“ATANDO CABLES TÍO....SWEEP THE MEAT....ATANDO CABLES........."

Mr John Doe casts no shadow, is just not there and Pete knows it.

He was not on the bus sat next to The Born Again Priest, nor was he lurking at the bus station, contrary to what some might have you believe, or do you believe everything you are told?

“Atando cables tío, atando cables.”

He lives not in the church or outside the church hall, neither lives he in the next street nor behind those grey clouds or just out of vision keeping his beady eyes on you from round the next corner. Or in another universe, or another dimension come to that.

No, he lives not in any of these places. Mr John Doe lives solely in fear and guilt. The hoards of Priests and self-appointed representatives have done their jobs to perfection.

“Atando cables tío, atando cables, cables............Sweep the meat from the street............”

THE STORY OF BUG EYED PETER JOHNSON, THE SUNDAY SCHOOL OUTCAST.

"Bug Eyed Peter", his Sunday School classmates called him, because he stared, not a blink to be registered. His eyes insisted on following everything and everyone everywhere, but he didn’t say much of anything, which meant he listened a lot and understood a lot more. But they weren’t to know that, were they?

The wooden folding chairs were painful and made dry cracking sounds if you fidgeted.

You could march to the hymns. Onwards! Oh christian soldiers.

The teachers, stiffly smiling and acting all friendly, had whitish, recently shaved and scrubbed, parchment skin and exuded a dry heavy smell of age and the burning wisdom of submission, ashes and dust, ritual and rules.

You could see deep blue veins in their cheeks. They sometimes pulsed ever so slightly in their ivory temples.

The Bibles had felt weighty, fine yellowing paper fingered by previous pious innocents and they exuded a dry heavy smell of age and the burning wisdom of submission, ashes and dust, ritual and rules to be obeyed without hesitation.

Oh, but the girls, the girls............

Bug Eyed Peter the Sunday School kid never got over it, but he knew just what was going down, and didn’t believe a word of it. But they weren’t to know that, were they?

But from those days on, every now and again, Bug Eyed Peter, the ex-Sunday School Outcast, has suffered and suffers butterflies in his belly for what had been sown inside of him so early on. The teachers had carried out their mission and cold shivers of Sunday School guilt and fear for the thoughts in his head bring on hot minutes of sticky sour scented sweat.

Oh, but the girls were cute, so very very cute.

“Atando cables tío, atando cables, atando cables, cables, atando............Sweep the meat from the street, sweep the meat..........”(1) were the murmured nasal sounding words of the litany of The Born Again Priest as he scuttled off grubby black and beetle ugly on another crusade not to leave the Johnsons of this world in peace.

How to speak something into existence? Look for the Priest, The Born Again Priest. How to talk something into truth? Look for the Priest, The Born Again Priest.

(1)"If you take uncovered meat and place it outside on the street and the cats come and eat it, whose fault is it? The cats' or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem."

"If she was in her room, in her home, in her higab, no problem would have occurred."

A quote from Australia's most seniour muslim cleric, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, another brother of The Born Again Priest I guess, reflecting on the problems faced by a group of muslim men jailed for gang rapes. Just another representative of Mr John Doe I suppose.

Quote taken from the article, "Setting Themselves Apart" by Hirsi Ali. Newsweek, November 27, 2006.