The Evening Tickler

Once every few months a cleft opens up in the Catskills landscape whereby so much occult strangeness has seeped into the lives of the Brothers Tickler, there simply isn't space for a third kneeler at their communion. On these occasions - usually after enforced separation - the last two remaining Bovina Trappists don cassock and surplice, jimmy the locks off the tabernacle and go at the sacraments like Elvis at an all-you-can-eat peanut butter banana and bacon buffet. Tiptoe into the cathedral, take a pew at the back as Frère Steve chants a tender Dies irae to his father and reflects upon the existential vertigo to which we acquiesce, when we agree to ride the Wall of Death.

Having firmly established Delaware County to be a refugee camp for displaced peasants from the ravaged villages of Advertising, The Tickler attempts to elucidate what professional lock of God's beard (or ring of Satan's rectum) survivors are assigned when the 'visual assets' have dried up. First kebab on the skewer: lovely, shy but suspiciously wicked Daryl Kovalich, who comes to the table with healing powers and an understanding of the Tarot that could never have been gleaned from flogging anxiety to the terminally anxious. Is it possible to devote one's sophomore squirts to the Service of Mammon, only to see the light and walk towards it clutching the Six of Cups? Come, join Steve and Julian as they lubricate Daryl's Road to Damascus with lambrusco.

In the tradition of Scott and Shackleton, of Amundsen and Franklin, an expedition has been mooted. The Tickler has found a crack in the seamless immensity of the Catskills glacier, and we're going down it. Our guide? Affable, soft-spoken, glitteringly sly and faintly priestly Kirby Olson. Tender Virgil to our twin Dantes. Listen in awe as the Inferno reveals itself to be flat, frozen, featureless, without end. It's disorienting; you know you're heading South, but it feels North. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, no blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down. Hold your breath, Pilgrims. This is Shelly Winters swimming with a flashlight through the upside down engine-room of the Poseidon, skirt billowing at her armpits, revealing those behemothic ladies' smalls. It may be dark. It will be cold. But Kirby will lead us through the aisles of purgatory with book, bell and banana ...

In the tradition of Scott and Shackleton, of Amundsen and Franklin, an expedition has been mooted. The Tickler has found a crack in the seamless immensity of the Catskills glacier, and we're going down it. Our guide? Affable, soft-spoken, glitteringly sly and faintly priestly Kirby Olson. Tender Virgil to our twin Dantes. Listen in awe as the Inferno reveals itself to be flat, frozen, featureless, without end. It's disorienting; you know you're heading South, but it feels North. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, no blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down. Hold your breath, Pilgrims. This is Shelly Winters swimming with a flashlight through the upside down engine-room of the Poseidon, skirt billowing at her armpits, revealing those behemothic ladies' smalls. It may be dark. It will be cold. But Kirby will lead us through the aisles of purgatory with book, bell and banana ...

Bovina Center, December 24th, 2017. The Tickler has been commissioned to fashion the annual Bovina Center Village Nativity Scene, but procrastination and the absence of Google Maps in the Valley of Lost Souls has left us all shepherds and no virgin. A carrier pigeon is dispatched up Bramley Mountain. In a flash Heather Rolland dons her Madonna wimple and is Subaru'd to Roxbury, where she crouches like a silverback at the WIOX scrimmage-line: holy quarterback, poised to receive the messianic pig's bladder. 'Hut-hut' and Bovina Farmer is galumphing down the touchline like a carthorse, sandals slapping, Joseph tea-towel billowing in the wind, his soil-encrusted mitts extended for the immaculate reception. Heather, Virgin Most Prudent, faints left, moves right, the Lamb of God is in the air, the crowd holds its breath, the Farmer strains, then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, for his yoke is easy ...

Bovina Center, December 24th, 2017. The Tickler has been commissioned to fashion the annual Bovina Center Village Nativity Scene, but procrastination and the absence of Google Maps in the Valley of Lost Souls has left us all shepherds and no virgin. A carrier pigeon is dispatched up Bramley Mountain. In a flash Heather Rolland dons her Madonna wimple and is Subaru'd to Roxbury, where she crouches like a silverback at the WIOX scrimmage-line: holy quarterback, poised to receive the messianic pig's bladder. 'Hut-hut' and Bovina Farmer is galumphing down the touchline like a carthorse, sandals slapping, Joseph tea-towel billowing in the wind, his soil-encrusted mitts extended for the immaculate reception. Heather, Virgin Most Prudent, faints left, moves right, the Lamb of God is in the air, the crowd holds its breath, the Farmer strains, then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, for his yoke is easy ...

Steve and Julian invite Carol Spinelli over to share a magnum of Thunderbird and a nice game of Monopoly. Carol pulls the ruse of nailing the oranges on the left and greens on the right; no sooner have you paid up for landing on St James Place than your ass is being torched on Pennsylvania Avenue. Within minutes Steve is black-lipped and potted, clinging to his Get Out of Jail Free card and mumbling about retiring to a crack house on Baltic. Having failed to win second prize in a beauty contest, Julian is forced to sell Boardwalk. Carol puts hotels on it. Game over; she puts 6% of everything in her Birkin bag and heads back over the mountain to Bovina. Steve and Julian survey the rubble of their lives from under the table, where the cigarette burns pock the polyester into black blisters.

Steve and Julian invite Carol Spinelli over to share a magnum of Thunderbird and a nice game of Monopoly. Carol pulls the ruse of nailing the oranges on the left and greens on the right; no sooner have you paid up for landing on St James Place than your ass is being torched on Pennsylvania Avenue. Within minutes Steve is black-lipped and potted, clinging to his Get Out of Jail Free card and mumbling about retiring to a crack house on Baltic. Having failed to win second prize in a beauty contest, Julian is forced to sell Boardwalk. Carol puts hotels on it. Game over; she puts 6% of everything in her Birkin bag and heads back over the mountain to Bovina. Steve and Julian survey the rubble of their lives from under the table, where the cigarette burns pock the polyester into black blisters.

Imagine Waiting for Godot taken by the scruff of its neck and retooled: five wearisome minutes in, woman enters at a brisk clip, listens to Vladimir and Estragon chundering into their beards, rolls her eyes, tells them to shut the fuck up and proceeds to get something done. Interval, wine, no need for Act II. Masterpiece of the Absurd it may not be. Exercise in Existential Pragmatism it is. With Bonfire Night on the horizon, Laura Silverman- Marketing All-Star and doyenne of The Outside Institute - crosses county lines to squint at the scrofulous old Guy Fawkes dolls propped up outside the front door of WIOX.

Imagine Waiting for Godot taken by the scruff of its neck and retooled: five wearisome minutes in, woman enters at a brisk clip, listens to Vladimir and Estragon chundering into their beards, rolls her eyes, tells them to shut the fuck up and proceeds to get something done. Interval, wine, no need for Act II. Masterpiece of the Absurd it may not be. Exercise in Existential Pragmatism it is. With Bonfire Night on the horizon, Laura Silverman- Marketing All-Star and doyenne of The Outside Institute - crosses county lines to squint at the scrofulous old Guy Fawkes dolls propped up outside the front door of WIOX.