Praise Jesus, Ralph! (1 - 29 - 07)

“I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human, than someone who doesn't believe anything."
- David St. Hubbins


When you stare into the eyes of pure lunacy, voices come out of the dark that say things to give you nightmares.

In May of ’06, I interviewed Ralph Lang. He’s an anti-abortion protestor, with personal experience in high-level Christian hallucinations on a regular basis.

I first got in contact with him because my phone number was listed in the table of contents for the Flipside, since I was the managing editor at the time. He called my room while I was in it, and I let the message pick it up, since I didn’t feel like dealing with anyone at the moment. He began talking about an article in the recent issue he had picked up which mentioned a persons internal struggle dealing with shock-tactic Christians passing out information against abortion, and Ralph noticed the writer had said that he was a Christian. He started leaving a message in an attempt to get in touch with the writer, and by this time I had noticed this was more than a telemarketer call. I picked up and began talking with Ralph. I set up a time to meet him the next day, since we had been flooded with dead bloody fetus pictures fairly regularly at this point, and I was dying to lend these people my ear, because I am a sadist.

I met him at the campus clock late in the afternoon, since I would be finished with my classes for the day, and I wanted to give Ralph full reign to run at top speed for as long as he wanted. He had a box under his arm, and I had a duffel bag, since he’d mentioned he’d be giving me things to look over. He would turn out to be fully armed.

I’ve listened to the full interview three times now. I’ve transcribed it. All 57 pages and 2 and a half hours of it. I don’t expect to erase it any time soon. I had captured on tape something that I’d never heard before: Pure uncut mental loss, in the flesh.

I’d want nothing better but to wipe him from my mind. He’s only been a horror to think about. He’s a black ghost on my thoughts. The quote above is from the movie “This Is Spinal Tap", and Ralph has actually ruined this movie for me. The level of crime that entails; that I can’t watch this movie without breaking into tears because I now know there are people in the world who think like that. Worse than that. The disturbing irony that a joke becomes the truth, and leads you to scream at the abyss because you realize there are actually people out there lacking the mental acumen to be smarter than someone trying to be stupid. For the sake of my humor, the prime and only mark of true sanity in the world, I needed a cleansing wash on the level of a confession to purge this kidney stone. “To lift a pen is to be at war." Voltaire would understand a campaign to save a movie.

*************

Where to begin? The horror. The horror. Something solid is the only way to go. Make order from chaos…

First and foremost, the miracles. The visions. The staff of light. Waking up singing songs he didn’t know the words to the night before. Flashes of light while he was reading. Hearing crying souls when he prayed. Seeing Jesus and Mary. White tunnels, moving ribs, jumping words, shaking knees, leaping hearts, beams of heat from his chest. He tells me numbers. Things that don’t mean ANYTHING, and takes them as proof. Praying stops wars, and prevents 53 abortions. 1,000 souls will be granted amnesty from purgatory with one psalm, and if you say it seven times it goes on forever. The Prayer of Perpetual Recitation. The vinyl is caught, and the skipping track goes on forever. He actually said this. Is he lying? Does he actually think I’ll believe this? Is he that stupid? Nothing bodes well. All arrows point to a dead end. Mental death.

The American civil war was brought on by God to free those oppressed under the yolk of slavery, which only came to fruition in the first place due to the lack of prayer in the world. And the North won because they out-prayed the South, mustn’t forget that. People aren’t having 10, 11, or 18 kids anymore, and they’re not having them soon enough—before 26, definitely. Evolution is a sin, and homosexuality and abortion brought a flood to Asia and a hurricane to New Orleans.

I suppose nothing Ralph told me was news to my ears. I had heard things like this all before. But it had never been right in front of me like that, right there, for so long. Too much to handle. The wind shear breaks your mind to pieces at that much close contact for that long. With the benefit of months of distance now, I can attempt some cohesion. Stop the onslaught.

He constantly suggests prayer as a panacea, of almost epic proportions. And also, somehow, of simple cause and effect. Praying stops sin. To stop sinning, start praying. Like some sort of cycle, outside of which is only death. Just keep praying. The desired effect sounds to be something akin to eating all your meals sitting naked on a toilet: you don’t move, you don’t do anything. Nothing happens. Which means nothing bad happens.

A common theme runs through everything Ralph said. He wants everything back again how he remembered it. He wants everything normal again. He wants his life back. It seems nothing makes sense to him anymore, and his call for prayer is a vocalized cry for the world to stop moving so he can get back on again. He holds God as a general, with clear orders to follow. Ralph is in on the struggle. He’s begged for a reference point, and he has it. Every bright figure, flash of light, or plain-dead randomness is another sign. He’s being reminded that he has a place. Where another person would fear for their sanity if they were to withhold half the visions Ralph claims to be a part of, for him they’re just a kind word and a shine of favor on the loyal soldier who so dearly deserves it. A pat on the head, and fresh direction from someone who, somehow, knows what they’re talking about. Someone who knows more than Ralph. Someone who knows why things happen, and where Ralph fits into it all.

Victory is clear cut, and the defeated are even easier to notice: anyone who’s not Ralph. He does his part, God takes care of the rest, evil is vanquished, and Ralph goes home and fucks the prom queen. He’s hailed for all eternity as one of the chosen few. The Right. The Strong. A Hero.

What everybody wants. So how does this help me with the movie? Can I enjoy sarcasm in peace again? Can I live with some irony, not worrying that there’s a double-digit IQ skeleton rolling around out there somewhere, waiting to take a literal translation from a Bazooka Joe wrapper? Like so many other things, the answer lies nearer to the problem than I thought.

The luck of my tape recorder is in its amazing power while still being a $60 off-hand purchase. It catches everything. While driving with an open window can be agonizing when it comes to typing what the hell genius I was saying at the time, in other situations it seems to have a Zen wisdom for hearing what I needed, instead of what I was actually listening for. For interviews with random maniacal religious nuts for instance, it had the sense of mind to also catch all the background noise, the most vital of which was high-heeled shoes. Just when things seemed at their worst, I heard these beat of hard leather on tile, and a window was opened for me. I thought of women. All of them. All the ones who had walked by at the time, anyway. And there were more than a few. The tall one, the blonde one, older, younger. All the molds of the fairer species, it seemed.

Due to a genetic masterstroke of the very Thing that Ralph claims to worship, I’ve been blessed with a highly contrary nature, the results of which is that not many things can get me hornier than holding company with someone who doesn’t want me to be. So much fun! What he thought I was thinking about, how much attention he thought I was paying him, The Crusades, The Pope, every flash of light, bleeding statue, and threat of eternal fire-and-brimstone damnation from him fell like a house made of cards trying to hold ground against the hurricane from me licking my chops and rubbing my hands in anticipation. Not viciously primal, but more mental than anything. I realized there was a whole arena, a full game, with rules, tricks, victory or disappointment, that was open to me but which Ralph had surrendered in.

The chance, floating in the ether, that one of them could be for me, and I could be hers, is invigorating like car batteries hooked up to my nuts. The edge of failure or success I walk, in every goal I pursue, not just women, gives anything I do a taste of glory that would go toe to toe and beyond anything Ralph could ever muster in his wildest dreams. He’s given up the ghost. He has no wild springs of imagination. Something somewhere died for him, and with it went dirty visions, living heroic stories, and the feeling of being in on something as sublime as genius art, like this movie. Some work of voice and emotion that struck a chord for him and those of his ilk. He found no common-ground heroes of his time, so he was forced to invent one. Like a puppeteer being taken over by his mannequin, and he gave up the idea of having something of his own.

At one point in the interview, Ralph tells me of once praying a thanks to God for giving him his noble quest. Thanking the lord—“Thank you for taking me away from my life." It’s an appreciation of a surrender. Reminding himself of the time when he threw up his hands and quit the fight. He went back to the middle ground and stopped trying.

I stared into the eyes of pure lunacy, and returned to life with a gusto. I keep Ralph’s tape like a communication from a death camp. Sunken eyes. An emaciated frame. Someone who gave up. The tapes are Metal to me now. They are Punk. They are everything that keeps me going. They are love and sex, poetry and romance. They remind me of everything I never want to be, and I run with a volt like lightning listening to them now. I am a swift wave, engulfing everything I can get my hands on. Ralph sits on his crapper, eating stale bread from a dead country, many miles and even farther years away. I no longer bother myself with minds that can’t keep my pace or know how to appreciate my movies.