"What's the most obnoxious thing you've ever worn...?"

For me, the answer would be a t-shirt I bought in college: one that is easily the most blasphemous thing I've ever seen in my life.

The shirt was poorly-drawn, but it got its point cross very well. It had a close-up of a large, wooden cross - the sort the Romans used to nail people to, back in the day. On that cross was the upper thorax, arms and skull of someone who'd been crucified there for way too long, and had rotten about halfway to the bone. Everything below the ribcage was gone, as was its jawbone and one of its eyes.

Perched on the left shoulder of this unfortunate fellow was a crudely-drawn demon. It could have come out of a medieval tome on witchcraft, and looked like a blocky cross between a dog, a dragon and a rooster. It had a whanger about as big as your arm, and was busy poking said organ into one side of the corpse's decaying noggin and out the other.

And in big letters - either above the picture, or just below it - was written this motto:

I bought it from a fellow, older gamer at Athens' RPG club, based on the description of the shirt alone. One Saturday, he brought it in, and unfurled it without a trace of shame. I looked at it, grinned wickedly and bought it. I think someone applauded my purchase, but I can't remember who.

The shirt was - and still is - one of the most obnoxiously wrong things I've ever seen, so of course I had to have it. And since it only cost me five dollars (and possibly my own, immortal soul?) I thought I got myself a bargain.

"Did you ever wear it?"

Yes. I've worn it twice, now, and two times was more than enough. I will never wear it again.

But it taught me a valuable lesson, so I think it was well worth that five dollars.

"Care to explain?"

Sure.

The first time I wore it was at a dance night at the bar I used to frequent in Athens. Every Saturday night they had a really good "Progressive" night, so I went up to down a few beers, lose my self-consciousness and take to the floor once there were enough people on it. This was a regular thing for me: probably the only steady exercise I got in college, other than walking from class to class.

So one night, not long after I bought it, I wore it under my trenchcoat and went up to the bar. No one really noticed it, mostly because of the coat. Or maybe they did and they just didn't care, or didn't care to comment, or didn't want to risk having to talk to me in order to comment. After a while I totally forgot I even had it on.

Then, while I was up at the bar talking with some friends, a friend of a friend took a look at the shirt, pointed his finger at it and said "What is that?" I opened my coat up and beamed, and his face just...

Well, it didn't fall. His face was suspended somewhere between disbelief and rage, with no ability to go from one to the other without a further push. But even a complete doofus could have figured out that he was deeply, horribly offended.

He wanted to talk about it. He, as a Christian, wanted to know why, or how, I could be wearing something like... that.

So I, as an Atheist, explained that I wasn't actually talking about the Jesus Christ - ultra-cool historical figure who taught the world that it's better to die for cause than kill for it. I was aiming my anger - and the shirt - at the false Jesus of the Televangelists: the mean-spirited asshole who hated queers, feminists, non-Christians, Democrats and whoever else they didn't like this week.

Believe me, that explanation made a lot of sense in 1992. But he wasn't buying it. He just shook his head and made it clear - in words I can no longer recall - that he wasn't happy at my choice of apparel.

With nothing left to say to one another, he walked off, still stunned and in a state of disbelief. I don't think we two ever saw each other again. And if we did, it must have been brief, and I'm sure we didn't say anything to one another. Then again, after that night, I don't think there was anything else to say.

Now, I'd only met this guy before once. He was a friend of a good friend I've since lost direct connection to, unfortunately. This good friend talked me into going to this dive Chinese restaurant - located partway down Union St. hill - for their Friday "All you can eat" special*, and this guy came along for the ride.

At the time, this friend of my friend and I didn't have much to say to one another. I think he was friends with my friend for much different reasons - maybe schoolwork? - so we had little in common. In fact, he struck me as a non-entity, or at least someone who was distinctly unimpressed with my no-doubt witty banter on a Friday.

But I really do think having met him once before may have saved me from a fist fight, right then and there. When his face fell, I could see the furious confusion in his eyes. It's the same furious confusion that you usually see just as someone realizes that you really did just pinch his girlfriend's ass, or call his mother a coke whore; It's the brain shifting from "hey, things are cool" to "fight-kill-eat-hump" mode, which gives you around two to three seconds to either apologize and/or run for the door, or else get ready to put up your dukes and have at it.

If I'd just been some smirking face attached to a t-shirt, I think he would have stepped over the line and pasted me one. And I'd have deserved it, too.

"Why?"

I'll get into that later.

"You said there was a second time?"

Yes. This one was a little more surreal.

My wife and I were visiting Pagan friends up in Akron, and one night we had a Vampire LARP** This was held under the auspices of one person - the Game Master, in fact - needing to infuse better dialogue into a stage play that was going to be based on this. I have no idea how he was going to swing turning White Wolf's copyrighted material into a real play, but I'll give him credit for trying.

Anyway, I got to play a member of a vampiric Clan which is known for its anarchic tendencies, iconoclastic manners and criminally-short temper. So I thought of what a Brujah might wear, and came up with my duster, my black leather boots, jeans and the FUCK THE SKULL OF JESUS t-shirt. It was obvious.

We drove up, and we played. It was an alright night of gaming, though we were clearly railroaded into a train-wreck ending that had little or no chance of survival. High points included dragging a now-former friend out of a 'burning' house by his ankles, one friend finding his muse and scaring not only my character, but also me, and one line I had about the time my city'd had a Brujah in control of it: "It only lasted for about three hours, but boy was that a good three hours..."

But when I asked Out Of Character about that shirt, people seemed to blanche a little and disapprove. Not violently, mind you. I got nothing like I got that one night at the bar. But I do remember some negative comments being made about it, most memorably that it was a bit much. And I could see the wheels spinning behind those eyes, going "ewwwww...." as they went around and around.

Keep in mind that these were folks who enjoyed trash-talking "X-tians" and had little or nothing good to say about Christianity in general. I've found that a lot of modern Pagans came from backgrounds where their childhood and/or adolescence just sucked, and Christ's presence in that part of their lives was either a further tool of repression or a horrid contradiction of his teachings. In that house on that night, everyone was fairly true to form, including - I'm ashamed to say - yours truly.

But when they saw that shirt, in all its obscene glory, even they were quite taken aback. Even to them, this crossed a line. Even to them, this was wrong.

That was about the time I finally learned the true meaning of what it means to be antinomian. And it's left a bad taste in my mouth ever since.

"What do you mean?"

Antinomian. Against Name.

When working antinomian magic you consciously and deliberately break taboos in order to gain power. Society has ingrained a sense of right and wrong upon the world, and the mass weight of untold ages' worth of people upholding those values - or at least thinking they should uphold those values, even if they don't - has created something akin to a forward momentum. That motion is power.

You get some power for going along, of course. But if you consciously and deliberately hang an arm outside the moving vehicle, you also get power from the drag. You might also break your arm, though, but no one ever said this was supposed to be safe. And given what you have to do in order to work that kind of magic, these days, well...

So that's it in a nutshell: blasphemy is power, but violent outrage is its eventual consequence. The angry mob will kick in your door and burn you at the stake, sooner or later. The question is only how you'll be made to burn, or whether it was really worth it in the end.

There is blasphemy committed in the name of the pursuit of higher and lower truth, such as when you tell the Emperor he has no clothes, or question whether the sun goes around the earth like the Church says it does. Such blasphemers tend to suffer in their own time, but if their questions eventually bear useful fruit then their names are cleared of wrongdoing.

But there is also blasphemy committed for selfish or angry reasons. Such as the aforementioned antinomian magicians, all eating poop to try and get more out the world's bargain than they're truly owed, or worth. Or the resentful, mean-spirited and rebellious kid who declares there is no God because some really scary bastards took Him away and turned Him into a weapon they could use to get votes.

So you deserved a good punch in the face for wearing that shirt for selfish reasons? Is that what you're trying to say?

Exactly. I wasn't being witty or clever - I was being a prat, and I deserved to have my ass handed back to me for it.

And I think that's something that's terribly wrong with today's modern media. We have a lot of antinomians out there, but not all of them are questioning The Word From On High in pursuit of higher or lower truth. Some of them are just cynically poking their penises - or attack wombs, as the case may be - into the wrong hole to get cash, make people read their blog, or play into the anger they feel for some old wound, however real or imaginary.

Now, don't get me wrong: there is a place for anger in discourse. It's nice to want to forgive people their small-minded stupidity and give them just that much more rope to hang themselves with. But sometimes you just gotta say that you are angry at so and so, for X and Y reason, and let it hang out - especially if so and so has power over you, or at least the ability to make your life less pleasant. You can call it Sacred Rage, if you like. Maybe Righteous Anger, if you swing on that side of the pew.

However: coupled with that Righteous Anger should be some grounding - some sense that you're doing The Right Thing for The Right Reasons. This is another important principle in Magic. Selfishness is a sneaky and destructive little bugger, and if you're not careful to wipe it out of your mind before doing anything, you're going to get nailed for it.

So why are these people bringing up the old canard about Martin Luther King being a Communist, or Hillary Clinton having had Vincent Foster shot and killed, or George W. Bush's actions since 9/11 having been all about oil, or... whatever? Is it because they want to see the truth out in the open, or because they want to see the target bleed just that much more? Are they really standing for higher principles, or just bending them to their use to score another point in the Culture War?

What are they poking us with, and why?

Good question. When's the last time you asked it of yourself?

I thought I just did.

* The place was a danky hole in the wall that smelled of egg drop soup. The special consisted of them throwing a few trays of food out, followed by everyone jumping into line to get it, and then going back for whatever was left, which wasn't much. It would be a few more years before Athens got a "real" Chinese buffet - some time after the dive went out of business - and even that went out of business shortly after we left town for South Korea. Make of that what you will.

** Live Action RolePlay. This is where you play a game by impersonating your character, and walking around a pre-set area, with Game Masters floating around to present situations or adjudicate them. I tend to hate LARPing both from the standpoint of being (1) too lazy to want to walk around, and (2) too unmotivated to do that and deal with the stupid, Out Of Character politics that inevitably screw such groups up. One-shot LARPs tend to be okay, in terms of the latter, but I still don't enjoy them as much as sitting on my ass in a chair and playing the character from the waist up, only.