Dear diary,
So now Tolstoy and Jesus and I start a business together. It is a fruit stand. We schedule a meeting with a bank officer and show her the diagram that we drew up, which explains how we plan to make a profit; then she approves us for a loan.
The back story is that Tolstoy created a species of robots that could shape-shift. So, for instance, a toaster could transform into a metal humanoid who looks like a Goddess Decoy. Then Jesus built upon this idea and improved it — he created a Male God Decoy. So that’s how the two organs were created: the male pole and the female hole. Then I myself entered the stage and tried to create a third type of organ, but it was hard for me to compete, because my forerunners were so ingenious, having these robots with their poles and holes that they made. So I ended up fashioning a man out of mud, and I gave him big muscles and blonde mop-like hair. Then Jesus and Tolstoy tried to copy my Strong Clay Man by making humans out of blue material, so these became the deities of the East. And they mated with my Clay Man’s offspring and the vehicular androids of Tolstoy, which resulted in the natural birth of smaller bluish people. These were known as the sky people, or sometimes the sky gods. many of them were giants who looked like lumberjacks, so they were nicknamed skyjacks. (I’ll talk more about these skyjacks in some future book, when I live in Ancient Egypt.) And the toughest member of their gang was called The Storm God: he had the shape of a Feline Human, and his penchant was to chase after mice.
So, for many years, our creations battled to the death and made sweet love with one another. Their weapons were enormous, and their passions ran strong. One of them wore a plastic exo-wrap that covered his whole body, even his face, so nobody ever could tell what he was thinking or saying. And these multitudes that were male and female robot warriors, having various shades of blue casing, would frequently visit our fruit stand, because Tolstoy manufactured potatoes (more of a vegetable than a fruit, I know; but we needed some way to get vodka), and Jesus made apples, and I myself made oranges.
Now one day the seven spirits of the Storm God Cat Bot clicked together and formed one single Tyger, and they named their co-op Bryan. And he was the author of his own books, and his last name was Ray. These seven spirits scheduled a meeting with a bank officer and showed her the diagram that they drew up, and they demonstrated how they could become this Giant Cat Machine by merging their metal frames into One Flesh. And this beast was hot.
The equally attractive female mega-bank loan officer was convinced by the above performance that the spirits’ enterprise, if managed wisely, might prove profitable. Therefore she approved them for nine hundred and ninety-nine thrillion caesars. This was a lot of money, back in those days.
(Please note that it is unclear whether the loan above is the same one that Tolstoy, Jesus and I got when we started our fruit stand.)
Now the earth was still forming, and all of its mountains were still molten, and no grass had yet grown on any of its hillocks; so the rolling plains were dangerous. Thus our heroes resided on the planet Jupiter, and they crafted a Black Panther named Myala to keep them company. (Actually, they didn’t craft her; she was already there. But for the purposes of this myth, we’ll say that they crafted her.) And the seven spirits of the Storm God would sometimes merge into Bryan the Tyger so as to go romping around with Myala the Black Panther, and sometimes they would remain separate and just hover over the firmament, brooding moodily. But back to Tolstoy and Jesus:
Now after the earth cooled down and all the reptiles were extinguished, my two friends Tolstoy and Jesus got an apartment in New York with the other Bryan (the regular human Bryan, not the Tyger who is his author). And they realized that they needed a female roommate, because Bryan had failed at creating a third sex to keep them company. So they ordered the aforesaid Myala to be dreamt over from Jupiter in the form of a movie star named Vanessa. If all this sounds confusing, just relax your attention and let the info melt around inside your fancy like blobs in a lava lamp. You’ll learn to like it, or else.
So all four of us live in this apartment together, and we menfolk own a fruit stand together. And whenever we finish either watching television or babysitting our business, we all meet each other at a local bar for free beers. For there’s a bar right across the street from our place that has beer on tap which they offer to locals gratis.
And the earth soon became overpopulated, so Vanessa invented death. This was a relief. We also began to sell a lot of fruit from our stand, although we fell behind on paying our loan. But we learned that if you destroy the bank, your loan gets annihilated right along with it. So that saved our hide. This is how we avoided being thrown into debtors’ prison.
But Tolstoy made some bad decisions, which got us all thrown into debtors’ prison anyway. However, since we are all popular mythological personages, the judges awarded us a luxury cell that looked similar to our apartment, which was positioned adjacent to a pub that sold very cheap beer. And the reason for our popularity was as follows. Tolstoy was popular for being extremely fast (for he was born Russian); Jesus Christ was popular because his dad on his mother’s side was God; and I myself was popular, despite the homeliness of my visage, for possessing an exuberant imagination. (That means I’m really good at lying.)
So our first job in jail was to learn how to do slapstick comedy. That was fun. Then our second job was to drape robes over all the angels in the museum. For our jail was blessed with a gymnasium that was cluttered with angel statues, and these artworks were so sublime (for they were all plucked, so they had no feathers covering their ugly parts) that the actual angels — the blue ones from heaven — continually gave in to the temptation to descend their escalier and ransack the collection. And we found that placing robes on the statues worked as a deterrent.
Then we went out for beers, and I sat on the bar stool between my friends Tolstoy and Jesus. (Vanessa did not accompany us to jail — I should have mentioned that fact. She is waiting for us on the outside, in our apartment in New York. But our movie comes with a special consumer-grade editing board that has a toggle knob, which allows the viewer to alternate between watching either of two entertainments: [1] us three men serving our time to pay Tolstoy’s debt to society; or [2] the sensual adventures of Vanessa. For her movie is basically a separate project that is directed, written, filmed, and acted by herself; and she is interested primarily in showing off her charms, both physical and intellectual, as she was born gorgeously brilliant: she came fully-formed, straight out the womb, smoking cigarettes and delivering playful soliloquies.) So there I am in the middle of Tolstoy and Jesus, drinking cheap beer.
“I wish this were absinthe,” I complain. “Hell, I wish WE were free. I miss our apartment. I miss Vanessa.”
Jesus drapes his arm around me and sez: “We’ll get thru this. Don’t lose heart. Lo, if the United States could make it thru the 2019 novel-coronavirus pandemic, then the three of us can certainly make it thru a stint in debtors’ prison.”
“If only this facility weren’t maximum security,” Tolstoy remarks and then sips his beer.
“Wait, what you just said is wrong, dear Jesus,” I say, “for the U.S. never did make it thru that pandemic. In fact, that’s what caused the fall of their awesome empire.”
“Point taken,” Jesus blows the frothy foam from the top of his beer mug.
“Christ, are you not feeling well?” asks Tolstoy. “You haven’t been drinking.”
“Nah, I’m fine,” sez Jesus; “I’m just a little depressed, for all the reasons that you two mentioned. Jail is a drag.”
“Then drink, my friend!” Tolstoy tries to improve the mood. “That’s why we came here, to this pub across the street from our cozy cell.”
“Alright,” sez Jesus, and he gulps down the full mug of beer; then raises his finger to the bartender. “Another, please.” He then guzzles this second beer as well.
“That’s more like it!” Tolstoy pats Jesus on the back.
Jesus smiles. “It does help,” he admits. Then he looks at me and Tolstoy very earnestly and sez: “It also helps to have a couple good friends like you.”
The scene cuts to a commercial for an object that looks like a bible, but when you open it up, it has a hollow place in the shape of a pistol where you can conceal your handgun.
When our story resumes, we’re all back in our apartment-like jail cell, sharing a cigarillo of cannabis.
There is the sound of a doorbell on the soundtrack.
“Come in,” sez Jesus; “it’s always unlocked.”
The apartment’s door opens and an angel enters.
Jesus tries not to exhale too much smoke as he exclaims: “Gabe! Welcome! Where’s your boyfriend Mike?”
“Mike’s coming,” sez the angel Gabriel. “He just had to stop and lace up his boots.”
Now another angel enters the apartment thru the door that has been left partway open.
“Hey,” I Bryan the human say, “please stay back on the mat — you’re tracking blood all over the carpet.”
“Oh, oops; sorry,” sez Michael the angel. He steps back onto the doormat and unlaces his boots. Then he addresses his angelic companion: “Did you tell them why we came?”
“Not yet,” sez the angel Gabriel.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” sez Michael, sliding his boots off and stepping forth in his stockings.
“I was waiting for you,” sez Gabriel; then, looking down at Michael’s feet, he remarks: “Are your socks bloody too?”
“No,” sez the angel Michael, “these are made from a synthetic fiber — I think it’s called elastane — so they look wet all the time, but they’re totally dry.” He then steps a couple times, to prove this; but his feet make sloshing sounds — so he adds, in explanation: “That’s not from my stockings — I’m just standing where I had walked before I removed my boots.”
“Guys,” Jesus sez to the angels, “what’s this news that you’re saying you didn’t say yet?”
Gabriel turns to face Jesus proudly. “We paid your debt,” sez the angel. “You’re free.”
“You’re breaking us out of prison!?” Tolstoy looks hopeful.
“No,” sez Gabriel, “I said we paid your debt. There’s no need to break out. You can all go back to your apartment now, legally. Everything’s squared away. Vanessa’s just finishing shooting a steamy scene — she’ll be happy to see you all.”
“I’m gonna miss this place,” I say, looking fondly at the surroundings of our cell.
“Well if we ever want to return,” Jesus punches my shoulder playfully and then passes me the cigarillo, “we can always commit more sins.”
Before taking a drag, I quip: “Hey, don’t give Leo any ideas.”
Jesus and I share a laugh at Tolstoy’s expense.
§
So we move back into our apartment and ask Vanessa how the fruit stand is holding up.
“Oh! The business! I’m sorry, I totally spaced out and forgot to even check on it!” she sez; then inhales sharply on her cigarette.
“You didn’t even go look at how much fruit is left in the bins, or ring up any new sales and put the caesar coins in the cash register?” cries Tolstoy.
“No, like I said, I forgot,” sez Vanessa, while exhaling a plume of smoke.
So Jesus and Tolstoy and I hold hands and go walk diagonally across the busy 4-way intersection in New York and check on our fruit stand. When we arrive, we see that there are rotten apples and decaying oranges littering the ground; and the potatoes in the bin are all gnarly with roots groping out, and there are only fourteen crates of vodka remaining.
“Holy flowers of evil, my brothers,” I say; “if I’m not mistaken, I’d say we’ve been robbed.”
“No, this isn’t a robbery,” Jesus reasons; “look: the fruit just naturally rotted because nobody wanted to buy it. Let’s check how much money there is in the cash register…”
We discover that although we stupidly left the key dangling from the lock, so that anyone who wanted to could have opened up the drawer and stolen all our lucre, miraculously the entire multi-thrillion-caesar loan is still in there, collecting dust.
“Shit,” sez Jesus; “we could’ve used this to get out of jail.”
“But the archangels Gabriel and Michael broke us out,” sez Leo Tolstoy; “I think it’s better this way. Now we can afford to pay rent for this month. Maybe even next month, too.”
Jesus and I exchange a knowing look.
“Leo,” sez Jesus, “why don’t you go take a nap in the hay bale over there.” Jesus points to the pile of fodder that we keep in case we ever acquire a farm animal. “You’ll feel better when you awake. This is not a commandment, however; it’s only a strong suggestion.”
So Count Tolstoy dutifully falls asleep in the hay.
Jesus now turns to me and whispers, “When he starts to snore, help me fish the scrolls out of his deep pockets.”
I gasp, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Jesus makes an evil face: “I want those movie scripts that he’s written.”
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