A Guided Tour Of My Body’s Temple

Nathan Pashley
Slackjaw
Published in
4 min readMar 19, 2024

No pictures, please.

Image by C Widyanto

Greetings all and welcome to My Body’s Temple! My name’s Nathan, and I’ll be your guide on this exclusive tour.

Before we enter, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that no pictures are allowed in the temple. Inside these four walls lie many ancient artifacts that are confronting, to say the least. And the things you’ll see today will change how you look at me, forever. I promise you.

Got it? Great! Let’s swing open these temple doors and head to our first site! Any questions so far? Yes ma’am, the doors are supposed to creak. That’s just what happens when you get older.

Come, follow me up these impractical, winding stairs. As we ascend, please take a moment to peruse our collection of photographs depicting My Body’s Temple throughout the years. As you can see, the temple’s best days are far behind it, and a lifetime of neglect has reduced this once beautiful feat of architecture to the sad, dilapidated heap you see before you. Honestly, it’s hard to believe that it’s the same building.

Sir, be careful! This stairwell and the entire building could give out at any moment.

Here’s a fun fact: My Body’s Temple is rigged with an old but sophisticated network of booby traps designed to keep people from getting too close. With that in mind, please line up behind me and pay attention to the exact sequence of steps I take down this hallway.

It’s crucial you get this right. Your life depends on it.

Ah, we’ve arrived at the temple’s library. Here, all the knowledge known to the temple is stored and archived. Feel free to take a moment to read some of our sacred texts. Two of the temple’s favorites are How To Suppress Your Emotions for Dummies and A Visual History of People Who Have Wronged Me in the Distant Past. Please stay out of the restricted section, it’s full of porn.

Let’s continue! Yes, the walls are always this moldy. And no, I don’t know what that smell is, but if I had to guess, I’d say burrito.

Ok everyone, it’s time to head to the east wing. Kindly direct your eyes to the floor for this part of the tour. My Body’s Temple is home to an ancient demon named Anzu The Traumatic. He moved in during the early days of the temple’s construction. Any eye contact with Anzu, even a cursory glance, will paralyze you for eternity.

It’s safe to look up now. In fact, we encourage it, because up on the roof is our famous My Body’s Temple fresco art. Here, you can derive many of the temple’s philosophies and religious ideas from the motifs hidden in the artwork. The left quadrant of the piece depicts a man reaching out for God and finding nothing there. In the middle right is a photorealistic image of Bob Marley smoking a joint, commissioned in the temple’s teenage years.

Next, you’ll find our famous hedge maze out the window to the left. The design represents how every important life decision at the temple, no matter how simple, is made unnecessarily complex, becoming caught in a series of wrong turns until the decision eventually reaches a dead end, ultimately trapping it for eternity. It flowers in January.

We’re nearly at our final stop. And, sir, ma’am, could you both please refrain from laughing at the tiny penises on the temple statues.

At last, here in the heart of My Body’s Temple sits an important antique totem gifted to the temple by an ex-lover. As you can see, it symbolizes the very moment she left the temple for a cool, hip yoga monastery where they stretch and basically have sex for months at a time in a “judgment-free zone.” Patrons of the temple often visit this room to reflect on what a bitch she is and how lame yoga is anyway.

Ma’am, please tell me you didn’t move that artifact. The temple still holds a fragile hope that it’ll eventually get back together with her. Oh my god. Do you hear that? It’s happening, it’s finally happening. My Body’s Temple is coming down!

Are we all ok?! One dead? Hey, not bad. Annnnnd that brings us to the end of the tour. If it’s not too much trouble, please take a moment to rate and review your experience. And if you could spare some money for the temple’s restoration, I’d appreciate it.

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