Captain California Battles of the Beelzebubian Beasts of the Bible: A Young Man's Encounter with the Evil Within Himself

By Buck Stanley

Captain California presents some refreshingly original ideas on religion and human psychology. It recounts the author's spiritual transition from a psychologically disturbed young man obsessed with fantasies of rape and suicide to a mature adult with a message of optimism and love. The author presents complex ideas in a simple way, in

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Mar 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951505271

Buck Stanley

The author has chosen to write under a pen name because he wishes to remain as anonymous as possible. Since Captain California is an autobiographical essay, anyone who reads it will learn a lot about the author. This author has a corny sense of humor. He believes that a great deal of pain accompanies stunted maturity.

Book preview

Stanley_EBOOK_COVER.jpg

Copyright © 2020 by Buck Stanley

Paperback: 978-1-951505-28-8

eBook: 978-1-951505-27-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of nonfiction.

Ordering Information:

BookTrail Agency

8838 Sleepy Hollow Rd.

Kansas City, MO 64114

Printed in the United States of America

The author would like to thank the British author, Colin Wilson, without whose encouragement this book would probably never have been finished.

Table of Contents

I. THE ORIGIN OF CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA

II. CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA’S FIRST MISSION

III. CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA’S CONUNDRUM

IV. THE ATTACK OF THE BIBLE MONSTER

V. CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA TRIUMPHANT

VI. CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA’S COSMO-CONCEPTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I

THE ORIGIN OF CAPTAIN CALIFORNIA

Though we will come to know Captain California rather more intimately in the course of this narrative than we ordinarily know anyone, we will never learn his true identity. We will always refer to him as either Captain California, or more simply as Cap. We should point out that Cap never thought of himself as Captain California, except derisively, but then, given his very low self-esteem, he seldom thought of himself in any manner except derisively. (Cap was more likely to think of himself as Captain Moron, or Captain Jerk-Off). However, when we think of him as Captain California, we should do so with the respect accorded to the sort of hero that this comic-book moniker implies. Cap was very much an average, good-natured kid upon whom God, or Fate, or Blind Chance, or His Own Stupidity, however we like to explain our lives to ourselves, dumped an unusually gross load of shit. Captain California managed to crawl out from under this filth without committing suicide, becoming a drug addict or a serial killer, going postal, w taxpayers as an inmate at a mental institution, and even without irritating those of us whom he happened to meet with obnoxious religious fanaticism. How many of us, we pause to ask ourselves rhetorically, could have managed as well?

We first meet Captain California on a hot Friday evening in July 1973. Cap was twenty-two. He had grown up on a pig farm way out in the country, but he now lived in the fabled city of Indianapolis. He graduated from a small college near his boyhood home about five months previously, and for the past four months has been working at the sort of boring, meaningless, but kind-of-well-paying job that those of us who are blessed with them are supposed to be happy that we are fortunate enough to have. Although Cap had not yet reached the point of admitting to himself that he hated his job, that came shortly. At the moment, he was feeling deliriously happy. Since this was the last evening that Cap was to feel anything but terrified and miserable for at least the next two years or so, this is a particularly poignant moment for us to make his acquaintance. Unfortunately, the reason for Cap’s present state of ecstatic well-being was, as he was soon to discover, entirely delusional.

For the past four years, Cap had had an intense crush on Velvet Fox, a svelte blonde woman just as heart-stabbingly beautiful as her rather ridiculous, Hollywood-like name suggests. (Although this was not her real name, her real name was quite similar to Velvet Fox). Though Cap would ordinarily never even have considered trying to talk to a girl like her, in some mysterious way completely beyond his comprehension, she had become his lab partner in chemistry class. While Velvet was getting top grades as a psychology major, chemistry completely overwhelmed her. Cap was a science whiz. With a lot of help from him, she managed to make a B – in the course. Of course, she had a boyfriend with whom she seemed to be very much in love, so Cap never really had any intention of asking her for a date. But then just a few weeks previously Velvet had caught her boyfriend screwing some other girl, so she immediately broke up with him. Cap had always thought that her boyfriend was a complete asshole, and had been disappointed with her for not being able to see him for what he was. Now, finally, she agreed with him.

Despite Cap’s conviction that it was a ridiculous thing for him to be seriously dreaming of, he began to seriously dream of asking Velvet for a date. Cap had never had a date with a girl before. He had seldom worked up the courage to ask a girl for a date, but whenever he had, the girls had always either turned him down, usually not very kindly, or stood him up. After having been universally rejected by all of those relatively ordinary girls, he could only conclude that the probability that Velvet would want to go out with him was probably not even faintly probable. Unfortunately, the desire to have Velvet as his girlfriend had successfully breached the defenses of his good sense and established a secure beachhead. Since he could not get her out of his mind, it would be sort of stupid if he let her go off and find a new boyfriend without at least putting her through the minor discomfort of officially rejecting him.

So Cap had asked Velvet if she wanted to go to movies with him. Actually he had said, "Jesus Christ, Superstar is playing. I’d kind of like to go see it. I’d prefer not to go alone. Would you like to come along with me, since you and Carl are broken up now." He mentally kicked himself for having added that last part, but there it was. If the truth be known, Cap was a devout atheist and really had very little interest in watching Jesus Christ, Superstar, but he remembered hearing Velvet singing some of the songs from the album when it had come out, so he figured she would be interested in seeing the movie.

She gave him a surprised look, which he interpreted as meaning Why on earth is someone like you asking out someone like me, but then she smiled at him and said, Sure, I’d like that. Cap had been in ecstasy ever since, and tonight was the big night.

Driving along to her apartment in his battered old Volkswagen beetle that he had freshly washed inside and out in honor of the occasion, Cap, as we can easily imagine, was experiencing enormous sexual tension. Even though he was making every effort to not think of Velvet sexually, he had had an enormous erection for the past two hours. How in the hell was he supposed to spend the whole evening with her with this stupid thing trying to burst out of his pants? He was wearing a pair of baggy pants and a long, loose shirt to try and hide the thing, but it was not as if she could possibly fail to notice it. He hoped that she did not intend to wear one of those short skirts that she sometimes wore, which permitted him a generous glimpse her panties every time she shifted her legs. When he had first met her, she had nearly driven him out of his mind doing that. It had not bothered him as much after he had gotten to know her better, but he had never been alone with her before. Oh, hell! How could it matter what she wore? His hard-on could hardly get any bigger than it already was. Cap started drowning in the presentiment that this evening was really going to turn out horribly.

He parked the car and got out, so nervous that he dropped the keys as he tried to lock the door. At this rate, it would be a miracle if he did not wind up spilling a Coke on her before the evening was over. He looked up at the window that he thought was her apartment and could not help but notice that it was dark. Did he have the wrong address? He pulled the slip of paper out of his pocket and reread the address that Velvet had written out for him. He hardly needed to do this since he had already read it over about a million times. This was definitely Velvet’s address, and it really looked like she was not at home.

Well, this was after all, just what he had expected. This was hardly the first time he had been stood up by some girl that he was supposed to have a date with. He almost just got back in the car to drive away, but no, he should at least go and knock on the door first. So he did that, and sure enough, Velvet was not at home.

Captain California chuckled wryly to himself. The next time he saw her, in the unlikely event that there ever was a next time, she would no doubt tell him, in the coldly unapologetic, amused way that girls always did that sort of thing, that she was sorry but she had simply forgotten that she was supposed to go out with him that evening. Well, at least now he did not have to worry about making a complete ass of himself.

He banged his fist into the fender of his car hard enough to dent it and break the skin of his knuckles. Well that was a stupid thing to do. Now his hand was bleeding and hurt like hell. He flexed his fingers to see if he had broken any bones. God! All he needed to top off the evening was a trip to the hospital. Fortunately, his hand was okay.

He got into his car and drove away. So what was he going to do now? What he really felt like doing now was driving at top speed into a brick wall. This was an urge that he often had, and he wondered why he did not just actually do it. His whole life amounted to nothing but bullshit. Working so hard for top grades in college, and for what? So he could spend the rest of his life making new kinds of plastics? Who in hell cared if the world had one more kind of plastic – the very symbol of modern American phoniness? In real life, the girl that The Graduate loved thought he was a complete dork and wanted nothing to do with him. The thought of being dead, of the great peace that could be achieved by completely extinguishing his consciousness, filled him with yearning that was just as strong and painful as his yearning for Velvet Fox. But since he could not quite bring himself to do it right at the moment, he decided to drive back to Indianapolis and go watch the movie that he had intended to see with Velvet.

Jesus Christ, Superstar did not succeed very well at taking Cap’s mind off of Velvet. He kept imagining that she was sitting there beside him, and they were holding hands. Imaginary girl friends worked out much better that way. If she had really been there beside him, he would never have dared to touch her. What the movie did succeed at, much to Cap’s surprise, was an appreciation of Jesus that he had never had before. The ugly, self-righteous hypocrisy of Christianity had always led Cap to despise Jesus. The movie made him realize that Jesus was not merely some vile, fictitious god dreamed up by Ku Klux Klan Christians to justify their petty hatreds, greed, and racism, but an actual historical human being who had most likely not only been opposed to those things, but had died fighting them. This realization did not make any great impression on him, in the sense of striking him as being particularly important, but it did register in the back of his mind.

On his way home from the movie, Cap stopped off at the neighborhood Rexall’s to look through the comic books. Cap had been too busy studying, and too poor, to read very many comics during his four years in college, but now he was getting back into them again. He was excited to see the newest issues of Jack Kirby’s The New Gods and The Forever People. The story lines of these two were linked together, along with Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s Pal and Mr. Miracle, and