LODGERS PART II

So Bloggiana is sitting wreathed in smoke at her table and Jesus the practising Christian - potential lodger and actual supper guest - is sitting opposite in his beauty parlour slippers, sipping cordial and trying to defend himself against queries about his paedophile status. He is dealing with the onslaught admirably, the answers almost perfect in their combination of tact and political correctness. Yes, he promises, I do like children. No, he avers, I have never been in trouble with the authorities.

Bloggiana keeps up the bombardment. In a few months, the hostess assures the guest, you do realise we will have you smoking and drinking again? Jesus smiles weakly but as yet, the hand clutching the stem of his cordial glass appears steady.

Feeling certain the deal is home on a duck’s back and that Jesus as lodger will any minute now be plugging a reasonably large hole in her weekly budget, Bloggiana moves towards the climax of her attack-moment. And you do realise also, she confides, that in the end we will almost certainly shed you of your belief status. What kind of Christian are you, by the way? Bloggiana tells me later had she known what a Branch Davidian was, perhaps she would have altered her course. But as it is, tumbler ahoy, she continues undeterred. For my money, religion should remain absolutely private and personal, she blusters, like sex. It is at this point that Jesus the practising Christian gives the first hint that all perhaps is not well. He gulps. But HMS Bloggiana is in full sail now, PG streaming through her pipes, Marlboros hot-firing her cylinders, and she interprets the gulp merely as a frisson of excitement at the mention of the S-word. After all, she reasons and probably not unreasonably, the practising Christian is almost certainly untried.

So the food is eaten and swearwords digested and the wine drunk and the butts cleared and Jesus in his slippers swept off into the night. Bloggiana goes to bed that evening reasonably happy with her day’s work. Tomorrow she will hear from the Christian and he will say I commit. I will live as lodger with you and your friends, I will do so as soon as possible. It will be a brilliant and convenient marriage, reasons Bloggiana, between the materially needy and the comfortably-waged-but-unloved.

Then the inbox the next day. Through a haze of after-dinner regrets, Bloggiana manages to decipher a fairly detailed missive from Jesus. It turns out that after all that, Jesus the practising Christian enjoyed a sleepless night. Turns out that all that smoke got to his lungs, that all that talk of being re-introduced to the god of PG had got to his soul, that he had woken up next day with “gloop” (sic) on his chest and a burning ache of doom in his liver. Turns out that Jesus was reluctant to be corrupted as it had taken him rather a long time to become pure. Turns out that unless Bloggiana could mend her ways at least in the smoking if not in the drinking, swearing and belief departments, Jesus could not after all commit. He was very keen to try, he said, but he would have to have undertakings. (my italics)

Bloggiana and I are now sharing a glass of tap water. I have one straw and she has another and we are hoping the waiter won’t charge us for the second. It’s been a tough week or two and she’s still no better off than she was. Bloggiana reaches into her handbag and pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Fuck it, she says, fuck it with gusto.