The Televisionary Oracle (51 page)

“Glad to see you went out and found yourself a real, live, fleshy, substantial creature to consort with, Queen Trashdevourer!” she beamed towards me. “Excellent addition to your apocalypse-killing repertoire. Not that I have anything against your friend Rumbler. But he is a little too chimerical to rely on for some of the more concrete work we have ahead of us. On the other hand, don’t count the old boy out just yet.”

She produced another can of beer from behind her seat, popped the top, and chugalugged.

“Now let me officially welcome you both to the Tantric Campus of Drivetime University,” Blavatsky said, punctuating the “ver” in “University” with a prolonged burp, “for couples only. Not a moment too soon, either, what with the mass extinctions going on back on Planet Heavenandhell. Malkuth. Earth. Whatever you want to call it. We need all the collaborative kundalini we can get. Wink wink. Hint hint. Climb on board now, you love-buzzards. Time for class.”

“But we haven’t bought any of our school supplies yet,” Jumbler protested archly as we both stood up. “Shouldn’t we take notes?”

“This is all you will need,” Madame Blavatsky said authoritatively, handing us each a giant pomegranate she produced from a pouch near her feet. “A Televisionary Oracle. Like all those sacred machines you see around the necropolis, only mini-versions. Open it up.”

On closer inspection, I saw mine wasn’t exactly a standard-issue pomegranate. It had about ten black seed-like buttons embedded in a row on one side.

“Press this one,” Madame Blavatsky instructed, pointing to a button at the top.

I did, and a door popped open on the pomegranate’s surface, revealing a screen that bubbled with images that at first glance looked pornographic.

“You just pour your thoughts right into the swirl,” Madame Blavatsky said, “and it will converse with you, in a manner of speaking. You will hear its replies inside your head. It will feel very familiar and strange at the same time. Play around with it. You’ll get the hang of it. Now get in the vehicle, please. Time is wasting. Oh, and here is your sacred underwear. Put it on immediately. You cannot do much learning without it. Or rather you
should
not.”

She handed me and Jumbler battered grocery bags which we opened up as we got on board. My “bra” was fashioned out of two gold linen cups that were replicas of the Grail I had stolen and sold. My panties were white satin decorated with several dark brown blotches which were the exact shape and size of the birthmark I had worn on my forehead until very recently.

Jumbler’s “sacred underwear” consisted of a flesh-colored leotard bearing a photographic likeness of breasts on top and a penis at the crotch. Laughing, she held it up to show me.

As we changed into our new costumes and rode over the grounds of the necropolis, Madame Blavatsky entertained us with an odd rendition of the children’s alphabet song, a-b-c-d-e-f-g etc. She delivered each letter in a vocal ejaculation that was simultaneously a sung tone and a loud belch.

“That was a graphic example of profane entertainment,” she proclaimed when she was done. “Though I admit that it is perhaps a slight exaggeration to equate it to the slick productions of Time-Warner or Disney-ABC or any of the other multinational narcissism-dealers that are infecting the mass imagination. But only a slight exaggeration. And it is an excellent context within which to begin exploring the other kind of entertainment—the sacred variety. Which, I am happy to add, is the foundation for the next step of your mission, Queen Chucklefucker.
What you do
after
you kill the apocalypse.”

After donning my sacred underwear, I gazed into the screen of my Televisionary Oracle. The scene I saw there can only be described as a sex riot. Hundreds of adults of all ages, universally naked except for red shoes and moving along in a slow, chaotic procession, were attempting to dance and copulate at the same time. They looked like Persians or Afghani. Though the men in the crowd were active participants, it was primarily the women who initiated and led the licentious improvisations. I don’t mean to minimize the homosexual activity. There were men embracing men and women with women.

I tried what Madame Blavatsky had suggested: projected my thoughts into the swirl. “What meaning am I supposed to draw,” I asked the Televisionary Oracle, “from this sex riot?”

The voice that spoke in my mind was female. Its cadences were stilted, as if it were using shorthand.

“Mass outbreaks of sexual bliss,” it said. “You must help unleash them. It will end global flirtation with apocalypse. Explode boundaries through pleasure, not death. Blast apart tyranny of ego’s petty vision and revive memory of divine origins through
petite morte
, not
grande
.”

“And the implications of this for me and my mission?” I beamed into the swirl. “What specific actions should I take?”

“You are Queen Bee of Orgasmic Liberation,” it glimmered back. “Not Queen Bee of Titillation. World already has too much arousal without release. You will replace pandemic of repressed teasing with revolution of brazen rapture. You are Great Juice Mother of Psychefunkapus.”

“Psychefunkapus?” I asked with a mix of alarm and intrigue. “What does that mean?”

“Psychefunkapus: New Covenant of Primal Nookie; Rebirth of Once and Future Throbwiggle; Apotheosis of Slippery Boink; Coming of Fuckissimus.”

“And tell me again what this has to do with me?”

“You are High Priestess of Global Jiggy Snake. Holy Empress of Planetary Oozeshimmer Revival. Sovereign Shamanatrix of Collective Flutter Magic.”

Madame Blavatsky was demanding my attention with annoying pinches to my arm, so I had to promise myself to return later to my
conversation with the Televisionary Oracle. She had driven us up to a large rock outcropping about three times our height. There was a giant television screen embedded in a steep, flat part of the slope, with long streamers of tied-together bras and underpants hanging down from large hooks on either side. A vulture was also perched on each hook. On screen, a talking head in suit and tie was pressing a headphone into one of his ears, keeping his eyes closed as he apparently listened to a message. He looked like an anchorman, complete with impeccable blow-dried hair and heavy make-up.

To the right of where Madame Blavatsky had parked the golf cart was a metal pole planted in the ground, at the top of which was a white box.

“Lesson one in Sacred Entertainment,” Madame Blavatsky announced, “courtesy of the one and only Televisionary Oracle.” She turned a knob on the box. The face on the screen opened his eyes and began to speak. The sound spilling from the box was surprisingly high-fidelity.

“Warning of imminent ‘hype-ocalypse’ and ‘genocide of the imagination,’ a team of self-described ‘benevolent terrorists’ calling themselves the ‘Televisionary Oracle’ is now in the third day of what they term a ‘channeled
coup d’état.’
Two days ago they managed to seize control of at least a portion of the broadcast facilities of a number of major television networks. How exactly they accomplished this remains unknown, though they themselves have invoked the improbable term ‘menstrual shamanic telekinesis’ to explain it.

“Much of the regular programming on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN has been seriously disrupted. In its place the Televisionary Oracle has been presenting a bizarre hodgepodge of well-produced but controversial material, ranging from the mysterious ‘Mary Magdalen’s Monster Truck Rally and Tantric Cryfest’ to the black comedic ‘International Tribunal of the Multinational Narcissism-Dealers’ to a kind of erotic telethon, the ‘Kundalini Pledge Drive.’

“Less than an hour ago, we were contacted by one of the apparent leaders of the takeover, Rapunzel Blavatsky. She joins us now from an unknown location in Northern California. Welcome, Ms. Blavatsky.”

“Dude, you are looking so good tonight I wouldn’t mind licking whipped cream off your forehead.”

Butterflies stirred in my belly as my doppelganger appeared on the Televisionary Oracle. She was an older version of me—how I might appear ten years in the future. I—she—was wearing a striped baseball jersey. The words “Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail” were written in cursive across the chest. A smallish vulture was perched on her shoulder.

The anchorman ignored the joke.

“Until two nights ago, Ms. Blavatsky,” he droned, “you didn’t exist for me. That’s when I saw you on the pirated CNN broadcast. I was confused at first. Why would someone with the media savvy to kidnap the airwaves then appear on those airwaves without a trace of make-up? You can’t possibly be ignorant of the impact a close-up of a face without make-up has on the viewing audience.”

“I wanted my new viewers to see the pimple I have here on my forehead,” The Other Rapunzel said, pointing to her reddish bump. “If I make it difficult for them to attribute perfection to me right from the start, I might have a chance to prevent them from turning me into an energy-sucking monster they worship with all their hearts.”

“Well, I have to say,” the anchorman continued, “that pimple had a strong impact on me. As I fell asleep the other night, I could not take my mind off it. It was so big and ugly! And on such a pretty woman, too.

“Around dawn I had a strange dream about you, Ms. Blavatsky. I dreamed you had crawled into bed with me and my wife. You were lying between us, sexually arousing us with sweet words and tender touches.

“You murmured in my ear as you nuzzled it. You said something like, ‘I predict Congress will pass new legislation decreeing that all Americans must be rewarded financially in direct proportion to how much beauty they create.’ Then you were rubbing your feet up and down my legs and stroking my wife’s breasts. ‘I predict a Sufi real estate magnate will announce plans to build a chain of sacred shopping centers in the American heartland,’ you said. My wife and I lay there for a long time while you pleasured us. The entire time you kept uttering more of your silly predictions.

“Just before I woke from the dream, Ms. Blavatsky, you had your right hand on my penis and your left on my wife’s vagina. You were softly chanting, ‘The apocalypse is dead! Long live the apocalypse!’

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I have never felt so perplexed and yet so blissful in my entire life.

“Would you mind telling me your thoughts on the meaning of this dream? First of all, what did you mean when you said, ‘The apocalypse is dead! Long live the apocalypse!’?”

The Other Rapunzel slowly stuck her tongue out to its full length before she spoke. It did not seem to be a sign of juvenile defiance, but a gesture akin to the depictions of the Hindu goddess Kali in her moments of arch ferocity.

“My greatest desire,” The Other Rapunzel said finally, “is to kill the decrepit old patriarchal apocalypse in the hearts of the mass audience. That will clear the way for me to resurrect a fresh, new, sexy apocalypse. A sweet, aromatic apocalypse that restores the original meaning of the term
apocalypse:
revelation, a great awakening, second birth. Thereby eroticizing the same kundalini that the bad old daddies have been thanatizing all these centuries.”

“And does that require you, if you’ll excuse my irony, to make love to the mass audience in their dreams? As you did with me and my wife?”

“Think of me as a kind of succubus Santa Claus for adults,” The Other Rapunzel said with a sly grin. “I bring a very special kind of blessing to everyone in the world.”

“Now really, Ms. Blavatsky, do you expect me to take seriously what you just said?”

“I am as serious as the big old pimple on my forehead.”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound like a deluded guru wannabe.”

“Indeed, I am the most humble guru wannabe in the history of dreams. The most total nobody in a world full of nobodies. And as far as being deluded: I’m sure I am in my own lovable way, but do you know any other deluded fools who are capable of engineering a takeover of ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN broadcasts?”

“Will you explain for us how you managed to accomplish that feat?”

“The rowdy ruby glissando of the silk lotus.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms. Blavatsky. Would you care to try again?”

The Other Rapunzel stood up suddenly and ripped open her shirt, which revealed a bra surmounted by two rubber vulture puppet heads with their maws open. The real vulture on her shoulder flew off.

“I predict that compassion will become an aphrodisiac,” she declaimed in a loud, laughing tone, her arms raised in a V-shape, “and charisma will replace cancer as the official national disease. I predict the networks will be required by law to show live childbirth in prime time every night. I predict supercomputers that will be able to converse with the Goddess. I predict that the launching of celebrity garbage into outer space will lead to miraculous breakthroughs of new sources of free energy. I predict that the Twenty-Two Hours of World Orgasm will usher in the amazing, thrilling, and just-in-time end of history—turning millions of entertainment victims into well-rounded, incredibly kind, sex-crazed geniuses—with lots of leisure time.”

As I—she—finished her rant, she began to do a whirling jig, hands high above her head.

“End of lesson one in resurrecting the apocalypse,” Madame Blavatsky announced with a triumphant chuckle as she turned down the volume on the speaker and peered at us with an expression that was both shifty and piercing. “Any questions?”

“So I don’t have to just kill, kill, kill,” I exulted appreciatively, glad for the apparent revelation that my mission was not merely as a destroyer, as she had insisted last time I saw her in the underground junkyard. “But how exactly am I supposed to go about resurrecting the good apocalypse?”

“Twenty-Two Days of World Orgasm, my dear,” she said. “You will be hearing much more about that.”

“Now I’ve heard three different versions of the World Orgasm thing,” I noted. “Is it twenty-two minutes or hours or days?”

“Well, now, that is completely up to you, is it not? Seeing as how you will be the one to plan it and carry it out.”

Madame Blavatsky revved up the golf cart engine and turned to depart. I could see that The Other Rapunzel had been joined on the Televisionary Oracle by women dancers wearing skimpy yet goofy clothes. Aluminum foil and Spanish moss and rainbow-colored clown wigs were common sartorial materials, as well as band-aids, flowers, papier-mâché, and plastic wrap. An older-looking Jumbler was one of
them, though she was barely visible in the background.