Beings

Men and other creatures make the gods by believing in them. And, oh yes, yes, yes enough of them believe in me to give me presence to do my pleasure. Digressing from my sensual delights for a moment I could render some discourse on the FATES, or the Intelligence of the Universe, or the ultimate unknowable truth, but like you, I don't understand these things.

I do understand my own sorrows and joys. Let there be less of the former and more of the latter! Christianity represented a bit of a change. --A few promotions, numerous demotions. Many of the gods took lesser jobs as angels or saints. Luckily there are enough crazy fucks out there to give solid work to the demons and devils --fed so enormously on the massive amount of putrid energy coming from people's minds. But I like this energy. It gives me my daily bread.

I'm tired of these reminiscences. Oh, I'll do a few more: I remember Yahwah when He was simply Yah, battling sea serpents upon leaving His mountain, or plaguing His followers with peculiar demands. I haven't heard anything from Him in three thousand years. Some say He's been elevated to the Universal Conscience, others claim He's simply gone on holiday. I was in His gang; one of the host. I was called The Destroyer. Excuse me, as I laugh. Me doing military service! Well that was a long time ago. Threatening Moses, slaying Egyptians. Keeping busy. And before that I had my own gig. Collecting offerings, taking the virginity of young women before their wedding night. Yum-yum. Many a husband roiled in the deepest consternation upon discovering that I had been there first.

I have no conscience; it's a people thing. People developed their consciences (if they have them) alongside their neuroses. They were afraid that other people would find out about all the bad thoughts and evil plans in their own heads and do to them what they intended to do to others.

I wander about, disguised as a venture capitalist or motion picture producer. I can get people to do almost anything for me. Much more power than merely a god. No threats, no storms over the wine-dark sea. --No ranting and ravings and lunatic diatribes against a mutinous crew; just a chauffeured limousine and a nice wardrobe.

***

At a bar one night, with an ingénue on my arm. A man began to rail at me about Hollywood pornography. --As if I cared about the cartoon industry. Must have been an evil politician. "You can't take your children to the movies anymore," he complained.

"Then don't. Let them do chores in the backyard so their fathers can hunch over the computer or VCR and get their wankering done." Time and place for everything.

He got upset and came around to my side and touched me with his finger. "You don't understand the seriousness of this," he told me.

Little Miss was getting anxious, thinking they'll be a scene or worse a fist-fight in this swanky bar. I don't like to be touched by men. Not on good material. I've taken to wearing dark blue suits, with a formal dress shirt, gold cuff links and black bow tie. I don't go for black tuxedoes. Why look like a waiter?

"You're right, I don't," I admitted without any sheepish-ness.

"Youth is being led astray," he said.

"You should have seen the Crusades, or the Black Death or any number of other calamities. Seeing some beaver won't do that much harm. It's you who are jealous," I said.

He got angry. But I didn't react, I slipped out from in front of him with little Miss on my arm. "Excuse me, I have some fornicating to do."

She didn't like my announcement and looked away. Women. Not to worry. I'll make it right or get another. I could hold auditions, or simply walk into an executive office with a briefcase full of money. It'll provoke enough wanton looks to re-do Dante. Everyone wants to be a star!

Me too, unfortunately. I was told that eons ago. Avoid the limelight. Stay away from top-billing unless you can keep your pecker in your pants. It'll do you in. I'm weak. Tormented by constant desires. Eros gone mad.

**

I met some of my old chums to go on about it. "I'm tempted to actually make a motion picture. Call it My Perversity. I could play myself doing everything I want. Think of how much fun I could have," I tell them.

"Think again," I was told.

My tie was hanging, balance tottering as I drank champagne from the bottle. "How's that?"

"Go into the anti-pornography crusade. Become a politician, and pinch a few bottoms along the way. Hypocrisy is the way to go!" I was instructed.

"Oh, damn that's no fun.... All subterfuge," I replied to Janus, that two-faced bastard.

"Do it! Do it! Do it!" The chorus rang. "And get us a tax cut."

"Okay. So let me get this right. I campaign against smut while imbibing in it, right?" I was drunk. "All right then," It sounded like a fun idea. So I became a politician.

Who knew I'd get elected President.

***

It wasn't as much fun as I thought. Trysts had to be well-timed as there were countless volumes of people who needed to shake my hand. A primate thing touching the hand. Many meetings to go to. Everyone had something to say, except me. I would just nod and then ask something like, "Time for lunch? Tea anyone?"

I was preparing to demonstrate an interesting technique for lovemaking to one of my many administrative assistants when some advisor or other came bursting into the office.

"They've just discovered evidence of intelligence in the Universe," he said trembling.

"They have? Who is this 'they' who are themselves able to detect intelligence?" I mused aloud. "And where is this intelligence, it's certainly not here?"

"We are not alone," he cried.

Having been elected as a conservative I had been obligated to accept the wrong bunch of servants and savants for my personal retinue. People of limited creative abilities.

"And you wish to be alone?" I asked him.

"We don't understand their message," he related, holding up some sheaf of papers.

"Give it here," I said and seeing that it was gibberish, tossed it into the trash, thinking now I can get on with lusty coitus.

"I don't think we can suppress this. It was originally detected by the SETI project running on people's home computers as screen savers. The word is out."

I had no idea what he was babbling about. "Suppress what? This isn't about any of our administration accepting bribes and contributions. It's dull, science news, which nobody cares about."

"No, this is the kind of stuff that makes people doubt Jesus and God and..."

"Oh I see..." We are back to what people believe. I became concerned. What if they stopped believing in me? I should perish. Thoughts of bestial carnality shriveled. I sat at the desk and thought tremulous ideas of destruction.

"Maybe we'll fall under the reign of Lucifer himself," this foolish aide said.

My spirits brightened. "Say that again. We will stop believing in the Divine and instead believe in the devil?" How could this make any sense? I seldom get angry over philosophical treatises but this one irrationality in mankind about THE DEVIL bedevils me! There is no THE DEVIL only a slew of amoral gods behaving as arbitrarily and capriciously as the men who imagined them. As for devils of the lesser variety; hey, you're talking about old friends of mine. Concocting a theorem of universal evil personified in one pitiful creature is the kind of rubbish that gives humans such a bad name in the universe.

"What we'll have to do is convince the citizens that the Divine is real," I said. Thinking that maybe televising a lengthy display of my prodigious sexual bouts might be the thing. But this would alienate my political base. What do humans truly want from the Divine? "I shall call a conference."

***

"People want to be loved."

"People want to be saved."

--"From what?" I asked, having endured hours of boring trivia at this convening of the mediocre minds and great egos of earth.

"From nothingness. People need to be saved from nothingness," the old professor said.

That was of course impossible. Universes themselves deteriorate into nothingness so that new ones can be born. Everything perishes. Yes, yes, yes there could be a great explanation beyond that. But none of us are capable of comprehending it.

"The people need to be reassured," someone else said.

"What are the people doing right now?" I asked. "Watching television, eating, shitting, talking about sports or hairdos? Nobody agrees with anyone else..." And why should they, after all, they're all people! Monkeys wearing suits, driving automobiles and occasionally running over one another. My only concern was that they continue to believe in me, making me possible. I did not wish to perish. Not just yet.

"About the message from the distant galaxy. I think I have deciphered some of it," the old professor said.

"A postcard from Yahwah? Having a great time, wish you were here?" I joked but shivered thinking of my old boss. He had a sense of humor, but not one to be endured.

"Is there anything in there about gods ... you know the metaphysical?" I asked.

"No, not at all," the Professor said.

"Ooo, that's very bad. I think we should tell the people to pray. And beware of demons and supernatural messengers, for they could be everywhere," I said.

There was some laughter. I was losing the crowd. After thousands of years of restraint I had enough. I decided to levitate into the center of the room and stand, naked, midair over the conference table.

***

Years later, the next administration released explanations months apart for two widely misunderstood phenomena: The first explained the synchronous X-ray signal from galaxy Z21 as the first signal to be amplified by negative gravity and therefore mistaken for intelligent communications. The second detailed the mass hallucination due to mushroom poisoning during the conference in which President Terence D. Presley disappeared.