Noah Tavlin

Jesus Christ: So this where Obama sat?

MM: That’s actually his mug. That’s the mug that he drank out of. 

JC: That’s amazing. This is the mug that Obama drank from. Wow. It’s hard to fathom an object of that significance. You know, I’m a little offended that you invited him before you invited me.

MM: Yeah. So where’d you grow up?

JC: I grew up in a small town called Nazareth.

MM: Where’s that?

JC: It’s a couple hours north outside of Jerusalem.

MM: Okay, right. So you’re a Jewish kid, growing up in Nazareth. What’d your old man do?

JC: He’s God.

MM: Wow, heavy. So you grew up ‘in that world’? Surrounded by all those characters?

JC: If it sounds glamorous, it wasn’t. Believe me. Seriously. Believe in me. I’m real.

MM: It sounds like he wasn’t really present. Maybe preoccupied with the burden of that responsibility?

JC: Well, no, he was actually omnipresent. It was hard to get away with much of anything.

MM: Siblings? You got any siblings?

JC: No, just me. Only child.

MM: What was your mother like?

JC: Very sweet woman. We were very close. 

MM: Too close? Overbearing Jewish mother?

JC: In some ways yes, in some ways no. She was a virgin her entire life.

MM: Wow. A virgin. It must have been kind-of dark for you to have to confront that as a kid.

JC: Not really. In general, I find chastity preferable.

MM: Okay, okay. So who were your guys?

JC: My guys? As in, the disciples?

MM: No your guys. Pryor, Carlin, Howlin’ Wolf, Peter Bogdanovich, the French New Wave, the Stones, Muddy Waters, Calvin and Hobbes, Burroughs...

JC: Oh uh...I don’t know I mean this is the 20s, into the early 30s, we were all pretty much illiterate and there was no recording technology at that time. I guess Socrates? Recently I’ve gotten into The Velvet Underground.

MM: See this is the thing that kids today don’t understand. Back then, before all this social media, you had to wait to hear about things by word of mouth. It seems today, with the media landscape being as fragmented as it is today, I don’t know if a Jesus Christ-type figure could achieve the prominence that you did.

JC: Exactly. I hate to say it, but if Twitter had existed back then, I’d be screwed. Instead I got nailed.

MM: Hehehe. That’s funny. You’re a funny guy. So the whole Crucifixion thing. To me, this was the DEFINING moment in your life, wouldn’t you say?

JC: I think a lot of people would agree with that statement, but I don’t necessarily see the episode of my death as defining my life. If anything, my resurrection had a greater impact on the way people perceived me.

MM: Right so then really we’re talking about two Jesus’. There’s Jesus the man, and Jesus the character. And there seems to be a struggle between the two. 

JC: People choose to interpret the things that I said how they will. I don’t condone it, but I respect people’s right to have their own opinions.

MM: Do you think you were clear in your message?

JC: I think so. People should love each other. We are all one.

MM: So you’ve risen. Jesus Christ is back. Are you back--for good?

JC: I’m not making any promises.

MM: Can you talk about your future plans? 

JC: Primarily the final judgment of mankind. I’ve got some other things in the hopper. Do you mind if I plug some dates?

MM: Not at all.

JC: I’m going to be performing miracles at the Korean Church on Vermont and Hollywood Boulevard tomorrow at 7. Then I’m going to be delivering a week of sermons next week at The Chuckle Hut, that’s in the Valley. 

MM: So are we good?

JC: Peace be upon you.

Students watched glassy-eyed as the future Wolf of Wall Street waxed romantic about his beloved 90s “It” girl. I had summoned the strength to grade homework assignments as I attempted massage the headache out of my scalp. My students were quiet and I had managed not to throw up on myself. The room smelled of budding, undeodorized armpit. Everything was going more or less according to plan. In a few minutes, the bell would ring, and the students would go off to Geometry.

Or at least it was, until Danes “accidentally” flashed her bosom to my 6th grade class.

The infamous boob scene. Danes was so young. So innocent. So very topless. Surely it had been the first boob sighting of countless teenagers in 1996, whose English teachers had taken them on a field trip to see the film in theaters.

The boob awoke my class like a pubescent alarm clock. They bolted up at their desks, mouths agape. Danes’ nipples had activated them, like a bunch of horny sleeper cells. I saw the dilated pupils of my titillated pupils and knew I had done something irrevocable.

While fumbling with the remote, trying to turn the TV off, I accidentally paused the video just as Gilbert Grape’s brother was about to give Carrie Mathison from Homeland’s breast an examination.

Now, I’m no astronomer. I’m just a high-functioning alcoholic middle school English teacher who has narrowly evaded several DUIs. But there must have been a full moon somewhere on this earth that day, because what happened next can only be described as… lycanthropy. My class of preteens literally transformed into wolves. Hair unfurled itself on legs, armpits, upper lips and groins. Fangs groaned out of their gums, snapping expensive orthodontic equipment like number 2 pencils. Yellow saliva dripped off of their massive new teeth like mouldering stalactite juice. The smell of decomposed eggs poached in molten rubber wafted from their unmolested pores. I had awoken in twenty preteens the delicate natural urges they weren’t supposed to learn existed until next year. Only, these urges weren’t delicate. They were cannibalistic!

I managed to stop fumbling with the remote and shut off the TV. By then, my students were snarling, creeping towards me. They looked hungry–and not for iambic pentameter. Some were humping chairs. Others were humping each other. The good news was, they had no idea what they were doing or how to do it. The bad news was, I was on the verge of getting fired for what the principal could accurately describe as “gross negligence.”

Sweating like an over-caffeinated bomb squad technician, I threw erasers and coffee mugs at the weretweens. They were unfazed by the impact of blunt objects on their snotty snouts and began creeping toward me, backing me toward the front wall of the classroom. It was as if they had somehow figured out that I, an individual adult, was terrified of their potential in numbers to completely undermine my authority at any given moment of the school year. But instead of refusing to do schoolwork or deciding to act out, they had elected to devour my flesh and use my corpse as a prop in their furious lust orgy.

They crept ever closer, snarling with anticipation. Any minute now, the bell would ring. Would the bell save me? If my next period class entered and called for help, maybe my life would be spared. But if it was discovered that these 6th grade monsters had seen a boob. I would be fired and, who knows, maybe even charged with a sex crime. Or be forced to attend rehab. Or kill myself. I had to reverse the curse before the bell rang.

I began hurling empty whisky bottles that had been accumulating behind my desk for the past three years at my dear students. To my dismay, all the shards of broken glass did was encourage them to be kinky with each other. It was pretty vile.

It was 1:29 pm with 30 seconds to the minute. I had one last chance. If I didn’t turn them back into human children, my life would be over in one manner of speaking or another. I thumbed through the stack of DVDs I kept behind my desk; my entire curriculum. Without a moment to spare, I ejected Romeo + Juliet and inserted a DVD of PBS documentary about the Dust Bowl.

Dirt swirled across the bleak midwestern landscape. There is neither season nor sun. A farming family sat huddled beneath their kitchen table, with clothes over their mouths and noses, waiting for the storm to settle; waiting for something to grow from the futile land. It was a real snoozefest.

As sure as Shakespeare’s head is bald, my students’ fangs and boners receded back into their bodies. The bell rang. They shuffled off to class, not one student making eye contact with another. Their sexuality had been successfully repressed and my job saved.