6:45
Turn
into the pitch black, empty neighborhood street on which the boxy house of God
stands and add our car to the handful already parked next to it.
6:50 Eavesdrop on Winzdee naight pruhyr meetin (trans: Wednesday
night prayer meeting) as we enter and head for the stairs. The following was overheard
the first Wednesday night, word-for-word:
The
Wolf:
I have the acid reflux, you ever have it? Oh, I have it so bad.
Nose
Hair:
Yayus, so does Lois. You know, she
slipped off of her pillow and her acids started comin’ back up.
Why would pillow
slippage cause the return of the acids?
6:51 Descend the
stairway into the musty, damp bowels of the church and begin picking our way
through the bizarre maze of corridors in attempt to reach the choir room. Make
one wrong turn and you’re in the bathroom, a dreadful little hole in the wall
with linoleum flooring and cracked, mauve, laminate countertops. Head for the
sink and you behold a small dingy vase holding a bouquet of fake daisies (that
have managed to wither and yellow like a fresh bouquet) and a basket containing
two bottles of lotion, both of which are just about ¼ full and covered in that
congealed and hardened lotion mass that
gathers on rarely-used containers. Somehow this whole scene is upsetting, reminiscent
of an old nursing home or dentist office bathroom, and you run away as quickly
as possible.
6:57 Locate the
little choir room just in the nick of time and enter to be greeted by radiant,
elderly faces and exclamations of “Voltron!” and “Nelson!” and “We are SOOOO
happy to have you!” This inordinate praise began from the first moment we
entered this space. Before they even had a moment to discern our relative worth
or godliness, this group of nearly-dead were heaping upon us all manner of
praise. After the very first rehearsal during which Nelson merely sightread
some alto jams and Voltron hammered out some accompaniments, back row bass
singer Jabba (yes, as in the Hutt) stirred from his idle position, opened his
watery eyes wide and bellowed, his giant belly expanding and contracting
exaggeratedly as he spoke, “You have breathed new life into this kwahr
(trans: choir). We thank yuh.”
7:00 Take my seat
next to the only other alto, Laughtrack, and exchange our regular greeting, “Altos
are the best.” This apparently is a
joke that we share. After the first rehearsal, when she was laughing and
gushing about my existence then laughing some more—“Oh it’s so good to have another ayul-toh (trans: alto) in this kwahr—I responded, “Yeah, altos are the
best!” and I put my hand up for her to give me a high-five. At the time, her
giddy laughter did not indicate to me that she found this comment any more
amusing than she did the myriad other things to which she reacted in the exact
same manner. Laughtrack, a lady in her mid-sixties and always dressed in scrubs,
received her blog-moniker in the most predictable way possible: by guffawing,
giggling, chortling, and chuckling CONSTANTLY at everything that is uttered.
However, apparently my comment about altos struck her as particularly
hilarious, because the following Sunday after church, an avuncular energetic,
balding man approached me and introduced himself as Laughtrack’s husband,
saying, “Laughtrack told me ALL about that ayultoh
joke you told! Heh! Ayultohs are the best! Whew! That’s a good one!”
7:05-8:00 John Arbuckle, our
choir director, instructs Voltron to bang out the SATB parts and drags us through
spotty reading of the 10 pieces we are working on for the Christmas program. (J.
Arbuckle—openly gay to the secular world but has yet to come out of the sacred
closet—shall be profiled at length soon.)
Laughtrack and I sit to the far
left on the middle row, right in front of Jabba and his bass posse, perfectly
positioned to hear him come in whole measures too early or howl out notes that
have long since ended according to the music we have in front of our faces.
Close to Jabba is a cohort of lady tenors, among whom is the Oracle, the
wise-est and most venerated of the entire group, who I have yet to hear utter a
contraction in conversation. She recently brought Voltron and Nelson an entire
pecan pie inside a ceramic dish. When I assured her that we’d return the vessel in which it had
been delivered to me, she insisted, “No! I shall not be wanting that to be
returned! I will not be accepting it! It is yours to keep!” The rest of the crew
is sopranos, including Big Geezy. Between the 13 or so of us, I’d wager that
about 9 know how to read music, and
of those 9, 5 may be able to do it with any kind of accuracy at any given
moment.
8-8:15 J. Arbuckle opens
the floor for prayer requests, and all manner of illness, injuries, and
impending deaths amongst the group’s acquaintances are discussed. Bottom line:
everyone is dying in the church, like, tomorrow.
8:15 Prayer and
wrap-up. Usually Oracle leads the prayer, wowing all of us with her grandiose
Georgia-southern drawl and her complicated and esoteric but powerful
grammatical constructions. However, on rehearsal night #1 of our Methodism, J.
Arbuckle insisted that we create a circle with our bodies, hold hands, and
enact a kind of open-mic prayer, to be concluded with the joint singing of a
verse of Amazing Grace.
I. Am. Not. Kidding.
It was at this point that Voltron
and I were both living on the verge of bursting into explosive laughter and
ruining our characters entirely. As we gripped one another’s hands tightly,
squeezing at every moment of hilarity, one of the bass posse members prayed, “And
Lord, watch over my granddaughter, who was hit in the head with a twirlin’ flag
as her marchin’ band was presenting a musical piece to the football crowds.” My
body ached with the need to expel the humor from my breast as this solemn
pronouncement was followed up by the warbly strains of “I-I wuuuuuuuuunce wuuuz
laaaaaawst! But nooooooooooww, Ahhhhhhh’m found.”
8:15-8:20
Return our music to our little designated cubby holes and listen to the
ever-resounding pronouncements of “We love you, Nelson and Voltron!” or, as
they like to call me, “Voltron’s better half,” as if I were the half of him
that contained the vital organs such as the lungs, heart, and liver while he
carries useless things such as the appendix, cuticles, the belly button, and an
extraneous toe. We grope about in the hallway-maze, find the stairs, hop in our
car, let out a good chuckle and a well-placed expletive as if to cleanse the palette
then head home only to return on Sunday.
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