An Inhuman Condition

I: Soul Mate

Daisy wants to go to heaven, but I’m having fun right here. She says she’s worried like she’s doing me a favor: concern over my immortal soul. I always brush it off, give some half-hearted reassurance that her God must have pity on virtuous heathens, but the truth is I don’t know shit about her God. He probably wants me to burn all sorts of horrible hell, but it doesn’t bother me. I’ve got my own shit to worry about right here, this minute, on a tangible world.

Really what “her God” amounts to is just a pile of comforting horseshit passed on to scared children by dead adults as a way to cope with their future emotional and physical death. In the long run, I think it helps to have religion if you don’t plan to succeed. It’s like a backup plan for mediocrity. If life doesn’t wind up interesting for you, at least you’ll have this pretend thing to hold and cuddle for warmth when the darkness sets in.

And maybe “her God” is just a set of rules and rituals that kept her from getting pregnant as a teenager meant to mold her into an obedient wife in the long, denim skirt who always has a hot plate of cookies for her mundane spawn. Like a kinky fuck-dream for the white picket fence, her God is there to make sure there are plenty of sensible, middle-class Americans to continue on in comfortable lives of middle-management.

I’m not looking for a fantasy adventure after life. I assume you just die, decay and fade into memory. I guess it just puts pressure on me to get things right the first time. I don’t assume I’ll have a miraculous mulligan to spend forever with my favorite people on a beam of sunshine while we all eat candy, sing and dance for eternity. I don’t know how to explain heaven in a way that even sounds plausible. Maybe I missed an important assignment in school.

I think, really, her God is meant to keep her away from folks like me. That’s where all this concern is coming from. It’s that nagging, doctrinal acid bubbling in her fear hole. She doesn’t want to spend her life with someone who won’t be around the big ol’ candy bowl with grandma and all her pets. She doesn’t want to be alone in paradise.

Daisy doesn’t see it this way, but it all worked on her: the pitch, the sale. That wire was crossed in my head, and now we won’t be able to love each other forever. Her God is working hard to make sure she finds a lobotomized lover to sip soma with until the kids go to college. I hope she finds him and thinks she’s happy. I know it won’t matter after we die; I won’t be able to smirk and say “I told you so.” She’s just going to find someone average and boring who will never challenge her to be more than what her “God” wants until death do them part.

But hey, bastards and sinners need lawyers, and they tend to leave the whiskey and whimsy for us.

Cheers.