I wrote this two years ago for a contest for a magazine called McSweeneys. It was rejected. I am thinking of reworking it for another magazine. I think the piece is quite funny and absurd, but I think it is missing something. if anyone has any suggestions, I will be happy to hear them.
Enjoy,
Blur
The garbled buzzing of the fire door alarm choking, half-submerged in the bathtub warm water awakens him from his sudden slumber. He remembers a flash of the Merv Griffin show, claustrophobic and isolating images of his legs, clad in Legg’s pantyhose and stiletto heels strutting away from his torso, still trapped in the magician’s box. Maybe it was the applause, but he was pretty certain it was Merv’s sweater that terrified him the most. He pushes the fire-door under the water to drown the life out of the alarm. “I suppose I deserve this on some level,” he begins to think, as the plastic key for the Hotel St Moritz drops from his teeth. “I should have known those hillbillies were up to something when they invited me out for barbeque.”
There was an argument, more like discussion really, over home made venison and Mountain Dew in the warehouse of the printing shop one afternoon during work. Jim, who now finds himself adrift in the ocean about a hundred knots south east of Seychelles, was wearing a pin on his uniform polo shirt that designated him as a member of the Promise Keepers, a men’s devotional group that was centered on the image of the nuclear family and promoting “strong, Christian values” among fathers and husbands. While wearing this pin, Jim strolled through the warehouse to ask Rick, the bearded warehouse manager and prior-service Marine, about what was holding up shipment of the Landmark Utilities order. Rick spied the pin and immediately asked Jim about it.
Sensing another confrontation, Jim dismissed the pin by giving a casual answer and attempted to steer the conversation back to the Landmark order. Rick would have none of it. Soon Jim was surrounded by the boys in the warehouse, a testosterone laden bunch who wore Harley t-shirts, and talked openly about sex and auto racing and hunting. Jim had found them to be somewhat neanderthalish, but he felt that God had blessed him with an education, and a pretty decent upbringing, something his compatriots in the sweaty warehouse did not have. Jim felt a sense of pity toward them, and he could tell that they were resentful of Jim’s blessings.
“Looks like we got ourselves a fundamentalist fellas.” Rick said, revealing his missing canine with a wily smile.
“Sheeeeeeeit!” Responded Jake, a scrawny ex-rodeo clown from Kentucky who often left soda bottles with his tobacco juice and spittle around the office. Jim thought it repulsive, and had complained to Rick once about the matter, but nothing was done.
Jim informed the warehouse cronies that he was not comfortable with this sort of conversation, and that they should return to the task at hand. Again, that notion was vetoed when the other three redneck denizens of the warehouse arrived, straddling the forklift adorned with NASCAR stickers, auto parts decals, and something scrawled in French that disturbed Jim when he read it, but he was unable to understand why, since he did not understand French.
Rick barraged Jim with serious questions regarding Jim’s Christian faith; was he a fundamentalist? Jim answered in the negative, but hesitantly enough to allow for further questioning from his bearded interrogator.
“I think like most fundamentalists, you have failed to axe yerself the following question which is central to your faith - Jim, do you believe that the bible, as published, is the unmitigated word of the Lord?”
Jim answered in the affirmative.
“Well then my boy that makes you a fundamentalist. Now the question remains, are you a Calvinist?”
Jim looked at Rick quizzically, he had heard of Calvinism, but had never thought much about it. When he thought of Calvinists, he thought of Thanksgiving and the Mayflower.
“I take it from the clueless look on your face, that you don’t understand the question. I will restate it – do you believe in predestination, or do you believe in free-will?”
Jim felt the acid in his stomach begin to rise. He pictured the commercial with the purple pill that was supposed to help his acid reflux disease, and he suddenly realized he had forgotten to take his daily regimen. Jim was becoming visibly uncomfortable.
“You see Jim, these things all matter, as we have to define just what sort of fundamentalist you are. If you are a Calvinist, then you believe that everything in your life, including the salvation of your soul, is pre-determined and that the universe is a sort deux ex-machina that spins without any interference on the part of the players within that universe. If you believe in free-will, then you must believe that in some way your salvation rests on whether or not you perform good works during your life. You get that?”
“Yes” Jim answered, attempting to slide his way toward the door.
One of the warehouse guys, the forklift operator with the tattoo of the ugly baby on his arm, stood in Jim’s way.
“Do you believe in free will or not Jim? It is a simple question, and not truly a religious one.” Rick seemed disappointed that Jim was trying to escape.
Jim thought for a moment; and then said: “How about a little of both?”
“I think we got a Spinozan here boys.” shouted Jake, as if he had found a rabbit under his porch.
Rick immediately followed up with another question: “So Jim, you believe that God thinks in a sort non-linear fashion that allows him to see all of the decisions that could possibly be made, and therefore has an understanding, not so much of what we will do, but understands the consequences of each of our individual steps?”
Jim was stunned. He couldn’t believe these guys were asking him these sorts of questions, who was this Spinoza? What was all this about? How do these guys know this?
The last question actually formed on Jim’s lips and was audible enough for Rick and the others to hear it.
“Fair enough Jim, fair enough. You see, I and my colleagues here have all come to the same basic point, but through different means. I can understand your prejudice against our intellectual authority regarding these types of matters, so I will gladly explain. You see Jim, when I was in the Corps, I was holed up on a ship with a Chaplin as my rack mate; this man made me question my own faith, and could even be defined as the impetus to the ultimate loss of said faith in your lord and savior. But I still thank that man, he was a committed Christian, and understood the irrationality of his situation”
“Was he a big fan of the Kierkegaard?” piped the forklift driver.
“I suppose, I have to say I hadn’t read Kierkegaard until our recent discussion on matters of faith in regard to atheism and the like, but that makes me wonder if he weren’t one of us. Now, Jake here, he did some time in the joint, and found that he had a lot of time to read. He sort of specializes in the French philosophers of the later twentieth century, Camus, Sartre, and Foucault, although we all struggle with the verbosity of the post-modernists.”
Rick continued: “ Fat boy over there”, indicating the rotund driver of the forklift who sported a full-on, unmodified, unabashed mullet “he is what we call a pre, or proto existentialist, he is a Nietzcshean of sorts, although his insistence that Nietzsche was a positivist has many holes, but then again, so does Nietzsche’s empiricism, so it only stands to reason. Anyway, Fat boy has a Masters in philosophy from Stanford, which don’t mean shit in this place, but he can drive a forklift like a motherfucker.”
Fat boy smiled with his eyes at the compliment.
Jim was barraged for minutes with questions, his stomach acid rising and his patience was quickly eroding. Jim hesitated to fall back on any of his pat arguments when he was approached with the type of drivel that liberals would sometimes throw his way. These men were not making fun of Jim; they were truly attempting to get him to express his faith in a way that had never been done before. Jim was fortunate that his worries were over of the time being. The intercom sounded, calling Jim back to his office for a conference call with Cincinnati. That night, Jim went home and couldn’t sleep. In church the following Sunday, Jim felt a sense of emptiness that he had not noticed before, something he could only describe as “a space” that was either newly formed, or was something he never felt.
The following week, Jim avoided the warehouse. He would send his assistant or the intern into the fray in order to avoid the possibility of confrontation with the hillbilly intellectuals, as he now deemed them. Somehow, they felt dangerous, like stray dogs that would wander the streets of Jim’s native Boise, Idaho in the summertime. Once, Jim’s secretary forwarded a message from Rick about reading Bonhoeffer, something that was lost on Jim and made him even more nervous. The weeks stretched into months though, and after a particularly moving sermon one Sunday about cowardice, Jim decided that it was time to confront his demons.
The following Monday, Jim strolled into the warehouse with no particular agenda in mind, just knowing that he needed to see Rick. He found all of the warehouse cretins busily working, shipping and receiving materials and finished print jobs. He got nothing more than a quick nod from Fat boy and Jake as they sped around the warehouse on their forklifts. Jim walked up to the line in front of Rick’s desk, spying the photo of Rick’s daughters, and a black and white photo of a wall-eyed man that looked familiar. Rick was busy typing on the filthy computer at his desk.
“What you need boss?” Rick asked.
“Nothing, I just came to pay a social call.”
“Damn, you sure picked a hell of a day to do it. I tell you what, Fat boy is having some of the boys over for barbeque this Saturday, now if you want, and we sure would love to have you there.”
Jim felt the bile rise in his stomach as he answered yes.
The following Saturday, Jim was eating ribs and drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon from a can while standing in the backyard of Fat boy’s modest house situated in the countryside about ten miles from the printing factory. The discussion was normal at first, NASCAR, and basketball dominated the conversation. Jim was asked about the absence of his wife, to which he replied that she was in Hagerstown visiting the in-laws. A few canned in-law jokes later, and all seemed to be going smoothly. Over pie though, things changed irrevocably.
Jim was about to place a forkful of pecan pie into his mouth when Rick ambushed him.
“Jim, how are we gonna git you to understand the futility of the individual in the universal schemata?”
Jim squinted his eyes while chewing what was the most delicious pecan pie he had ever eaten.
“Good pie ain’t it? I mean, to truly understand one’s faith, one must question it don’t you think?”
Jim nervously shoveled more pie into his mouth.
“You wanna know what I think Jim?” asked Rick pointedly, “I think you are a goddamn fraud.”
Jim stopped chewing the tasty pie and his balls began to crawl into his torso when his eyes met Rick’s bloodshot gaze.
“I think you haven’t ever questioned anything in your life. I think you lack what those of the Christian faith refer to as a soul. The soul Jim, must be earned in most faiths, and early Christianity was no exception to this- the martyrs all understood the precariousness of their faith, and they chose, or so as I see it, to die for that faith. That sort of thing only comes with direct and thoughtful questioning of the origins, the very nature of your beliefs, weighing them emotionally, intellectually and historically. You have simply followed blindly doing what you were told. Christianity requires you to be a shepherd Jim, not a sheep. I think it is time you came to grips with the absurdity of the universe that we reside in.”
The next thing Jim remembered was the dream of being sawn in half on the Merv Griffin show, something that stemmed from his first erotic memory when those disembodied legs boldly strutted across the floor of the stage. He remembered his excitement, and the nausea felt at the site of Merv’s sweaters as well. When the Cosby Show was aired, he couldn’t stand to watch it because of the sweaters worn by Cliff Huxtable. He felt this sense of Job-like certainty when he awoke on the screaming fire door, that God would come to save him somehow. The keycard bothered him in the same way that the French graffiti had bothered him. He was clinging to a large metal door that fried his arms and shoulders from the reflected heat of the sun. Jim found himself praying that God would come and save him somehow. He noted the irony that he often thought of himself as saved, and would refer to himself as such among his church-going friends, and here he was in need of rescuing.
After two nights in the swells of the Indian Ocean, Jim no longer wondered how he got there. He no longer cared for anything. He understood suddenly that he was completely and totally alone in the universe, and that there was little chance of him being rescued. He came to the realization without fear, or trepidation, but with the same sense of emotion one would have while routinely waiting at a red light. He was ready to accept it. He understood, that this sense of loneliness that he feared his entire life was the reason he shied away from questioning anything at all. He now understood that he was simply a man who had been somehow dropped by rednecks into the middle of some tropical ocean with nothing more than a fire door and a keycard from a Parisian hotel. The thought of the random beauty of it made him smile, which opened cuts on the corners of his mouth. He was not afraid anymore.
Jim was not afraid even when the shark approached him from behind. Kicking around while floating on the door made Jim appear to be a wounded fish of some sort, and the large Mako shark swam up to have a look see - When the shark bit into Jim’s torso, ripping him in half, Jim was surprised, but not fearful. He really had no time to be afraid. A final thought did escape from him as he saw the shark had spit Jim’s legs from his toothy mouth, not finding them meaty enough – “This is absurd.”
