Phallic jokes and where Zuma can gloriously take us

A young Scotsman, Wee Tom, disliked his nickname for obvious reasons. His schoolboy friends had seen him in the shower and he was very wee where matters are supposed to count.

“Ha ha, Tom, when you get it up you’re going nowhere. She will fall asleep from boredom.”

“Just wait and see,” retorted Wee Tom. “Things will develop. I guarantee you my bride will be a virgin — I have strong religious views on that — and we will have a honeymoon night in a hotel next to the Niagara Falls and the next morning she will regard those majestic, cascading waters as her second greatest moment of ecstasy. A disappointment by comparison with the first moment.”

“Woof woof, Tom!” howled his friends. “At least you are never short on wisecracks. Get it? Short, ha ha.”

“Aye, but that wasn’t meant to be funny,” muttered Tom.

Unfortunately Tom never grew where it mattered and one day, never having had the pleasures of a girlfriend, he went to the Edinburgh zoo. He regarded an elephant with its swaying trunk, lazily pulling off leaves and inserting them into his mouth, the image almost hermaphroditic, he thought. And then an astonishing idea occurred to him as he saw the trunk arching up again, so splendidly phallic in its glory. He went to Scotland’s finest transplant surgeon and told him his idea. The surgeon’s eyes sparkled as he said “Aye, by coincidence some research in enlarging men’s size has been done in that area. We could do it as an experiment on you but you will have to sign various documents absolving us of any responsibility before we can do some experimental grafting.”

“Done deal!” cried the ecstatic Wee Tom.

A few weeks later, after various operations, the team surgeons sat around Tom as he proudly stood in just a sheet on a table. It was indeed a solemn occasion. He let the sheet drop and there was a momentous silence.

“Are you sure you don’t want Nurse Jenny to use a feather to assist a successful ascent to glory?” asked one of the senior surgeons, stroking his beard while they all gazed proudly at their craftsmanship.

“No, that’s kinky, and besides, I am a religious man,” replied Tom. “I will just tense my lower stomach muscles the way you trained me. Up up and awaaay … ” he cried, hands on hips, staring at the ceiling above him. He felt his new acquisition rise and rise and, simultaneously, the surgeons’ heads and Nurse Jenny’s reverentially turned upwards as they followed progress. Their chins remained uplifted in astonishment and delight as they admired their great achievement.

Nurse Jenny’s jaw dropped, her eyes widened and she gasped, putting her hand to her mouth. That was just the sound ~~Wee~~ Tom so badly wanted to hear. He could hear the distant rumble of Niagara Falls as he recalled his promise to his schoolday friends.

Tom relaxed his lower tummy muscles and slowly all eyes and heads lowered in the room as they witnessed the gradual touchdown. A moment of reverential silence; then everyone applauded, and, with a kind of Freudian foreshadowing of greater things to — ah — come, Nurse Jenny popped a large bottle of champagne and its white froth gushed everywhere which she, perhaps prophetically, licked off her fingers …

(To be continued in a moment … Notice your reaction to this interruption of our merry tale. Write down your reaction if you can.)

* * * * *

In all the debate about sexual activity on the SA media, centring around our president Jacob Zuma, I have got to thinking again about the role of religion in it all. Our Tom, now no longer wee, is a self-declared religious man. Nevertheless, he wishes to persevere at things that many religions do not see as a “spiritual” practice. And those “cults” who practise Tantric sex and so forth, which do see the spirituality in sex are demonised by certain religions, one of which will now be named: Rhema and its leader, Ray McCauley. (I regard “Rhema-ism” as an independent religion, and emblematic of the lunatic charismatic fringe that does a grave injustice to the more traditional approaches.)

Our problem with our sexuality in South Africa is that we have been taught to be ashamed of our bodies through religion and even post-religion. By post-religion I mean that even though some people have ceased to practise religion they still have assumed a thought system that determines their relationship to their bodies, others’ bodies and what is acceptable sexual behaviour. There is a lot of shame, anger and awkwardness about our performance in the area of sex. In religious circles we are taught to not even masturbate! I know. I used to be a church-goer and even attended Rhema Church for a bit in the early Nineties before I saw through it all. I went on men’s “retreats” in another church where much time was given to getting us to control our bodily desires, including the “sin” of masturbation.

But our character Tom seems to have a firm grip on things and is desperate to perform well. Shall we proceed with our merry tale about Tom? Note your reaction to that question.

Before we continue (oh get on with the gag Rod, you are perhaps muttering), I have a question. Why oh why is it that the debt-laden McCauley will allow the non-Christian Zuma to speak to his flock, not the Christian Zille, and McCauley also remains silent about the president’s ongoing sexual shenanigans? Polygamy in Rhema would be regarded as deep sin, “of the devil” and the practice of the cultic and deluded. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I see a very silent Rhema in the media … where there should be engagement and honesty. Do not bite the hand that feeds the mouth. Our story:

* * * * *

Tom could not wait to ask out a buxom blonde lass, Roxanne, whom he had his furtive eye on for many a year. He felt so confident now, and strode around Edinburgh thoroughly cocksure. He smiled at the lasses and now! Behold! They often smiled back! And did not that honey as she whisked past quickly glance down at his crotch area before looking away with a flush sweetening her cheeks?

Tom gave his groin a pat almost whenever he thought of Roxanne. “Down, young man!” he proudly scolded. He then thought of his finger-wagging deity and prayed for forgiveness and felt his prize new possession obediently and shamefully wilt.

A delighted Tom listened thrilled as Roxanne readily accepted the invitation to dinner and to watch a movie. “Aye, Tom, I have wanted you to ask me out for years,” she breathed down the phone and his ears tingled. Tom felt such regret, almost grief, at all that wasted time. His groin area suddenly took on a real life of its own. He laughed and patted, barking, “At ease soldier!” He saw that divine finger shaking back and forth once more, and again Tom prayed for forgiveness.

In the restaurant on their first date, Roxanne and Tom went to an Italian restaurant and soon there were warm bread rolls and wine arriving on the table while they thought about their order, eyeing each other from time to time over the menus. It was a marvellously fresh experience for huge Tom, and again he heard the expectant roar of the Niagara Falls. Not only was Tom hot under the collar, but hot in the loins and secretly let his zip down a wee bit to let the poor creature breathe.

A moment later, Roxanne’s eyes widened as she saw a peculiar sight. A long pink trunk came arching over the table from Tom’s side of the table, took a bread roll, and then disappeared again under the table. “Oooo, what was that?” gasped Roxanne.

Deciding to be honest, Tom explained the transplant surgery. The truth would, ah, come up, sooner or later.

Roxanne was now truly intrigued. “You could join a circus!” she exclaimed. “Can it do that again, snatch a roll, like?”

“Aye,” wheezed Tom, face turning purple, “But I don’t think my bum could take another bloody bread roll.”

* * * * *

“By the cold and religious we were taken in hand, shown how to feel good and told to feel bad,” cries Roger Waters in Pink Floyd’s album, The Final Cut. It sums up many monotheistic religions’ dogma about the human body and its most powerful urge and definition of itself: sex and sexuality. What we are seeing in South Africa, unwittingly led by Zuma (whom I see Zapiro has gloriously crowned again with a much larger shower spout in his latest cartoon) is an explosion of debate on what constitutes proper sexual and marital customs. These customs lie at the heart of society. Some commentators are saying his misconduct is now too old hat. No, no, I quickly demur.

Because hopefully the Zuma Mêlée will also get us to be transparent about the contextual nature of our inherited, religious or post-religious values. Which the likes of Rhema church are most certainly not. That is about dishonesty, deceit and currying favour with the powers that be, to state the obvious. His flock is woefully deceived. How can one possibly attend a church and voluntarily shell out all that money in tithes and offerings for McCauley’s lavish lifestyle? At the time of the news of all his debt, he was living in Durban and he and his latest wife would fly to Joburg every weekend to deliver sermons and duties … at the cost of his flock. The flock is brainwashed. But then so are we all. So this Zuma Moment is a wonderful invitation to us all to look at our deceptions.

If you found the Wee Tom joke funny, note that the ending is crucially reliant on Tom’s utter honesty in his confessions to Roxanne. Even though a self-confessed religious person, there would be no joke without his transparency. Jokes take us outside of ourselves through sheer laughter. We cannot laugh when we are being our conventionally thinking selves. The punch line requires just that: a punch. It is utterly fresh information, something surprising and honest. Laughter is like a coughing fit or a huge sneeze. Notice how for a moment you are no longer here or there in the middle of a body-shaking sneeze. Laughter works the same way. Being utterly honest with ourselves, being ruthlessly open to other ideas, be they polygamy or acknowledging other cultures’ customs, is surely freeing. South Africa has a splendid chance in this Zuma Brouhaha to re-think herself.

If you did not find the Wee Tom joke funny, ask yourself why. Maybe you just don’t think it is a good joke, but be honest about your reasons. A joke like this can never be told in many religious circles. Why? Because there we are told to feel bad, to live in denial. What if the Wee Tom joke had ended with him confessing again to his deity and asking for forgiveness? No joke. That’s like adding soap water to the celebratory bubbly; all the fizz is flattened. What’s left is just a stifled way of thinking that perpetuates dead systems of perceptions and behaviour.

This could be a watershed in South Africa’s history. Many of us are tired of being screwed around; our bums cannot take another roll.