Black Monk Time

• The Monks, “Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice” (buy here)

A colleague pointed out this recent column by Peter Duffy of The Chronicle-Herald in Halifax, and thank you, thank you, thank you, colleague. I haven’t laughed this hard since Borat. In short, Mr. Duffy devotes an entire column to a vivid dream – or was it? my God, it was real! – in which he was visited and sodomized by a cowled, monklike ghost.

That’s all I really want to say up front. Before we go any further, you need to go read the piece in its entirety. Here.

No, seriously. What are you waiting for? Right here.

OK, welcome back. We have much to savour. The riot of emotions that must have rocked the copyeditor along the way to the “Nocturnal visit left me shaken” hed; the intriguing stylistic choice of no fewer than 30 one-sentence paragraphs; Duffy’s lingering shock over an elderly woman dying before his – oh no, wait, only fainting; “It was midnight, late for me”; the lush description of the assault; the fact that it’s a “psychic-astrologer” who first tries – and fails – to bring Duffy back to Earth; his tenaciously looney responses to every plausible reality-based explanation that he encounters (“How did this ‘thing’ even find me?”); and, of course, the promise of a sequel column, featuring a priest.

Wow.

Having only been to Halifax a couple of times in my life, I’ve never heard of Peter Duffy, but apparently he’s been writing away for The Chronicle-Herald for years & years. I still can’t quite believe that this is real (surely this is the first draft of a long-lost Mr. Show sketch?), or that this guy is a working columnist for a theoretically reputable daily newspaper.

The raped-by-ghost piece actually got Duffy onto Gawker (here). And then there’s this, which only makes me think all over again that maybe I have slipped down a rabbit hole into some wonderland (one no doubt prowled by priapic phantom monks). Unless it’s just a convincing spoof. Which, come to think of it, is more likely.

I’ve posted this song before, but oh baby, it is Monk Time once again.

• The Monks, “Monk Time” (buy here, and check out the official Monks site here)