Thus the heavens and the earth were finished. And on the seventh day God ended his work and he rested on the seventh day.

Jesus Christ said he needed to rest all day. "It's a Dad-Son thing," he said. On the seventh day, yadda, yadda.

No lightning bolts flashed across the sky; there was no thunder. "The bedroom's all yours," I said. Or you can just crash here on the sofa."

"I began life in a cardboard box," Jesus Christ said, "I have no problem ending it there."

Jesus Christ hugged me. He didn't seem to want to let me go, so I hugged him back.

"Thank you for giving me a respite from the sins of the world, yadda, yadda. Even the Lord high Mighty God of thunder, elephants, and peonies needs a break every once in a while."

He turned and walked out the door-as naked and free as he had ever been and it seemed as I saw the sins, the anger, the hostility of the universe float up and away from his shoulders as he grew taller: five foot four, five foot eight, six feet, six feet seven, ducking as he reached the rose trellis, touching the white rose once, turning it and all the others crimson red. Jesus Christ turned and looked at me, waving, "I feel as good as I did the time I was in Amsterdam, ogling the male prostitutes in the windows. It took them a while, but they grew accustomed to me," Jesus Christ paused and touched his limp penis which grew into a tree branch, at least three feet long. "It comes and it goes, it goes in, it goes out, it's the pause that refreshes. Perhaps, this penis is actually the mighty god and savior of all mankind." Jesus Christ tossed me a Bud. "There's plenty more where that came from."

Jesus raced back to me-like a mother who had abandoned her child and raced down the mountain to find him again.

"I turned your swimming pool into beer," The Savior said.

After drinking to our heart's content, and while lying poolside as naked as jay birds, I asked Jesus to go over some of the details of the creation myth.

"I hate to bring up the same subject more than once," I said, but "I've never quite figured out that verse-or any of the first chapter of Genesis for that matter."

"Why couldn't God just create the earth in a twinkling of an eye or a heartbeat . . . or ten days . . . or fifty years? Why did it take six days. . . or seven if you're a born-again Christian?"

"Now you've got it. You're the first person to figure out the word."

I blushed. "What? I've read the word-the Bible-five or six times, as a matter of fact, but you lost me. I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're the first person who figured out the word. Pop and I must have mentioned that word a dozen times in the Scriptures. 'I am the word, behold the word of God, this is the word of God', yadda yadda and no one ever figured it all out . . . until you."

"It's just a word!"

"Exac-a-mundo! One word or fifty thousand or whatever the Jewish or Catholic or Protestant or Greek version says it is. It's just a word."

"A joke, a fairy tale . . . a story!"

"Exactly. That's all it was ever meant to be; it's just a collection of stories for guys to tell while sitting around a campfire-it's merely an ancient form of entertainment to keep the women away. . . a form of entertainment that has carried on even to this day!"

"To keep the women away? That's how you 'read us?'"

"Exactly. The Bible is all guy stuff," Jesus said. "It's like the Super Bowl, the World Wrestling finals, the NCAA playoffs! It's a magnificent collection of fairy tales revolving around fear, death, and total annihilation. That's all it was meant to be-that and a few hot stories about King David's homoerotic relationship with Jonathan and some meaningless drivel about women the ancient collectors threw in at the last minute, against Pop's wishes, in anticipation of Women's Lib."

"But the whole shebang was nothing more than a way to pass the time-cut the mustard, if you will, give a guy a chance to smoke and get on with his life."

"Think of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, only more grim." Jesus laughed.

"But a billion people rely on the Holy Bible . . . it's the word of God . . the only path to 'eternal salvation'. Do you mean that's all a joke?"

"Call it a security blanket. No one on your planet wants to think of reality. You're all going to die and rot and become fertilizer. You're going to become corn, or fodder, or soybeans. And that's it: that's eternal life. . . are you up to that?"

"Can you remember a time, when as primitive man you saw one of your own get struck by lightning and die. When you watched him die and then stand back up again? Well, that was the first of your resurrection myths. That man met death face to face and overcame it. Have you forgotten the origin of your own myth?"

I thought, trying to stretch my earliest memories, trying to go beyond time, trying to remember time before the word, before writing, before civilization crept up and devoured us.

"And the soybeans will be eaten and shat out and become more fertilizer for more beans or cows or pigs or whatever. That's eternal salvation. . . that's all there is."

You don't have to rub it in! I thought.

"I'm not rubbing it in!" Jesus Christ said, "I'm just reminding you of reality-it's something your pastors have told you to avoid. 'Just look toward Jesus,' they say. 'Just look toward eternity, give me ten percent of your money and God will reveal everything to you in the future. Not now, of course. It's never now. It's always in the future. How else do you think the church can control your sorry asses?" Jesus said.

I backed away, figuratively as well as literally. I could spot a mad Jesus Christ when I saw one. "Would you like some cheese and crackers?" I said. Losing my mind for a moment.

"I'm fine", Jesus Christ said. "You don't have to bribe me or placate me. Just be realistic. Can you do that for a moment or so? Can you overcome the corn and the soybeans long enough to see life and death as they really are?" Jesus Christ paused for five minutes-five long excruciating minutes-and I knew him well enough not to interrupt. "Even the son of God has limited time here. Even I must face reality."

It was the first time I'd heard Jesus Christ refer to himself as I and I was astonished. "What role do you play in all of this, then?" I asked.

"I'm Linus' blanket."

"The Linus' blanket?"

Jesus was still laughing, "Think of Charlie Brown and Peanuts and Linus and his blanket-or think of the name of the second pope, the one 'elected' right after My hot Peter."

I googled it quickly on my laptop. "Linus," I screamed. Linus was the second pope. Oh my God, is that what Charles Schultz was trying to tell us all those years?"

"St. Peter's church has lived in fiction since I handed him the keys to the kingdom."

"I wanted Mel Brooks to be the Pope Uno the First, but he wasn't born soon enough, and Pop and I got into a knock down drag out fight about that so we settled on writing a history of early Papery all by our lonesome. Big thick Peter was number one . . . my loving disciple, yadda yadda and then Linus came along." Jesus laughed gloriously once again, "and his blanket, if you get my drift."

"Linus had a very big blanket."

"You mean his ass?"

"Oh yes."

"But you? you mentioned that your time was limited. I still don't understand that."

Jesus Christ sighed. "My time is your time. When mankind stops worshiping me, just like they stopped worshiping the ancient Egyptian god, Atum, whose semen became the primal component of the universe, or the Japanese gods, Izanagi and Izanami who churned the ocean with a spear and created the Japanese islands, . . . or Mbombo of Bakuba who vomited out the world when he had a stomachache. Or my all-time favorite, Rod," Jesus Christ giggled, "the supreme Slavic deity-creator of lighting and thunder, yadda yadda."

"Your race has to start thinking. It has to let us go-let all of us go. LaLa Land is calling and I want to sit my ass back down on that vinyl clad yellow lawn chair. I want to be king of LaLa Land a few more times before I fade away into oblivion."

"I'm sure that will take thousands of years," I said.

"Or not," Jesus added with a twinkle in his eye, "I can stop believing in humans. I can stop believing the myth. Pop stopped believing all this shit decades ago. . . he flew off to the other edge of the universe in a pique of rage, and we haven't spoken in nearly two thousand years."

"And the Holy Ghost? He's alive, right?"

"He? It? . . . Whatever! The Spook is alive in a sense and dead in another. The Spook never made it to LaLa Land-he was created by your people after the Great Door was closed, so he just stumbles and rumbles about-ghostly like, I guess, and that's why your ancestors gave him his original name."

I dared not ask but as usually Jesus read my thought, "Wholly Ghost was his original name. named him and as a ghost he lives in an entirely different sphere. Picture a pixie. That's the best description of the Spook. Here one minute, flitting out the window the next. Look, there it goes now."

I saw a flicking light dart out the window. "I've seen that a thousand times, I said, it's just the reflection of sun light."

"Really?" Jesus Christ glanced at me out of the corner of his dark brown eyes, "Me, Myself, and I still have the power to be everywhere you know-as long as we want to-and as long as believers believe-and, even more powerfully, as long as we are allowed by the higher powers to exist."

"You are the higher power. Everyone knows that."

"Do Hindus? Do Buddhist? Do you, as an atheist?"

"Well . . . no, of course not."

"I was speaking figuratively not literally. There are millions . . . billions of non-believers, but I've always been taught that they-and I-would just go to hell, whatever in the hell that is."

We both rolled this time I found myself on the ceiling and Jesus Christ was on the floor.

"You have to stop these magic tricks," I said. "Just be god, okay? That's who you are. Not a cheap legerdemain artist."

"Are you sure? Perhaps all I am is a magician. Do you think that was me up there on the cross?"

"It wasn't?"

"Nope. . . It was a slave named Demetrio. Condemned to death in the arena-lined up to be devoured by a lion. We played a quick came of poker-he lost-I walked into the lion's den, turned them all into pussy cats and walked away, enjoying a cold brewsky on my way out of the Coliseum."

"You're putting me on."

"Not at all, actually, the writers of fairy tales have been putting you all on for thousands of years. And quite honestly, I think it's time to end the charade. Let's get real. Let's, as Dr. Phil would say, own it!"

"And mankind loses all hope?"

"Pandora will pack up and leave."

"Is that your myth, too?"

"Yes," Jesus giggled. I spent a few days scribbling out the Greek myths, the Roman myths, even the Egyptian and Persian myths and I wrote a 'Thousand and One Arabian Nights,' and Grimm and Anderson are a few of my other pen names. When you think about it," Christ chortled, "myths, fairy tales and the scriptures are equally inspired-tall tales from the mouth of the gods."

"So, when you leave, when you flit back to LaLa Land, what's left for us? For mankind?"

"What you found when you first evolved: your own intelligence, your own human kindness. Cast out the fairy tales and live. It's time for you to grow up, to be real, to accept your faults and your frailties. . . to enjoy your lives. You only live once. There is no heaven. No hell. Just fertilizer. So, make a choice, believe in yourselves and live. Just live!"

"Carpe Diem!" I said.

"I wrote that, as well," Jesus said, "Let's nap. You're wearing me out!"

After our naked nap together and after Jesus Christ was all brown-skinned and gloriously brazened again and his hair had bleached blonder, I said, "Tell me about Bimini, how did you get away from the Popes. . . the people . . . didn't you feel guilty?"

"I was the first-born son, what can I say."

"Over-indulged, over-loved, never spanked, closeted with the Spook for years and years."

"Dad ghost wrote the textbook on child care, you know."

"Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care: The One Essential Parenting Book. Dad not only wrote it, he must have read it twenty times!"

"And of course, once I entered the Hebrew School at Yeshiva, it was Dr. Spock's 'The School Years: The Emotional and Social Development of Children,' that Dad kept by his nightstand. . . and let me tell you, dust never grew on that dust jacket." Jesus laughed. "Dad was a voracious reader, you know-after he wrote so much, I guess he decided he should go back and read it all-and everything else that was ever written."

"Pop reads in three-hundred twenty-six languages. He's amazing."

"That's why he's the Lord of the Universe I said, ducking as the house trembled.

"That's for me to say," Christ said. "His name is sacred here, you know!"

I blushed as Jesus Christ roared in laughter. "You are the silliest goose since Marie Antoinette; I had her believing she was a shepherdess. She was hilarious-dressed up in silly farm clothes, herding sheep, while her husband lolled around Versailles and her servants tried to keep up with her and her insane idea that she could hide among the peasants as a local farm girl. Ha."

"And that was fun? Mocking her?"

"She mocked herself," Jesus said. "Let not the mysteries of the Lord thy gods deceiveth you but believeth thou mightily in his power-that's from the lost book of Ezekial."

"Our gods are loving, caring gods, with many names."

"And one of those was Benjamin Spock?"

"One of them, yes." Jesus Christ smiled-his two front teeth were missing now, he had a shaggy beard, and his zipper was dangerously low.

"Do you have another AA meeting," I asked.

"I'm leaving on a Jet Plane," Jesus Christ said. "All my bags are packed I'm ready to go. I'm standin' here outside your door . . . "

"I guess you wrote that, too." I said.

"Not all of it-just breath from the larynx of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spook, yadda, yadda."

"Tell me more about the Holy Ghost."

"Ah….you mean his birth? Life? Heavenly attitudes, yadda, yadda?"

"All of that. Yes, please."

"Well," Jesus Christ sat back and lit another stogie. "Cubans are always the best but those people ae so big they fall out of your lips!"

Jesus Christ, the humorist, never stopped and this time we hugged each other, laughing, farting, giggling, ascending in a huge crescendo of love up, up in the sky so high that I swear to yada yadda himself that I did see an elephant fly.

"Smoke, Scot, smoke, stop it with the Maggie Simpson sucking action-it works on my ass and my dick but for Myself's sake it never works on stogies! If for no other reason, always remember those damned Cubans never wash their prepuces . . . smegma is just not my cup of tea!"

"It was back there in that smegma coated tobacco field, that the spook blew out of Dad's ass late one evening-born of the holy ass just like I was born of the holy virgin." Jesus Christ laughed loudly. "Pop and I are so different in sexuality, He's as straight as an arrow, if you get my drift . . . but," Jesus laughed again, this time louder and longer. "There are no female angels. . . no male angels for that matter. Pop created them all sexless, handsome critters, but fairies without being fairies, if you get my drift, ego-centric, narcissistic, and diabetic."

"Diabetic?"

"A figure of speech, I guess. There's no sickness or illness in LaLa Land, but the angel critters are too sweet for their own good-one group of black angels I call my Godiva Collection, gloriously chocolate on the outside and creamy smooth inside."

"And the Holy Spirit?"

"Ah yes, I try not to think about him too often. Covered in shit for so many millennia."

"Because he came out of the-"

"Yes."

"Pop isn't the cleanest creator in the universe and there are no bathing facilities in heaven-even in Roman times, the baths were off limits to eunuchs, pumpkin eaters and the gods-and trust me there were thousands of us back in the Roman and Etypian days-but one by one, and sometimes in mass exterminations, you and your people hid us away in a Cretan vanishing cabinet spoke horrible irreputable enchantments and whisked us away."

"So, the Holy ghost is a eunuch?"

"Yes . . ." Jesus Christ paused, "and no." Jesus Christ giggled. "Actually, he/she/it was born like an angel-completely sexless, but Spook does have breasts-size 528, actually, after the augmentation."

"You're putting me on."

"Not at all." Jesus Christ mumbled, "The Spook cried and cajoled Dad for centuries before finally going to Dr. Surgiss, that eminent breast-augmentation doctor in LA and well, the rest is history. A shivery shiny Spook with five-hundred-and-twenty-eight-inch boobs!"

"Have you ever walked down a sidewalk, or in a shopping mall or been in a long hallway and felt as if some big breasted woman bumped or felt yourself being propelled into a bush or tree or tombstone by a force you cannot see-even though you're the only person there?"

I pondered. I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one and sealed my lips, like the Savior closed his asshole so many centuries ago I thought wondering if anything the Yadda Yadda had said was true-were there nail marks on his hands, his feet, his asshole? I'm not sure now. Was my entire week merely an illusion-a trip on some as yet unnamed drug?

"Don't be an asshole, Scot, or should I rename you Thomas now that you, my BBF has doubts. Never forget that I can read your mind faster than you can think."

I wondered if the Savior was upset or just enjoying my banter and erring on the side of banter-there was no lightning, no thunder, just a huge smile on my friend, Jesus Christ's, face.

"Well," Jesus continued as I felt his holiness, his glory, his steaming sexuality envelop me, "on those occasions when you feel like you're being bumped, it probably really happened. The Spook loves to wander the earth bumping into men with her/its/his mammoth breasts. I think that's what turns the Spook on, and I swear to Myself I've actually seen an erection down there-as hard, no pun intended, as that is to believe from a sexless eunuch such as the Spook."

I knew by looking at my companion-friend-lover-savior-and king that we were both done thinking about the Spook.

"Tell me about the rituals," I asked. "You know so many churches believe they eat your flesh and drink your blood. How do you feel about that?"

"Devoured," Jesus said as we both rolled on the ceiling and laughed.

"And communion is . . . "

"Just a chance for people to drink some wine-or grape juice-and party," Jesus said. "Too many followers forget what life's all about-it's not about casting stones or dunking people into massive rivers to wash away their sins, or even sitting on a wooden pew and listening to a long-winded Southern Baptist preacher scream and holler and yell at you so long that you gladly empty your pockets just to get the hell out of there."

"I know what you're talking about," I said. "I attended Wheaton Bible Church, a cult that convinced me Billy Graham was a modernist and a sinner. We were taught that all smokers and drinkers were doomed to hell, and the world must be avoided at all costs-dancing, going to the movies, watching TV, reading comic books or modern literature, admiring art, listening to classical music-all of these were 'of the world' and we had to avoid them, so seven days a week I was in one church service or another and every Sunday, I remember drinking a tiny glass cup of Welches' Grape Juice and devouring a tiny cut up piece of stale bread."

"I was there with you," Jesus Christ said, "I was the one who singled you out-I knew who you were back then-I admired your sexuality-your honesty-your devotion-and I protected you as best I could from those maniacs." Jesus Christ belched out a chimney load worth of Cuban cigar smoke, "That bread wasn't my body, and the grape juice was just exactly what the label said . . .and the folks back at Wheaton Bible Church weren't at all honest with you."

"They poured cheap ass grape juice into those Welches bottles. You can only imagine what happened to the real stuff."

"They drank it the night before," I guessed.

"Not, at all," Jesus Christ responded. "They were much kinkier than you'd ever believe."

"Pastor Kirk and his wife, Virginia, were seriously into water sports. Drinking purple pee turned Virginia Kirk on as much as the recycled Welch's turned on your pastor."

"Do you mean that Virginia Kirk, the pastor's wife, wasn't that angelic person I remember?"

"Not at all," Jesus said, "She and Mildred Finley, the organist, and Ed Swartz, the choral director had quite a cabal going on. Pop and I used to look down from heave and shake our heads."

"I thought you were in Bimini for the past two hundred years."

"The Myself your Myself is omnipresent, remember?" Jesus Christ paused and took a few more smokes on his stogie before dropping the biggest bombshell of the evening, "The Spook's epileptic, you know, and goes into fits every other day or so. You should have seen him at Pentecost. He had Pop and I writhing in laughter all over LaLa Land."

"I think that's how the Holy Rollers and Pentecostals got so confused. Every time the Spook comes in contact with humans he goes into an epileptic fit and his followers absorb it and writhe on the floor in convulsions just like him."

"That means his holiness-"

"Is just a physical abnormality," Jesus Christ laughed more loudly than I'd heard in quite a while. "Look at me," he said. "What do you call this schlong of mine? A blessing or a curse?"

"Personally?"

"Yes."

"I'd call it a curse."

"Exactly."

"There's no way I could take you-front or back," I said.

"I don't know about women though, but there are several professional women in Amsterdam. I bet one of them could handle you if you paid them enough."

Jesus Christ had a wistful look in his eyes. "I really wish I could have tried, but-"

"I know, it's difficult for me to picture one of them naked, let alone the Son of God having sexual intercourse with one of them."

"Exactly!" Jesus was crying now, with bold billowing tears rolling down his face. "I was the only hope of the deity,' he said, "the only one of us who could reproduce but-"

"I let him down. I let the mighty fucking Father down." Jesus Christ was crying harder now. Copious tears flowed in crimsons and blues down his dark brown face.

Jesus pulled down his lime green knickers and showed me his ass again but this time it was different-his asshole was normal-no spikes up his tail, no scars on his shoulders from carrying the cross, no thorns protruding from his sweet head in an epiphany, it came to me-all those stories about the cross, about his asshole being nailed shut, about hundreds of rusty nails-were abject lies, stories, fables, myths, make believe LaLa games and that's what religion was-what the gods were-what Jesus was-but what was real? What had been real about anything this miracle boxed man had said or done-surely his love was real, wasn't it? Certainly his ability to weave a glorious myth or fable or tall tale was the most supreme I'd ever encountered.

"This was my body thousands of years ago-long before your ancestors decided to crucify me, back then, when I was a boy, Pop beat me continuously for over three hundred years. I call that period of my life the 'I hate myself as a worthless two-bit god era', the era when I lived in such pain and agony, wishing Dad would have loved me for the faggot I was instead of who he wanted me to be."

I pondered, realizing this was the first time I had heard my friend call himself a faggot-what was he thinking? Was his love for me real? Where his words real-or was I hallucinating? Was I merely in a dream-had I been in a state of delirium and dreaming ever moment we had enjoyed?

Yet, my life has revolved around reading myths and fables and fairy tales and I have been writing since I came out of the womb-with words rambling and rumbling inside my head-part of me-part of my very viscera-my soul, my breath, my sperm, my shit.

And then as if in the epiphany Jesus had wanted me to experience-the truth has emerged: his loneliness, his terror, his pain-not as a savior of mankind in LaLa land-but as my friend-my soul mate, my lover, my best part of my soul oozing out of me.

How lonely he must have been? How thankful I was that, at least for a few moments, this wonderful adorable god was part of my life. . . and my friend.

Jesus paused for the longest time in our new life together and I could sense the anger and hatred building up and boiling over, "That's when the Catholic church began to reign supreme, when they stopped listening to me and only heard the invectives of God the Father as he ranted about me, 'I hate your fucking homosexual ass, you God damned pervert! Scram! You filthy boy, you are no son of mine you disgust me, you worthless piece of shit!"

There was a long beat as Jesus continued weeping and I only wished I could have done something to prevent his tears, which were now watering the geraniums outside my kitchen door and streaming down Bolling Road to the village far below me. I leaned forward and Jesus Christ put his head on my shoulders, crying, crying, crying. "I know your pain," I said, "but in my case it was my mother who was the abuser. My Dad was an atheist like I am now, but my mother was a born again 'click your heels together three times and shout out His holy name in public' Christian. 'What did I do wrong? Why did you abandon Jesus for homosexuality' she'd say. 'You break my heart when you turn your back on the Lord. You know you're going to die and go to hell-that's where God puts homosexuals,' she cried as she opened her Bible to Leviticus chapter 18, verse 22: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.'"

And that's why my mother wept copious tears, but not enough to water the geraniums. 'You're going to die and go to hell,' she ranted in bigger and bigger letters said over and over like an irate maggot on Truth Social, 'and all my friends will think I raised you wrong. You must be born again.'" The words God the So-called father spoke to my friend, Jesus, were the same my mother spoke to me.

"I've never understood those words," Jesus Christ said as he blew his nose all over my hair and the snot dripped down my back. "Being born again was just an expression I used two thousand years ago. All I meant was that you have to turn over a new leaf. Be good to yourself. Love your enemies. Love your friends. Love your cock. Love your balls. Love everything about you and your friends and your neighbors and your gods as you can. . . and their cocks, too!" Jesus Christ said.

"But everyone seems to have misunderstood me."

"Especially Pop."

"And the Catholic church."

"If only they had read what I really said, if only they'd spent a moment or two to develop a scintilla of human kindness, they would have realized that all men, straight, bi, gay, and transgendered, all women, all human beings . . . are warm wonderful compassion people."

"But instead-"

"Instead," I added, "they turned Christianity into a heartless wasteland of terror, anger and fear-and there ultimate purpose-there only purpose was mind control."

"You read my mind," Jesus Christ said, "yadda, yadda."

"Speaking of that-"

"The yadda yadda?"

"Yes," I said.

"You may not be ready for it."

"My God," I said as Jesus Christ stared at me with his Sinatra baby blues, "I'm ready for anything from you, from your eye transformations to your quick-change artistry. Nothing you do or say could ever phase me. I love you, Jesus Christ, you are the joy of my soul, my heart and my very being-you know that."

"Phasers on then, Scotty, let's go where no man has gone before."

The sky darkened and for a moment I couldn't breathe. I sensed Jesus Christ with me, in me, by me, under me, on top of me. When I could finally regain my breath, I asked, "My Lord, where are we?"

"Don't cuss," Jesus Christ said. "My name is Ishmael, I'll be your guide tonight-as you discovered the Great White."

"The Great White? You mean Moby-"

Jesus Christ squeezed my thigh. "All of them," Jesus Christ said, "the story tellers and the stories. I am alpha and omega-the beginning and the end. "I'm not created yet," Jesus Christ said. We're nearing the Big Bang.

The sound was excruciating. Imagine the end of the world, the eruption of Krakatoa, a tsunami, Barack Obama's stentorian voice. It was as if the mouse had roared and the end of the world had descended upon me.

"It's not the end of the world," Jesus Christ said. "I told you that. It's the beginning. The Big Bang. . . and I'm not born yet, Dad isn't even a thought, neither is Chac, Ishtar, Ra or Zeus."

"You're kidding, right?"

"The Myself your Myself never kids. . . we joke a lot, but we never kid."

"Check it out on http://www.godchecker.com; it's all on the internet."

We stepped back away from the noise-the Big Bang now erupting into space, filling the void. "Then what caused it? What made the Big Bang"

"Igotyourback Buluwanunun farted."

"Right." I said. "But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the show?"

"Igotyourback, the fifth son of the great lord Bumufuck, farted, this entire universe-everything man has seen or sensed or believed is merely a fart from his glorious ass."

"You're putting me on."

"Have I ever put you on?"

"Ever really put you on?

"No," I said. "Never, but you sure jerked my chain more than most."

"That's what gods do," Jesus Christ said. "It's all part of the mystique. Call it the Madonna-Cher syndrome."

I sensed us moving through time and space and, looking back, I saw what appeared to be a giant bubble-like a fart bubble in a bathtub. "Jesus H. Christ," I said, "You weren't kidding."

The smell that overtook me nearly knocked me off Jesus who struggled to hold me in his hairy arms.

"Hold tight," Jesus Christ said. "Things won't start happening for a billion years or so-time is slow inside a giant fart bubble."

I tried not to breath.

"There won't be any oxygen for six point nine billion years; try not to panic."

"I NEVER PANIC," I screamed as my fingernails dug into the Savior's chest hairs and as hard I tried to avert my eyes from the magnitude, the magnificence the power of this moment of creation but my eyes, like my hands, like my ass, like my dick, like my eyes have never kept still-never refused to see what is there, I took a deep breath and said "Man I love, Jesus who fills me emotionally and physically, I'm still here-I was merely trying to get my bearings."

"There are no bearings, there are no markers, no suns, nothing but hydrogen and helium and this is the first time I've traveled back in time, so hold me tight and enjoy the ride."

"Keep your dick in your pants!" I said.

"Maybe," Jesus laughed, "or maybe I need to get a big bang out of this, as well. Just keep holding tight, it's going to be a much longer journey back in time to go forward."

"What?

"Esau invented twinkle, twinkle little star to explain God's power. I know, I know, everyone thinks Esau was just a dumb jock. . . a hunter-but he was very theatrical and a closet poet. That's why he traded off his birthright for a 'mess of porridge.' Feed the starving artist and all that." Jesus Christ hugged me close enough to have kissed me. His breath was a mixture of dog poop and taco sauce.

"How about this," Jesus Christ said as his breath turned to the smell of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.

"Better," I said, "want to pucker up."

Our kiss illuminated the void and I swear I saw the universe form around us.

"O Myself," Jesus Christ said.

"Behold, in the twinkling of an eye, you and I may have created dawn's red glow."

I swear, for a moment, I heard the National Anthem being played on a flugelhorn a few yards away.

"Ummm ummm good, uummm ummm good Campbell's chicken soup is ummmm ummmm good."

Where in the hell did that come from," I asked.

"Igotyourback, fifth son of the great lord Bumufuck was only three years old when he created the Big Bang. His favorite commercial was the soup song-he has a collection of the Campbell kids in his playroom.

"How do you know all that?"

"This is the Soup," Jesus Christ said. "No, not the TV show-the soup. The primordial soup. Creation is nothing more than Igotyourback's fart-filled with his DNA, his memories, his childhood songs, his games, his fun-ever wonder why so many of your fellow humans are mindless senseless children inside? Well, wonder no more."

"That Cambell kid was a robust lad, that's for sure."

"It sounds like you know him, like you met him."

"I know his ways. Mighty are the ways of God-his handiwork-his firmament."

"What the hell does that mean?" I slipped down further on Jesus' phallus.

"I thought you weren't up to sucking."

"Let's call it our quality time together time. Nursing in the nursery!" I said.

"No, let's call it the moment that true love entered the universe. Without love there'd only be Igotyourback's fifth son, Bumufuck's eternal fart smell. . . "

"And games, maybe, and pride, of course. But love conquers all fear!"

"But how do you know so much about the god Igotyourback, fifth son of the great lord Bumufuck who farted?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Look at what came about-look at your race. What are your favorite sports? Football, soccer, bull fighting . . . they're all blood sports, aren't they. My Self! You people believe more in blood sacrifice than Daddy does-and it took me centuries to talk him out of fantasying over the smell of freshly killed bullock or lamb's blood."

"Have you ever smelt lamb's blood or tasted it? You should have seen Dad's face after spending an hour or so at the blood trough."

"Dis-"

"-gus-"

"------TTTTing!"

"Right now, making love is my national sport" I said, "with the right god that is," my eyes glazed over.

"That's coming," Jesus Christ said as he flipped me over and grunted, "That's been coming for a long time." J.C. pumped me slowly, only entering three or four inches at a time, saving the big thrust for a final moment of pain and pleasure.

"Fuck me, fuck me." I screamed. "Make love to me-fuck me. Fuck me, fuck me." I felt the universe rumble and star clusters appeared.

"In and out, in and out, round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows."

Our passionate screams blew out the first black hole.

"You're a hot little bunny," Jesus Christ said. "So much better than Luke and Mark and John."

"I thought you bottomed for them," I moaned.

"Most of the time, yes, but we were all created versatile, were we not?" Jesus Christ said, and I sensed that he blushed, but his face was behind me. I guess I felt a sudden surge of heat in his penis, I'm not one hundred per cent sure-but I ended up flushed, as well. "You know I'm not even halfway in you yet."

"Oh my God!"

"Not even a third, actually, but you can take me." Jesus Christ sang softly, 'All of me, I want you to take all of me.'"

I pulled myself away a few inches.

"Don't be like that," Jesus Christ taunted until I thumped my ass back full force upon his gigantic phallus. "Oh Myself," Jesus Christ said, "oh Myself, Sweet mother of Myself. Hallelujah!"

I felt Jesus Christ filling me. I felt the power of god. I felt as though I was one with him.

So, you aren't the Living God? The Savior of the Universe?"

"No more than Isis, Mithra, Vishnu, L. Ron Hubbard or Mary Baker Eddy. No. I'm not. We're all one-in-the same, actually. We're all Me, Myself and I, or as you might call us God the Father, God the Son, God the Freaky Holy Spirit."

I looked at this man I had grown to love, this Jesus Christ, in wonder, sensing that he would be exiting this world and my life forever.

"I'll never forget you." I blurted out. "You're my-"

"Living God," Jesus Christ said, saying the word for the first time. "I know, I'm everyone's god-in one way or another but our time is short here, mine and yours-but Me, Myself and I's time, as well. We've just about finished our allotted time. Soon, all three of us will be out of here-in a flash.

And the people of the earth?

"Will just have to find another god," he said. "Besides, it's time. Isis, Zeus, Thor, we've all had our time here. It's time for the old gods to move on and the new ones to move on in.

And the new gods are?"

"I wish I knew" Jesus Christ said. "But to be honest with you none of us know those things. We come. We go. Such is the order and the nature of the universe."

"The universe that you did not create."

"Exactly."

"Then, who did? What's the origin of life on the other side of the Big Bang?"

"That, my loving friend, is a question we're just discovering now. Pop, the Spook and I will find out on Thursday next week-I can hardly wait."

"But that's when you disappear."

"Getting absorbed is a better way of stating it," Jesus Christ said, "Becoming part of the universe with the other gods and going back to our original atoms."

"So, it is exactly like being reborn, isn't it? Like being reincarnated?"

"In a sense, yes, I think so. Pop, the Spook and I are like water molecules. We can't be destroyed but we can be turned into ice or steam. That's what we'll learn on Thursday, at least I think we will. . . but I'm not exactly sure about that. . . not one hundred per cent sure, anyway. We haven't been told that. . . not exactly . . but that's what we went through in our pre-doc."

"Pre-doc?"

"Yes, we've had a dozen lectures, indoctrinations and seminars. . . Real estate magnate, Sisyphus gave the most heart-warming / heart-wrenching one. Even Plato talked to us for a while. So did Socrates. But the best was Zoroaster-he's always been closest to us, besides Mithra-my half-brother. Zoroaster said that we'd never truly disappear-we'd be reabsorbed, re-employed, re-deployed, perhaps even re-discovered as it were, into something substantially better."

"Better than God?" I was ready to scream, was I talking to a maniac?

"No, I'm not a maniac, just a normal god, knowing that my life here in the universe finishes this coming Thursday-thank Myself!"

"Just like your life-your entire race's lives-will end."

"All good things come to an end, you know. Even a good cartoon."

We were now back in my kitchen as Jesus Christ replayed his favorite Woody the Woodpecker cartoon-filling up wall with a 3-D image of a giant laughing bird and we both relaxed as he reached over and grasped my hand. "It won't all be bad,' he said. "Lo I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, I will be with you now and for always and forever and ever even until the ending of this cartoon."

"I thought you were serious for a moment," I laughed.

"I was," Jesus Christ said with the straightest face I had seen him give me since we first met."

And Jesus Christ laughed and so did I.

So, what's he really saying? I wondered. Is he going to die again? To disappear from the face of the universe? Will this coming Thursday be the end of the Trinity? The end of this planet? The end of the universe? Or will my dearest friend on earth, Jesus Christ, merely be reincarnated as some alien god?"

"I don't know," Christ said, "I really don't know. I only know it will all happen on Thursday. And you'll be around to see it happen."

"That's what it's all about," Jesus Christ said, as he made the Warner Brothers, yadda yadda yadda sound, "that's all, folks!"

"So, there's no eternal life, no hope, no future?"

"There's always hope," Jesus said, "remember I am the light of the world, so there's always-" Jesus Christ's voice trailed off, and he wept as he slowly became transparent and faded into the morning mist.

"And what is there after death?"

"Just death." Jesus Christ's voice rang hollow in the fading light. "Just death, nothing more. . . just death."

Jesus Christ faded away and I assumed he was gone forever-out of my life like a puff of smoke-gone and away, but late that evening, while taking out the garbage, I saw Jesus Christ one last time. He was curled-up in a Maytag Washing machine box this time, his elongated body wrapped up like a snake-or an elephant's trunk-protecting himself and anyone else who came near. He was wearing a dark red jockstrap, a Hell's Angel leather jacket, and a pair of flip flops and wearing a T-shirt with the words: I (picture of a heart) Scot Walker, (signed) your pal! Jesus.



Click the image for a larger view


The End



Back to The Sixth Day
Complete Chapter List

The Scot Walker Story Page

The Tarheel Writer Home Page

I'd love to hear what you think!  Leave me a comment on our contact us page.