Close to Godliness

Some time ago in Berlin...  I sat upon the ledge of a large jacuzzi tub and watched as my lover lathered himself on the other side of a glass standing room only shower.  I was studying his excellent buttocks when suddenly he began to shake and shout.  He spun back around and burst  through the door looking terribly too awake after an early rise following a late and invested night of drinking.  

What is it?

It's just the cold water.  I always turn it on at the end of a shower.  It's good for the skin.

Huh..

Since then I've followed this recipe for excellent skin.  This morning I turned the cold up as I turned the hot off and in the time it took for the water to adjust I realized that I had in fact turned off the cold water and turned up the hot.  Then it hit and scalded my skin like liquid lightning.  And in that moment of shock, as I readjusted the knobs to command my head to spit cold water, my immediate thought was, "Is this what hell will feel like?"  As the temperature dropped my mind loosened the query and I was filled with a perfect "Ahh...thank you...that's much better."  Once my body relaxed into the safety of the sensation of bathing in a mountain spring I remembered my instinctual question and I realized what a queer question it was.

Do  I really believe in hell?  Do I really think that after this life I'm going to drop down into some big bad furnace?  No, not really.  

Thank you freak life.  

  

O! Yes.

O Magazine is my choice dessert. Cindy; forgotten. Asta la Seeyas Pam! And catch a cab Giselle. Modernity etched Centerfolds into a wireless Macintosh tombstone back when the Y2K epidemic was reincarnated as a dance move. Hola! The Cover is where the love's buried. Perhaps you've noticed while purchasing 7th Generation products in the self check out line at your local grocer's the Mama of the year, Mammoth of the hour, Mistress of the minute, Miser of the moment. Here she comes again ready to ring in the month riding a stallion in a tan suede onesie or wading through the wind wearing a crimson phantom-like robe, perhaps she's balancing atop European steeples in a neuvo self-titled yoga pose or up close (certainly not close enough) silvery and twinkling with the funk of a disco ball: Oprah is radiating childlike bliss and commending my Eco-chic spending habits in stacks of fifteen gracing the iron rack birthed to house her bounty of grace, insight, and humility.

Oprah is Andy Warhol as Oprah. Oprah is the IKEA of pop culture for stiffs. Oprah is the color salons prefer for pedicures. Oprah is the Iron Chef's favorite spice. Oprah is also the sixth Spice Girl: Oprah Spice. Oprah is a straight Mom's Rosie. Oprah knows life; she's an old school Christian who believes in reincarnation and she only wishes she had lifetimes to sit you down and school you 'bout it. Oprah is the little sister Maya Angelou locked in the closet so she could climb out on the roof and write poems in peace. Oprah is the Eiffel tower of bath towel designers. Oprah will never go to jail. Oprah has her own school in South Africa. Oprah is the shape of Dr. Scholls new gel insert. Oprah just approved J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye for her book club. Oprah will have a flame bigger than Stalin's and JFK's over her grave otherwise it will not get her graveclub seal of approval.