For fifty-two Sundays Toby had roused himself from bed while his parents slept and walked the mile to church, through rain and snow and the dark of night. He had dropped half his weekly allowance on the collection plate. He had prayed on bended knee every morning and every night. But at the end of the year, his upper lip was still as bare as a baby's bottom, though cleaner.
On the night of the three-hundred and sixty-fifth day he stood naked at the mirror, rubbing his lip. There was not the faintest hint of fuzz, not a bit, no matter how he angled his face to the light. He looked down. There was the slightest, remotest chance that God had misunderstood and put the hair in the wrong place.
``Give it up, Toby! If He thought that was your nose, he would have put the mustache underneath it. Face it: He is another Santa Claus, another Easter Bunny, another Tooth Fairy.''
He looked at his watch.
``You got three hours and fifteen minutes, `God.' If you don't give me a sign by midnight, I'm giving up on you.''
He lay back on his bed, dejected. From downstairs he could hear laughter. The tempo of the New Years party was picking up. He fell asleep, and when he woke he needed to pee. He looked at his watch and saw it was eleven twenty-three. His mother must be having a good time, or she would have come in and turned off his light by now.
``You got thirty-seven minutes, `God'!''
He put on his robe and went down the hall to the bathroom. The door was closed, but nobody answered when he knocked. He opened the door. Somebody was lying on the floor. Actually, somebody was lying on top of somebody else lying on the floor. A man with his pants down around his ankles was lying between a woman's legs. Her skirt was pulled up to her waist. The man's butt was going up and down, and as it did, his balls swung to and fro. Toby backed out of the room and closed the door.
``People oughta lock the door,'' he muttered. He went down the back stairs to the other bathroom and up to his room again without anyone seeing him.
``Twenty-two minutes, `God'!''
He checked his lip in the mirror, then pretended he hadn't. He stuck out his tongue. It was moist and pink.
The party was getting louder. Pretty soon they'd be kissing, and yelling, and setting off firecrackers. He had bought a pack of Black Cats from Timmy Barnes, whose father drove a truck, but his mother had found them and taken them away. He lay down again, dejected.
``Fifteen minutes!''
He thought about the people in the bathroom. He thought about the man's balls. They had been dark, and hairy. He looked at his own. They weren't as big as that man's . They were pinker, and had hardly any hair on them.
He wondered what it felt like to fuck. There had been a funny sound when those people were doing it, like slurpy kisses.
``Eight minutes!''
He looked at his dick. He hadn't paid much attention to it before. It looked funny, like a mushroom on the end of a weenie. It felt funny to touch it like the way it felt when you shinnied up a pole. It was kind of a squirmy feel, but not all bad, so he felt it some more, squeezing it between his fingers. It was sort of rubbery. It was looking pinker than he remember. It felt different too, like it was thicker. It was definitely looking bigger. It wasn't so wrinkled, and it didn't flop down on his balls when he let go of it, but sort of stuck out a bit. The top part was turning purple. He squeezed it some more. The edges were still soft, but the inside was feeling firm. It was much bigger now. It felt hard, and pointed straight out.
A firecracker exploded. He heard cheers from downstairs, and noise-makers. Firecrackers were going off all over the neighborhood. Toby checked his watch. It was twelve-o'clock.
``Boy, you cut things close, don't you God.''
;
After dinner the next day, the men clustered around the television watching football. Toby headed for the stairs.
``Where you going, Tobe?'' his father asked. ``Don't you want to watch the game?''
``Nah. Going up to my room.''
``Don't know what's wrong with that boy,'' he heard his father say.
He closed the door to his room, and propped a chair under the doorknob. He took off his jeans, and his underpants, and stood in his stocking feet in front of the mirror. His little dick hung limp.
``Are you there, God?''
He flicked his dick with a finger. It swung a couple times like a pendulum and came to rest.
``I don't have to pray a whole `nother year, do I?''
He shook his hips and his dick danced like an empty firehose.
``If you don't want me to pray, and tithing doesn't help, what is it you want? As long as you'll give me a moustache, I'll do it.''
Like a miracle, words came into his mind. He knew God talked to people sometimes, but He'd never talked to Toby before. This is what Toby heard: ``Rub me.''
``Rub You? That's all?''
He looked down at his dick.
``My Dick is God, and He wants me to rub Him.'' He wiggled his hips again and watched God dangle between his legs. ``Okay, if that's what You want.''
Toby rubbed his Dick, and watched in awe as it swelled and stiffened, like it did the night before, till it stood out from his body, tall and proud.
``What now, God?'' he asked.
``Stroke me!''
``What?''
``Stroke me with your hands, up and down.''
Toby stroked. It felt good. God was rewarding him; could a moustache be far off? He stroked more, till his Dick felt too sore to continue.
The previous year he had prayed, gone to church, and tithed, all for a moustache. This year, he stroked his Dick every day, and he had to admit, he liked it more than church. A few days later he traded his knife to a kid at school for an old copy of Penthouse. God liked Penthouse, so Toby cut out the Holy Icons and kept them hidden under his dresser. Each day, when it was time to worship God, he got out the Icons, put the chair under the doorknob, and stroked till it hurt.
On the twelfth day of January, the teacher kept him after school for swearing, so he didn't have time to worship after school. His aunt came to dinner, so his father made him stay downstairs and visit until his bedtime. By the time he got upstairs, he was tired and sleepy, but he took the time to worship, because he really wanted that moustache.
He spread the icons out on his bed, and lay down, too tired to stand in front of the mirror this time. God didn't seem to mind, and stood up right away.
Toby stroked and stroked, and suddenly it felt different, like there was an ache inside, but an ache that felt good. Was this a sign? Suddenly it felt very good, and his hand was wet.
Toby was confused. God was spitting up, and it was all over his fingers and belly.
``Does this mean I get the moustache?'' he asked. God was drooping. Toby stroked him again, but it didn't help. His Dick wilted. There it hung, limp and sticky, a little wrinkled weenie again, and no matter how he rubbed and stroked, it wouldn't stand up.
``Some `God'!'' he said. ``After all I've done, you make a mess all over me and then you won't even answer. Why should I worship a little weenie like you.''
Toby was ready to give up on God for good this time, when he heard Him speak.
``It feels good, doesn't it?''
``Well, yeah,'' said Toby. ``But what about the moustache? And what about the mess?''
``Forget the stupid moustache and get a Kleenex. Then call me again in an hour.''
``I guess I should give You one more chance,'' Toby muttered. ``This is more fun than church, and besides, I can always buy a fake moustache and glue it on.''
God rewarded him again that night, and Toby devoted himself to his new faith. Good things come to all those who persevere, and in another year, God gave him the moustache he had prayed for so long. He kept the faith all his life, worshipping God at many altars, and God brought him many good things, but when Toby was eighty, God pooped out.
He called his children to his bedside and told them his time had come.
``No, don't cry,'' he said. ``I've had a fine life, I can't complain. God was good to me, and I was good to Him, but now He's pooped out on me.''
``What are you talking about?'' they cried. ``God doesn't `poop out'!''
``Wait'll you're eighty,'' he said.
They called the doctors, but it was no use, and in a few days
he passed away in his sleep. A son found him in the morning.
Rigor mortis had set in quickly, and frozen his hands in an
embarrassing position, but the mortician assured the son that no
one at the funeral would know. Toby left a generous will, equally
divided among his family and friends, with but a single last
request, that on his gravestone they write: ``Here lies a
God-loving man who practiced his faith every day.''
Mark Kemp escaped from a small town in Michigan a long time
ago, and now lives in Eugene. (I'm sure there's some kid out
there right now who wants to escape from there also.) A cat and a
ferret lives inside his house, and birds, and squirrels, and
possums, and deer, and worms mostly outside, and good herbs of
the legal kind grow in the garden. He tries to keep his brain
alive, but decay is rampant.
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