Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise (5 page)

Jim liked this guy.  “Uh, Jim.  Yeah, it’s Jim then.”

“You sure about that, darling?”

“Stop calling me darling.”

“If you don’t have a name and your heart’s aflutter on the dance floor, you’re everybody’s darling.  Darling.”

Jim
really
liked this guy.  Therefore he punched him with the arm that was like his own.  “Call me darling again,” he said.

And the man who was
entirely
a man said, “Ha!  Maybe there’s a man in there after all.  Tell you what, Jim, forget about this place.  Spare yourself the anguish, it’s an empty burlesque.  You want to know who you are, what a man is?  A man is what he does, Jim.  A man is what he does with his time and his sweat.  A man is where he goes and who he fucks and what he says.”

Jim considered this.  “Well, before I came here I was at the edge of
paradise
.  And the devil gave me a blowjob, like, right when I got here.  And I told Kant he’s a dick.”

“That’s more like it.  So what it’s going to be, Jim?  You want to piss your panties in the corner, or you want to tag these bitches and get your balls back?”

“Balls.”

“Alright, here’s the deal.  We’ve got a POW out on the dance floor.  They’re running the bulls on Cloud Seven and his whore wife dragged him to this shit show.  We’re going in hard, a good old fashioned smash’n’grab.  Get in, get what’s yours, get out.  We rendezvous at the gate.”

And he pulled from the shadow of the corner a Louisville Slugger.  With it he pointed to the balcony where the devil had
whoomfed
.

“You see that stack of human up there?  That’s Hunter.  He’s on point and he’s bringing down the chandelier.  When he does, me and Jack and Bunny are going in swinging.”

“Wait,” said Jim.  He looked at the stack of human who
was
Hunter, and again at the man who was
entirely
a man.  “What did you say your name was?”

“Ernest.”

“Ernest
Hemingway
?”

“You in, darling?”

Jim took the bat.

6

Hunter leapt from the balcony to the chandelier.  He wielded a sabre and he shook it at the phantoms in the ballroom.  He said, “What I do, I do for Nixon.”  And he cut the rope and the chandelier crashed to the ballroom floor.

Then Hemingway charged in with a musket that was fitted with a bayonet.  He was the first to strike, for he removed a pretty blonde head from a thick and veiny neck.  Jack and Bunny were close behind.  Jack cleaved with a machete, and Bunny swung a nine-iron.

Then Jim charged in with the Louisville Slugger.  He made short work of several heads.  The heads rolled on the floor and cursed in French.  “Mayor-duh!” they said, and, “Vay-to-fay uncool!”

Hunter, the stack of human, climbed out from the ruin of the chandelier.  He brandished the sabre and said, “Victory!”  And he claimed an arm.  “I am not a crook!”  And he claimed three legs and a head.

So the pale and the beautiful were soon reduced to their wriggling parts.  Hemingway and Hunter and Jack and Bunny sifted through the parts for the parts of their friend.  Jim searched for himself.  He found his head, and he found his arms and his legs and his chest.  But he could
not
find his balls.

Then he heard a voice say, “Jim!”  And he knew the voice.  “Cherry!”  And he found Cherry’s head between four tits and a thigh.  The spark in the eyes of the head
was
Cherry.

“You’re back in your head!”

“Your balls.”  Cherry pointed with her eyes and Jim found his balls.  “I kept them warm for you.”

“You were wearing my balls?”

Cherry’s head blushed.  The heart in Jim’s own chest, which he carried in the crook of the arm that was like his own, began to flutter.

“I’m sorry about your party,” Jim said.

“Are you kidding?  Best
Frankenmasque
ever.  You should probably go, though.”

For the wriggling parts of the pale and the beautiful were coming together, and the heads
were
cursing.

“Yeah.  Um, I’ll call you then.”

“Yeah.”

He ran out of the ballroom in the mansion of the devil, and he carried with him the superfluities of his person.

7

Jim reconstructed himself in a guest bathroom, and he was once more Jim from nub to skull.  At the gates outside the mansion he came upon Hemingway and Hunter and Jack and Bunny, who reconstructed their friend.

When the work was finished, Hemingway said, “You in there, Fitzgerald?”

Fitzgerald blinked his eyes and shook his head.  “You guys are insane,” he said.  “What did you do to her this time?”

Hemingway pulled Fitzgerald to his feet.  “Your wife’s a jack-fisted whore.  Tonight we run with the bulls in the clouds and drink martinis until our tongues are dry and we can no longer speak. 
Vamonos
!”

And Hemingway and Hunter and Jack and Bunny and Fitzgerald went down the drive.  They climbed into a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado which had
metallic blue
paint and
tailfins
.  Hunter took the wheel and Jack rode shotgun  The others took the rear-facing backseat.

Jim waved.  “Thank you, Mr. Hemingway!  I got my balls back!  And my head!”

“Looking good, Jim! 
Paradise
is awesome, but it’s only yours if you fight for it!  So fight for it!”

“Don’t listen to him,” Fitzgerald said.  “He only fights for lost causes.  He thinks it’s noble.”

“
Vamonos
!”

Hunter lit a cigarette and the Cadillac peeled away.

VI

1

So Jim
became
Jim. He was Jim in his heart, Jim in his head, and he was Jim in his balls.  He was Jim
entirely
.  He knew his Jimness for twenty-two years, and in those years he also experienced some
happiness
. 

These are the brief
happinesses
of Jim in
paradise
:

He stepped up to the home plate at Fenway Park on two bad legs and he called his shot over the green monster.  The slider came low and away and with a war-weary swing he pulled it down the line.  He waved the ball fair and the ball sailed fair and over the monster, and it
was
a homerun.  He hobbled to first, pumped his fist while rounding second, and he missed third altogether and hobbled back for the legal touch.  Then he planted his feet at home and the big board said, Cubs Win!  The tears of thirty-seven thousand Yankees were collected and fed to the goat who grazed at centerfield.

He put his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel and he rolled out to the great wide open.  He smoked two joints and he kissed the sky.  He listened for the songs that voices never shared.  And when the black hole sun gently wept millions of peaches for the Bally table king, he wondered if he was paranoid or just stoned.  For these
were
the words of the prophets and other tongues of lilting grace.  And getting no satisfaction from the smoke of the ship on the horizon, he chopped down a mountain with the edge of his hand and said, Quinn the Eskimo was
here
.

He pushed his Deuce Coupe to one-forty on a back country road.  The coppers flashed their lights in his dust.  Crates full of jars of moonlight rattled in the backseat.  The road ended where the canyon began, and there were no paths but dead on or capture.  So he leaned out the suicide door and elucidated his convictions  with a Chicago typewriter, raised a jar of the moon to the coppers, and said, “You’ll never take me alive.”  He drank the moon and met the darkness in the canyon with a high five. 

And his nights he spent with Cherry.

2

Then one day, while Jim cavorted through the aromas of Downtown, he came upon the angel who said fuck and laughed at suffering.  The angel was handing out flyers to passersby, so Jim took one.  He read,

Annual Cleopatra Lottery

Spend a night with the Egyptian Queen!

Enter in person at: 777 Lay Lady Lane.

Take your chances or accept your fate.  Just don’t be late!

The Cleopatra Lottery is run by the Paradise Grant Committee and is in full compliance with the Pussy Pact.  All participants enter willingly and with full knowledge that their Indulgence Rights will be thoroughly abused.

Jim said to the angel, “Angel, hey.  What is this?”

“It is what it says it is,” the angel said.

“Yeah, but what
is
it?”

The angel looked at him and recognized him.  “Oh, it’s you.  We run these things all the time.  Winner of this one gets to bury his bone in the Queen of the Nile.  You really haven’t rolled for a scorcher yet?  You’re not exactly fresh from the circus anymore.”

“Been kind of busy,” Jim said.  “So if I win this I really get to lay Cleopatra?”

“Yep.”

“What about this bit here? 
Take your chances or accept your fate.
  What does that mean?  What’s the difference?”

“You don’t learn so quick, do you,” the angel said.  “Last time you asked me something like that, I heard they shot you out of a tiny cannon.”

“Oh yeah.”  Jim checked the boulevard for philosophers.  He saw none, so he said, “Give me a hint?”

The angel shrugged.  Then he struck Jim in the face with his fist.  It was a mighty strike, for the angel
was
an angel, and Jim fell upon the sidewalk. 

“Dude.  What the hell?”

And the angel said, “
Chance
is which hand I hit you with. 
Fate
is when you hit the ground.”  Followed by a
chuckle
.

3

Lay Lady Lane was a long and shining broadway of neon lights and marquis that flashed the names of history’s sexiest women.  There were marquis for Marilyn Monroe, Mata Hari, Pocahontas, Jackie Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Madhubala, Nefertiti, Grace Kelly, Joan of Arc, and a thousand more.  Above them all and at the center the name of Cleopatra glittered.

Jim went through the doors that revolved beneath the marquis.  In the lobby there was the banter of hopeful men.  Each man was queued in one of two lines: one line for men who took their chances, and one line for men who accepted their fate.

Jim went to the help desk.  Behind it was a man whose nametag said, Butch, Angel in Training.

“First time?” said Butch.

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s pretty simple.  You go through that door, you get what’s coming to you.  You go through that one, you get something else.  It’s like, you walk the path or you roll the dice.”

“Dice?”  Jim checked his pocket.  He still had the glossy red dice from the other side of the brick wall at the edge of
paradise
.  “Seems like fate could do dice, too.”

“Well, flip a coin, then.”

Jim didn’t
have
any coins, so he was forced to accept the redaction.  “What about this part here?  The part that says my indulgence rights will be thoroughly abused.  I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Really?”

“What?”

“You’re here for a chance to put your dick in the queen and you’re asking me about the fine print.”

“How do you know I’ll do the chance thing?”

“From one guy to another, you don’t exactly have the gravity of fate under you.”

After some consideration, Jim decided that this was not an insult.  “Indulge me,” he said.

“Tell you what.”  Butch cracked his knuckles.  “Here’s the short of it.  Lucy, her whole thing is everybody gets what they want, right?  She hates rules.  But what’s the first thing you want to do when you get here?  You want to fuck Cleopatra, that’s what.  So Cleopatra’s got, like, a billion dudes playing Every Rose Has It’s Thorn at her window, and that’s a shit deal.  For
everybody.
So she rounds up all the scorchers, you know, your Marilyn Monroes and your Marie Antoinettes, and they all march on Lucy.  And Lucy’s cool – have you met her?  Yeah, you seem like the type.  Anyway, they set up this whole infrastructure and assign teams of angels to field requests.  It’s all very organized.  Now Cleopatra just gets an email every week, and she doesn’t have to hear that damn song anymore.

“It all sounds good, except Cleopatra – just Cleopatra – needs a thousand angels to sift through all these requests.  There’s a shortage of angels.  And there’s a billion dudes that are pissed off about the selection process.  They know damn well that Cleopatra isn’t gonna blow some clerk from New Jersey.  So there’s hardly an angel in
paradise
that isn’t reading love limericks, and everything with a dick is crying foul.  It’s a fucking mess.

“So Lucy comes out with the lottery and the Pussy Pact.  She tells Cleopatra and every other scorcher that if they forego free will once a year and spread their legs for some Jack, she’ll give them angelic privilege.  That’s, like, they get to be angels but they don’t have to wear the uniform or do any work.  And to the Jacks she says, Listen, you’ve got an eternity to win, and if you don’t like it the Truth Road is that way.  That cooled everybody off, and we built Lay Lady Lane.”

And Jim said, “So this is just saying that I might not win.”

“Pretty much.”

“Thanks.”  And Jim went to take his chances.

4

The casino was filled with the men who did not have the gravity of fate under them.  Though Jim did not count them, he thought that this was probably
most
men, for they were many.  He wondered if accepting a light fate might have been better than taking a fat chance.

He rattled the glossy red dice in his pocket and looked for a craps game, but he couldn’t find one.  Nor could he find blackjack or poker or roulette or
any
slot machine.  There wasn’t even a bar.  There weren’t even hookers.  It was the damnedest casino that Jim had ever seen.

But there
were
balloons.  He came to understand that there was a balloon for every man, and inside a
single
balloon there was a ticket to Cleopatra’s villa by the sea.  So he mulled about through the fateless men and searched for his lucky balloon.

He mulled too long.  Now there were only two balloons left.  One of them was red, and the other was blue.  He chose the blue, for it
was
the color of the sea.  But as he chose it, another man chose it as well.

“This one is mine, thank you very much,” said the irrelevant gentleman.

“I don’t know,” said Jim.  “I think I touched it first.”

“I mean to have it.”

“Is there a moderator around here?”

As Jim looked around, the irrelevant gentleman tried to take the balloon.  But Jim’s grip was firm.

“Hey, that’s not cool, man,” he said.

“I have been coming to this lottery for two hundred years, and every year my balloon is blue.  I mean to have it.”

“I’ll do you paper-rock-scissors for it.”

“And take
two
chances while everyone else takes
one
?  I am not an idiot, sir.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Of course that’s how it works.  If the ticket is indeed in one of these two balloons, I will choose the correct balloon half of the time.  And assuming that we are equally matched in the game of paper-rock-scissors, I will defeat you half of the time.  To perform both in consequence requires a half times a half, and I am reduced to a quarter.”

“But there’s just two balloons.”

“I will not trade my half for a quarter, sir.  I mean to have this balloon.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make any sense.  The ticket might be in the red one.”

“So why don’t you
take
the red one?”

“Well, maybe I will.”

“Take it then.”

“You know what, I’m
gonna
.”

So Jim took the red balloon and the irrelevant gentleman took the blue.  And now that every fateless man had chosen a balloon, the casino staff handed out the thumb tacks.  There was some fanfare, and the owner of the casino thanked the devil for the Pussy Pact and all the fateless men for attending.  Then he said, “May fortune fuck the queen!”

Jim took up the red balloon and the thumb tack and he popped the balloon.  Inside of it was a ticket, and the ticket
was
to Cleopatra’s villa by the sea.

So all but one of the fateless men became dejected.  More dejected than any of them was the irrelevant gentleman.  Jim put a consoling hand upon his shoulder and said,

“Cheer up, man.  You’re good luck.”

5

Cleopatra answered the door in an old T-shirt and sweatpants.  She ate pizza rolls from a ruby-studded chalice.  She offered him one, so he ate it, and it was alright.

He said, “Are you Cleopatra?”

“The seventh,” she said.  “Daughter of kings, consort to Caesars, and Isis in the flesh.” 

“I’m Jim.”

“Come in, Jim.  And please, don’t be shy.  Or ceremonious.  I loathe ceremonious.  Just relax and enjoy yourself.  Oh, and you’re to take this, tuck it away, and you’re not to open it until the contest is over.”

“What is it?”  Jim took the jeweled egg and turned it over in his hands.  “It’s very pretty.”

“I’m not sure.  I’m just the prize, as they say.  Though they don’t really say such things, do they?  But come, this way.  Fate is waiting in the sun room.”

Jim put the egg in his pocket and followed Cleopatra through the villa by the sea.  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.

“Oh, do tell me.  What have you heard, my brave warrior of fortune?”

“Uh, well, you’re the Queen of the Nile.  You launched a thousand ships with your face.  Um, you killed yourself with a snake because of Caesar.  And you’re, like, the most beautiful woman that ever lived.”

Cleopatra took another pizza roll from the ruby-studded chalice.  She talked while she chewed.  “I was Pharaoh, never queen.  It was the face of Helen of Troy that launched a thousand ships.  The asp was invented by some sappy poet, and Mark Antony was never Caesar.  And I could never get rid of the arm fat.”

She wiped some pizza roll grease on her T-shirt then demonstrated the arm fat by the jiggling of her elbow.  Jim saw that she
was
a bit flabby.  But before he could assure her that she
wasn’t
, she belched, and the moment passed.