Idolism (30 page)

So yeah, I didn’t really mind all the fangirling and fanboying at all. I was grateful, because it was a nice feeling to have people tell you that they liked what you were doing, although I wasn’t really doing much in those days. It was Julian who did all the doing, but although he was basically touring the United States as a solo artist, he remarkably often used the word ‘we’ instead of ‘I’, and that wasn’t a majestic plural or anything. When he was talking about our music he was indeed talking about
our
music and
our
band, not his. Only when he talked about his personal views on politics and religion and life, the universe, and everything, he said ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ because he knew he wasn’t speaking for any of us. And when he said things like ‘What we must realize’, ‘What we must understand’, and ‘What we must do’, then he suddenly spoke for all of us, you me, every person on the planet. He then became that sort of messianic figure, that spiritual leader, that wise old man, that 17-year-old wise man, who seemed to have a vision for all mankind; a vision for a better future in a better world with prosperity and happiness for everyone.

His message didn’t go down well with everybody, especially not with a lot of very old, very religious people, no matter if they were Christians, Muslims, or Jews. His message did, however, resonate very well with young people, people under 30, regardless if they considered themselves to be religious or not. The reason for that was that he gave people a world view that was deeply rooted in reality and in reason, without any of the supernatural, esoteric, philosophical nonsense that didn’t have anything to do with the daily lives of real living people. He took the divinity out of Christianity and the esoteric out of the spiritual, and he repackaged and rebranded it into a new product that appealed to an insane amount of perfectly sane people. Julian managed to do that by talking to people in a way they could understand.

If you tried to talk to any reasonably sane person about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, they would slowly back off and say, ‘Okaaaaay,’ and then get on their mobile and write a status update like, ‘I just met a crazy person, LOL.’

 A personal relationship with Jesus Christ, what the hell did that even mean? Julian wanted people to have personal relationships with real people, with family, friends, neighbours, with other people that they could actually talk to, not with some idol that had been dead for 2,000 years. He managed to talk to people about compassion, friendship, dignity, and morality in 21st century language and in a way that made these concepts accessible to anyone who was willing to listen.
The Times
titled ‘Common Sense Christianity’ on one of its front page articles that sought to examine the cultural phenomenon that Julian Monk was turning into. Another newspaper had this iconic picture of Julian on its front page, standing on a stage with his arms spread out like Jesus on the cross. The headline for that one read ‘Julian the Redeemer.’

Not everyone was happy of course. Especially evangelical Christians in the United States weren’t. One week into Julian’s U.S. media blitzkrieg, several ultraconservative Christian groups organized rallies all across the country and asked people to bring their Puerity CDs so they could be burned. The most successful of those rallies attracted a staggering crowd of 90 people, plus 200 environmentalists to protest the burning of CDs because of the dangerous levels of dioxin it would release into the air. Meanwhile, Julian was speaking to 900,000 people at the Mall in Washington, D.C. at a rally for peace and reason, talking about love and forgiveness, and about burning CDs.

“I think burning CDs is a great idea,” he said. “Go on and burn all your favourite Puerity songs on CDs and pass them on to all your friends! Spread the word!”

The crowd obviously went wild, and this beautiful little gem of a sound bite made the evening news in most countries in the world, so much so that party-pooper-in-chief Peter Tholen deemed it necessary to step in front of the cameras himself to remind people that Julian had obviously made a joke, and that copyright infringement was an abominable crime.

Poor old sod.

The Gospel According to Michael – 15

“MINDY?”

“Yes, Michael?”

“Track Julian Monk.”

“Yes, Michael.”

“I want to know where he is and what he’s doing at any time.”

“Yes, Michael. Julian spent the night at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. He is currently at Marco’s Restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. In two hours he is scheduled to speak at the
Atheism Now!
conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Later today he is expected in Burbank to appear on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
. In the last 24 hours, 329 videos containing the name Julian Monk in the title or the video description have been uploaded to YouTube. On Twitter, #JulianMonk has been trending worldwide for 11 days, 2 hours and 55 minutes, with the highest position being number one and the lowest position being number seven.”

“Thanks, MINDY.”

“You’re welcome, Michael.”

I leaned back in my chair and marvelled at the great progress I had been making with MINDY. Through days and nights of relentless work I had turned her into the most sophisticated tool the world had ever seen—or not seen, because MINDY’s most important feature was being invisible, undetectable and untraceable. Her individual modules were floating freely around the Internet, never resting more than a few milliseconds in one place and using CPU time of unsuspecting users’ computers on the fly.

I also marvelled at the progress Julian had been making in his quest to shake the world in its foundations. In the ten or twelve days that we had been separated, I had come to realize that it was decidedly more fun to watch Julian wreak havoc from afar, rather than standing right next to him at the centre of the storm. I was missing my best friend like crazy, but I knew that my feelings of affection for him were only safe as long as they didn’t run the risk of getting overshadowed by the annoyance of having to be in his entourage. It had taken me a while, but I was finally ready to accept that Julian was a brilliant mind on a difficult and dangerous but noble mission. I didn’t have the patience, the courage, and the strength to be an integral part of that mission, but I knew that Julian did what he did not out of narcissism or a desire to upset people, but because there was no way he could not do it. He had to speak his mind, the way he had always spoken his mind when he was with us. I still didn’t quite understand what had triggered his decision to take that huge leap from Underground Zero to the world stage, and perhaps I would never understand it, but I no longer felt offended or jealous. Instead, I had silently joined the ranks of those who loved and admired Julian for all the right reasons: his passion, his eloquence, and his determination to make the world a better place.

I wasn’t the only one whose attitude towards Julian had changed. A very noticeable shift had also occurred in the way the mainstream media handled the Julian Monk phenomenon. They were catching on to the fact that despite the somewhat negative press we had received in the beginning, Julian’s popularity had been rising steadily, and that it kept rising no matter what was being written or said about him in the media. At first, most of the media had tried to portray him as a disruptive little punk who only wanted to cause trouble, a stage whore who would cause offence solely in order to sell more music. Well, he was a stage whore all right, but the media soon had to realize that they had completely misjudged his motivation. During the time Julian was going solo, there were dozens upon dozens of TV programs with him, but there were almost as many programs
about
him. Every single day you had psychologists and psychiatrists, bishops and biologists, sociologists and philosophers discussing the phenomenon that Julian had become, and while they all had a different stance on Julian, they all had to agree on one thing: he was authentic, genuine, and honest, and his motives were pure.

There was a lot of disagreement over the various ways in which Julian tried to pursue his objectives, but there could be no doubt as to what those objectives were: love, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. Julian wanted to make the world a better place, it was as simple as that. The public realized it first, and the media soon followed suit. And so he kept on preaching against the preachers and false prophets, and he did it in a way that struck a chord with people. The things he had to say were very powerful and often very controversial, but he always said them in a very calm and reasonable manner. Taking part in many heated debates, he always kept his cool. Every so often his opponents tried to distract him from the real issues by launching ad hominem attacks against Julian, but he never took the bait. He never condescended to defending himself. All he ever did was to defend his convictions and his beliefs which, as many experts had to agree, were deeply rooted in the teachings and philosophies of Jesus Christ but at the same time completely detached from all the supernatural divinity mumbo jumbo. By accepting and promoting Jesus as no more and no less than a brilliant philosopher and respectable role model, Julian managed to attract a lot of support from people who were looking for the kind of spiritual guidance that they could no longer find in organized religion, and he did it in the most alluring, enthralling, fascinating way. Even when his opponents on a TV debate were spewing fire and brimstone at him—as they frequently did—he never even raised his voice. He would just sit there and smile and wait until the other person was done with their hissy fit and realized what fools they’d just made of themselves, and then Julian would deliver a knock out line like, “As I was just saying, man created God in his image. There’s your proof.”

‘Disarmingly Charming’ was the headline in one of the papers the next day, and the article argued that with his Gandhi-like demeanour Julian made it almost impossible for anyone to attack him without looking like a total prick. Another newspaper went even further. In an article titled ‘The Second Coming’ they called Julian a 21st century Jesus. ‘Forget about the father and the son and the holy spirit. Young people today who are looking for enlightenment follow Julian Monk.’

 And people did follow him quite literally. About ten days into his U.S. tour, Julian appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres programme. In the background they had a big screen displaying Julian’s Twitter counter. It was during that live TV show, beautifully placed between two commercial blocks, that Julian became the first person in the world to reach 50 million Twitter followers. Meanwhile, back home, nobody thought of Julian as a disgrace or an embarrassment anymore like they had done just a few weeks earlier. Suddenly everyone was proud. Julian was British, they were British, and that made people proud because it meant that they were a little bit like him. Even the MMC controlled media had ceased firing cheap shots at Julian. In hindsight it should have made everyone suspicious, because at the end of the day MMC still stood for everything that Julian didn’t believe in, but I guess we simply put it down as opportunism, thinking they were just worried about their ratings and circulation figures. Who would have thought that MMC’s restraint was part of a bigger plan?

The Gospel According to Tummy – 16

During the ten or twelve days that Julian had been touring the American talk show circuit, I had adapted a new lifestyle. I got up every morning at around nine, but I didn’t go down to the kitchen until ten or so, because by that time everyone had left for work or for whatever it was that my sister was doing every day. I quite enjoyed having breakfast and lunch on me own every day, because no one was bothering me. I had the whole house for meself and I could do whatever I wanted, except for going out. But I was still allowed to use me phone and me computer, so I kept sexting Momoko all day, which was quite a bit of fun, and sometimes we would Skype and have proper cybersex. However, it’s not quite the same as being physically together with your loved one, and we were both missing each other’s bodies, so one day I invited her to come over in the afternoon. It had only been a few weeks since I had last seen her, but it felt like a lifetime. We started kissing and undressing each other the moment she walked in the door, and by the time we had made it upstairs to me bedroom, we were both in nothing but our undies. She wrestled me onto me bed and then we made out for what seemed like an eternity, although it probably was just a couple of minutes. We kept kissing and hugging and fondling each other and sucking each other’s boobs.

And then at one point she suddenly asked me if I had any whipped cream.

“I was hoping that you would whip my cream,” I whispered as I nibbled on her earlobe.

“No, silly boy,” she said, “I mean real whip cream? In spray can?”

“We have some in the fridge, down in the kitchen.”

“I be right back,” she said and got up.

I lay on me bed and watched her tiptoe out of the room, wearing nothing but her panties. As I waited for her to return, I kept fondling me balls and thinking about how I was probably the luckiest 17-year-old in the history of the world. And I probably deserved to be the luckiest 17-year-old in the world after all those years of being bullied at school and at home and having people call me ‘Fatty’ and ‘Lord Spamalot’ the whole time. I wished that everybody who had ever made fun of me could see me now. I wished that everybody could see me and Momoko making sweet love. I wished that we didn’t have to hide anymore. I was in love and being loved, and I wanted the whole world to know and to see and to envy me. That’s what I was thinking as I was lying there on me bed, naked and fondling me balls.