Shalampax Speaks

Hi, peeps. If you haven’t been following my columns on Openfly’s adventures in America, you should spend a few minutes reading the previous ones (there aren’t that many yet). Otherwise, this will get confusing.

There’s an easy way to get caught up. The “Openfly Serial – Part 2” category in the navigation menu to the right includes all of my articles in this series sorted in forward chronological-order, as opposed to the reverse chronological-order that is the blogging standard.

Last time, we learned that when Marie returned to America she first lived above a strip joint on Iberville Street in New Orleans and, after she gave birth and subsequently got her figure back, she started stripping there.

MadMadMargo, who may be the daughter that Marie gave up for adoption (I’m told that we might have the DNA-based maternity test results back in as little as a few days and certainly no more than a couple of weeks), posted a comment on my last article. When, about 30 years ago, MadMadMargo visited an old friend in New Orleans, that friend’s apartment on Iberville Street was only two doors away from the Cher-Marie strip club. In her comment, MadMadMargo asked if that was the same strip joint that Marie lived above and worked in.

Well, MadMadMargo, we owe your friend a debt of gratitude. I would like to dedicate today’s column to her because if she had not lived near Cher-Marie, and if you had not mentioned it, I likely would have not had anything to write about today. Instead, thanks to your friend, we now have an interesting story about a part of Marie’s life after she returned to America. Not only that, but I also learned a very surprising fact about one of Shalampax’s businesses.

I passed your question to Openfly, who posed it to Marie. The answer is, yes, it is the same strip joint. However, it wasn’t called Cher-Marie when Marie lived above it or while she was stripping there. Back then, it was called “Cajun Bare Facts.”

It wasn’t long after Marie started stripping that she became the talk of New Orleans and the most sought after stripper in the city’s history. As a result, she was also the highest-paid “exotic dancer” in the city, by far.

With the money flowing in, she quickly had enough cash to start up her cult. But she didn’t stop there. She also bought the Cajun Bare Facts and the apartments above it. She left the strip joint as a strip joint, but she turned the upstairs apartments into her cult offices.

Marie’s cult was called Cherism. That may sound familiar to you. I’ll have more to say later on why you might recognize the name.

The premise of Cherism is that, back in the nineteenth century, God started a long, well-deserved nap. He left a Parisian stripper named Cherie and, in turn, her female descendents in charge for the millennia that his nap will last. However, being a bit absent-minded because of all he had to do as God, he forgot to tell Cherie about it.

In the off-chance that Cherie’s descendents followed in Cherie’s footsteps, Cherists, which is what Cherism devotees are called, are expected to spend a lot of time in strip clubs searching for a female descendent of Marie so they can inform her of the responsibilities that she and her descendents are supposed to fulfill until God wakes up.

Marie thought it would be a good idea to keep the strip joint open as it would benefit from spinoff business from Cherism. Marie changed the name to Cher-Marie at that time. Marie put “Cher” in the name in the hope that it would lead Cherists to believe that it might be a good place to look for a descendent of Cherie. And the fact that “cher” means “dear” in both French and Cajun created a name that would appeal to non-Cherists as well.

I promised to tell you why Cherism might sound familiar to you. There are two reasons. First, Cherism has been in the Shalampax cult religion catalog for a long time now. And second, it was only a little over five weeks ago that Gravyonshirtfront, the spirituality columnist here at Shalampax Speaks, reported that Bentteaspoon, the current owner of Cherism, was bemoaning the fact that he wasn’t doing as well as the other cult religion owners here in Shalampax.

That’s the surprising Shalampax business fact that I mentioned earlier. I had always been told that, after fleeing our island, Marie had never contacted any Shalampaxians until Openfly chanced upon her in Hawaii. I had also assumed that Bentteaspoon had started Cherism himself. Neither of those things are true.

When the American authorities eventually started badgering Marie about her cult, Shalampax already had established radio communications with the outside world. Marie used those communications to arrange to sell the Cherism cult religion to Bentteaspoon.

A few years prior to that, Marie had bought her land in California and set up her Cherism retreat. Marie kept the California land, which she converted to her current enterprises, a five-star resort and a hippie-retro commune. This was the only asset of the cult religion that she held onto.

In addition to gaining the rights to the cult religion itself, upon closing of the sale, Bentteaspoon became owner of Cher-Marie and the upstairs cult religion offices.

Bentteaspoon sold Cher-Marie within a year. He figured that, because of the international arrest warrants sworn out against him (and against most other Shalampaxians as well) he would never get to visit New Orleans. He didn’t see any point in running a strip joint if he wasn’t able to demand sexual favors in return for handing out stripping jobs.

History shows that Bentteaspoon has never been as successful with Cherism as Marie was.

Why did Marie sell Cherism to Bentteaspoon rather than to someone else? I don’t know, but hopefully we’ll get an answer to that question eventually. Could that be a clue to who MadMadMargo’s biological father is? Possibly, but I doubt it. We don’t know exactly when Marie left Shalampax, but Bentteaspoon would have been about 11 or 12 years old at the time. If he reached puberty early he might have fathered MadMadMargo, but it seems highly unlikely.

And was the sale to Bentteaspoon the only contact Marie had with Shalampaxians after her departure? Or were there others, possibly with more significant implications? Again, I don’t know. But Openfly seems to have settled into California nicely so she’ll probably be having many more conversations with Marie. Maybe the whole truth will come out eventually, but maybe not. You never know.

That’s all I’ve got for you now, peeps. Like they say, stay tuned.