In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Early this morning as I was taking out the trash, I tripped over Jesus Christ. For a moment, I thought it was Molly, our next door neighbor's Golden Retriever, cowering there inside a Beauty Rest mattress box, but then I realized that dog was really God, the son of God, and the Holy Spirit-all three Christian gods rolled up into one bodacious sleeping mass of humanity. Christ what a mess, I thought! That bum looks more like an Oscar Meyer wiener lathered end to end in yellow vomit and sprinkled with flecks of pea green sputum than the savior of the known universe.

I couldn't tell if Christ was alive or dead so I slowly pealed back the upper layer of cardboard and noticed Jesus was wearing a piss-soaked pair of 'Valentine's Day is for Lovers' boxer shorts in boy's size sixteen; a blue and yellow wife beater inscribed 'Bimini is for Lovers'; a gay visor with an emblazoned rainbow flag superimposed with Harvey Milk's silhouette; and a pair of size six tennis shoes with red tops and the K Mart logo in fading letters hand-scribbled on each side-as if the God of the known universe was forced into buying knock-offs.

Jesus looked up at me with his glassy wino eyes and belched noisily as he shot me an even glassier-eyed look that said if you touch my beer, I'll kick your sorry ass halfway to Cheboygan so I kept my distance, but his aroma would have forced me to have done that anyway: it was an overpowering mixture of reefer, Double Bubble chewing gum, smegma and Bud Light, a bottle of which Jesus Christ was nursing nosily at fifty sucks a minute, as if he were Maggie Simpson.

"My name's Scot," I said, extending my knuckled right hand and exhaling slowly as I tried not to inhale his stench. Then I knuckled tapped him once as I turned my head owl-like past my left shoulder, inhaling garbage scented alley air like it was ambrosia.

"I'm Jesus Christ," he coughed in a raspy mid-eastern type of voice with a twinge of a Brooklyn accent spiced with a glob of Anglo-Saxon phlegm. "I'm the Bearer of all Suffering, Savior of the Universe, One with the Father and the Holy Ghost, Maker and Ender of All Things, Timeless and Forevermore. Yadda Yadda."

Somehow I knew he wasn't kidding. The Savior's halo illuminated the gunk dripping out of his left nostril and singed the hairs in his right ear.

As if reading my mind, Jesus said, "Yeah, it's me already. I am that I am: omniscience, omnipotent and omnivorous.

I sat down next to Jesus and began scribbling my thoughts on his cardboard box. "I hope you don't mind," I said.

Jesus looked over his spring-bridge thick-lensed pince-nez golden eyeglasses (the ones I wonder that Joseph Smith might have used while translating the newest book of the Bible), flashing the biggest brown eyes I'd seen since watching the TV dog Lassie as a ten-year-old, "It's not the fucking Torah," he said. "It's just a cardboard box. Scribble away."

Bless us and protect us! I thought.

I blinked and Jesus yawned cavernously, revealing a half dozen rotting teeth and a gray wooly tongue. "I haven't gotten around to sanctifying this box. The manufacturers may have, but I didn't, but let's not take any chances with boxes fabricated by the goyem." Jesus Christ stretched his legs until his big toes burst from the lining of his sneakers. Then he spread his legs-which God help me-was not a pleasant sight-and touched both sides of the box simultaneously, "Blessed be ye O Cardboard Box, Hallowed be thy ply. I bless you in the name of me, myself and I. Amen." Jesus Christ drew a large circle in the air with his right forefinger as if drawing a hula-hoop. "Yadda, Yadda," he said as he waited another beat and glowered at me with his fiery Mediterranean eyes. "Yadda, Yadda," he repeated until he rolled over in laughter shaking the foundations of mattress box, "I'm just playing with you, Scot. Don't be such a wanker!"

The Living Christ waited a few more beats, but I sensed he knew he'd already wanked my wanker harder and firmed than it'd been wanked since my trip to Tunisia a year before. Yet miraculously, I began to feel the power of this alley dwelling wino who understood my thoughts, sensed my fears, and knew my very soul. I blushed crimson, wishing I could shield my face from the Light of the World.

"My tan's fading now," Jesus said, "I've been sunbathing nude in the Caribbean for the past two hundred years. Whatcha think? Like my exotic hue?"

I was too absorbed in Jesus Christ's changing costume to respond. Now he was wearing a pink chiffon nightgown; orange flip flops; a Playtex living bra that looked as if it had committed suicide several years before; topped with a golden tiara with dandelions and al dente fettuccini dangling precariously over his Frank Sinatra baby blues.

"Have you ever reeled-in a queen-"

I blushed, praying his disparaging remark was not aimed at my queerness.

"-angelfish," Jesus continued without missing a beat, "Queen Angelfish are glorious manifestations of God. . . " The Living Christ's voice faded as he pursed his lips together gaily, sucking his now perfectly formed pearl-white teeth as his form changed in front of me once more-now he was a six foot four, two-hundred pound young Mohammed Ali. "Those angelfish are tiny little suckers, but they're bitchier than a gaggle of Mormons elders at a GLBT meeting." Jesus's voice trailed off. . . then he raised his transformed pure black fist, "right on!" he said.

"I sense you don't believe me, Scot, but the six-balled gods know a thing or two about your world, even though my Old Man retired to Cygnus a couple millennia ago."

I'm sure he saw the look of absolute puzzlement on my face.

"The Old Man wanted to take up skeet shooting and miniature golf and Cygnus is the only place under the gods' heavens that offers them on the same venue. . . with a buffet lunch-all you can eat for a buck fifty!"

"Six balled gods?"

"You're a little slow on the uptake, aren't you, Scot?"

"You don't suppose the three of us share the same two fucking balls, do you? That would be blasphemy! Pop, the Holy Spook and I each have our own set," he paused and such a twinkle in his eye nearly consumed me, "Even us gods are entitled to our own individual jars of Plantersk after all, aren't we?" Jesus smiled and the earth shimmered in his transforming Jamaican glory!

"I always thought the Spook was feminine." I said, while all the time thinking of how much fun it would be to roll my cojones around in front of the living Christ.

A boom of thunder blasted across the rapidly darkening sky.

"'Spook's' our nickname for my lesser third. You may refer to it as the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm just jerking you around, Scot. "You can call the little bugger any damned thing you want. Just don't call him late to dinner."

"It's an old saw, boy. Get with the program! Or can't you picture a god of thunder with a sense of humor? My cousin Thor had his hammer, let me tell you and when anyone got on his nerves or didn't understand his jokes, it was slam, bam, thank you bam!"

"But getting back to your question, the three of us are males. We haven't allowed goddesses to hoover over our airspace for a couple millennia now, not since we kicked out Aphrodite, Isis and that whore Juno."

"Chill! I'm just yanking your chain, Scot. I know you fought like H. E. Double Toothpicks to ratify the gay and trans right-and we, the heavenly hosts are all one or the other, so you should learn my latest Commandment, it's Number 6,432: Bigotry exists equality in heaven and on earth. Get used to it."

"I imagine there's bigotry in hell," Jesus continued, "but I was only up there for three days . . . one, actually, and an hour or so in the evening of the first day and a few seconds on the morning of the third." The color faded from Christ's face, "It's not something I like to talk about. It's bitter memories of splinters. . . rusty nails, mass derision, full frontal nudity and a hard-on that grew more and more rampant with each fucking nail those Romans drove into my arms, legs, thighs, and lips-those were the nastiest by the way, I can still taste the dang-blasted rust."

"So, they used rusty nails?"

"It was not the best of times, Scot, and those Romans were cruel and as nasty as any humans I ever met-although they're all cardinals and priests and pizza makers now."

Jesus paused and then continued, ""Hell's a lot like Azkaban and I'm a lot like Harry Potter-only way cuter and (he winked at me for God's sakes) I'll show you what I've got in a trice. Yes, boy, I can sense you drooling wondering that age old question every faggot dares not ask until the clothes come off and the goods are fully revealed."

And which are you, I thought to the Savior of the Universe who read my every thought before I had a chance to articulate it.

Jesus let out a roar, "My wand's significantly bigger than Harry Potter's!" Jesus laughed again and rubbed his hands up and down his thighs and I averted my eyes from his 'wand', "More than anything else, picture it like this: Hell's like dropping your first double-decker ice cream cone in a pile of dog crap."

Sure enough, as soon as Jesus spoke, I stepped into a pile of Schnauzer shit.

When I took my eyes off my rank bedroom slippers and looked back at J.C., merely "the twinkling of an eye" later, the Savior of the known and unknown universes was wearing nothing but a red jock strap; a form fitting T; a foot-high blond Afro wig intertwined with pink and green ribbons; and Bozo the Clown shoes. Transformed again before my eyes, he now appeared as a Jamaican drag queen with the hottest cocoa hue; the most virile legs and thighs I'd ever seen; and heavenly cocoa café latte eyes, as his T-shirt. . . and only his T-shirt. . . was doused with Atlantic seawater and I saw the tips of his man-tits and the shape of his bulging pectorals peeking through.

Then Jesus's West Indies face was plastered with lilac eye liner, magenta lip stick and tangerine rouge. His eyebrows were shaved bare and his T disappeared, revealing his firm brown nipples that were rapidly hardening in the morning's chill. Jesus did a one-eighty, retrieving a six-pack from his cardboard box, and all I could focus on was Jesus Christ's manically hairy ass, outlined in his heart-shaped red jockstrap, as if it were two quivering mangos beckoning me to dine.

Jesus emptied his Bud Light in half a gulp, "You know it's not the same as that damned Miracle at Cana-wine's a piece of cake, but brewing beer inside a cardboard box in this Myself forsaken alley-well, let me tell you, this is a bitch!"

Jesus tossed me a cold brew and popped the tab on a second for himself, "The good thing about being one third of a lesser god is that I had an eternity of idleness to earn my Brew-ology Degree. Bob Jones University used to confer them, you know, but after that horrible moment when the keynote speaker delivered his racial diatribe to a hyped crowd of South Carolina fundamentalists, well that ended in a hurry, let me tell you!

But at least I earned my Brew-ology degree and can make beer anywhere I want, any time. The Spook, on the other hand, only has his milking degree and I think he gets jealous. Don't look at me like that. He's old school. He can turn anything into milk-or kefir in North Africa-it's disgusting! Have you ever watched a pound of pond of green frogs turn into whole milk? Probably not, but if you had, you would have known how nasty a taste can ever be."

Anyway, the Milk Maid doesn't get angry-he's not a corporeal being, you know, and only humans can get angry but he can be a son of a bitch when he wants to! He has an entire litany of names he calls me: the High Holy Wampa-you, know it. Don't look at me like that-the wampa-from Star Wars. Look it up. Well, the Spook also calls me Big Chief Stinky Feet, the King of Beer, and the Big Boy with the Bachelors of Drunkenness Degree, which is hilarious because he's barely halfway through his coursework for his Milking Degree-he failed sheep milking fifteen times and still can't tell a bull from a cow. I don't blame that entirely on the Spook, of course, a great deal of the problem is Our Father who created the spook without a body. I mean, try to imagine wrapping invisible pinkies around cow tits? It freaked out a thousand dead cows in Switzerland, alone.

"Then, there's the Old Man . . . Oh My Self. . . he's still trying to sort out the fiasco he caused when he rained down manna on the heads of the Children of Israel for forty fucking years-Promised Land, my ass. If the Jews had had a choice they would have moved to Cheboygan." Jesus belched, but this time it smelled like ambrosia. Perhaps I was getting used to this man of so many visages and so many aromas.

"Anyway," Jesus Christ continued, belching loudly from one end and farting from the other, "I digress. The topic was angelfish, after all, wasn't it?"

I waited a beat. It was a rhetorical question, even I knew that-besides, as an author I wanted to hear what this God, the Son of God, the Spook from God had to say.

"Angelfish are easy to tame," Jesus Christ continued, "I named my favorite angelfish Lucifer and Lucifette-they were hermaphrodites and got along well with the males and females of assorted species, so I kept them in an underground bunker along with souls of Adolph Hitler, Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy back in Bimini. I see that look, Scot, you're wondering about the Trump family, aren't you?"

I nodded

"Trumps have no souls-they are the rump roasts of humanity. You, on the other hand, dear Scot, are filet mignon-don't freak out, boy! I might eat you-but not that way. Anyway the Hitler's and Putin's and Netanyahu's are buried deep in the lowest parts of hell, in an underground bunker natural to them-Big Old Joe McCarthy, the Senator known as the Commie Buster, found it utterly delightful-even though he was out of the limelight and got more and more psychotic as time went by . . . even Joseph Welch-the only human who has stood up for anything in America in the past hundred years, feels sorry for him and tosses him Fortune Cookies from time to time from up there in the peripheral parts of La La Land."

La La Land, I thought, what the hell is La La Land?

"Sadly, the Holy Spook demands Trump's and McCarthy's and all the rest on High Holy Days."

"Between Tiddlywinks, and the perpetual milking machine we hooked up on Joseph McCarthy's dick which has kept him close to but not capable of coming since he died and went to hell, and the angels and I playing canasta, and watching weekly performances of Hernando, the whip-master, I did the best I could to entertain their sorry old asses. . . but what can I say? When you're duty bound to entertain Joseph McCarthy and Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Putin and the sickest most perverted of all: Donald J. Trump, Richard Nixon, they spend half of eternity stroking each other's' dicks' and the other half stroking our own-and yes, you do know that we commissioned my birthday song for a reason, don't you?"

"Your birthday-"

"O Cum All Ye faithful!"

Jesus Christ smirked and then exclaimed "Oh Me, Myself and I, I forgot to crate up the little buggers and ship them off to the Spook! Putin's probably screwing the shit out of Hitler's flabby old ass right this very minute-they're both horny little buggers and the dildos and butt plugs are never big enough to turn Hitler on. . . and even though the Farty Old Russian's dick is only 3 and a quarter inch, it's as thick as a rat's ass."

I could see Jesus's mind wandering-as though he couldn't understand human sexuality and I wondered if he was still a virgin.

"You should hear that Kraut moan, "Ach, mein Gott, rette mich! Rette mich aus dieser verdammten Schwanz." If you thought his 'Heil Hitler's' were ear-piercing, you should hear that skinny bitch screech now!"

"Ah . . . you're wondering what "Ach mein Gottt, rette mich! Rette mich aus dieser verdammten Schwanz' means, right? Well, loosely translated it's 'My God, save me from this fucking dick "

"So they're still suffering in purgatory?"

"There is no purgatory. There is no heaven. There is no hell. . . they're all scams-money scams-established up by Pope Linus the Rug Bearer a hundred and fourteen years after my death. Blessed be My Holy Name." Jesus Christ cleared his throat, as if he was waiting for me to correct the God of the Universe."

"My death-" he repeated.

"Don't you mean your resurrection?"

"Thank Myself most of you are trained." Jesus Christ winked at me as he continued, "The more people who believed they could pray their way out of hell, the more money Linus made! He died a very rich pope, but his nuts fell off and his pecker putrefied because of his Gonorrhea and Diarrhea and rampant syphilis and well. . . that other thing-that thing that didn't even make a footnote to Papal history, the fact that because Linus the Rug Bearer was such a haughty son of a bitch fag, when he died, fourteen of his newly named cardinals wrapped his cock up in gold foil and shoved it up his ass."

"He was buried that way and the relic sellers hounded the new Pope to dig him up but, you know how that goes. Once you shove a dick up a dead pope's ass, it's not marketable. . . except to scatology lovers, and they're pretty, for lack of a better word . . . shitty, after all."

Anyway, the cardinals wrapped the son of a bitch up in a Persian carpet and that's why he's called Saint Linus the Rug Bearer. And then they laid his stuffed ass out in full regalia underneath the Holy See in Rome, next to the Captain Crunch Memorial. It's quite a site to see. I'd take you there, but I've been barred since the Hershey's incident of 1898."

"But trust me on this if you don't trust me on anything else: never eat those nuts you find in chocolate bars!"

"What the hell are you taking about?"

"The Hershey's incident. You never heard about the Great Papal Cocoa Chocolate Latte Fiasco?"

"It started back with St. Clement the Robeless. It seems he was a clandestine closeted chocolate licker. The straight bishops (and trust me there weren't many of them even back then) locked Old Clem up in a vestry room and coated his cock with constantly dripping chocolate from an elephant sized porcelain penis." Jesus laughed loudly, "Call it the Myth of Sisyphus ass backwards. The only way Clement the Robeless could escape was by licking his own cock, which was miniscule in comparison to the ever dripping pachyderm dick and, well, he licked so hard he licked off his foreskin. He would have done all right but the nuts got to him and that's when he got his final Comeuppance."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"The good pope pooped himself to death and the remainder of his empty nut sack ultimately got stuck in his lower intestines. If you think my Greek and Roman brother gods thought of horrible deaths, you have no idea what the Papal See has done. Poor Pope Robeless died an inhumane death. His foot-long pecker wore down to the veins and his nuts rotted from the inside out, all because of the friendly bishops-"

"The chocolate lovers?" I interrupted

"Yes, but those evil bastards still weren't finished with the robe less pope. They then dispatched six hundred sixty-six squirrels and chipmunks to lick up the constantly dripping chocolate because the stench was overpowering the Vatican's scented candles and that was too much for the vendors-I mean, after all, what is religion all about anyway? . . . it's nothing more than money, isn't it? And besides all that the stench of St. Clement the Robeless's rotting carcass and of the rancid chocolate, was driving parishioners away."

"But sadly, the squirrels arrived too late to save the fucked up bugger.

My mind couldn't handle Jesus anymore, so it took a right turn and scurried back to boyhood memories of Michael J. O'Reilly, III, a fellow classmate in Miss Loughrey's sixth grade class at the Adrian Barbeau Middle School in Titusville, Florida. For months, Michael had been studying for confirmation but that day, he decided to take a break from his catechism by hosting a sleepover in his newly decorated Star Wars bedroom. His Darth Vader Star Wars bed was shaped like Darth's helmet and his bedroom as decked out with Star Wars sheets, pillow cases and curtains. That night he clued me in to his clandestine Catholic studies as the two of us snuggled side-by-side underneath his Obi-Wan Kenobi blanket. I held the flashlight and for the first time in my life, he opened the gates of boy love by holding both our penises in his right hand and rubbing them together as we fantasized over Michael's new found treasure: a book entitled "The Sordid Scandalous Story of Papery for Teenage Readers." Our favorite tale concerned Pope Aloysius the Categorical, that is, after we stopped giggling over the name Aloysius trying to pronounce it a dozen different ways: Alley o see us; Al Oy See I us?, ahoy boy, and from there on the names got sillier and sillier, but we were totally in the dark about the meaning of categorical until Michael told me about the awesome way he had memorized the names of every Pope, starting with Pope Peter the Punctual all the way up to modern times. . . ."The trick to remembering Aloysius the Categorical is to think of him as a flat-foot floozy in a dance hall," Michael said. Ally the Cat doing the Alley cat!"

"Meow, meow," Jesus Christ said, as he read my mind, "The Spook and I did that dance as a protest because Our Father refused to acknowledge us as his legitimate heirs until I died and went to hell."

"Some Dad, huh!"

Jesus seemed sad and I think he pouted but I kept my mind blank and my lips sealed. Then he grew a long furry yellow tail and furry feline ears and started dancing to the tune of the Alley Cat.

I couldn't stop the urge to join him and we strutted up and down my alley for hours as Jesus grew me a cat tail and ears so we could cat our way past the homes of the Murphy's, Diaz's, Cheng's and Mbutoo's, rubbing our furry heads against the fences, peeing on the signposts, and laughing until our meows echoed and re-echoed up and down that alley.

I wish the neighbors could see me now, I thought.

"Reading minds is a blessing . . . especially yours. . . but it's also a curse, can you imagine knowing the deeds and thoughts and actions of every single human being who has ever been or ever will be?"

"Back in the day," the living Christ continued, "when there were only a few hundred of you and you had just begun to walk upright and think and wonder about the mysteries of the skies and your ability to procreate and what caused the seasons, you created us and named us: Vishnu, Mithra, Zeus, Odin, Kukulcan, and Guan Yin."

"How else can you explain the mysteries of Thor and his thunderous hammer or Ceres and her power to rejuvenate the land or how two of you could begat a world of humans? Each time you thought about those things, you created more and more myths-more gods-and more explanations of why and how things happened. Your brains were far too small to understand the universe, so you created your own gods.

"For years, Dad was alone-worshiped merely by Jews but then you created me and Spooky."

"Don't look at me like that. Don't you know how many saviors you people have created?"

"Odin sacrificed himself and rose from the dead."

"Thor's wife, Sif, was murdered by Thor's evil brother, Loki, but Thor was able to resurrect her just like I, purportedly, resurrected Lazarus." Jesus laughed. "Christian public relations is everlasting, don't you think? You followers have a winning way with storytelling. . . . I attribute it to your Neanderthal blood."

"Then there are the resurrected gods like Mithra and Horus and Krisna and at least thirty more!"

"Horus, for example, one of my closest friends in La La Land, was the falcon-headed god whose right eye was the sun and left eye the moon. The speckled feathers of his breast were the stars and his wings-his glorious wings were the sky creating the wind. My magnificence pales in comparison!" Jesus sighed. "Like me, Horus was born of a virgin, had twelve disciples, walked on water, raised Asar from the dead (just like I raised Lazarus), and was baptized in a river by "Anup the Baptizer." Anup was later beheaded, just like John. Horus was tempted in the desert, healed the sick, cured the blind and cast out demons just like me. Horus was crucified, rose on the third day and was known as "the savior of humanity." Sound familiar? And all this happened 3,000 years before I was created by the minds of priests, Pharisees and punks. . . Sadly, Horus assimilated many other gods . . . just like I assimilated him.

Jesus, the living Christ, washed his hands in the blood of a dead dog next to a pile of cinder blocks behind the trash dumpster and continued: "Another favorite is the Persian god, Mithra, who was born on December 25, just like me. And like me, Mithra performed miracles, was killed, and was resurrected on the third day. He was known as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Good Shepherd and the Way, the Truth and the Life," Jesus let out a gigantic guffaw, "hell, Mithra even built his church upon 'petra' the rock-just like I did with Peter that Myself-awful Fisherman. It's amazing how many things you people stole from the past to incorporate me as your latest god and Mithra, for Myself's Sakes, lived 1,500 years before I was even born . . . on his birthday, of course." Jesus laughter filled the alley and echoed off the rooftops.

Early Christian believers even used the magi as part of the legend they created around me. Mithra's priests, after all, were called the magi." Jesus laughed again, "Where do you think the term 'magic' began? It's nothing more than a bastardization of Mithra's name, just like Crisco is a bastardization of my name."

I could hear Odin and Thor laughing in the ramparts as the skies darkened and lightning heaved in zigzagging bolts from the sky.

"Got to watch my Ps and Qs around the other gods, you know," Jesus said. "If I get too familiar with them, or too silly in my renditions of their holy words, I'll be accused of blasphemy and that would be blasphemy, wouldn't it?" Jesus smiled through the gap in his front teeth as his costume changed again, this time he was wearing a tuxedo, an opera hat with ostrich plumes, patent leather shoes, size 11, and a shirt with cufflinks shaped like Thor's hammer.

I was still shaking from the overcast skies and lightning and thunder to give Jesus his due.

"Remember, myths and gods take eons to die."

"So what are you really saying, in between the lines?"

"Obviously you're not studying your Bible. Let me quote, 'I am that I am.' And that, in essence means, I am whatever you see me as."

Jesus changed again. This time he was the Great Pumpkin and I swear I saw Linus waiting and heard Charlie Brown's theme song.

"Yikes!" I thought.

"Always remember, the Lord your God, and the Spook and Me and the entire panoply of gods are only what you want us to be."

And in a flash, Jesus became Achilles as played by Brad Pitt in the epic movie, Troy and I salivated when Jesus Christ opened his Brad-like arms unto me and gave me succor.

That image faded too quickly for me, however, because Jesus turned back into his Jamaican persona-a young Black man with long golden dreadlocks, a bone sticking through them, open toed sandals, and a grass skirt.

"Stifle your laughter," Jesus said, "just look upon me as the great mediator like Mithra was and think of me returning to earth some day in the far distant future riding a white stallion judging mankind, just like Mithra. Indeed, there isn't much difference between us."

Jesus Christ transformed again. This time he looked like Steve Urkel from the TV show Family Matters as he whipped out his iPad and googled and I saw a drawing of Mithra, the sun god.

"Let me quote from Wikipedia," Jesus said, "According to the Roman historian Plutarch, Mithraism began to be absorbed by the Romans a full seventy years before I was even born. The religion eventually migrated from Asia Minor via soldiers to Rome and the far reaches of the Empire. Syrian merchants brought Mithraism to Alexandria, Rome and Carthage, while captives carried it to the countryside. By the third century Mithraism permeated the Roman Empire and extended from India to Scotland."

"But what about you?" I asked, "weren't my ancestors-my Christian ancestors worshiping you?"

"Actually, no, before its usurpation by Christianity, the Romans and most of the people in the Western World worshiped Mithra. In the fifth century, the emperor Julian, rejected Christianity and adopted Mithraism as the state religion in Constantinople."

For a moment I thought Jesus Christ said my hero, Justinian had denounced him. I guess my ears were tired of listening to his holy words. Enough of the history lessons! I thought as Jesus Christ turned into Rose Helen Hartsock, my fourth-grade teacher, threatening us boys with the yardstick and keeping us after school for the most trivial of things-like not knowing the answer to what is seven times seven or who build the Great Pyramids. . . and my brain began to snore.

Jesus morphed again-this time he was a combination of Lena Horne, Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Detrick. Okay, I know that doesn't rock your boat, but any of those three woman would easily have rocked mine.

So, as quickly as I had thought of Rose Helen Hartsock, I ordered my brain to recalibrate. I didn't want to picture my new found alley friend as my fourth grade teacher-I just wanted him to be my friend!

And a moment later, Jesus was transformed again-this time back into that wonderfully hot black Jamaican man he had been a few moments before-the one with the dreadlocks, pink shirt and blue pedal pushers that hovered around his hips revealing his milky-white jockstrap, size 28.

No! I thought. I don't want this Jesus either. I want-

Jesus didn't let me down. Within a moment he had transfigured himself yet again and now stood in front of me just as he had once before: the spitting image of Brad Pitt's Achilles in the Hollywood movie version of Troy and my brain tried to block out the sexual images he was sending me-tried and tried. . . and failed.

Jesus read my mind again, as he had done so many times in the past few minutes. "Actually all the gods have this same power: they, too, can transform themselves into any shape or being they want-it's part of the fantasy-part of the creation process-part of what you envision us to be. This development of gods taking on different forms, shapes, colors, ethnicities and other attributes according to location, era and so on is not only quite common but also the norm. Thus, we have hundreds of gods and goddesses who are in many ways interchangeable, but who have adopted various differences based on geographical and environmental factors. I'm sure you remember the stories about Zeus coming down to earth and screwing every mortal female he met . . . well, he screwed just as many males-more actually. . . the perpetrators of those myths were all heterosexuals and expunged the records."

"I do have the secret tomes, though, if you're ever interested in reading them-I rescued them from the library in Alexandria-tales of the gods and goddess who had a jolly time fucking their way from sea to shining sea-and eighty per cent of the fuckees were men and boys and here Jesus Christ the Savior of Mankind blushed just for an instant and said, "but none half as hot as you, Scot Walker."

"Actually," Jesus said, your ancestors created me-merged me into my current form.

"But I digress," the Lord of the universe said, "We were talking about Mithra-and how he and I were so closely akin-just remember," Jesus said with a grin, "the legend of Mithra was devised centuries before the legends that surround me."

"Mithra was born on December 25th of the virgin Anahita and they wrapped him in swaddling clothes, placed him in a manger and was watched over and protected by shepherds. Mithra was considered a great traveling teacher and master who had twelve companions or disciples, who accompanied him on his journeys. He also performed miracles and, this is the best part," Jesus smirked, as if he and only he knew this ancient tale of Mithra-the ones I had studied in high school but was denied access to while attending a born-again evangelical Christian college: the King's College in Briarcliff Manor, New York-because-well, we only studied Christian thought-and closed our minds to the rest of knowledge.

Jesus Christ continued, as he sat on a cinder block in the back alley, brushing off the dog poop and ignoring the cat pee. "As the great bull of the Sun, Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace-was crucified, dead and buried and rose on the third day. . . just like me!"

"That's where our tales diverge a bit," Jesus said. "Because Mithra ascended to heaven. . . and my followers decided to send me directly to hell. . . do not pass GO, do not collect $200."

"Mithra was considered to be 'the Good Shepherd,' the 'Way, the Truth and the Light,' the 'Redeemer,' the 'Savior,' and the 'Messiah' . . . sound familiar?"

"Mithra is omniscient, as he 'hears all, sees all, knows all: none can deceive him.'"

"He was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb."

"His sacred day was Sunday, the Lord's Day."

"His religion had a Eucharist or 'Lord's Supper.'"

"Mithraism even emphasized baptism-that wasn't something John the Baptist or I invented, it was an ancient right that you Christians stole from even more ancient, more mystic religions."

"Mithra 'sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers.' . . .I'm not quite sure what that means but I think it's an added protection-perhaps like those damned ashes the priest screw into your forehead on Ash Wednesday, I'm not sure-all these religions confuse us in La La Land-mostly we just want to be left alone. . . to sleep in a soft cardboard box in a well-scented alley, to play on the beach at Bimini, to hunt polar bears in Alaska. . . not that we do that, these are only dreams and you know what they say about dreams!"

"Hold fast to dreams," I said.

"For if dreams die," Jesus continued.

"Life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly,"

"Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go,"

"Life is a barren field frozen in snow."

It was good to know the Savior and I had memorized the same poems in Miss Nelson's eighth grade English class as I pictured Jesus Christ as Kerry Kelpy, the boy I first fell in love with. Both Kerry and I had received an "A" on our recitations. . . and the more I reflected, the more I remembered that dark-haired, brown eyed boy who gave me hard-ons every day. Could Jesus Christ and Kerry have been really one and the same? I thought, but no, Kerry couldn't' have been Jesus. Jesus said he was in Bimini back then, I'm sure he said that when Kerry and I had first met.

"It was I," Jesus said. "Remember the Lord Thy God is omnipresent, omnivorous and omniscient-so yes, indeedee-do, it was I: Kerry Kelpy and Jesus Christ, the Savior of the Universe, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the yadda yadda, were one and the same."

Jesus Christ took a breath and for a few moments he morphed into Kerry, and we both sat there in Miss Nelson's U.S. History class at Cornel Joseph Belt Junior High School in Wheaton, Maryland as Jesus Christ now Kerry Kelpy, now Jesus, now Kerry touched in places no man had ever gone before and GOD ALMIGHTY, did I feel my tumescence grow.

"It's okay," Jesus said, "many men have developed hard-ons for me throughout the ages. . . just about every Pope, Catholic Priest, orange master, most pastors, and all the evangelists who preached hell fire and damnation in my name, along with most Christian musicians and choir directors channel my cock as they perform their duties to the flock. . . Get a look at their profiles sometime-you'll see my cock there-larger than life-bulging from those purple robes.

"You diverted my attention," Jesus Christ said. The last man to do that to me was Nathaniel."

"Nathaniel?" I asked, "Wasn't he one of your unimportant disciples?

Jesus tried not to laugh but he broke into the loudest outburst I had heard since listening to my friend Janie-O while we watched Some Like It Hot on Netflix.

"Everyone thinks John was the fag-that he was my favorite, well, the truth is-"

This time the wait for Jesus's response seemed to last six and a half eternities.

"We're all fags! Deep down inside the soul of each human being there is fagdom-fagness-fagosity-brewing, brimming out over the surface-each one of us longs to be with our peer-to know more about our own bodies as we learn about those of our fellow creatures."

"This nonsense about one man and one woman being 'right' for each other is the wrongest advice I ever heard."

"My favorite disciple was Nathaniel-he was the poet, the artist, the dreamer, but all twlve of those boys were as faggoty as me-we were, we are fags to the core."

"But we were talking about the other gods, weren't we, before you distracted me," Jesus adjusted his Priapus under his eighth-grade Belt Junior High School physical education uniform, and continued, "Everyone celebrates my birthday on December 25th, but the custom of equating the birth of a god at the winter solstice is as old as recorded history."

"Winter solstice?" I asked, "Your birthday is December twenty-fifth, solstice is-"

"The guys who set that date were as drunk as skunks and had been drinking for several weeks-tghey burped and belched and farted and fucked and sucked so much and so often that they didn't give a rat's ass about an exact date. So, when my birthday was established, the ancients felt I had brought light into the world, just as all that booze had brought light to their souls and to hell with anything else back then except scribble down a damned date, hit the bottle, fuck each other senseless, fall asleep and start all over again.

Jesus laughed raucously, "Haven't you ever questioned the song The Twelve Days of Christmas? Oops, your guys sanitized that didn't they? Originally it was beer, beer, beer and drink, drink, drink and fuck, fuck, fuck, and oh those were the good old days so actually no one cared as much about when a god could or could not have been born-we, they, you, all of us are much concerned about the party. Am I right?"

Jesus blushed again-I surmised that it was because of all those carefree days in Bimini in the Caribbean as he continued, "all the other pagan gods who had gone before me . . . and," Jesus paused, I knew he was going to reveal something horrible, "all the other gods who will come after me in the millennia to come. . . they, too, will be born on the winter solstice."

"But, let's get back to Mithra and Sol Invictus. . . each of whom was born on the winter solstice. Since Mithra was so popular, The emperor Aurelian, declared that Sol Invictus was also born during the winter solstice-it was his way to dampen the field-to negate the power of Mithra-but let me tell you, as a Redeemer who has spent eternity with Mithra, he outshines me in every possible way-he ranks up there with Odin and Cronus and Vishnu-he is a party guy!

"My Roman Catholic followers even created a cave for me at Bethlehem and told everyone it was my birthplace, but actually. . . it was a rock shrine in which the god Tammuz, who was also known as Adonis, was worshipped. Adopting pagan worship places is the way Christianity spread-all of it is based on the superstitions of the past. . . and of the thousands of ancient gods who came before me."

"But the myths continued. Mithras was called the God from the Rock and that's why the Vatican hill at Rome was consecrated to Peter as the Christian Rock-or should I say it was re-consecrated from Mithras to me . . even though Mithraic remains have been found there. Mithraic remains on Vatican Hill are found underneath the later Christian edifices, which proves the Mithra cult was there first."

"Indeed, Mithras was known as the rock long before Peter assumed that same title. But, there's more to history than just that fact," Jesus added, "Mithra was double-faced like Janus and Mithra was the key holder-another attribute Peter stole."

Jesus produced a red Bible from thin air. "I thought you'd remember this, Scot, it's your old red Bible-after all-the Bible must be read."

We both laughed, but Jesus laughed louder-it was as if he had been part of my soul since before I was born.

Jesus opened my Bible to Matthew 16:18 and 19 and read, "And I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Jesus closed the Bible and it vanished.

"All of those legends about the rock and the keys were legends about Mithra-utterly stolen from one god and given to me."

I saw a few tears in the Savior's eyes.

"It makes me feel so bad to know how many you humans stole from my friends-from the other gods-from the better gods-from the gods who were created eons before me. . . and knowing that that hill called the Vatican was really just the place where Mithra dwelt for so many millennia."

"By the time the Christian hierarchy prevailed in Rome, Mithra had already been a popular cult, with pope, bishops, and clergymen serving him. The doctrines of Mithra were well established, and all you people did was burry them, but they're there: and that fact, alone, proves the Mithra cult was there first. Mithraic ruins are abundant throughout the Roman Empire."

"So, Christians stole from one god to make you stronger, I don't see anything wrong with that."

The skies darkened again and my knees trembled.

"Your people didn't steal from just one god, you stole from all of them-Do you think I'm made of whole cloth? Well . . . I'm not. "I'm a composite of every god who ever lived. For example, there was Krishna, who was also born of a virgin, baptized in a river, practiced carpentry, was killed and was resurrected a thousand years before my time. Here's a photo of him," Jesus Christ said, as he pulled out a catalog from the National Museum in New Delhi, India and showed it to me.

"Another of my closest friends is Osiris, who by the way was the best cock sucker I ever met even though he was born 4,000 years before me. He doesn't talk much about his life-unless we're really drunk-and then he gets into the details. It seems Osiris was chopped up into pieces that were spread throughout the entire kingdom of Egypt, but, like me, he was resurrected. Each year for millennia, his resurrection was celebrated at the temple of his wife, Isis. Her statue was stripped naked and the priests made paste out of the first fruits of the land-Egypt's marvelous grains. The grains, it seems, symbolizing Osiris, were placed in her bed and moistened with water, representing the moist earth. Then the priests ate this Eucharist; and they too, were transformed into eternal beings.

When you humans created me, you borrowed a lot from the Osiris myth. For example, in the judgment scene from the Book of the Dead, a dead man, Hunefer, is taken into the judgment hall by the jackal-headed god Anubis who weighs Hunefer's heart against the feather of Ma'at with Ammut waiting for the result. Finally, the triumphant Henefer, having passed the test, is presented by the falcon-headed Horus to Osiris, seated in his shrine with Isis-and thus began the first recorded legend of the purity of the heart and soul and the concept that if a man is pure in heart, he merits everlasting life with the gods."

"That sounds familiar," I said.

"At death, a person faced judgment and if he led his life in conformance with the precepts of the goddess Ma'at, who represented truth and living right, the person was welcomed into the kingdom of Osiris. If found guilty, the person was thrown to a "devourer" and didn't share in eternal life."

"The hell you say!"

"The sinner who is taken by the devourer," Jesus said, "is subject first to terrifying punishment and then is annihilated, the only difference between my friends, Isis and Osiris's religion is that in their system, the guilty were ultimately annihilated. In the religion your people established around me, however, the guilty suffer for all eternity. You humans lost your humanity when you created me-and passed it on from generation to generation as part of my essence, part of who I AM."

When Jesus spoke his Biblical name, the skies darkened and the earth trembled.

It seemed eternity before Jesus calmed down and I heard him talking to himself, "Pins and needles, needles and pins, a happy man always grins." I think he spoke that mantra ten thousand times before the earth stopped shaking and the skies returned to a semblance of their former clarity and beauty and it was then that Jesus changed shapes again-this time he appeared to be Marilyn Monroe-wearing that famous outfit she wore when she stood on the street grate and the wind blew her dress up to her knees.

Jesus Christ, the savior of mankind and the lord of the universe, giggled as he continued, "Like Christianity, however, the purified entered into a state of bliss where they experienced the triumph of rebirth. The Egyptian damned, however, were complete destroyed-never tortured but, like the Mormon myths your cousins created about me, the Egyptians always offered divine pardon at judgment. I like Mormonism more than Christianity-at least those folks gave their converts a last second shot to walk the golden streets that line their version of heaven."

"I never realized there were so many other gods like you."

"Why do you think Pop's first commandment was, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' There must have been a dozen Yawehs and Jesuses out there when he winked at Moses and told him to chisel out that first commandment."

"So many. . . so many like you," my voice petered out, trying to comprehend the madness of this hot young Marilyn Monroe, enjoying her frivolity, her gaiety, her joie de vivre, even as I hoped her dress would fly up to her breast and show me more.

"There were more than conceivable," Jesus, the living Christ, said as he quickly changed personas. This time he looked like Margaret Thatcher and for the first time since I saw him lying in his piss-stained underwear in that Sears mattress box the alley, I turned my head and barfed.

"Another of my favorites was Attis of Phrygia, who lived 1,500 years before I was even a concept in Pop's eyes.

I stood nonplussed. Dozens of gods who rose from the dead? I wondered, how come I've never heard about these resurrected saviors of mankind?

"In the beginning," Jesus said, "there was man. It was he who created us. . . not the other way around. Your feeble gods are nothing more than half-cooked ideas rattling around in monkey brains-monkey-human brains-a life form that exceeded its potential and, since it was limited in knowledge, it created its own history, its own theology, is own science, its own fucking universe." Jesus spread out his arms as if he were hanging on that infamous cross: "Ladies and gentlemen, "I give you man-the fool of the universe."

I thought for a moment, "You know," I said, "I think religion is a lot like my blue jeans. They shrink so often that I'm tempted to buy a new pair. . . but when I do, the new ones shrink as well…and then months later I hop on a scale and realize the horrible truth: my jeans didn't go off into the closet and decide to reform-to transform themselves into a smaller size…I grew fat! Perhaps it's like that with religions, I wondered, perhaps we kept the same monkey-brained ideas of nature and taboos and our misunderstanding of science and the universe and created and recreated our gods-but, as we did so, we used the old legends and modified them-eating our god in the Eucharist. Praying to idols, worshiping the Son as if he was the Sun. Strange monkeys, I thought, if only we had been aardvarks instead . .. perhaps we would have been more rational-perhaps our brains developed too fast for our evolution. I wonder if. . . "

I was interrupted once more as I looked at Dick Nixon-overpowering the shape and form of Jesus Christ. At least I didn't vomit.

"You're getting there," Jesus Christ said "you're the first human I've ever met who has begun to understand the arduous journey people have made in their creation of the gods . … perhaps in another 50,000 years your species will annihilate us just as the ancient Egyptians annihilated those who didn't believe." Jesus signed a glorious sign, "And then we will all be free to evaporate and find peace-me and Osiris and Krishna and Dionysius and Mithra and all the others….

And the evening and the morning were the first day.


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