The Last Testament: A Memoir (4 page)

⁹
And so in fashioning him I sought to make not only a responsible planetary caretaker, but also an attractive, likeable spokesman who in the event of environmental catastrophe could project a certain warmth.

¹⁰
To immediately assess his ability to function in my absence, I decided to change my plans; for I had intended to use Day Seven to infuse the universe with an innate sense of compassion and moral justice; but instead I left him in charge and snoozed.

¹¹
And Adam passed my test; yea, he was by far my greatest achievement; he befriended all my creatures, and named them, and cared for them; and tended the Garden most skillfully; for he had a great eye for landscape design.

¹²
But I soon noticed he felt bereft in his solitude; for oft he sighed, and pined for a helpmeet; and furthermore he masturbated incessantly, until he had well-nigh besplattered paradise.

¹³
So one night I caused him to fall into a deep sleep; fulsomely did I roofie his nectar; and as he slept, I removed a rib, though not a load-bearing one.

¹⁴
And from this rib I fashioned a companion for him; a hunk, unburdened by excess wisdom; ripped, and cut, and hung like unto a fig tree before the harvest;

¹⁵
Yea, and a power bottom.

¹⁶
And Adam arose, and saw him, and wept for joy; and he called the man Steve; I had suggested Steven, but Adam liked to keep things informal.

¹⁷
And Adam and Steve were naked, and felt no shame; they knew each other, as often as possible; truly their loins were a wonderland.

¹⁸
And they were happy, having not yet eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge That Your Lifestyle Is Sinful.

CHAPTER 5

¹
N
ow the snake was more closeted than any animal in the Garden; literally on the downlow; for though he oft hissed his desire to mate with comely serpentesses, yet he lisped, and fretted over his skin care, and could not have looked more phallic if he’d had balls for a rattle.

²
And that which he needlessly despised in himself, he set out to destroy in others; so one day he slithered unto Steve and said,

³
“Steve!

⁴
’Tsup?

⁵
Hey, random question for thee: Hast thou ever eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge That Your Lifestyle Is Sinful?

⁶
’Cause I hear it’s some quality produce!”

⁷
Long did the serpent cozen Steve in this way; at first he balked, but the serpent tricked him, by telling him that the fruit would intensify his orgasm; which was a reckless lie;

⁸
For the fruit did not intensify orgasms; it merely prolonged them 45 minutes.

⁹
And so Steve ate of the tree; and he bid Adam eat of it; and the knowledge that their lifestyle was sinful shamed them, and also filled them with white-hot lust; and they entwined themselves unceasingly until dawn.

¹⁰
(For it was and remains true, that all aspects of sexual activity grow more pleasurable following their moral condemnation.)

¹¹
But in the morning they grew embarrassed, and cloaked themselves in fig leaves; these constituting the entirety of their fall collection.

¹²
And they heard me walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and they hid themselves from my presence behind a grove; which, a lot of good
that’s
going to do;

¹³
And I called, “Adam and Steve, where art thou?”

¹⁴
And Adam said, “Father, there is something we need to tell thee: we are gay.”

¹⁵
And I said,
“Whhhuuuhhhhh?!?”

¹⁶
And Steve said, “Yea, it is true, L
ORD
; for the snake bid me eat the fruit of the forbidden Tree; and I gave it to Adam; and now we know that we are not only here, but queer; and lo, we would thou growest accustomed to it.”

¹⁷
And I turned to the serpent and screamed, “Thou hast ruined everything; for I had wrought Steve of the same gender as Adam, so that they could not breed, and would be free to focus on their gardening careers;

¹⁸
But thou hast made them ashamed for no reason, by convincing them to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge That Your Lifestyle Is Sinful.”

¹⁹
“But L
ORD
,” said the serpent, “surely I could not have done this evil thing, if thou didst not inexplicably put this stigmatizing tree in the Garden to begin with.”

²⁰
I considered this.

²¹
“Look,” I said, “hindsight is twenty-twenty.

²²
And surely this is not the time to play the ‘blame game’; at least not until my full-scale internal investigation is complete;

²³
Whose findings will be used to ensure, that an event as tragic as the Fall of Man, never happens again.

²⁴
But in the meantime, serpent, thou art cursed above every beast of the field; and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life; and even the humans who study thee will be accursed; for they will be known as ‘herpetologists,’ which sounds like ‘herpes.’

²⁵
And as for thee, Adam and Steve: Damn it! I knew I should have made thee lesbians!

²⁶
Then thou wouldst have tended the Garden with more diligence; yea, and been a lot more outdoorsy in general.

²⁷
But thou hast been disobedient; and for that I must now inflict upon thee the harshest punishment possible:

²⁸
Transforming thee from carefree young lovers living in the heart of everything, to a married couple with kids stuck in the suburbs.

²⁹
Steve, so that thou mayest bear young, I will tomorrow transform thee into a woman; fear not, the operation is relatively standard; in the meantime, put this on.

³⁰
Oh, and consider what female name thou wilt want; try to make it something that rhymes with ‘Steve,’ so that 6,000 years from now, the righteous can use it to create the most inane slogan of all time.

³¹
As for posterity, do not worry about humanity learning the true nature of thy relationship.

³²
I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe; I know how to spin this.”

CHAPTER 6

¹
S
o Adam and “Eve” left the Garden, and wandered the wilderness, supporting themselves through foraging and occasional freelance work.

²
And they learned how to copulate; and after a few years they learned how to do it vaginally; until finally Eve found herself with child.

³
It was the first human pregnancy, and she had no idea what was happening; so I explained to her, that a tiny person would be living inside her uterus for nine months and growing to the size of a watermelon before passing out of her vagina.

⁴
She did not take it well.

⁵
But I give her credit; despite all the dangers she stuck it out; and though she suffered in childbirth like no woman has suffered since, when it was all over she had borne Cain;

⁶
The first baby, and in time, the first great disappointment to his parents.

⁷
Thou hast read of what transpired between Cain and his younger brother Abel; how Cain murdered Abel in a jealous rage.

⁸
For Abel was a shepherd, and as a sacrifice he offered unto me his flock’s firstlings, which were absolutely adorable; yea, to this day they remain the cutest things I have ever seen burned alive on a pyre.

⁹
But Cain was a farmer, and his offering to me was but ten sheaves of wheat; pretty scanty, sheafwise; and thou shouldst have seen these sheaves; completely unacceptable, even by the most basic standard of sacrificial wheat-sheaf quality.

¹⁰
And I told Cain as much; and he grew angry, and set out to kill his brother.

¹¹
Now, this will sound strange, and even cruel, but it is the truth: Abel’s murder was not only the first in human history, but for that very reason the most mirthful; for Cain had absolutely no idea how to commit it.

¹²
From dusk till dawn he attacked Abel in the most fruitless of ways; he blew upon him; he strangled his hair; at one point he spent two hours simply shouting “Die! Die!” at Abel from various angles.

¹³
Fortunately for him, Abel was equally ignorant of how to fend off a murderous attack; neither defending himself nor running away, but making what in retrospect proved the tactical blunder, of lying perfectly still.

¹⁴
Ah . . . thou canst not make this stuff up.

¹⁵
Eventually Cain made use of a rock; but rather than throwing it at his brother, he picked up his brother and threw him at
it
; he did this 50 times, until Abel finally succumbed to a preexisting heart condition.

¹⁶
But in intent it was murder; and afterward I did indeed ask Cain of Abel’s whereabouts, and he did indeed reply, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

¹⁷
Thus did Cain also invent sarcasm; and lo, who is not eternally grateful to him for
that.

¹⁸
I remember marking Cain upon his brow to denote him as a murderer and a fratricide, and saying unto him, “Behold, thou art branded forever.”

¹⁹
And he turned to me and smiled, and said, “Indeed, O L
ORD
, thou hast ‘branded’ me forever, and most winningly; for now I shall position myself as ‘the original bad boy’;

²⁰
And I shall wander the earth a lonely rebel, with an air of danger, and a visage most brooding; and all men will want to know me; and all women will want to
know
me.”

²¹
At the time I thought him mad; yet he proved most savvy, and within five years Cain was the most famous man in the world.