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You can be my lover incognito
My roommate, Gene? He likes to pretend that he’s this diehard Jew. For example, this is how an actual conversation he had at Biddy’s Pub went last week: Gene: “Hey Baby, you’re hot.” Baby: “I’m sorry, I don’t date fat people.” Gene: “That’s ok. You’re not Jewish, so we can’t get married.” It must go differently every once in a while (“Really, the new tax laws are quite fascinating. And did you see that new FASB ruling? Woo-wee”) although, judging by the dearth of repeat customers, not that often. He must get them in bed using sensitivity or some other such nonsense. But a guy like Gene, he shouldn’t draw lines on something like religion. And don’t assume that I’m being Anti-Semitic just because I’m not one of the Chosen People. I think Gene’s a great guy. Really. Well, most of the time. I’ve noticed that people often confuse an inability to empathize with them on one specific occasion with an inability to empathize in general. The only thing that I know for sure is that God likes money. It makes sense, really, when you think about it. Like any other poor schlub – take Abraham walking around the desert, for example, or one of those African tree gods – he just wants what other people have. Or maybe he started out like Buddha – he had a bout of equality and now realizes his mistake. But if you ask me, anyone who needs a bunch of buildings and other assorted real estate dedicated to him is either super-insecure or just likes owning a lot of stuff, and it’s hard to be insecure when you’re all-knowing and all-seeing. But I guess that insecurity is all in the interpretation. I’m not saying anything all that new here, and I know that I’m not saying it as eloquently as most. But Gene’s a guy who believes the same thing that people 5,000 some-odd years ago believed, and it’s all centered around this idea that there’s going to be a messiah that comes one day, but he never shows up. So the entire point of that religion is to wait for this dude to show up, and when he does you actually have to be sure that you’ve found the right guy and that you’re not worshipping a false prophet, and then what do you get? I mean, there’s not even all that much of an afterlife for Jews, right? I was raised Catholic. I won’t even get into that. I mean, I spent my youth being told by a bunch of celibate people that everything I’ll ever do in my life will land me in this place where the caretakers don’t get bored with their continual duty to torment me (I mean, even bullies need a day off), except if you actually take the time to read the Bible, you find out that they don’t talk all that much about hell and that this entire idea of burning for the rest of eternity is more Madison Avenue than Jerusalem. I’m sure you’re running to your stolen book donated by the Gideons to some hotel somewhere to prove me wrong now. And then there’s all those Eastern religions. I don’t know too much about them, I’ll admit, but then again, I live in New York and the idea of giving away all of my worldly possessions to be a Buddhist or accepting some caste system to be Hindu or reading fortune cookies or whatever just sounds a lot more idealistic than I care to be. I’ve decided that the only thing like religion that I believe in is astrology. First, I can get my personalized horoscope for free without having to sit in a stuffy room for hours on end. Second, if you’re going to say that God influences your actions – and don’t even get me started on what crap this idea of free will is – and then you’re going to claim that God doesn’t influence you through the movement of the planets, then you’re just smoking crack. I mean, you have no idea how God marionettes you. It seems to me to be just as rational to assume that it happens because the planets move through a pre-determined path in the sky, I mean, if you’re going to buy the whole universe-was-formed-in-seven-days idea anyway, which I know is only popular in the South where some dumbass legislator decided that creationism was just as valid as Darwinism. I try not to think too much, though; it just pisses me off, and then everyone else gets PO’ed at me too. Maybe we should all look at it this way: physicists believe, at least for the time being, that our planet can support life for about one billion years total. So far, we’re about halfway through that, so subtract out five hundred million years. That leaves us with about half-a-billion years before the sun expands to the size of Earth’s orbit and we’re all dead in a big, fiery inferno, but it leaves out the possibility that we have another ice age sometime in the next 100,000 years or that an asteroid hits us and kills us like it killed the dinosaurs before the sun expands, which has a probability of, like, 100%. So, yeah, if you believe that some deity went to all this trouble to make life hospitable for us, specifically, for what may end up being only another 100,000 years or so, then, ok, fine. You have fun with that. I don’t want to sit in this apartment anymore.
Gene stumbles into the apartment. The girl standing next to him, who lied about her name earlier in the night and is trying desperately to remember if she said that she was a Jane or a Suzanne and whether he was a Mark or a Milton, it was definitely some ‘M’ name, runs into the bathroom, kneels in front of the toilet and starts to vomit. Gene falls into the kitchen, takes the Brita pitcher out of the fridge and starts yelling in the direction of Pete’s room for not refilling it earlier in the night. Pete, who is at work at this moment trying to find a synonym for the word “convergence” that sounds equally businessy, can’t hear him as he rants, “All you had to do was refill the fucking pitcher, and now me and Stacy have to drink tap water and that’s totally not cool.” Stacy, as she learns is her name, squeezes some toothpaste from the bathroom counter onto her finger and rubs it around her mouth before spitting into the sink. Afterwards, she walks in a straight line from the bathroom to the kitchen. She forgot to flush. She points waveringly at the pitcher of water and Gene pours her a glass of tap. “Don’t you have filtered water?” Stacy? smells the water. “My dumbass roommate forgot to fill it. Sometimes, I swear, I’m just going to answer an ad on Craigslist and move out of this place.” “Oh.” She takes a little sip and coughs. “Do you want something to eat?” “Not really.” Stacy puts down her still-full glass, resigns herself to a hangover and walks around the breakfast bar to Gene, who is busy filling the pitcher. Looking at Gene’s fluorescent tan, slight paunch and shedding head, she gives him a quick kiss on the lips and starts to fall backwards. She asks, “Is it ok if we don’t do it tonight? I don’t feel so great.” “Uh, yeah, I guess.” “I need to pass out. Which one is your bedroom?”
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Prism Fragments |
