daily writing (Thursday Next)
For gisho, off the prompt Joffy/Miles, communion wafers. 1056 words.
on becoming e. e. cummings
Note: This is a story which is not (entirely) true in the universe as it existed before Landen Parke-Laine was eradicated, and which became retroactively true after Landen's eradication. Whether it will remain true in the event of his restoration is another matter altogether.
---
There are a few traditions associated with coming out of the closet. Joffy was somewhat skeptical of them, and of traditions in general, but you don't take up Cubism because you can't paint realistically--you train classically and then take what you've learned and go in original directions. Joffy felt he should at least try these traditions before he abandoned them completely. After all, there might be something worthwhile in them.
The first tradition Joffy tried out was co-opting a dead author--scrounging through his letters and unpublished notes, reinterpreting his works, all with the intent of proving that said dead author was gayer than an orgy of the Cambridge Five. Joffy's professor tried to steer him to someone easy, like Oscar Wilde, who had been done to death. Joffy resisted, and instead turned in a paper on A. A. Milne. He had little to go on in Milne's life, but felt his reinterpretation of Milne's texts was masterful: the bit about Eeyore with his tail tacked to his bum being a metaphor for anal sex, and how the only females were mother figures rather than romantic figures, and Kanga didn't even have a husband because all the male characters were only intersted in each other, and the analysis of Piglet and Pooh's relationship made several people inform him that he had ruined their childhoods, not least of which was Christopher Robin Milne, who, along with with Goliath Corporation, who owned the rights to Milne's works, sued Joffy for defamation of character. (Joffy won the case by arguing that it was not defamation to say someone was gay: possibly untrue, but not damaging.)
Joffy was so pleased by the outcome of this that he did Edith Nesbit for an encore, but this backfired on two counts: firstly, taking an interest in potential lesbians didn't do his homosexual credibility any good, and secondly, anyone who knew anything about Nesbit had already read about her open marriage, and was hardly shocked by anything Joffy had to say.
The next tradition Joffy tried was to alienate his family and church and run away to live as a godless, heathen, free-spirited, romantic, Byronic poet or some such (Byron being just about as done to death as Wilde). However, Joffy's attempts at alienating his family with his homosexuality fizzled. Thursday said, "That's nice, but 'doofus' does not mean 'my dear' in queer culture"; his mother said, "Have some cake"; and his Uncle Mycroft said, "Do you have gaydar? I've been wanting to do some work with pseudotelepathic functions."
Joffy did manage to alienate his church, or at least a number of its members, but what he found was that he quite liked religion in general, and didn't believe for a moment that God was going to send him to hell for being the way He made him, and that what he really wanted was not to become a godless, heathen, free-spirited whatever, but to have church without the stupid bigots in it.
This was when he founded the Church of the Global Standard Deity.
The general idea of the GSD was the same as how Joffy approached everything: to try out all the religious traditions he could find, keep the ones that worked and bollocks to the ones that seemed pretty utterly pointless. Having been raised Anglican, Joffy felt he knew enough to sort out those traditions without much deliberation. He moved on next to Catholicism, since it was a close brother of Anglicanism, and tried that out for a bit. He gave celibacy a good go--three weeks or so--before deciding it wasn't doing anything for his faith, and hooked back up with the boy from his Lit class who'd actually laughed at the Milne paper--which had been the entire point.
Miles, the boy in question, was very understanding of the three weeks off (it helped that the bulk of it had fallen over Easter break, when they'd been at home, away from each other, anyhow) and helpfully started offering up things like, "If every day's a Saint's day, does that mean they're all hols?" and "Cannibalism with the body and blood of Christ--seems right up your alley."
The only saints that really interested Joffy where the ones that had made obscure predictions for hundreds of years in the future, and he tried his hand at a few prophecies himself. He made a few he was pretty certain of ("And I shall haveth a niece namethed for the last day of work, that is to say, Friday" and also "yea verily, shall I be killethed doing something stupid, like bungee-jumping off London Bridge at the age of eighty, and not die-eth in my sleep") and a few that were purely for his own amusement ("And on the ninth day of the eighth month of the year of our Lord twenty-one thousand and sixty-seven, we shall meeteth aliens from another world, and yea will they be-eth purple, and haveth but one eye, and also a horn, and be inclinethed to eateth us, though also haveth an interest in music").
As for the Eucharist, Joffy had tossed it when he was working through Anglicanism, but Miles convinced him it was worthwhile, if nothing else because when you dragged out of bed far too early in the morning to go to church and only had time to get your tie on straight or eat breakfast, but not both, it was nice to have a bite once you got there. Joffy eventually decreed that in every GSD church, there should be by the door a refreshment table, containing communion wafers, hair of the dog, coffee, decaf, green and black tea, sugar, cream, orange juice, and fresh croissants. This was exceedingly popular, and in part led to the GSD being as global as its name implied instead of services done out of Joffy's newly blessed backyard.
"What next?" said Miles, when Joffy was done with Catholicism. "The Roundheads?"
"I think I shall goeth somewhat further afield," said Joffy, who still occasionally dropped into prophetic pseudo-Middle English when speaking in the future tense. "Let's try the Olympian Gods, shall we?"
on becoming e. e. cummings
Note: This is a story which is not (entirely) true in the universe as it existed before Landen Parke-Laine was eradicated, and which became retroactively true after Landen's eradication. Whether it will remain true in the event of his restoration is another matter altogether.
---
There are a few traditions associated with coming out of the closet. Joffy was somewhat skeptical of them, and of traditions in general, but you don't take up Cubism because you can't paint realistically--you train classically and then take what you've learned and go in original directions. Joffy felt he should at least try these traditions before he abandoned them completely. After all, there might be something worthwhile in them.
The first tradition Joffy tried out was co-opting a dead author--scrounging through his letters and unpublished notes, reinterpreting his works, all with the intent of proving that said dead author was gayer than an orgy of the Cambridge Five. Joffy's professor tried to steer him to someone easy, like Oscar Wilde, who had been done to death. Joffy resisted, and instead turned in a paper on A. A. Milne. He had little to go on in Milne's life, but felt his reinterpretation of Milne's texts was masterful: the bit about Eeyore with his tail tacked to his bum being a metaphor for anal sex, and how the only females were mother figures rather than romantic figures, and Kanga didn't even have a husband because all the male characters were only intersted in each other, and the analysis of Piglet and Pooh's relationship made several people inform him that he had ruined their childhoods, not least of which was Christopher Robin Milne, who, along with with Goliath Corporation, who owned the rights to Milne's works, sued Joffy for defamation of character. (Joffy won the case by arguing that it was not defamation to say someone was gay: possibly untrue, but not damaging.)
Joffy was so pleased by the outcome of this that he did Edith Nesbit for an encore, but this backfired on two counts: firstly, taking an interest in potential lesbians didn't do his homosexual credibility any good, and secondly, anyone who knew anything about Nesbit had already read about her open marriage, and was hardly shocked by anything Joffy had to say.
The next tradition Joffy tried was to alienate his family and church and run away to live as a godless, heathen, free-spirited, romantic, Byronic poet or some such (Byron being just about as done to death as Wilde). However, Joffy's attempts at alienating his family with his homosexuality fizzled. Thursday said, "That's nice, but 'doofus' does not mean 'my dear' in queer culture"; his mother said, "Have some cake"; and his Uncle Mycroft said, "Do you have gaydar? I've been wanting to do some work with pseudotelepathic functions."
Joffy did manage to alienate his church, or at least a number of its members, but what he found was that he quite liked religion in general, and didn't believe for a moment that God was going to send him to hell for being the way He made him, and that what he really wanted was not to become a godless, heathen, free-spirited whatever, but to have church without the stupid bigots in it.
This was when he founded the Church of the Global Standard Deity.
The general idea of the GSD was the same as how Joffy approached everything: to try out all the religious traditions he could find, keep the ones that worked and bollocks to the ones that seemed pretty utterly pointless. Having been raised Anglican, Joffy felt he knew enough to sort out those traditions without much deliberation. He moved on next to Catholicism, since it was a close brother of Anglicanism, and tried that out for a bit. He gave celibacy a good go--three weeks or so--before deciding it wasn't doing anything for his faith, and hooked back up with the boy from his Lit class who'd actually laughed at the Milne paper--which had been the entire point.
Miles, the boy in question, was very understanding of the three weeks off (it helped that the bulk of it had fallen over Easter break, when they'd been at home, away from each other, anyhow) and helpfully started offering up things like, "If every day's a Saint's day, does that mean they're all hols?" and "Cannibalism with the body and blood of Christ--seems right up your alley."
The only saints that really interested Joffy where the ones that had made obscure predictions for hundreds of years in the future, and he tried his hand at a few prophecies himself. He made a few he was pretty certain of ("And I shall haveth a niece namethed for the last day of work, that is to say, Friday" and also "yea verily, shall I be killethed doing something stupid, like bungee-jumping off London Bridge at the age of eighty, and not die-eth in my sleep") and a few that were purely for his own amusement ("And on the ninth day of the eighth month of the year of our Lord twenty-one thousand and sixty-seven, we shall meeteth aliens from another world, and yea will they be-eth purple, and haveth but one eye, and also a horn, and be inclinethed to eateth us, though also haveth an interest in music").
As for the Eucharist, Joffy had tossed it when he was working through Anglicanism, but Miles convinced him it was worthwhile, if nothing else because when you dragged out of bed far too early in the morning to go to church and only had time to get your tie on straight or eat breakfast, but not both, it was nice to have a bite once you got there. Joffy eventually decreed that in every GSD church, there should be by the door a refreshment table, containing communion wafers, hair of the dog, coffee, decaf, green and black tea, sugar, cream, orange juice, and fresh croissants. This was exceedingly popular, and in part led to the GSD being as global as its name implied instead of services done out of Joffy's newly blessed backyard.
"What next?" said Miles, when Joffy was done with Catholicism. "The Roundheads?"
"I think I shall goeth somewhat further afield," said Joffy, who still occasionally dropped into prophetic pseudo-Middle English when speaking in the future tense. "Let's try the Olympian Gods, shall we?"