- copyright Tommy Tiernan
Unholy Communion

People often ask me how I feel about religion. Not what I think
of it but how I feel and I always tell them this little story.
I was on a Laudanum bender with my very good friend
The Archbishop of Choom. Laudanum is a heroin based cough
suppressant and my pal was thinking of using it at mass instead
of the wine. We had studied theatrics together in Belmullet in
the early 1980’s. Twas just the two of us living in a caravan at
the time, translating Ibsen into Old Irish and then putting the
plays on in the town. Fair to say we were unloved. We did a two
man Gaelic version of An Enemy of the People, renamed An
t-Asshole, on the back of a truck driving round the parish. We
drove through every estate and down each boithrin within an
eight-mile radius of the youth cub. Twas hard going. The roads
are bumpy up there and we were probably being driven a bit too
fast for anyone to be able to keep up with the story. We fell off a
good few times.
He was a star though. Even back then I knew he was destined
for greatness, his ability to conjure meaning out of nothing and
make everything he said sound believable was truly awe
inspiring. Little did I know that he was destined to the religious
life. Of course he had dilly-dallied with the fairer sex but in
Belmullet the fairer sex is rough enough. Couples often take it
in turns to be the fairer sex and tis many the Monday morning
you’d see big men a little unsteady on their feet and jumping
every time a door opened. From there he went to France to live
in a cave with six Dominican nuns and emerged a year later with
a one-man show entitled Christ Almighty, What Was That!
which went on to get a special mention in the drama section of
the Ploughing Championships.
Such was the depth of his ecclesiastical knowledge and
such was the width of his wisdom that it wasn’t long before he
came to the attention of the mystical wing of the Catholic
Church, men, and women disguised as men, who travel so deep
into the bowels of the mind that they drop below dogma and
rules and a lot of the time below coherence. What they needed
was a vessel who could travel far under the surface of things and
yet emerge understandable. They believed that Milo was their
man. He wasn’t up to much so he said he’d give it a lash
confiding to me over the phone ‘it’s a gig Tom, it’s a gig’.
We often speak over a phone and if it rings we take it in
turns to answer. He did the seven years training in a fortnight
and only spent an hour being a priest before being promoted up
the ranks and handed the Archdiocese of Choom which was
often thought of by the powers that be of being an incidental
parish on the outskirts of Europe where experiments of a
theological nature could take place without anybody really
knowing, least of all the inhabitants. They knew well enough
though and said nathin, content in that age old Irish tradition of
playing dumb in order to be left alone.
Milo took chances with Mass, he used to say it sideways. Music
could only be played on animals that were still alive and he
made a point of baptising cattle and hedges and attending
conceptions. He blessed petrol, wore transparent plastic trousers
and during Lent ate only Magic mushrooms and cold Barry’s
tea. He was working hard at the coalface of perception. He spent
a year walking backwards, only to end up right where he started.
He had a mask made of his own face which he use to wear on
himself, sometimes to the back sometimes to the front. He had
his right hand amputated and grafted on to his left wrist and his
left hand taken off and put on his right. A fine enough idea but
once he had it done he couldn’t shuffle cards or deal a hand of
25.He’d be looking straight at you, aiming for you and throwing
cards left and right onto the floor. And at dinner would often
send his fork into his ear and him aiming for his mouth. Three
days of the week he muttered inaudibly to himself in Hebrew, a
language he didn’t understand but somehow spoke fluently. Of
course the parishoners sometimes sickened of him and used to
throw him down a well for a few days when they saw him
getting a bit hyper and leave him there til he came back to
himself. But most of the time he was cherished.
Anyway there we were the two of us, leaning over the phone,
yapping. The laudanum was by now wearing off and we had
resorted to poitin to help take the edge off our comedown. It had
been brought to him by the children of the local primary school
who had made it themselves as part of a project on rural
disobedience. It was tough stuff. A hint of apple at the front
with a jammy aftertaste and the middle bit tasting like fermented
Lynx. We were on our fifth glass when he said to me
I think I need to lie down
I told him he was already lying down and then he said
Well then I need to get up
He stood up and almost immediately collapsed back down again
Well, he said, that didn’t work out quite the way I
had it planned
You’d be as well off staying where you are now I
told him
I am Chumbawumba he declared struggling up again
And thus proceeded an awful half hour of rising and falling,
rising and falling
I haven’t the knees for this, he said
And that’s how I feel about religion, I don’t have the knees for
it.