Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Mike Phillips

“There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.” —1 John 5:7-8

I looked up from my book as the train emerged from the tunnel, creaking with care onto the great steel bridge. Even though we had all had made this trip countless times, at this moment everyone in the car lifted our heads to greet the island city, brilliant in the slanting light that warmed our faces.

But there was one man on the other end of the car whose chin remained firmly on his chest. I had noticed him when I got onto the train, the way both his knees were bouncing up and down, as if in anticipation.

After a moment, I saw his chest expand and collapse in an exaggerated breath. He got up and began walking purposefully in my direction, leaving his cluster of plastic bags on the seat. I pretended to read. I felt relieved when I realized he was not coming at me but pacing back and forth.

“I got a real simple question I wanna ask you,” he bellowed at no one in particular, in a tone more of accusation than inquiry. “It’s a real simple motherfuckin’ question, but nobody can tell me the answer.”

His voice was muffled by the clatter of the train as he turned away from me. I strained to hear as I stared blankly at my book. He turned back: “I asked college professors this question, and they can’t even get it right. Motherfuckin’ P-H-D, don’t know shit. I asked—,” and his voice faded again.

He went on for a minute more, until the train plunged us back into the dark. Then he stopped, turned, and sat back down. He didn’t say another word. I never heard his question and wasn’t sure if he had even asked it, but I knew that I didn’t know the answer anyway.

by Mike Phillips

“When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’” —Luke 9:54

I was surprised to see his enormous feet dangling toes-down over the arm of the couch, like two miniature sides of beef. He had a habit of rising early and letting himself out after a bender. I considered pulling the sleeping bag away from his close-cropped hair and waking him violently, but then I noticed the rivulet of drool, the only proof that he was still for now among the living, and thought better of it.

As I turned away, some recently displaced piece of furniture materialized in the exact spot where I was about to place my foot. Awoken either by the noise of the collision, the sound from my mouth like steam hissing through a broken radiator, or his irrepressible lust for Schadenfreude, he slightly lifted his head and muttered, “Hey Fuckface, get me a glass of water.”

When I returned from the kitchen, he was halfway sitting up and mostly naked. His furry thighs formed an obtuse angle, the leg-holes of his briefs not hugging his skin quite closely enough near the vortex. He scratched his chest loudly and said, “Man, those guys were assholes last night, huh?”

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by Mike Phillips

He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah.”
—John 1:41

He breathed hard out his nose, somehow sighed while inhaling, and expelled his inevitable refrain: “Yeah, well, their earlier stuff is way better.”

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by Mike Phillips

“But we are the ones who have suffered through the Mother’s transgression.”

—The Letter of Peter to Philip (Nag Hammadi Codex VIII,2: 139)

He kept trying to skip stones on the river’s surface, but each time he was answered with a distinctly unsatisfying plop. I told him to knock it off, and he shuffled over to the picnic table, swung one leg over the bench, and immediately started scratching at the peeling paint.

“I just don’t get it,” he mumbled. He looked at me, then away, across the water. “Why are all women crazy?”

I told him that everyone’s crazy, by which I meant that he was crazy.

“Nah, bitches, man.” Now he was digging flecks of dried paint out from under his fingernails. I noticed they needed a trim. “I mean, they’re so irrational. It’s hormonal or something.”

He was always going on about purity, simplicity. That was what had started the argument. He told her she was wearing too much makeup, and that he liked her better without it. He just couldn’t understand why she would get so upset.

“She should be flattered, right? Doesn’t that prove that I love her, no matter what she looks like?” By now he was putting his fingers into his hair, taking them out, putting them back in.

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