I heard about a business in Yuba City which offers the sportsman in your life a very special postmortem service. For what I imagined would be a substantial fee, this business takes some of the ashes from your beloved hunter’s cremated body, mixes them with some sort of thickening agent, packs the resulting wad into a shotgun shell, and blows said wad through the recently deceased’s favorite species of fowl.

I had to know more. It was a hard rumor to track, but eventually I got a name: Enrique, who was in charge of something called “Out With a Bang.”

I called Enrique’s number, hoping to get some basic information about the company: mission statement, history, plans for the future, franchise options, etc. As the phone rang, I designed an imaginary brochure for Enrique’s little venture. The company logo would be a terrified mallard mid-flight, pursued by a bullet in the shape of a coffin. Then the copy: “Need a gift for the dead outdoorsman in your life? Is there a mortally-ill hunter on your Christmas list who is simply impossible to shop for? Well, look no further than Out With a Bang.”

Finally, Enrique picked up. He sounded like he had just awakened. It was three in the afternoon.

I had a lot of questions. I wanted to know if his services were limited to wildlife, or if one could pay extra to be blown through a particularly annoying coworker or ex-spouse. Okay, that might be a bit much. But what if I wanted my mortal remains blazed through my neighbors’ Lhasa apso, the one that’s been shitting with impunity on my lawn for the last year? I really needed Enrique’s input.

But when I mentioned the business, Enrique started explaining to me that this was a new business, therefore he was a new employee, therefore he couldn’t give me any solid answers. He did, however, confirm that he was the owner.

I don’t want to cast aspersions, but I think a better name for his business would be “Out With a Bong.” I swear to Christ I heard what sounded like smoke being sucked through bubbles in the background. Enrique accused the state of California of discomfiting his vision. “Yeah, we’re just having problems, you know, gettin’ started. With, like, permits and stuff.”

This was starting to feel like a wild goose chase.

When I called the California Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers and asked them about Enrique, their only official comment was an incredulous, “What? Are you serious?”

But, off the record, they have heard of this idea before. An anonymous informant noted: “They probably won’t get too far with it. We tend to frown on human remains being turned into projectiles and shot across the countryside. The animal rights people would probably say that plugging a goose with Uncle Henry’s dying wish qualifies as cruel and inhumane.”

From last night’s reading:

Following a profound new experience, providing a new illumination of the world, the founder, a highly charismatic person, begins enlisting disciples.  These followers become an informally but closely knit association, bound together by the new experience , whose nature the founder has revealed and interpreted.  The association might be called a circle, indicating that it is oriented toward a central figure with whom each of the followers is in intimate contact.  The followers may be regarded as the founder’s companions, bound to him by personal devotion, friendship, and loyalty.  A growing sense of solidarity both binds the members together and differentiates them from any other form of social organization.  Membership in the circle requires a complete break with the ordinary pursuits of life and a radical change in social relationships.  Ties of family and kinship and loyalties of various kinds were at least temporarily relaxed or severed.  The hardships, suffering, and persecution that loomed for those who cast their lot with the group were counterbalanced by their high hopes and firm expectations.

Of the founder himself, he has visions, dreams, trances, frequent ecstasies, unusual sensitiveness and an intense emotional life, and is ready to interpret manifestations of the divine.  There is something elemental about him: an uncompromising attitude and an archaic manner and language.  He appears as a renewer of lost contracts with the hidden powers of life.  He does not usually come from the aristocracy, the learned, or the refined; frequently he emerges from simpler folk and remains true to his origin even in a changed environment.  He speaks cryptically, with words, signs, gestures, many metaphors. and symbolic acts of a diverse nature, illuminating and interpreting the past and anticipating the future in terms of the circle.

~ Joachim Wach

Phone sex is a multimillion dollar a year industry — I just don’t get it. Phone sex just doesn’t do much for me.

I’ve tried — God knows I’ve tried. Inevitably I start laughing. The absurd mechanics of trying to remove my pants and deal with God-knows-what while holding a phone is enough to kill the mood for me right off. But hey, that’s just me, and I’m obviously in the minority.

Since I couldn’t figure out the allure of phone fucking on my own, I thought perhaps I should enlist the help of a friend of mine, Divina, who has worked in the phone sex industry for many years. I figured I could spend some time with her, interview her a bit, listen to some calls, study her habits, and then document all of my findings in an essay of extreme sociological importance.

I hadn’t seen her in quite a while, so I called her up, told her what I was doing, that I’d like to hang out with her while she worked the phones for a day so that I might lift the veil from the face of this secret world, exposing the truth of whatever lay beneath, and tell the story to the world.

“Yeah, whatever … you got any booze?” was her reply.

I affirmed the presence of liquor in my cupboards, and she said she was on her way.

Here’s the way a basic phone sex system works: Customers thumb through ads in publications that range from glossy porno mags to local neighborhood papers. They come across a small advertisement, usually in the back of the publication featuring a very alluring male or female, with a phone number to call for “some real hot talk.” In the past, the number would typically begin with a 900 prefix. This meant that the caller’s next phone bill would contain a pirate-like gouge, probably something around $3 a minute, just for dialing the digits.

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