Dear diary,
Now that I’ve gotten my eleventh novel written and made a whole bunch of money from it, I can just goof off for the rest of my life. That is, until the next novel needs to be written; but that’s not for at least a couple weeks.
So the first thing I do is attend a baby shower with a group of my girlfriends. I reach into the pocket of my leather jacket and pull out a black comb and begin to comb my hair. I say hello to all the familiar faces (we all went to the same high school and worked at the same law firm for seven years) — I greet Jennifer, Rachael, Mindy, Sandy, Tessa, Jessica, Donna, Sheila, and Laura.
“Which one of you is having the baby?” I ask.
Nobody answers. We can hear an old rap song from the 1980s playing at low volume from the boom box.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say; “nobody’s even pregnant? And we’re here celebrating the birth of a new baby girl, but she’s not even conceived yet? No one even got married, among all of us friends from wayback? Please tell me someone at least had a dream about being big-with-child.”
“I had a dream last night,” sez a voice from the back.
“Who said that?” I shout. “Step forward and show yourself.”
Donna raises her hand and waves to get my attention, while she steps forth from the group and repeats: “I had a dream last night. Here’s what happened: I gave birth to an alien creature, even tho I’m still a virgin. I know that that doesn’t make sense; but that’s how dreams are. I assume that some extraterrestrial deity must have planted a seed in me without my consent.”
“And how did you feel about this gift of life?” asks Mindy, now super-interested.
“Why?” sez Donna, now on her guard and not wishing to be harshly judged.
“I’m just wondering if you felt thankful or resentful about your predicament,” Mindy explains, “because I happen to have had the exact same dream. I was too shy to speak up, when Bryan first asked; but then when you, Donna, stepped forward and began to tell your story, that’s when I took courage. So now I’m wondering if you were more proud or ashamed at being the chosen vessel of the God Amen-Ra. Cuz I felt kinda good about it. I was a virgin living in Ancient Egypt, and I couldn’t wait to bear the child of our overthrowers. (Somehow I knew that this babe would act as the conqueror of our Ancient World.)”
“Ah,” Donna relaxes, “that’s a relief — I thought you were going to accuse me of lying about this dream. Cuz it’s true: I could just be making it up — nobody knows what really transpired, last night, in my mind.”
“So what’s the verdict?” I say. “Did you have an opinion either way, about playing the role of an Ancient Egyptian teen virgin mother-to-be?”
“Oh, yes,” sez Donna; “I liked it. It felt good.”
Now cake is served, and I note that there’s a message written in blood — either that or red icing — which reads “Congratulations Sophia”.
“Is Sophia the name of the parasite or the host?” I ask.
“The baby!” all my girlfriends yell at once.
“Ah, that makes sense,” I say; “because none of you here is named Sophia. Plus, why would anyone congratulate the mother? It’s the babe who’s accomplished her own breakthrough into our shared nightmare.”
I carve a piece for myself that contains the last three letters of that name. Then I carve the piece that sez “Sop” and pass it to Donna.
“Share that with Mindy,” I say, “since y’all are eating for four now.”
Then I stand up from my chair and walk around behind it and push the chair back against the table, and I hold my hands out in the style of a prophet giving a blessing to his disciples. After the conversation dies down, I make the following announcement:
“I’m leaving you now. I made plans to go get my hair and nails done.”
“But you just got here,” sez Sheila; “and you haven’t even touched your cake — you only ate the icing off of it.”
I look down at the now-frostingless piece of cake. “You’re right,” I admit. Then I point to the bottle of wine at the far end of the table, and the girls all pass it from hand to hand until it reaches me, and I uncork it and glug it entirely. “Alright,” I say, placing the empty bottle back on the table; “now I’m off. Good luck with your babymaking.”
My girlfriends all salute me as I leave the room on foot.
§
I reach the salon and approach the front desk. “Hi, Bry!” the greeter greets me.
“May I look at your wristwatch?” I say to the damsel. She holds out her arm and I clutch it greedily and stare hard at the face of the clock, which reads 13:34.
“Drats!” I shout; “I’m thirty-four minutes late.”
My hairdresser now emerges from the drapes of the smoke room. “Don’t worry about the hour,” she sez in a sultry way; “I just love styling your hair and beautifying your nails. If we run overtime because we got a late start, my other clients can wait.”
“Are you sure?” I say. “I don’t want to make anyone suffer in agony, reading these awful magazines that you keep here in the Red Room…”
“They deserve it,” sez my stylist; “believe me.”
So I go take a seat in the giant comfy chair and get my hair and nails done.
§
When I arrive back home at my Great Pyramid, I look in the magic mirror, and the mirror remarks: “You look great!”
“Thanks,” I say. I kiss the mirror and then go to the kitchen. I fry myself some liverslices with crustcrumbs. “Uh,” I exclaim in ecstasy as I eat them.
Then I take an afternoon nap.
When I wake, there is the sound of hard rain on the stones of my home, the Great Pyramid of Giza. I slip on my loafers and forget to wear pants as I run out to check on the weather conditions.
“Wow!” I say, as the lightning ignites the sky, over and over, “This is a big one!”
“It’s the Day of the LORD,” sez Orpheus from the heavens. “It’s a bad day for bad folks, because they’re getting judged — the creditor class is weeping and gnashing their teeth on this occasion, because they abused the debtor class — but it’s a good day for good folk: so enjoy the pyrotechnics with your friends at the library.”
“Good idea!” I say. Then I grab a newspaper from the priest who is standing next to me and use it to shield my hairstyle from the storm while I race on foot to the Library of Alexandria.
“Hi everyone!” I greet my librarian friends when I enter the glass double-doors. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there; and the thunderbolts are flying!”
“The Day of the LORD is upon us,” sez the head librarian Potiphar. “The god of the Hebrews is destroying the creditor class.”
We all stand at the giant window and admire the sight of the Final Judgment.
“Jeez, that’s beautiful,” I say. “I wish this type of thing would happen more often.”
“So do we,” sez the entire staff of the library in unison. “So do we.”
Then, when the show is over, we all cook hotdogs with one of the library’s live-in street-vendors. I take my place in the assembly line as the one who decides how much ketchup, mustard, and relish to put on each dog; then I hand each dog to its consumer.
“Here you go,” I say with a smile. “I hope it has just the right amount of mustard on it. I left off the ketchup and relish because you strike me as a mustard-only type of virgin bondmaid: no nonsense; yet very eager to embrace dream-lovers.”
The consumer blushes. “That is true! How did you know?”
“Like I said,” I explain, “I just guessed. There’s something about your pretty eyes that moved me to prepare your order in this fashion.”
The maid stands blinking and biting her bottom lip.
“You’ll need to move along now, though,” I say, attempting to elbow her gently aside while holding the next dog for the next consumer; “we have a long line of souls to serve, this evening.”
The maid, however, does not budge.
“What is it?” I ask her sincerely. “How come you’re so stubborn? You’re making yourself overwhelmingly attractive, by showing such persistence — I don’t want to fall any deeper in love with you than I already am.”
“I ordered two hotdogs,” sez the maid.
I look at her receipt. “Ay me!” I exclaim, “the Devil’s Special, yes; how did I screw that up!? I’m so sorry, here’s your extra dog…” I quickly squirt mustard and ketchup on a fresh hotdog, and I add a few heaping spoonfuls of relish as well, to try to make up for my remission.”
The maid receives her second dog and smiles brightly. “Thank you.”
I gently elbow her away and hand the next dog to the next woman in line.
After serving all the other library patrons, I myself finally sit down to eat. I open a family bible to use as a makeshift dinner-table, and set my seven hotdogs and two grilled fish upon its pages. I take a bite of the dog, which is dripping with condiments, and I then stretch out my leg and use my left loafer to nudge the ankle of the damsel who happens to be standing at the bookshelf before me:
“Excuse me,” I say, and then I take another bite of the hotdog, and then I drink a little wine, and then I lift up one of the servings of grilled fish and bite into it and chew it thoroughly and swallow it, “dear virgin, could you please go browse the poetry section and pick something out for me? I would do so myself, but I’m dining at present.”
“It will be my pleasure,” the damsel replies.
Then after about fifteen minutes, when I have only two dogs left and a quarter of the second piece of grilled fish, the damsel returns holding forth a sizable volume.
I hold my hands up, to show that they are dripping with ketchup, mustard, and relish: “Please, set it at my side — my hands are dirty.”
“Why don’t you just tear some of the pages out of that New Testament and use them as napkins?” sez the damsel. “Start with the book of Revelation.”
“Ah, good idea,” I say; then I turn to the back of the book and rip out a few pages and wipe my hands; then I rip out some more and dab my mouth. Then I take the comb out of my leather jacket and make sure my hairstyle is impeccable. Then I hold out my hands for the book and exclaim: “Gimme, gimme!”
The damsel laughs and hands over the tome. I look at the cover. “Ooh! Robert Frost!” I cry, “I love this! Thank you! Excellent choice!” I flip thru the volume a little, careful to handle its pages with care. “Hey, it’s the complete works — that’s great; so everything’s in here! Alright, good deal!”
“I thought you might like that,” the damsel now returns to the bookshelf where she was standing before. Her skirt has a high hemline, and she poses in a way that presents a clear view of her womanhood.
I page thru the book a little more and then bring it to the checkout.
After leaving the library, I purchase a silver Ferrari Testarossa and drive to a landscape in China that has green grass, black mountains and a gorgeous waterfall, where I spend the rest of the day reading the poems of Robert Frost.
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