It's important to keep good records

This man Billy Fidget, he was an acquaintance of mine from back east. Had a lot of good stories in him, so I set a recorder going when we'd be drinking beer and such. One July, we're having some Steel Reserve--terrible stuff--and he says:

"So, one time I was preachin' in a church in New Brunswick... sorta like a guest appearance, 'cause it wasn't my church, 'cause I ain't got no church. Pastor picked me up at a shelter 'cause he said God told him to, and that does happen to me from time to time, so I went and stayed with him and his family for awhile, and he was moved to put me before the congregation. For him it was an act of faith, but for me it was a summons, you know?

So I'm up on the little stage they got, with the drumkit and the little choir behind me in their robes, and I'm preachin' the word or the Word is comin' forth, that's a better way of speakin' of it, and they all hip to it like only a gospel church can be hip to it, and that's a fine feeling like closing an electric circuit full of power in your soul.

I was getting my God on, groovin' to the prophet beat. Then this big, fat mama--I mean, she like three hundred pounds not includin' her hat, that's another twenty, easy--this mama, she jump up like she on fire, and she charges the pulpit, and man, she snarlin', she got foam at the mouth and her eyes all rolled back white in her head, and she comin' at me like a freight train dressed for church.

So I step on up, and my arm ramrods, palm out--'cause I know what this is about--and I'm all casting out in the name of the Lord and whatnot, with the power in my throat like golden honey, and when that 320 pounds'a demon-possessed mama hits my hand her hat hits me in the face and she bounces back like I'm a brick wall and she's made'a twigs. Drops flat on her back, laid out with her big arms over her head, quiet like a chastised child, eyes all closed.

Later, Pastor says to me, "You know, Hettie does that about once a month. Takes all the deacons to get her back in her seat, make her take her meds."

I say, "She won't no more."

Next time I pass through Jersey--'bout two years on-- I stop in at that church, just sittin' at the back, 'cause you know visitors is always welcome at a true House of God. And there she is--or, half of her, anyway. Up on the stage with the choir, singing the praises, about 150 pounds lighter. Over a fine supper Pastor says she back with her husband and her kids and the whole family's been healed, with a new child on the way.

And that's why, whenever I get picked up and tossed in the State Bin for preachin' where I oughtn't or prophesyin' too loudly in the train station or runnin' naked in the park with the Lord, they always have to stick me with a needle to get whatever drug they pushin' into me, and use two big nurses to do it, too.

I know who my Psychiatrist is."

Queer cat, Billy Fidget, but a good soul.