Magnificent Vibration (2 page)

“One more time: I’m omniscient.”

“Okay, okay—give me a second here. But this is just some phone number I found in a . . . on a bathroom stall in a bar.”

“Ah . . . no, you didn’t.”

“But—”

“You didn’t get it at any bar. In an act of desperation, you bought—correction—you
stole
a self-help book called
Magnificent Vibration.
This number was written on the inside front cover. In pencil.”

“Motherfucker!”

“I’ll smite you for that!”

“This is crazy! Really? . . . GOD?”

“It takes you people a while, doesn’t it?”

“Okay, see, you
do
smite. You just said so.”

“That was a joke. I don’t really go round eliminating folks just because they piss themselves, or me, off.”

“You said, ‘don’t really.’ That sounds a little iffy to me. Like there’s some wiggle room.”

“Not so much.”

“Well, that
totally
sounds like there’s wiggle room.”

“Look, once again, I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Anyway, I let Adolf Hitler live and he killed millions.”

“But you took him out him eventually.”

“No, I didn’t. He killed
himself.
And not before he murdered most of the Chosen and picked a fight with half the world. What
about Pol Pot and Stalin? Ivan the Terrible, Ted Bundy? So how can I justify dispatching depressed little Bunkie, just because you got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and leave all those other ass-clowns alone?”

“ ‘Ass-clowns’? . . . Is this
really
God?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Well, you should know if I’m kidding you or not, right?”

“I was being facetious, and can you stop testing me now, goddamnit?!”

“God says ‘goddamnit’?”

“Occasionally. When it’s warranted.”

“That’s like me saying ‘Bobdamnit!’ ”

“Your name’s not Bob.”

“I’m—”

“Horatio.”

“Ahhh, I hate that name!”

“Then that would be ‘
Horatio
damnit.’ ”

“I got the crap beat out of me in junior high because of that godawful name . . . sorry, that slipped out.”

“So you changed it to
‘Bob
’
?”

“My mother was a European-history freak. Horatio—”

“Nelson, yes, I’m familiar with him.”

“Yeah, I guess you are.”

“Very famous eighteenth-century naval hero. Napoleonic wars, Battle of Trafalgar and all that.”

“That’s great, so let’s name our only son after some old Limey sailor so he can get the daily crap kicked out of him by Steve the Jock when little Horatio joins the hormone-hell known as junior high.”

“Good call on your mother’s part.”

“What?”

“Naming you Horatio.”

“What?”

“It builds character.”

“What?!”

“You might not be at the point you’re at if you’d stuck with Horatio.”

“WHAT?!!”

“Okay, you’re gonna need to give me more back than that.”

“I don’t even understand why you’re saying all this to me.”

“We’ll come back to it.”

“Look, I just called—”

“—
‘to say
.
.
. I love you.’
Stevie Wonder, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Do you have ADD? I called this number in a last-ditch hope that this was God and that you could conceivably offer a little advice or guidance. But obviously that’s not what you do, so maybe you could see your way clear to offing me in a not-too-unpleasant manner . . . a quick, painless cancer possibly, or a sudden careening car . . . something short and swift that’ll take me out of my sorry existence, because I’m at the end and I really don’t have the balls to do it
myself!
”

“ ‘
I just called
. . . to say how much I care.
’ ”

“Will you stop
singing?
”

“Let’s go back to ‘What?’ I think I liked that better.”

“What?”

“Exactly. Go out to a nice bar and have a drink and a pizza.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“Good night, Horatio?”

“FUCKIT!!”

(End call)

Crap! What did I just do? Did I just hang up on God? Seriously? Could it really have been
the
God, big “G,” little “o,” “d”? If it was, I am so screwed. No, wait; maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe he’ll be angry and wrathful with all that dark, festering biblical shit that I just
know
is in there and he
will
toast me. But if he’s really pissed, he might do it in a vengeful, Jehovah/Old Testament kind of way . . . with serpents and locusts or raining frogs and boils, or maybe he’ll kill my first-born male child, if I had a first-born male child, which I’m pretty sure I don’t, but if I did and God killed the little guy, I’d never really know about it because I don’t even know if I have a little guy in the first place. I realize the bizarre call has not only shaken me, it seems to have eighty-sixed my desire to leave this world. At least for now.

I’m also suddenly really hungry. And pizza’s not a terrible idea. Good recommendation from the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

It’s eleven o’clock at night. I’m thirty-two, newly divorced, I hate my job, my boss is possibly Voldemort’s fatter, dumber brother, I’m alone in my new post-annulment digs at 1216 N. Detroit Ave. Apt 213, Hollywood, CA 90069, pining for someone to shave my shoulders and love me (not necessarily in that order), feeling desperately sorry for myself and thinking I just had a chat with the Almighty.

Maybe I’m a bit too baked. Since the divorce, I’ve somewhat fallen back into the old high school habit of lighting one up every now and then. That coupled with the mental distress of my increasingly crappy job.

My career as a sound editor at a mind-numbingly underwhelming audio/video company that has cornered the market on dubbing bad
Cambodian gangster movies into English is something I have fallen into after the rock star, Nobel prize–winning scientist, and gigolo options failed to pan out. Who watches these highly unpleasant videos in English is beyond me. Apart from the occasional kick-ass fight scene, they’re awful: the acting is usually atrocious and the dialog and story lines in general suck a very large and blood-engorged Cambodian elephant dick, if you’ll pardon the expression. I dislike both the product and my job. It’s vapid, thankless work, made even more distasteful by my sociopath of a boss who everyone covertly calls ‘The Right Whale.’ And not just because he clocks in at three hundred and fifty big ones, either. He has this disgusting biological anomaly that causes tiny balls of white, cheesy stuff he apparently secretes to hang in the corners of his mouth and stick to both his lips with a surprising elasticity when he talks, causing them to look very much like the baleen of the aforementioned marine mammal. Fucking gross.

The Right Whale actually doesn’t figure very heavily in my story, but for his relatively small footprint, he’s managed to inject an inordinate amount of misery into my life.

I lost my dog in the divorce.
My
dog, mind you. I was okay with losing the car, the tiny house, most of the hard-earned cash (though honestly there wasn’t enough left to feed the goldfish—which she also took—once the lawyers had smelled blood, gone into a feeding frenzy, and sharked down all they could chew). But Murray was mine. Why did she have to take him? Well, I know why. Because he was
mine
, and I wanted him. She doesn’t even like dogs—but she apparently had squatter’s rights on anything she wanted. Including Murray. I have a vague idea of stealing him back at some point, though I’m a little sketchy on the details. I think I’m hoping Murray will come up with an actual plan. He always
was
good at breaking out of the house, and
I’m trusting that with the aid of that innate global-positioning device dogs are supposed to have hardwired into their brains, he’ll somehow show up on my doorstep one sweet day. I miss him.

I look at my cell phone. It looks at back me. The wacky conversation I just had replays itself in sound bites inside my head. I felt like I was talking to a really well-educated nine-year-old. I hit redial. My hand is actually trembling. Yeah, I definitely need some Taco Bell or Subway.

The dial tone sounds strange and hollow. There’s a click on the other end; a pause, then a derisive, schoolmarm voice informs me that “The toll-free number you have dialed is not available from your calling area. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.” Figures. I hit “end call,” but before I do, does the voice really add “asshole” at the close of the message?

I know it’s late, but I’m going out to a bar. That serves food.

I
’m seven years old. I have largish ears. Some of my more aggressive schoolmates have taken to calling me “Alfred,” after the
Mad
magazine kid Alfred E. Neuman, who has ears like teacup handles protruding from his befreckled dome; and his prodigious auditory equipment is, if I’m honest with myself, fairly close proportionately to my own bat-ears. Damnit. Like Alfred E., I have freckles that won’t quit until I’m in my twenties, teeth too big for my mouth, mouth too big for my face, a penchant for the upper-grade girls, and a persistent little boner that will not stay down no matter how much I play with my toy robots or think about baseball. My mother is driving the family to church, as is her wont every
Sunday morning come rain, shine, bingo, flu, crying fits, or my father’s infidelity.

Church is a cold, sleep-inducing, anxiety-producing, wood-and-stone edifice that smells like old ladies and is, to my seven-years-young mind, filled with losers, desperation, and people nearing death. And nothing like the super-cool church of my toddler imagination.

Mom has slicked my reluctant hair down to my little noggin (so I can make more of a statement with my ears vis-à-vis their extraordinary three-dimensional properties, I assume) and dressed me up in my good suit of clothes. The suit is stiff and unyielding (like my ever-present woody), and I will forever equate good clothes with the unpleasant experience of forced attendance at an antiquated church ceremony that was born in the middle ages when my great-great-to-the-tenth-power grandfather was probably struggling to hack a living for himself, his toothless bride, and their twelve lice-ridden children out of the frozen, harsh, and brutal sod of an English moor. And consequently I will dress like an ardent sports fan for much of the following years, once I am on my own and free of my mother’s sartorial stipulations. At seven, I still love her implicitly, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that were she playing outfield for the Yankees and there was a choice between catching a fly ball or saving me from the path of a speeding train, before she chose saving me, she’d first check to see if there was a man on base. She hasn’t lost her mind, divorced my father, tried to commit my beloved but damaged older sister to the state mental institution, or given my dog Bob (in whose honor I later rename myself) away to the local Vietnamese family because he barks too much for her liking, so everything is still fairly copacetic. I never see my furry best friend again after he mysteriously disappears, and I’m pretty sure his new owners barbecue him one Sunday while I am blissfully unaware and in church (of course) professing
faith in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen. Really, no wonder we’re all so fucked up.

To make matters worse, I am in love. Her name is Angela. She is a twelve-year-old goddess, forever maddeningly beyond my reach, and I begin my twisted hot-religious-girl complex right here, right now, at the tender age of seven, in this bastion of righteousness and morality. There is no mix of emotions more exhilarating, convoluted, and bewildering to my little mind than getting a stiffy as I stare at the stunning back of this angel with a ponytail while she kneels and prays, accompanied by the ancient melody of the wrinkly old vicar who drones on and on about God the Father and recites centuries-old, incomprehensible text without a hint of emotion to the faithful as I shove my hand in the pocket of my good pants to squeeze Woody Woodpecker because I inherently intuit that Angela and Woody are somehow connected. Simultaneously I am picturing in my mind, through a gauzy, sun-splashed filter, Angela turning around in her pew and seeing the love light in my eyes, stepping into the aisle of the boxy little church (which has now transformed itself into a majestic cathedral attended by kick-ass knights in gleaming battle armor), running to me while pushing past the astonished yet wildly applauding crowd of absolute-believers, picking me up (I am a smallish child), and spinning me round in slo-mo while professing her undying love as Woody and I rub ourselves against her crinoline dress and pledge allegiance to her forever. Whoohooo!! It is the upside of forced religion. The downside being that I am wracked with guilt at the same time. I instinctively know that what I am envisioning is very wrong. Horribly wrong. Completely against everything I am being taught that God wants and expects of me, frail and pathetic human being that I am. My mother would be horrified. How dare I defile God’s house of worship with my
stinky-boy carnal longings? It is an awesome amalgam! And mixed all together, the hot, intoxicating brew of these conflicting and uncompromisingly charged emotions is delicious and staggeringly mind-blowing. I am effing hooked.