemed I was beginning to tire of looking at pictures that prominently featured naked women. Fearing irrepearable damage, the wisest course of action was clearly to bring an end to the day's romance with art.

Don't worry, we promised that we'd remain friends.