May Day! Fornicating thingies ahead!

May, the month of May Day but not mayday, the month of Maypoles and named for the gentle Goddess Maia. If you are a good Commie, you celebrate Workers International Solidarity Day on May 1 by singing “The Internationale.”

May, too, the month of witches, when pagan European peasants fell upon each other in sexual frenzy, rolling in furrowed fields to help crop’s fertility. At least that’s what they told their folks. This might explain the Evil Empire’s demise. Would you rather sing “The Internationale” with a bunch of people with bad teeth, or would you rather peel off your clothes and etc.?

I thought so.

“Mayday” as a radio distress call has nothing to do with either pinkos or pitching naked woo. It’s from the French “m’aider,” meaning “help moi.”

So if someone lopes down your street shouting “May day! May day!” my advice is to first yell “Comrade!” If you get a blank stare, try “What’s wrong?” If the blank stare continues, this may be your lucky day, plus your lawn will be green.

Maia’s daughter is Flora, whose day (the Floralia) was celebrated with flowers and fooling around. St. Augustine said the Floralia was a wingding of naked dancing and, ahem, doing it in the streets.

As Christianity spread into Europe, happy pagan fornicating in May fields died away. Church fathers said witches were ugly, filthy and did nauseating things. Rock music not yet being invented, witchcraft became unpopular. Fornicating kept on, but more quietly unless in the motel room next to mine.

Then there are maypoles, which are today Disneyed into inoffensive things wrapped with colorful streamers. In India, from whence came the maypole, the pole thrust into the earth was a god’s lingam, which is Sanskrit for “thingie.” Settle down. You—in back—stop that giggling or you can come to the front of the class and share what’s so funny.

On May 9, 1960, fertility and morals changed when the first birth control pill was approved by the FDA. This was the first sure contraceptive, and it touched off the sexual revolution of the ‘60s. The revolution was over in 1979, although no one realized it, when the first case of AIDS was positively diagnosed in New York City. In May 1983, the first experimental evidence was discovered for a retrovirus causing AIDS. The revolutionaries trudged out of the trenches, muttering “Anyone got a condom?”

The Catholic Church said God still disapproved of putting a condom on your thingie. Apparently God has a cell phone into the Vatican and cares about your thingie.

While we’re talking the Church, on May 15, 1252, Pope Innocent IV—great name—allowed torture as a useful tool for Inquisitors to root out heresy. The innocent, the uppity, the religious all got swept into terror that lasted for centuries.

Joan d’Arc was burned May 30, 1431, as a witch and heretic. You may think they burned her because she said she heard voices of angels, but they actually got her on a technicality. This may sound ridiculous, but it’s the truth—they convicted her because she wore men’s clothes without possessing a thingie. Perhaps you think the church is obsessed with thingies. However, as a circumcised Jew, I’m not pointing fingers.

Settle down, I said.

Sam Clemens, who invented Mark Twain in Virginia City in 1863, published his book, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, in May, 1896. Clemens thought it was his most important book—better than Huckleberry Finn and Connecticut Yankee.

There’s a reason you’ve never heard of it. It was terrible. Twain contemporary Harry Thurston Peck said he knew of only one person who’d read it all the way through—an unfortunate reviewer who was determined to make it to the end. Peck confessed that he’d given up because of the book’s “egregious dullness.”

I’ve read excerpts. Peck was right. If you want to check for yourself, the whole wretched mess is online at www.litrix.com/joan/joan001.htm.

And now, straight to the big finish. Our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy was born May 29. This year the young president would be, brace yourself, 86. Ah, but if he were alive today he’d still be doing his best to keep our fields fertile, bless his wee Irish thingie.