who will say-ee-ave our souls?

Last night, Perplexa and I decided to check out the Billionaires for Bush party at Chelsea Piers. It was interesting, to be sure, but not remotely as interesting as what occured afterwards.

We returned to the 'hood around midnight, drunk, tired, and hungry. We stopped by Haagen Dazs for cups of the best cookie dough ice cream in the history of the world (flavorful vanilla, generous balls of dough, big hunks of dark chocolate...mmmmm.) Anyway, we sat down on the bench outside to revel in the deliciousness. As we were both drunk and suffering from critical cases of sexual deprivation, the conversation quickly turned dirty. Very dirty. I'd tell you more but I don't even want to imagine the Google hits I would get if I did. So as we were finishing up our ice cream and talking about eating other things (har har,) two people--a small housewife-ish woman and a tall young man clad all in black--asked if they could ask us a question. Well, they'd already asked one question, so we said sure.

What role does Jesus play in our lives, they asked. Well, he doesn't, we said. The woman proceeded to tell us all about the Bible, to which I replied that after having gone to Catholic school for eight years I knew plenty about the Bible, thank you very much. She retorted that she went to Catholic school for 20 years. Damn, she won! She also told me she was from Wisconsin. Oh the coincidence. Anyway, she then grabbed our hands and said a prayer. I was so on the verge of a laughing fit that I bit down on my plastic spoon as hard as I could. After the prayer was over I thought their mission would be accomplished. Oh no.

The woman still wanted to know why we didn't have close personal relationships with Jesus. Perplexa replied that she was Jewish. The woman pointed to her cheeks and said that she had spent the entire day downtown weeping for the Jews. She wept and wept, she said. With her focus solely on Perplexa now, the tall scary goth-ish manchild decided to save me. After asking why I'd cut the lord and savior Jesus Christ from my life and not listening to a word of my response, he proclaimed that I must not have been welcomed by my church. He took my hand and said another prayer, I turned to Perplexa and saw her receiving the same treatment from the woman, they finished the prayers, I said we had to go to bed, and Perplexa and I ran home faster than I ever imagined possible in our 3 1/2 inch Miu Miu and Marc Jacobs heels, respectively. And I'm sure they walked off feeling like they'd just done God a very good deed, indeed.

I think what I garnered from this whole experience is that people's views on these matters are not going to change. The Billionaires for Bush are not bringing any right wingers to the left with their slogans and outfits, clever as they may be. And the missionary Christians aren't about to turn a non-religious Jew and a Catholic atheist into Jesus freaks. But the difference between the two camps is that A., psycho-religious people (I'm not saying all religious people, just the psycho ones) are just plain WRONG and, most imporantly, B., the non-believers don't go around trying to convert and/or blow up those who hold different views.