=When Mike Tyson Kisses You=

Mike Tyson stuck his tongue in my mouth. He stuck his tongue in my mouth and wiggled it all around. He stuck it way back there so that I thought I would gag on it but I didn't, I didn't dare gag on it, I was scared to gag on it because I was scared that he might take offense if I did. 

We were standing at the top of some stairs going a long way down. This was in a banquet hall. He'd been telling me about his change of heart since becoming a man of God.

I was scared being so close to the edge of these very steep stairs with a man like Mike Tyson. There was a gleam of the old madness in his eyes leftover from the days when he  brutally knocked men out cold even bigger than himself within seconds of the first round, threw couches and armoires through plate glass windows of New Jersey mansions, drove Bentleys into trees and dragged women down hallways, stairways, walkways by their hair to curbs. This gleam was in his eyes even though his mouth was moving around words about God and remorse and redemption and living the right way.

He was saying all the right things, the good things, all the things you wanted him to say, but there was still that gleam of star-fire in his eyes.

I don't like to prejudge anyone, not even by past reputation. I like to hold open the possibility that we're all capable of change, even profound, unlikely, yes, even miraculous, impossible change. Even Satan must theoretically be capable of change. Otherwise, what hope is there for anyone, or this world?

But, let's face it, this was Mike Tyson. His periods of sanity have been notoriously short-lived, subject to sudden and unpredictable eruptions of violence that have consistently defied explanation. Time and again, just when you thought he'd gotten his head on straight, he'd lose it. Bad things followed. Things that were recorded in the headlines of tabloids that for once didn't have to be made up.

We were both attending an event being held in his honor. 

We had been standing there talking. Rather, he had been talking. I'd been listening. The whole time I felt that he was perfectly capable of throwing me down the stairs at any moment. That he could lower his shoulder and give me a shove without hardly knowing what he was doing. I could hardly think of anything else. I don't remember what he was saying.

The gleam in his eyes signified to me that he was beyond good and evil even if he wasn't aware of it himself. He could do anything, good or evil, at any moment.

This was Mike Tyson.

This is what He was.

Mike Tyson was God, I thought, and a shiver of transconscious recognition went through me. Of course. Revelation, when it comes, is the most obvious thing in the world. Like a freight train. Standing there at the top of those elegant stairs carpeted the deep rich color of wine or spaghetti sauce or blood, I realized that Mike Tyson was god, or the very closest thing to God I was ever going to be so close to ever in my mortal life. At the foot of those stairs I could picture my body, small in its elegant black dress, broken like a hieroglyph.

Mike Tyson's tongue was way back there in my throat, tickling that thing back there, that little thing that looks like a punching bag, a speed-bag, I think they call it in boxing, the uvula is what the anatomist calls it. It's the thing that helps you talk, forms consonants; it seals off your nasal passages so that you don't breathe in foods or liquids, so you don't drown when you drink a glass of milk. His tongue was pushing that thing back and I felt like I might start gagging, but I didn't.

I calmed down and let him wiggle his thick, fat tongue at the back of my throat, groping around back there, searching for what? It seemed as if he were trying to tell me something. His tongue was moving around in this very intimate way, trying to impart some message, a secret, perhaps. This is like glossolalia, I was thinking. This is Mike Tyson speaking in tongues.

It's like a communion or a baptism or Moses hearing God talking from a burning bush.

I stood there petrified until it was over, which took a long time.

I had forgotten all about the stairs.

I had forgotten all about everything. 

When it was over, I could barely make my way over to the wall furthest away from the stairs. I fell heavily into a chair. I sat there for a long time feeling as if I were under water. Or as if the world was under water and I was looking down into it.

Months, a year, two years later, Mike Tyson's tongue is still in my mouth. It will never truly be withdrawn. Once Mike Tyson's tongue has been in your mouth it stays there forever. Once you're kissed by Mike Tyson, you stay kissed. I feel it in there now, that tongue, wiggling around, fat like a bloated snake, saying something or other.

But what it's saying I can't say. 

Mike Tyson's tongue has swallowed my tongue, it has taken up residence, rooted to the back of my jaw, and I can't spit it out.