Today is Good Friday, the day when Jesus was martyred. As a kid, I was taught that He allowed himself to be crucified to wash away our sins, but as an adult, I know better. It was so that He didn’t have to spend Easter with His fucking family.
Thankfully, I don’t have to spend Easter with my family anymore, either. My parents now Easter in Florida, allowing me to Easter in a blackout, the way Jesus wanted. I don’t generally mind spending holidays with my folks, but ironically, Easter with my family went a long way toward convincing me that there is no God.
First Easter problem: it’s on a Sunday morning. If Good Friday was when they crucified Jesus, Saturday night’s when I hold the Irish wake. I really don’t behave any differently than I do any other Saturday night, but I’ve learned that when you tell a Boston cop that you’re mourning Jesus, the field sobriety test becomes an Our Father, two Hail Marys, and he lets you go go forth to sin no more.
Second Easter problem: Since my Dad’s brother got him on Christmas, for Easter, we got Uncle Pete.
I’d tell you that Uncle Pete was a Vietnam vet, although if you’ve known him for more than seven seconds, he’d make sure that you already know this. Uncle Pete’s also (And keep in mind, based on my quip about my Saturday night behavior, exactly who’s saying this), a raging, unrepentent alcoholic. If I’m not a friend of Bill W? Uncle Pete wants to stab Bill W.
For Easter breakfast, Uncle Pete believes that the best way to honor Jesus on the cross, arms pinned up and all fingers dangling, is to do off a shot of Ten High Bourbon. Uncle Pete goes to the confessional during Easter Mass, and returns smelling of Catholic guilt, whiskey and Tic-Tacs. But he makes sure he’s still mobile enough to take Communion, which is a mixed blessing; the wine steadies him, but thanks to the miracle of Transubstantiation, it only means that by dinnertime he’ll be horking up big clotted chunks of Jesus onto the bathroom floor.
Throughout Easter dinner, since the confessional allowed him to wash away his sins (Or at least wash them down), Uncle Pete feels close enough to God to preach about the evils of niggers, spics, kikes, towelheads, gooks, and Aunt Jane. On a positive note, he has nothing bad to say about the good people of Scotland, thanks to my Dad’s Glenlivet.
After dinner, when it’s time for Uncle Pete to go, he likes feel close to Jesus by wrapping his arms around the wooden railing and insisting that he can’t make it down the two-inch front step. For two fucking hours. Leaving my parents with two choices: bringing the phone outside to call 911 on behalf of this dingbat and incurring the expense of an ambulance… or bringing the phone outside and asking their Japanese neighbors over for a drink, forcing Uncle Pete to call 911. And it turns out that they will send an ambulance, even if the caller is screeching that he has “Zips on the perimeter! I need all available artillery ordnance on my position!”
However, thanks to Florida, I no longer have to put up with that kind of noise. I can sit back with a bottle and reflect that even though Jesus died for my sins on this night, I have to believe that had he known that the sin of Internet porn was in the pipeline? He’d have gotten a lawyer and pled out to wait for it.
[tags]Easter, Good Friday, Easter Dinner, Alcoholism, Bill W, Dark Humor[/tags]
