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We Quit Bible Study

Psalm 69

. . . okay,
     I have another question for you.
Yeah.
Is your, your evil grandpa dead?
Yeah, he is.
Do you think he went to heaven or hell?

Oh, my god. I don’t know.
     I wonder if he did enough to spread the
         
word of God to make up for all the
         
kind of fucked up stuff he did.
    
I don’t really want to imagine him in
         
hell . . . he was my grandpa.
    
But uh, if I go to heaven,
    
I don’t really want to run into him.

Gotcha.
     What do you sort of imagine hell
         
would look like?
    
Can you like paint a picture?

You know, I, I really don’t like that
          question at all, but I will answer it.
    
I’ve always thought um—
    
I used to have this sort of paranoid
         
thought, especially when I was like
         
in a waiting room or like alone in a
         
hallway, that maybe death would
         
just be being suspended forever, in
         
a—in—in a single moment.
    
So like, you’re walking alone down a
         
hallway, and like, one second of one
         
step that you take,
    
like if you were just suspended in that
         
moment for eternity, like,
    
so it always felt like you had just taken
         
a step and you’re about to take
         
another one
    
but really you were just like repeating
         
that sort of like a, sort of—
    
not to, not, you know—
but sort of like a skipping tape like . . .
    
just like vibrating in that one moment.
    
That’s, that’s probably the scariest
         
version of hell I can think of.
    
I think that that would be worse than
         
um, getting, like, your intestines
         
eaten in front of you or whatever—

—tortured in linear time.

Yeah, I think being tortured in linear
          time would be very preferable to
         
whatever that would be.

Why didn’t you want to answer that
          question?

I just really don’t like um,
     I don’t like thinking about it.
    
Because I feel like . . .
    
I do believe I deserve to be punished for
         
my crimes.
     Um, but I don’t I don’t like the idea
         
that death is worse than life because
         
life is pretty bad.

The Transfiguration    

Okay, so this is the tale of the Transfig—
the story of the Transfiguration of our Lord as told by the Bible.

So one day—everything okay on your phone?—one day Peter, James and John wake up. And they’re all sleeping in the same bed. And it’s a single bed, it’s very small. And they’re very excited. And ah they all live together in a little apartment in uh, in Winnipeg, and the heat stopped working so it seems like maybe that’s why they were sleeping together but it’s hard to say for sure.

So James makes them some eggs. And John makes them some orange juice. And Peter makes them some toast. And, and the sort of way it’s told in the Bible you sort of feel kind of outside of what’s really going on.Like, it’s just sort of telling you what happened in very bare detail, but it’s, but it’s not really clear why things are happening it just says like, “They all woke up in the same bed and then they made breakfast.” So they make breakfast, and then they crawl back into bed to eat the breakfast. And they’re all chattering very excitedly. And, you know, sometimes, when you see somebody that you think seems like cool and hot, but they don’t really seem gay, but you hope they are? All of them have that vibe.

So they get back into bed, and they’re eating breakfast and then one of them, Peter, drops—he’s sort of sitting on the edge of the bed and drops his toast. And, and it sort of tumbles on, on its corner and spins under the bed. And he goes, “Oh, no.” And he reaches under the bed and he’s feeling around. But instead of—and then he thinks he’s found it but instead of picking up the toast, he’s picked up a bottle of very high quality lube. And he um, he thinks that it’s a condiment at first. So he’s like, “Hey, does anyone want this?” And they sort of all laugh a little nervously, because the other two figure out what it is. And then he realizes too. And there’s sort of some, some delicious sexual tension. And then James says, “Oh, haha, you can just put that on the nightstand, let me try to find your toast for you.” So he looks under the bed and he sort of has to bend down to find the toast and, you know, for somebody who you can’t tell if they’re gay for sure, he’s wearing very, very short shorts. And so the other two get a really wonderful view of his beautiful ass, and his legs when he bends over. He gets the toast, and they go back to chatting happily and eating toast.

So then there’s a knock on the door. And this is the thing they’ve all been waiting for. So they open the door and it’s their friend Jesus, who lives in the next-door apartment but he’s kind of like a bit of a loner. Like, he doesn’t have any roommates. He lives by himself and like has a cat and a lot of books. But they’ve sort of become friends and he’s told them that he’s going to take them on a wonderful adventure. So, so he says, “Hey, guys, come on, let’s go, we’ve got a, we’ve got a, we’ve got somewhere we need to go. I have to take you on a wonderful adventure. Today’s the day, we all made sure our schedules were clear, so we need to go.”

So for some reason—now it’s kind of cold outside. It’s like, it’s almost time for there to be some snow. But try as they might, Peter, James and John just can’t find all their clothes. So they go, “Well, I guess we’ll have to go like this.” So, so Peter sort of is wearing pants and like a towel like a cape. And John is wearing sort of like a shirt that doesn’t have any buttons on it so it’s open in the front. And the other one is wearing just like a, like a bathrobe and they just can’t figure out what happened to all their clothes. So in various states of undress, they put on some winter hiking boots and then they head out, and Jesus takes them to the base of a hill and he says,“Okay, guys, this is the tallest hill for miles around and we’re gonna climb it.” So they start climbing. And one of them said, “Hey, Jesus, what’s this hill called?” And he said, “It’s called Garbage Hill. It’s a hill made out of garbage, and it’s the biggest hill in this part of the prairies.”

So they’re hiking up and you know when you’re hiking, you sort of have to lift your legs in like a very particular way and you sort of have to really like, reach with your legs. Like you’re going up steps. And, and that sort of causes the garments to sort of drape open in the most extraordinary way. And everyone’s feeling a little awkward about it, but not too awkward.

So they keep going. And they get to the top of the hill. And they can look out and they can see Home Depot, and a Walmart, and a McDonald’s and all the cars driving around and like a concrete manufacturing plant. They are very hyped up at this point, even though they’re shivering and very cold and they’re like, “Hey, Jesus, what did you want to show us? Why did we come here? What makes this place so great?”

And Jesus says, “This,” and he suddenly rises up into the sky in sort of a Marvel-style beam of light and becomes—and it doesn’t really have to do with appearance, though it also does—sort of becomes the most beautiful woman that the disciples have ever seen. And, and Jesus is just kind of hovering there and more than, more than anything the disciples are just sort of struck by how beautiful Jesus has become, in some way that feels like it like has everything to do with having a body but also nothing because Jesus is sort of floating weightlessly, like a bird or something. And they’re so inspired. Oh, and also the beam of light is very hot and it sort of melts the little patches of snow on top of Garbage Hill, and the grass starts growing beautifully again. And it’s just too hot, even for the few clothes that they do have that they’re wearing. So they take off all their clothes. And they realize that what Jesus wanted to show them was that they’re all beautiful like that. That it doesn’t mean the same thing but they’re all beautiful like that. And then John, who was worried that the sun might come out, and thought he’d pack some sunscreen, realizes that instead what he packed into the pocket of the robe was the lube from underneath the bed. So he pulls it out. And they all walk towards each other. And then, you know, lube’s very expensive, but in that moment, it really doesn’t seem like it matters. So he pours it all over them and empties the whole bottle and they put their fingers in each other’s mouths. And they try singing while they do it. They choke on each other’s hands and it’s very funny and they tickle each other. And then, uh, and then Peter—you know, it’s so warm, everyone’s feeling so relaxed, and James, his asshole is feeling very relaxed. And Peter can just reach up right inside and touch him in his innermost part, in his innermost being. And, and John is just having such a giddy experience he can barely take it all in.

And then um, and then uh, well, they just sort of, they just sort of do that for a while and like they just sort of stay in this feeling between like when you start to have like an erotic experience, like when it’s good, and, and then it ends, which is usually some sort of orgasmic experience, but they just kind of stay in the middle, like suspended in their pleasure, just like Jesus. And it seems like they just stay there for days.

Then Jesus floats back down to the ground and sort of looks like their neighbour again. And they all realize that they look a little bit silly, standing on top of Garbage Hill, fucking each other with no clothes on and it’s almost winter and the lube gets a little chilly because the Marvel beam of light has disappeared.

And so Jesus says, “Well, guys, that’s what I wanted to show you.”

And then they go to McDonald’s and have a snack.

And ah, and they’re ordering food, James orders all the food and so he goes, “Hey, Peter, what do you want?”

And Peter says, “You know what I really want? A slice of toast.”

And they all laugh.

And that’s what the Bible says happened.

🌤    💦    🍞

Do you think that would work on you?

Yes.
I think it did work on me.

I think that’s all the questions I have for today.

We Quit Theatre is a collaboration between Gislina Patterson and Dasha Plett. Recent works include Men Explain Things to Us… and We Like It!, a short video work commissioned by the Stratford Festival Lab for Stratfest@Home. We Quit Theatre’s award-winning overhead projector performance 805-4821 (adapted for Google Docs during the COVID-19 pandemic) has toured to SummerWorks, OFFTA, Théâtre Catapulte, and PushOFF. Their new full-length performance piece, i am your spaniel, or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson, has been developed in residency at the Stratford Festival Lab and the SummerWorks Festival, and they are delighted to be premiering it at LOMAA! Find We Quit Theatre on Instagram @wequittheatre.