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    Where's Jesus: a novella
    Where's Jesus: a novella
    Where's Jesus: a novella
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    Where's Jesus: a novella

    By Michael Phillips

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Where's Jesus is a story about a man obsessed with finding the physical man Jesus Christ. In his obsession he explores his sexuality with his mistress and alienates his wife who also strays from the marriage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMar 2, 2020
    ISBN9781098302672
    Where's Jesus: a novella
    Author

    Michael Phillips

    Professor Mike Phillips has a BSc in Civil Engineering, an MSc in Environmental Management and a PhD in Coastal Processes and Geomorphology, which he has used in an interdisciplinary way to assess current challenges of living and working on the coast. He is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research, Innovation, Enterprise and Commercialisation) at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and also leads their Coastal and Marine Research Group. Professor Phillips' research expertise includes coastal processes, morphological change and adaptation to climate change and sea level rise, and this has informed his engagement in the policy arena. He has given many key note speeches, presented at many major international conferences and evaluated various international and national coastal research projects. Consultancy contracts include beach monitoring for the development of the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay, assessing beach processes and evolution at Fairbourne (one of the case studies in this book), beach replenishment issues, and techniques to monitor underwater sediment movement to inform beach management. Funded interdisciplinary research projects have included adaptation strategies in response to climate change and underwater sensor networks. He has published >100 academic articles and in 2010 organised a session on Coastal Tourism and Climate Change at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in his role as a member of the Climate, Oceans and Security Working Group of the UNEP Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands. He has successfully supervised many PhD students, and as well as research students in his own University, advises PhD students for overseas universities. These currently include the University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban, University of Technology, Mauritius and University of Aveiro, Portugal. Professor Phillips has been a Trustee/Director of the US Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF) since 2011 and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Coastal Research. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Victoria, British Columbia and Visiting Professor at the University Centre of the Westfjords. He was an expert advisor for the Portuguese FCT Adaptaria (coastal adaptation to climate change) and Smartparks (planning marine conservation areas) projects and his contributions to coastal and ocean policies included: the Rio +20 World Summit, Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands; UNESCO; EU Maritime Spatial Planning; and Welsh Government Policy on Marine Aggregate Dredging. Past contributions to research agendas include the German Cluster of Excellence in Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) and the Portuguese Department of Science and Technology.

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      Book preview

      Where's Jesus - Michael Phillips

      Copyright February 2020

      Michael Phillips

      ISBN: 978-1-09830-266-5 (print)

      ISBN: 978-1-09830-267-2 (ebook)

      Somewhere between folding his laptop and walking to his car Jay Carlson realized something about himself that had been on his mind for a long time. He was empty. He was filled with organs but they didn’t feel anything. Most of the time when he touched a person he felt their skin but he wanted to feel their soul. He turned the car on and paused, his head resting heavily on the steering wheel. He breathed in the scent of his 23 year old secretary who had gone to lunch with him just a few hours before. It was musk. Stale, juvenile and erotic the fragrance settled around him like a dog collar. He exhaled hard and tried to blow it all away. The whole summer had been difficult. He was forty four but he told every one he met he was forty five because he knew it was coming in December and thought somehow it would lessen the blow when it finally came. He was a cliché. Jay Carlson the adulterer. Couldn’t he at least go out and find someone his own age. Someone that might not believe everything he said. Couldn’t he find someone out there who wasn’t a 36D cup with a tight ass? Someone who wasn’t on their first job and knew that big hair and musk perfume weren’t appropriate in a national insurance office. Someone who wasn’t named Tonya. He put the car in reverse to back out of his parking space and rolled down the window. The air was moist and sweet from the honeysuckle. For just a second it brought back the smell of his baseball glove when he used to rub lexol all over it to make it flexible. He was ten and just starting little league. His mitt needed to be broken in for the first game of the season and he cared so much about doing it right that he carefully placed the baseball in the webbing and folded the fingers around the ball. He applied a thick rubber band around the mitt and placed it in between his mattress and box springs letting it stay there for two weeks. When he finally removed the mitt from between the mattresses he felt a deep sense of accomplishment and pride. It had been a long time since anything he did for himself made him feel that way. Most of what he did made him feel small and forgotten.

      Life plodded on for him. It didn’t fly by like people were always saying. It goes by fast so enjoy each day was bullshit. His life was slow and boring and in many ways humiliating. He didn’t like cheating on his wife with a Bimbo. He thought it would be more appropriate if he cheated on her with someone who was classy. But it didn’t matter because he was having a hard time feeling anything. A horn honked and startled him. What’s the matter asshole? he heard a voice yell. He realized he was still stopped in the parking space frozen in his downward spiral of feelings. Shit. He pressed on the gas and cranked the wheel to extract himself from the parking space, threw it in gear before it stopped and lunged forward toward home. Home was a concept he was struggling with. He was duplicating a place where he grew up. He was married to his mother who he was now fucking and he was becoming his father. He knew he acted like his father at times and he hated himself when he did it. Fits of anger welled up uncontrollably and he could hear a whisper in his head saying You’re James Carlson and I hate you. It was usually when his wife Marsha would ask him about going to church on Sunday. She was catholic and even though she didn’t know what the sacrament was for she always wanted Jay to go to church. Most Saturday nights would end with the same argument. Are you coming with me to church tomorrow, Jay?

      No, you know I don’t go to church so why do you keep asking me?

      Well, I just keep hoping that some day you’ll come with me and say a few prayers

      Why would I do that when I don’t believe in God?

      Nonsense, of course you believe in God

      No I don’t. I can’t see him, or touch him or talk to him and I don’t even know if he is a she or an it. I don’t see the point.

      Well you just have to accept some things that you don’t understand and the church is a good place to start.

      Oh c’mon Marsha that’s crap. All the church does is scare you to death and make you feel guilty about living like a human being.

      You mean fooling around don’t you?

      What are talking about?

      You don’t want to confess anything?

      If I did have anything to confess it wouldn’t be to the church it would be to you.

      Well, you better be careful because I might not forgive you…but the church definitely will.

      That was a Saturday night argument that always wiped out any chance for sex. The sex was strictly intercourse with a rubber. After 18 years of marriage she still made him use a rubber. Marsha knew his past relationships and she insisted that there might be some lingering disease that was lying dormant. Oral sex was dirty in her mind so she wouldn’t let him down there and she definitely wouldn’t do anything to him. That was what he liked about Tonya. She was open and liked to do everything.

      Traffic was jammed and he could only recall stopping at one light and making two turns but realized he was almost half way home. It had been one of those dangerous drives where he couldn’t remember driving; just thinking. He shook his head and read the license plate in front of him. LTV 469. Sixty-Nine was a position he imagined getting Marsha in. She was small and never got on top. He imagined her squirming on top of him rising to orgasm and then the image went away. It was unrealistic. He flashed to his mother in the kitchen making hamburgers. He shook his head again and turned the radio on.

      What was it about his mother that made her so sacred? She was the moral authority for him. She was the difference between right and wrong and so many things were wrong. Sex seemed always to be wrong. With Marsha what they did made him feel like he was taking something that belonged to someone else. It wasn’t exactly stealing but it felt like it. One time he took a marble and threw it at his brothers’ fish tank. The fish tank exploded and the fish flopped on the floor. It was pathetic the way the fish contorted out of the water drowning in the air. He was horrified at first and then felt some pleasure in taking something from his brother that he knew was important. The fish were necessary casualties. Having sex with Marsha made him feel that same fiendish pleasure. He knew he was taking something that was important to her. He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t find any part of himself

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