The Last Testament: A Memoir (53 page)

⁴
All my calculations must be readjusted; now, in addition to gravity, and electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, I have to factor in Tony and Peggy making goo-goo eyes on the Ferris wheel.

⁵
The closest I ever got to understanding the experience of human love came during a discussion I had one night with Abélard.

⁶
Thou mayest remember Abélard as the great medieval theologian and scholar who fell in love with his pupil Héloïse; they had a passionate affair, but when her uncle Fulbert found out he had impregnated her he forced her to become a nun, and hired thugs to castrate him.

⁷
Yea, that was a cruel fate; being forced to become a nun.

⁸
One night many years later, I visited Abélard one night in a dream.

⁹
I was curious: here was a man who had been a faithful and chaste servant of mine all his life; yet even he had found himself trapped in love’s sharp snares, and they wound up cutting his balls off.

¹⁰
“Abélard,” I said—we were sitting on big fluffy pillows in his childhood home, for I wanted him to feel at ease—“I deem thee uniquely qualified, as both a lover and a theologian, to answer a question;

¹¹
This question from the L
ORD
in heaven above:

¹²
What is this thing called love?”

¹³
He meditated for a long time, then spoke in a voice of solemn authority.

¹⁴
“Love,” he declaimed, “is a battlefield.”

¹⁵
I pondered.

¹⁶
“But how dost thou know if thou really lovest her?” I responded.

¹⁷
“L
ORD
,” he replied, “it is when thou seest her and thinkest, ‘I love thee just the way thou art’;

¹⁸
Or when her friend approacheth and says, ‘She loves thee; yea, yea, yea’;

¹⁹
When she is thy Alpha, thy Omega, thy Everything.

²⁰
Thereupon she becomes the meaning in thy life, and the inspiration; and thou wouldst die 4 her.

²¹
Years of meditation and solitude have passed since my affair with Héloïse, and I have long since come to realize the greatest love of all is inside of me;

²²
Yet I confess that on occasion I do still reminisce about those heavenly days with my lover;

²³
When we had mirth, mirth, mirth, ‘til her uncle took my testes away.”

CHAPTER 3

¹
S
ex is physical, love is emotional, but marriage is practical; and marriage I
completely
understand.

²
Genesis may be revisionist when it comes to the sexual orientation of the first couple, but in this it quotes me accurately: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet.”

³
It was true for Adam, and it is true now: human beings are fallible and fragile, and it is good that each share his or her days on earth with another, that they may both find support and consolation as they face the travails of life.

⁴
Those who debate whether I meant marriage to be a relationship only between a man and woman, or also between two men or two women, misseth the point.

⁵
I meant marriage to be a relationship between
any
two people, and the enormous amount of shit they have to deal with on a daily basis.

⁶
Marriage is difficult, and I myself, in my union with Ruth, have not always been the perfect husband.

⁷
For instance, I have forgotten our wedding anniversary every year for the last 843 years; and, as she correctly chides, I have no excuse.

⁸
But lately I have seen a proliferation of books and seminars with titles like
How to Be a Good Jewish Husband
and
The Keys to a Christian Marriage
and
The Muslim Wife’s Guide to Not Being a Filthy Whore.

⁹
Be dubious of these, Reader; for not a single passage in any of my holy books was written as an aid to spouses with communication issues, or 40-something divorcees dipping their toes back in the dating pool, or couples looking to have more fun in the bedroom.

¹⁰
(Yea, Leviticus offers some explicit suggestions on the proper placement of quarantined menstruating women; but their eroticism is limited.)

¹¹
I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe; I am not thy gay best friend.

¹²
Yet to put an end to the bogus claims of such charlatans, I will now offer my
true
counsel concerning dating and marriage; for having extrapolated the lessons I have learned from my successful dealings with mankind, I will here apply them to the sphere of interpersonal relationships.

¹³
Move very fast at the beginning.

¹⁴
Never go to bed angry.
Instead, punish thy partner immediately and eternally; and then never go to bed, period.

¹⁵
If thou hast something negative to say, phrase it indirectly.
“Verily, Noah looks awfully reverent today. I sure wish certain
other
cursed, sinkable profligates would act like that.”

¹⁶
Sometimes a
lack
of communication can really benefit stability.
I learned this from the Tower of Babel.

¹⁷
Once thou hast “Chosen” someone, they are thine to tease, torment, and disappoint forever.

¹⁸
Love requires sacrifice.

¹⁹
Therefore,
love requires livestock and fire.

²⁰
If thou findest a little clay figurine of the Ugaritic mother goddess Ashirat under the bed, it is safe to assume he/she is cheating.

²¹
Love means always having to say, “I’m sorry! Please don’t kill me!”

²²
Do not tell thy partner what thy needs are.
He knows all thy thoughts anyway; and thus is already well aware of that fantasy wherein the sexy cop pulls thee over for “driving while hot.”

²³
Do not give thy partner his own space.
Demand his constant attention through ritual, guilt, and fear.

²⁴
Long-distance relationships can work, but only with constant one-way communication.

²⁵
Do not be afraid to tell thy Partner “I love thee.”
Consider setting aside several fixed times each day—five is a good number—to let him know there is no one but him; and that Muhammad is his messenger.

²⁶
Let thy Child get between the two of thee.
I cannot stress this enough.

²⁷
Maintain the same unchanging practices and rituals for thousands of years.
Habit is the highway to happiness!

²⁸
And finally, because thou never knowest what the future holds, before committing to something permanent,
sign a pre-nup.

²⁹
I did; it’s called Revelation and I cannot
tell
thee how glad I am to have it in my back pocket.

REVELATION

CHAPTER 1

¹
A
s thou mayest have noticed, I have always had a bit of a people-crush on the Mayans.

²
Here was a society that had none of the traits I look for in a culture: they were polytheistic, based in the Western Hemisphere, had no alphabet, and built pyramids; and thou shalt remember I am not traditionally a fan of pyramid-builders.

³
Yet despite all that they lasted over 3,000 years; proved remarkable astronomers, architects, artists, and farmers; created an elaborate calendar which they used to chart time as fanatically as if they were the universe’s social secretaries;

⁴
And most impressive, remained so passionate about life that they were willing to safeguard it through its regular sacrifice.

⁵
(Understand that I am
not
by any means endorsing human sacrifice; but since they did it in service to a bunch of false gods it is not my responsibility, and thus I can look at their actions objectively and think, “Wow, the
cojones
on these guys!”)

⁶
So when it came to my attention, via myself, that many of you had come to see December 21, 2012—the completion of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mayan Long Count Calendar—as the likely date of the end of the world, I was intrigued.

⁷
For thousands of years mankind has fretted over, waited upon, but mostly gotten on its hands and knees begging me for, the Apocalypse.

⁸
It was thought I would send it when certain historical events had come to pass, and/or when thy species had attained the threshold level of evil needed to justify its extinction.

⁹
And each generation of fanatics has seen those historical events as coming to pass in its
own
time, and/or has flattered
itself
to be the lucky ones living in the age when thy species’ sin-o-meter finally rolled over back to all zeroes.

¹⁰
Yea; there has never been a time when mine ears were not regularly assaulted by the impatient cry of the self-righteously unfulfilled:

¹¹
“I want my Judgment Day and I want it
now
!”

¹²
But hear me: I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe; and the world shall end on
my
timetable, not thine.

¹³
And as it happens, when it came to the timetable of Armageddon I was always pretty flexible, schedule-wise.

¹⁴
I had no firm date in mind, or even an eon; to be honest I was too busy handling day-to-day affairs to worry about such macro-issues; when I thought about it at all, it seemed like one of those things where, when the time was right, I would know it.