YHWH $%#^?*&:)@gmail.com                                                  1:17 AM July 15, 2004
to me

Dear Madam,

Let me get this straight: This means I’m not in my office right now, with the door closed, way too early on what is now a Sunday, not in my house, which is not dark, not silent, on a street that is not entirely deserted, surrounded on either side and across by houses and lawns and driveways and crappy little garage-door-basketball-hoops that, though they are weathered and broken, are not at all there. Not because it is dark out, because it isn’t, but because of what you said. It is not (I think I’m getting the hang of this now) way too early on a Sunday for me to be up, not hearing the whir of my hard drive and the ratcheting ping of an inbox, that unlike the president’s, is not not private, and not not security-encoded. And what I am most not doing, by your logic, is paying any attention at all to one of the exponentially multiplying facets of my left-forward fleyeball, the one which depicts you, in the dark, leaning into liquid crystal, Wikipediaing Nietzsche, you pimply little blue-faced shit. What I’m most not doing more than that, is writing you this email.

So as long as I’m not, I might as well keep my mouth shut and not tell you about the wonderful fucking day that led to this embarrassment.

Let’s see. I woke up at six. I mean, dawn didn’t happen. Didn’t make coffee, an article in the Wall Street Journal technology section didn’t make me absolutely furious and I guess Cessnas have a history of “just disappearing” out over wine country, crazy as that sounds. It must be all the sandstorms. Jesus took the Land Cruiser to swim team, I mean, he walked or took the bus or something instead. No one can accuse me of that dump I took on Myanmar, God would have flushed.

Second (see my fingers?). Let’s see, what did I do? What didn’t I do after I shat? Oh yeah, I accidentally opened an e-invitation to the Dalai Lama’s birthday party and since Satan is out of town I was making myself sick looking through Outlook trying to figure out exactly which Prince/ Marquis/ Grand Duke/ Count/ Chancellor/ Grand Admiral/ Standard Bearer/ Horseman/ Giant/ Baker/ Garbageman of whatever the hell legion to forward it to when Belphegor rang my BlackBerry regarding who I knew was going to win this year’s intergalactic golf tournament, Hitler again or Whitney Houston, and in one long, impressively-controlled belch he told me he could forward it to this dude in Blasphemy he masturbates with on the weekends. Gabriel messaged me with an idea for a media campaign where we get all the plastic Ronald McDonald statues in China to start bleeding. I’m talking about the things I didn’t do, the things that didn’t happen in my life, the insignificant details, you understand.

Then I went to the gym, and instead of warming up for my usual routine (infinity-minus-one solar masses at infinity-minus-one reps, then a couple of wormhole laps), I just stood around, stuck my earbuds into a StairMaster and pretended to watch CNN Money instead of noticing all the pale, nervous VILFs stepping up and down around me in their spandex sport-robes. The mango-radium smoothie I got upstairs couldn’t have cost me ten dollars because it simply didn’t exist. They don’t sell smoothies at that gym.

Since I didn’t work out, I didn’t shower, it didn’t rain, peoples’ huts didn’t collapse into the Mekong. Checking the tires in the office parking lot, I was extremely surprised not find them caked with inches of innocent blood, so surprised that I chucked the tool I keep for that at the brainstem of a passing nihilist. Whatever you say, I still gave Ben, the kid who parks the cars, an extra dollar from some change I had in my pocket, so that still counts.

How would the king of all creation, matters light and dark, and responsible for the continuing endurance of such matter occupy the hours between nine and five, six days a week, hypothetically speaking? Check Facebook, email, Gawker, wander around and just generally harass people? Well, my first task was to announce that from now on Saturdays would be Anything Goes Day and unplug the server. Second thing I did was lock the door and spin idly in my chair, until it turned into a game where I tried to see how many full 360s I could make. That got dull as shit and made me dizzy, so then I folded something the Pope wanted me to sign into an origami space shuttle, lit it on fire, and dropped it in the wastebasket. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing, so I disconnected it and used the cord to strangle my secretary. I went to the roof, smoked some meth, and went to Panda Express for lunch. The rest of the day I spent in the bathroom, having unprotected hate sex with different angels. It’s good to be the king, especially when you’ve got some downtime because everyone on Earth isn’t asking you for money, or protection, or to bring their pet lizard back to life.

What would I actually do? Where’s the meaning? Why are you so lonely, afraid, skinny, bad at playing the guitar, and existentially bored? What about the part of my day dedicated to making people suffer in ignorance? Isn’t that a little hypocritical? Where’s your alchemy or natural magic or whatever they call it these days? The way you talk, I thought you had it all figured out.

This is me not taking the elevator down, exiting the sliding glass doors. Surely it’s not five, even six o’clock already. This is me not telling you what happens in the future or why Ebola exists and celebrities have to die. This is me not walking not-calmly to not-my-car, unlocking the door manually instead of remotely, sliding in, folding up the aluminum sun thing, unfolding and putting it back into place, looking at the ignition slit, looking dumbfounded at the key. This is me not speeding on the freeway.

Hmm what didn’t I do after that? Sam’s Club, dry-cleaners, Rome, the dispensary...

Oh, I’ll tell you what I didn’t do! This was after I was already home, in the driveway, fantasizing about terrorizing subsequent generations of the city council member whose face somebody had stuck in my lawn, while I unloaded or reloaded or totally ignored the car. Jesus, my son, adopted (I guess), five feet tall, tan as a Syrian (whatever), equal parts dust, shit, and blood, came out to help, and I couldn’t (literally) not not notice how red his eyes were, so immediately, or like, very very slowly, after, like, procrastinating a bunch, I informed him he was hereby grounded from hanging out at his friend Larry’s house or inviting Larry over to our house when I’m not around. Absolutely no sleepovers.

Larry, you have to understand, is no good. Or rather, he doesn’t exist.

I ignored what he called me and gave him time to calm down. Then I went upstairs and knocked on his door.

I opened it and walked in. I closed the door and went to see a psychologist and told the psychologist I thought I could remember designing the bone structure of his children in minute detail, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Anyways, Jesus, lying face-down on his bed, was pretending he didn’t hear me come in.

“Look,” I said. “I know Larry’s your friend, but he’s just not one of us.”

He didn’t answer. I thought I heard him sniffle.

“And now he’s getting you into drugs, and with you on your medication? You want me to tell you how that’s going to end?”

The face in the bed mumbled something in Aramaic.

“What?”

The face sat up.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He went to his computer and showed me everything on Facebook besides what it said on your profile, under religion.

But don’t you worry down there, you don’t have to feel guilty, or really, feel anything you don’t want to. Because we don’t exist. Our problems aren’t real. And even if they are (which alchemists like Richard Dawkins have proven they aren’t), they’re definitely not your problems.

Our hug was interrupted by Abaddon and his wife, who had just materialized and were playing with the doorbell, forcing me to let them in unless I wanted the new neighbors—these weird evangelical types—to ask questions. They said they wanted to use my grill to torture this transsexual with some poblanos they grew in their garden. We shared a blunt and they left.

Jesus was at his computer. He looked angry. I could tell he was writing problem-kid poems about you on his blog (http://anailinmyheart.wordpress.com). He looked at the banana milkshake I made him. He just stared at it.

Anyways, it’s late, it’s Sunday, my nerves are shot, the Ambien is starting to kick in, and I’m tired of being angry. All I wanted to say is I think you’re being really disrespectful and immature. My son loves you, small, hairy and weird as he is, and I’d like you to apologize. He’s been taking his mother’s inexplicable demanifestation pretty hard, that prostitute dumped him for the captain of the debate team, and making new friends hasn’t been easy for him. His counselor at school told me people were clapping him on the back and congratulating him when Obama came out in support of same-sex marriage.

What was it he said when I turned off the light?

“I wish I was actually dead.”

Something handwritten would be nice.

PEACE.

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