My Baptism

The River of Babylon goes around a little bend right near where we were doing the baptism so when I got around the corner I kicked over to the shore and hauled myself up it, and started to wring out my dress. Pretty soon, I've got this long coil of wound up red velvet cause I'm wringing it out a few inches at a time, then hauling some more out of the water, and wringing that out, and there's like this velvet rope like you have at the theatre while you're waiting for the stars to get out of their limousines and come up the red carpet. I used to date John Malkovich, and we went to those movie things all the time, so I'm pretty used to it, and it's no big deal. But where I was on the shores of Babylon, the ground is all covered with little pine cones and cedar fingers turned brown and nice soft dirt and old juniper because the River of Babylon, as many of you know, starts in the Muskokas, and, as some of you don't know, my dad was the King of Ontario for a while so we've got this castle or palace or whatever right on Lake Muskoka near Bracebridge, across from Frank Miller's house near Santa's Village. It's close to Bangor Lodge, and Santa and my dad and Premier Miller used to go golfing there. So I was getting a bit bugged cause my red velvet dress was getting dirty as I hauled it up the shores of the River of Babylon, and it was getting heavier and heavier and it was so long, there was no end in sight, and it got snagged on some rocks or something, or so I thought, so I waded into the water and sure enough, there's Jesus hanging on to the hem of my dress by his teeth, twisting around like a steelhead, snagged in some wild rice grass. Let go, Jesus, Let go, I said. I hauled on the dress and landed Jesus who started coughing and spitting and I said Hey Jesus are you okay and he gets up on his hands and knees and his hair is in his face and everything but I can tell he's crying. Jesus is crying. Hey Jesus don't cry I said and patted him on the back a few times. But he's still crying so hard he can't say much except buh-buh-buh which changes after a little bit to nuh-nuh-nuh and then unh-unh-unh and then he says: I. Like. Your. Dress. Oh hey thanks Jesus I say. I like your dress too. And he says No I really like your dress. A lot. And he stops crying and sort of looks at me all meaningful and all and I say Well thanks again. It's a pretty great dress, for sure.

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