Chapter One: Bumper Sticker was a Cancer

A funny thing happened on my way to meet a friend for dinner last night in West Hollywood. As I was driving south down LaCienega, away from the Noah’s Gayboat towards the artsy design / self-help district, I noticed a car in front of me with a bumper sticker that read, “Elect Jesus the King of Your Life.” Yeah, you read that right. Don't doubt it.

As I casually followed this bumper sticker, many questions came to mind, mostly involving the democracy/theocracy hybrid, life as a government-like entity, when the vote on the King of MY Life will be held, who’s in the running besides Jesus (and besides me), etc. I hadn’t pondered for thirty seconds when I concluded that, while the wording of the bumper sticker was very confusing to me, all that mattered to the driver was that this election was over, Jesus had won by a landslide, and regardless of whether you’re a pagan, Muslim radical, Jew, or Satanist driving on by, you should elect Jesus the King of your life.

As I considered this possibility, I changed lanes and began to pass the car on the right because I was running late and needed to take a right turn soon. At this point I noticed the music playing in my car stereo. The bass was shaking at 75% volume, the guitars and drums not far behind. However, the loud music was unable to obscure the lead singer shouting his lyrics in distorted clarity, out my window, and right smack into the car next to me, perfectly aligned for a split second before I forged ahead.

“So let’s pray together,” the voice from my stereo sardonically urged. “’Cause Jesus was a cancer!”

Jesus was a cancer!? I was well aware that the CD contained these lyrics, but I didn’t expect them to surface at that precise moment…what were the chances? I quickly glanced over at the passengers in the car next to me, worried they’d heard, prepared to give them some kind of explanation, maybe something like, “Well, the songwriter forgot Jesus was born in December…so he’s calling Jesus a Cancer, you know, the astrological sign, not the deadly disease,” might work.

Luckily, the girl sitting next to the driver was not damning me to hell but calmly sucking down a Starbucks Frap, staring off into her sunglasses, and driver was sticking to the road. Relieved that they probably hadn’t heard, I sped up and wondered, so what if they had? What did they expect, driving through West Hollywood with that bumper sticker and not one that said, “Jesus Loves Gay Marriage”? I know plenty of people who have elected Jesus the King of their lives, so to speak, and the flood of homo on Santa Monica during Saturday Happy Hour would shock them into relative numbness, so that by the time they heard the news through my stereo that our Lord and Savior was born in July and is really stingy with his feelings, they wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

4/3/05

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