LONGEST DAY

It's only 8:30 am and already it's 80 degrees up here on the mountain. Lets hope all you congregants still stuck in town have air. Preparations are continuing for this Saturday's Foxy Boxing Temple of the Little Green Man. Since it's on a Saturday it's a Temple. Duh. Yesterday three 18 year old girls dropped by out of the blue, taking pictures in front of the billboards and wondering what kind of church this was? "Your kind of church." I answered, as i turned the skeleton key and opened the door, starting the tour. I don't usually have ones so young in these hallowed halls. My mother insists that kids should be under 10 (except for Cardinal Tristan) or over 21. Her reasoning is that the teen years are too impressionable (without the maturity to realize the irony). All our ragging on "fags", "jews", "evil catholics" and any other sacred cow we can butcher can be lost on those so young. She may be right. But hell, the girls were already in the door.
   As the girls turned around, gape mouthed, taking it all in, the questions began. "Why the Hebrew?" "Was I Jewish?" "Was I Gay?" "What did I believe?  "Why did we burn dollars?" "Was that really a stripper pole?" "Was I ordained?" I wondered what kind of questions the Pope got as he gave the tour at St. Peter's. I always try to do my best to answer these questions. These kids were so cute and thirsty for knowledge. Turned out they lived on the LES. When I said I had lived there for many years they brightened. I mentioned this bar and that store, then realized I had left when they were two years old. Blank stares all around. Eventually they grabbed some old programs, an invite for Sat., and left with big smiles.

This is the first "Solstice" church. But it's not the first time the church has celebrated the longest day here in the Catskills. In fact when we first started this moveable feast in 1986 we religiously had "retreats" at Wolf Lake. These involved a caravan of junkers, filled with booze, food, drugs, guitars, drums, amps and dazed individuals, shocked to be out of the East Village, making a yearly pilgrimage to the lake. Plenty of boats were turned over, (Gary Ray's expensive video equipment is still at the bottom of the lake), pants were lost, much LSD was consumed, but we all made it out alive.
   These days not much has changed. The elders may have gotten older (and hopefully wiser) but the congregation has remained firmly rooted in that 20 and 30 something demographic, that allows them to make the most out of all that daylight. The laurel is in bloom. The mercury is rising. The girls are picking out their skimpy outfits for foxy boxing and Ku Klux Klown is about to turn that clown frown around and take on all sexy comers. What kind of church? I repeat- Your kind of church.