9.

The Gig

Wednesday, March 13 - 7:58p.m.

Mike didn’t read the newspaper on Wednesday morning and he probably should have. Instead, he spent most of the day on the Internet reading about the Gnostic Gospels and the other stories of Christ’s life until his eyes were too blurry to read.

He was almost late for the gig at the Plaza, but he got there just in time. He was wearing a black “Savatage” T-shirt and a gold chain. “Where’s your cast?” the guys asked him.

“Doc says I don’t need it anymore. Must have been a mistake with the x-rays.” They took that at face value, piled onto the stage and donned their instruments. After the opening riffs, he started singing.

The usual small audience gathered around The Original Artists that night, but after the first song, the crowd began to grow. By the third song, people in the crowd were whispering to each other and pointing at him. What’s going on, he thought. Is my shirt ripped or my fly open? Maybe I got a stain on my shirt. He was relieved when their first break came and he ducked backstage.

Jimmy’s girlfriend came backstage. “Hi, Babe,” he said and kissed her. “Bigger crowd than normal. Maybe we’re finally becoming popular.”

She said, “It’s weird. People in the audience are talking about a miracle or something. Some guy mentioned something about the newspaper but the music was too loud for me to hear him.”

Something clicked in Jimmy’s mind. “Oh shit,” he said. He fumbled in his backpack and fished out a copy of the Las Vegas Sun. He flipped through the pages until he found a small article with a photo above it. He handed the paper to Mike and said, “Shit, Mike, I thought it looked like you when I saw it too.”

Mike looked at the caption, Miracle in Bellagio? Subtitle, Jesus seen in casino? Below the headline was a fuzzy, blown-up picture of him and the old lady from Sunday, enlarged from a Bellagio security camera. Same black Savatage T-shirt, same gold chain. He read the article.

“Clara Olsen, a 75-year-old disabled woman, was apparently cured Sunday in what people are calling a miracle. Caught on security cameras at the Bellagio hotel and casino, Olsen is seen rising from the wheelchair she has needed since 1989. Standing by her is a man who looks remarkably like Jesus Christ . . . ”

The article went on, but Mike had seen enough. He folded the paper up and handed it back to Jimmy.

Jimmy pointed toward the stage. “The crowd thinks you’re Jesus Christ, man.”

Mike started giggling. He had never thought of it before, but now he realized that when he grew his beard longer he did resemble certain renaissance paintings of Christ. Of course, they were just artistic interpretations; no one had a record of what Christ really looked like. But the thought that anyone could mistake him for Christ was completely absurd. Jimmy interrupted him. “What the hell is so incredibly funny? That is you in the paper, isn’t it? What happened in Bellagio? This dumb broad thinks you healed her.”

“Nothing happened.”

“What do you mean, nothing happened? She was a fuckin’ cripple in a fuckin’ wheelchair, and now she’s walking, so something obviously happened, Mike.”

Jimmy’s swearing suddenly seemed very immature to Mike. The misunderstanding–taken all the way to the local newspapers–was ridiculous and Jimmy was blowing it out of proportion as usual. “Relax. I was in Bellagio, okay? I saw the old lady in the wheelchair. She looked lazy and I got pissed off, so I told her to get up and she got up. No big deal. She probably could walk the whole time. Psychosomatic. Hypochondriac. You know.”

Suddenly he had a flashback from an ancient time. He had been in a small room. The lights had been so dim he could hardly see. A twelve-year-old girl had been lying on a bed. Outside the people were crying and he had said, “Why all this crying and commotion? The child is not dead: she is asleep.” After he said it, people laughed at him. Then, taking hold of the girl’s hand, he said, “Get up, my child.” The girl got up and everyone was amazed. He didn’t want to make a scene. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” he said to the girl’s parents, but the news had spread anyway. No big deal. But the more he denied it, the more they called him Messiah.

“Earth to Mike.” Jimmy mocked, and he snapped back to the present with a gasp. “Break’s over.”

The crowd was just as big and they clapped and cheered as the band got back on stage and donned their instruments. Mike grabbed the microphone. When you’re a small band, he thought, you’ve got to take every opportunity to give your name to the public. He said, “Thank you very much. Thanks.” When the cheering stopped, he said, “Once again, we are The Original Artists and my name is Mike Tomson.” This time he added with a chuckle and a big smile, “. . . not Jesus Christ,” and Jimmy used that as a lead-in to the next song and struck a power-chord.

Wednesday, March 13 - 11:00p.m.

When the gig was over, Mike ducked out of sight before the crowd could overwhelm him with questions about the Bellagio. The rest of the band went their separate ways with their girlfriends, leaving Mike on his own. After the unusually large audience went home, he felt alone. The noise of the casino and the amplifiers earlier only magnified the silence he heard now. The stupid wedding songs they had played earlier only intensified his desire to play real music, music with a message, music that made people think deep thoughts and feel deep emotions. The memories of the audience cheering earlier magnified his aloneness now and he felt empty inside. The truth was, he was lonely.

Why is it, he wondered, that the religious leaders of this world are always alone? Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, none of the great religious leaders had girlfriends or wives that he knew of. Weren’t they lonely too, or was their relationship with God enough? Perhaps romantic love is too human a concept for these religious leaders who took their refuge in God. But Mohammed, the founder of Islam, had several wives, so maybe the idea wasn’t so wrong. If I have to be alone all my life, he thought, I don’t want to be a religious leader.

He always wanted a real relationship with a real woman, someone who would understand him, but no women ever seemed right for that role. Oh, there were plenty of women in Las Vegas, and beautiful women at that, but as far as Mike was concerned, they were all too shallow. Take the band’s girlfriends, for instance. They were more concerned about getting their nails done and what their shoes looked like with their leather miniskirts. How they looked was more important than anything else. He doubted they had ever asked themselves where we go when we die, or the meaning of life, or even more practical things like what happens when the Social Security money runs out, or how the Earth will be able to support nine billion people in the year 2080 and what we can do about it.

He knew that men could be just as shallow; probably even more so, forsaking their relationships and everything else in the world to watch baseball or the sport du jour on television. But men weren’t interesting. Women were. He wondered, how does a guy like me find a meaningful relationship with a woman who isn’t shallow? You can’t exactly walk into a bar and strike up a conversation by saying, “Hi, my name is Mike. Do you believe in reincarnation?” Or, “Do you think we should we spend our time making this world a better place for our children or should we spend it making our children better people for this world?” He longed for that kind of depth in a relationship, and his lack of it made his heart ache.

Meeting Professor Bailey had given him hope that there were women in the world who had depth, but somehow he knew she wasn’t right for him. She made him feel awkward. Maybe it was just that she was a professor, and he was a starving stage performer. He was intimidated by her and felt ignorant around her. He wanted someone more at his level.

He went home, plopped on his couch and started reading a book called “The Gnostic Gospels” that Professor Bailey had recommended. Eventually his eyes became too tired to stay open and he fell asleep on the couch.

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

He said, “Love is the most important thing in life, for love is the pathway to God. Walk that path. Love is the key that unlocks the kingdom of heaven. Love all of creation, for God’s love comprises all. Love yourself, for you are God incarnate. You may think of yourself as separate from God, but you are not. Just as you bring imaginary people into existence in a dream for the purposes of illustration, so too has God created you out of a similar dream. Love everyone else, for they are also God incarnate. Love all creatures and all things, for they too are made up of God.”