“Laughter is the only tenable attitude in a universe which is a joke played upon itself.” –Peter J. Carroll
[Cover photo courtesy of Alistair MacRobert via Unsplash.]
My dad’s opinion matters a lot to me. Not because I worry what he thinks of me (he is grateful that the spicy shop offers gainful employment and legitimately fanboyed when he found out I’d co-authored a book on Witchcraft), but because his love language is sarcasm, I will never not want to hear his take.
“Last night, we stayed in Hammond, Louisiana,” he once texted during a road trip. “That was a place.” Then, later, as they were making dinner plans: “My girlfriend wanted to eat at Waffle House. I told her I’d just wait in the car and drink bottled water.”
Even when my dad doesn’t quite understand whatever ridiculousness I’ve gotten myself into, he remains very supportive. Like when I told him that I was flying to Atlanta to run a workshop on Discordian fortune-telling, or that covering my head as a devotional practice resulted in a brand ambassadorship. Or when I told him that a local artist had decided to create a queer, occult parody of Michelangelo’s Moses and asked me to the be the model.
Oh, PS: A local artist decided to create a queer, occult parody of Michelangelo’s Moses and asked me to be the model. And afterwards, I spent several hours using olive oil and Dawn dishwashing detergent to remove about a pint of probably not toxic adhesive from my beard.
Eh. I’ve had weirder gigs.
My beard was actually the inspiration for the caper. I had not gotten around to trimming it in a while, and my friend Lucas wandered into the shop one day and was like, “Oh! You totally remind me of Moses.”
I probably looked less like an Old Testament patriarch and more like a wasteland cannibal, but I went ahead and took the compliment. And then he was like, “You know, I think I have an idea…”
When it comes to Lucas’ ideas, I trust the process, especially since he’s the genius behind the giant Glitter Lucifer that oversees our back room. It took months to get our schedules synchronized, but eventually, I went over to his place with a selection of leather garments, and he glued a five-foot-long white beard on top of my (grey) facial hair, and we made some damn art.
I do not consider myself particularly photogenic (and I don’t mean I’m ugly; I just don’t really know my angles), but Lucas seemed happy with the shots he was getting. At one point, I asked what I should be doing with my face, and he was like, “Don’t change a thing! Your intimidating glower and the angry glare in your eyes are perfect.”
So I explained that that was just my regular resting face, and he was like, “… Oh. Well, keep doing it anyway.” I complied, but I also began to comprehend why no one ever talks to me at parties.
Once some proofs from the shoot were available, I sent one over to my dad, and he responded, “Can’t wait for someone to ask me if I have any recent pictures of my sons.” And his standard snark aside, I could not tell if he was joking. After Virgo Witch, came out, he starting randomly accosting his neighbors in the hallways of his apartment building, demanding to know which month they were born. And if they said September, he’d go, “Have I got the book for you.”
For all I know, he’s got a print of me as Moses tucked into his wallet, just waiting for a member of his bridge club to go, “A cardiologist? How fascinating! You must be so proud. And what does your other son do?” At which point my dad will whip out the photo and gleefully announce, “He’s a prophet.”
Incidentally, my dad’s birthday falls on the feast of St. Expedite, which means he’s an Aries. I think I’ll get him a copy of Aries Witch, so that we can both understand why he’s like this.
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