BEWARE! IT'S OPUS DEI!

So at five the next morning I’m woken by a loud banging on the door. This irks me somewhat, but I have a golden rule. Always answer the front door.

It’s two men – dressed from head to toe in black; only not in the Johnny Cash cool kind of way. They speak with heavy accents.

“Did you go and see Steve Poltz last night?”

“Wha’ the fuck?”

“Did you go and see Steve Poltz last night?”

“Who the fuck are you?” I ask.

“We are, ahem…” They look at each other. “Representatives of Opus Dei.”

“Oh, right,” I say, “the shadowy ultra-right wing Catholic organisation founded by Josemaria Escriva in Spain in the 1930s. Why didn’t you say so?”

“How do you know about us,” one scowls.

“Ah, c’mon. Everyone around here has heard of you guys. Anyway, what the fuck do you want?”

“We want…” The one on the left pauses…

“Look, for fuck’s sake, it’s five in the morning. If I hadn’t been drinking last night and subsequently had the alcohol in my body convert to sugar while I slept giving me a strange energy boost, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Now, I repeat, what the fuck do you want?”

“We want to know if Mr. Poltz played the I got a handjob on the church bus song last night.”

That got me thinking. How I didn’t much like the look of these guys, and how I had no desire to accommodate them. How totally uncool it would be to rat on Steve Poltz. How morally bankrupt. How, let’s face it, un-Australian. And how, since I had really enjoyed the song, I was, as Mr. Poltz so correctly pointed out, complicit. No way was I telling them.

“Tell us, or we will be forced to take drastic and unpleasant measures.”

“Don’t threaten me, you cocksuckers.” So Deadwood. And I’m still thinking: morally bankrupt, un-Australian etc etc etc. And anyway, I enjoyed the song immensely.

The one on the right, now clearly the ‘bad priest,’ says, “Unless you tell us, we will torture you, torture your family, behead your cat and stick its head on a pole in your front garden so it’s the first thing you see each morning when you leave the house.”

This seems a little extreme, but I tell them, “Look my friends, I am not revealing anything. It would be immoral and cowardly. And this song you mention sounds like something I might have (theoretically) enjoyed very much.

Under no circumstances will I rat.”

“Well, this is our last offer. We are prepared to replace your scratched vinyl copy of Let It Bleed with a brand new shiny CD.”

“Ahhh,” I say, “One of the recently-released ABKCO remastered versions?”

They look at each other, one whispers something, and then after a pause, says, “Yes, all right.”

“Well, sure,” I say, “He played the I got a handjob on the church bus song. And, frankly, I found it to be quite disgusting.”