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Peewee And His Barbee Doll
I was in Dallas recently attending the wedding of a niece named Alex to a guy named Denny who is waiting for a heart transplant, and in attendance were the usual crowd of people I only see at weddings and funerals, and of these my favorite is fellow May '59 Taurean, and my junior by fifteen days, cousin Jim Harris. That's Father Jim to you. Jim is a Catholic priest and so it was he I asked the question which I hoped might lead to answers.
"Jim, Voodoo and Catholicism are kind of the same aren't they?"
"Sure, there's some overlap," he said, smiling.
And then I told him my story, thinking that his insights might be useful. I was speaking across the table and spoke elusively at times so as not to offend my mother, or younger nieces and nephews also sitting at the table. Jim's brother, my cousin Ronnie, was also at the table and provided some encouragement later on.
"Have you ever heard the expression--most often this would come from a black man to a white man--'you PeeWee Herman lookin' muhfuh?'" Muhfuh is code for motherfucker. I wasn't sure if my cousin, the priest Jim Harris (although an ardent admirer of PeeWee and his big adventures), would be familiar with the expression so I said it twice, kind of humming the muhfuh part to underscore the hidden indecency. I think he got it, and anyway, if not, I was feeling kind of stupid for humming a version of motherfucker at my mother's dinner table.
"It's meant as an insult, a major putdown, but as insults go it would be one I'd be proud to receive. Still it struck me right off as a kind of hanging by effigy of the only white boy in the area when I saw that familiar PeeWee Herman doll on my Rocheblave neighbor's clothesline. With his chest protruded, arms to his side but behind his side actually, PeeWee it could be said was hanging by his armpits on the backyard clothesline of my neighbor's hatred for all things white. But that statement (bad metaphor), is not only awkward, but probably inaccurate. I am not unpracticed at ignoring the unpleasant but after a week or so of slow diligence at the renovation site I began to suffer from severe pain in my shoulders and forearms. Now before I go suggesting Voodoo victimization let me confess that such pains are pre-existing, bad genes combined with repetitive blue collar work motions. Still, the pains exceeded all previous versions, and I was daily considering some sort of medical, or heretofore untried non-prescription cure. This is how serious I was--I even considered acquiring (through a friendly black market), prescription strength non-narcotic pain killers. To go to the black market for something non-narcotic is pretty serious in my book. I think on a couple of occasions if the pain had been less enough to allow me, I would have cried. Such is the human life. Later the doll was thrown over the cyclone fence and into my discarded wood pile, and my pains are no longer of the mentionable type. And that's where he lays now, arms and legs bent in unnatural directions, which I would be remiss not to correlate with Austin sister-in-law Judy's recent dream about me in a tragic car accident that left me similarly positioned. Everything can mean so much, or little, depending on where you stand, but on the gravity of dreams, and literal interpretations, my brother the criminology professor and I agree: if I can continue to have those few but precious lucid and wildly erotic dreams of me casually outperforming my real self, then I will gladly trade that for the ones that have me hurt and positioned oddly. And with that in mind I'm wondering what I should do with PeeWee. Which is why I'm glad to have a priest in this family of Methodists. What do you think Jim? I mean what if I cleaned PeeWee up and put him in a place of honor, perhaps even hooked him up with a nice Barbie doll? 'Man needs a Barbie,' that's in the bible somewhere isn't it? I just don't know about it all. Can a man affect his own Voodoo doll, should he try?"
My cousin Jim the Catholic priest is no damn fool and he chose his words of response carefully. "I'll meditate on that," he said.
His brother, my cousin Ronnie, was supportive in a different way. "I like the Barbie idea," he said, smiling.