God's Happy Ending: A story of healing

In which MC Guimond tries to distance himself from the protagonist, and fails.



It’s said that I created the world to enjoy myself, and that’s true, but God’s no selfish toy-maker breathing consciousness into his clay figurines for shits and giggles. I just wanted to spread the joy. After all the joke of creation is more pleasurable when shared. Does that make me bad or just a trickster? I intended a comedy. Really! I know, I know--I’ve heard it a million times, my good intentions have given wings to suffering, and now every nook and brook of my poem of being moans and weeps for a rewrite. Alas, I’m shitty at revision. I’m the God with writer’s block, in hell as I should be.

One of the figurines stuck a needle in my arm and left the room. Pretty as Eve and dressed in white. She said the voices of my creation would be silenced now so I could sleep in peace. God does get insomnia sometimes, and when dreams come they’re as bad as my first drafts. But I was proud of Eve. It took a lot of hit and miss to get the design just right. The curves and suppleness, the miracle of the nipple, result of a most fortuitous reverie, and I slept like the dead after that day. Unleashing evolution as creative method was a good thing I thought. Guess I failed to think it through. Maybe I should’ve stopped it with the trees or scraped the whole experiment once the lizards got uppity. It was great theater though. God just kicked back with beers and drank in the drama. Creating beer was a good thing, don’t you think? And not even a pretty little Eve, dressed in white and wielding needles, can take that accomplishment away.

They’ve locked me in a room. I can’t even stroll into the garden alone and hear the songbirds lull the earthworms out of their fear. They won’t even let me roll smokes. God gets depressed sometimes. I told that whore not to touch the fuckin’ apple and Adam’s balls shrunk three sizes that day. Sorry, that was harsh. Ah, what’s done is fucked. I shouldn’t have kicked them out. Even a God learns too late the perils of impatience, and psychoanalysis was a tool I’d only discover later in the sob-wracking workshop of my own self pity. Sadly, I got all pompous and self-righteous and forgot that I was just a local deity in training, given a little project to pass my probation. God failed. My punishment was to watch the fruits of my ideas wither, and quick as a toilet flush the comedy turned to dark farce. But how much worse can the shit storm get? They should grant me a reprieve, a second chance to make it all better. They could stick me in another galaxy if they wish. God wants to atone for his stupidity. Christ, other probationary deities have been forgiven of worse transgressions. I know I said all this shit through Jesus about being long suffering and how the last will be first but fuck, getting my powers stripped away and being locked up by my own clay figurines is a cross not even God can bear. Ungrateful monkeys! Sometimes God gets pissed. But the needle’s juice has done its work. Guess I’ll lay down on this nice white bed and dream of naked Eve.
Next goddamn day. An even better dream. I was dying. Maybe the reprieve I’ve longed for will be granted with my extinguishment. Christ, they let Siddhartha go. Ain’t God worthy of Nirvana? Don’t all speak up on God’s behalf at once. I know you’re all alienated and overworked and distracted with toys, but I’m God and none of you clay figurines are as fucked up as I am. Not only have I been separated from my creation, but creation’s highest exemplars have taken me hostage, bring me tomato soup and grilled cheese. They used to pray to me, you know, and maybe some still do. Not that I can hear them with this unrelenting electromagnetic shield around me. My flock’s been set adrift. God do I suck.

White-clad Eve made God swallow three pills. “Are you happy?” I asked.

Her lips diminished to a pinprick. Her face went white. “God help me,” she said.

“I would if I could,” I said. She laughed nervously and left the room. I did that. I made her laugh. They’ve left me a remnant of my power after all. If I could get out of here I’m sure I could help them learn how to live again. I’d appeal to their presidents and priests. You’ve run amok, I’d say, but so has God but God still cares. Ah, my darlings. It’s thirty seconds to midnight and the world needs me at full strength. It occurs to God now that I should have intervened more. In the beginning you had all the food you needed, all the water you needed, and all had access to God’s holy mushroom, the door to the fullness of my laughter. But I must take the blame for all the darkness and blight that has befallen you. In my stupid fury I allowed drudgery to come into existence for the first time. Of course you’d take refuge in addiction. The planet’s tears have risen to my chin. What’s to be done? God’s forgotten how to swim.
Undiluted guilt curdled the interval but Eve returned with blessed news. The leader will grant me an audience in the morning. Maybe the electromagnetic restraints will be lifted and I’ll be free to touch individual souls again. God will pour upon his mistakes the brimstone of Gomorrah, my figurines shall return to leisure, and just maybe the elders will lift my probationary yoke. God misses the glory days. God must meditate like Gautama now. God must be clear and calm, and every uttered syllable must flow with love and logic. Jesus, Socrates, help me. I must rest up for the performance. I must convince the clay figurine leader to set God free to save the sad world. Ah, how sweet it was to create the flowers. All the new colors, the manifold of beauty, and how I bragged to my cohorts--see what I’ve done, God’s multifoliate handiwork, this unlimited palate for inspiration I’ve made, and no other God can take that away from me. Color was my special gift, but the perfumes I mixed were also divine. Rose, lilac, lavender, chrysanthemum and so on. God will get his glory back. God will clean up his mess.
God needs to make sidebar commentary now. One of the inmates here, calls himself Adam, had the audacity to call God by that blasphemous name, Jehovah. He said it was God’s sacred name. Well, I said that’s bullshit. I Am That I Am, and have no sacred name but will answer to either God or Michael or pretty much anything if the believer’s heart is right. Poor Adam crumpled in his own skin bag. Literally sunk six inches, jello from the calves down. He stuttered. I stopped him.

“You are a seed and humility is the fertilized womb that makes rebirth possible.”

Adam squared his haughty shoulders and rose. “How dare you try to usurp the heavenly throne. Why the scriptures say--”
“So much bullshit exegeses,” I said. “Crazy opinions of men and women who’ve borne false witness. They never knew me.”
“Jehovah!”
“Michael.”

“You’re crazy.” Adam’s apple bobbled ludicrously in its cartilage course.
“Let me tell you a story,” I said. “Your name reversed is Mada. God once loved a woman on Mada street. In fact God still loves her very much and Michael will never forsake her.”
“Oh Jehovah, born in Bethlehem of Mary and the Holy Spirit,” Adam said. “Help me.”
“God was born in Michigan,” I said. “And so was God’s lifelong love, Susan.”
“God is no respecter of persons,” Adam said, his face turning red as tomato soup.
“Bullshit,” I said. “God loves Susan best. Susan taught God how to be God.”
“You devil. Jehovah!”
“Should’ve seen God in his glory in Susan’s turquoise room, Adam. God was happy in that place.”
“Get thee behind me--”
“God got laid.”
“Jehovah, deliver me from this blasphemer.”

I realized at this crucial moment in Adam’s spiritual crisis that now was the time for God to calm him. “Adam, may God ask you a personal question?”

“If you were God you could read my thoughts.”

I sighed with compassion for the fool. “They’ve taken my powers away, Adam, but that’s not important right now.” Calmed or simply confused, his face had lightened to pink. His heart was good and I wanted to help. “Adam, have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“I-I-”

“A boyfriend?” God raised his eyebrows and heard the burst of a thunderclap in his mind. The sound of accurate insight. Were my powers returning? Poor Adam closed his eyes and moved his lips but made no sound. “Well,” I said, “God has. God has loved more deeply, more often, and in more guises than you can imagine. Occasionally my divine lack of boundaries made Susan nervous, but she never scolded me. A wise and compassionate gal, my Susan.”

“Does Jehovah love me,” Adam said, his clenched eyelids trembling.

“Michael does,” I said, then held him as he sobbed from guts to gullet. I caressed his soft brown hair. God loved Adam at that moment and Michael remembered what empathy was. This beautiful boy with dark suffering eyes so resembled my beloved prototype. How I wish to start over, and place this Adam in the garden. I’ll keep the lizards away this time. I’ll learn how to manage my anger. I’ll court Susan properly and provide a life for us. God will have a queen and Adam will be our child and Michael will be happy and he will write the heart’s true scriptures and finally get published and paid.

“Forgive me my sins, Jehovah.”
“How could I not? Yours are but a teardrop in the ocean of mine.”
Adam opened his eyes. “You’re Jehovah?”
“Sometimes I think Susan is.”
“What?”
“And turquoise is her favorite color.”
“Jehovah, I don’t understand your parables.”
“Call me Michael,” I said, “and Susan is Michael’s cosmos.”

Adam gave me a strange look. His eyelids drooped and he put his hands to his head. I guided my child to his bed, tucked him in, stroked his fine masculine cheeks, kissed his crinkled forehead and whispered, “Your third eye will dream tonight, my son. You are beautiful and Michael loves you.” God lingered over Adam long after the sweet dreams had begun, kissing him many times, careful not to wake him. I hadn’t been that spent since the end of the sixth day, and like that day I reflected on all I had made, on what went right, and so very wrong. Finally I slept and dreamt that I was a young boy. I was in the corner of my backyard, single-minded, tickling the grass with the to-and-fro sway of my father’s metal detector. A telltale beep in the earphones. I gently probed the earth with a screwdriver. Clang of struck metal. Unearthed, a treasure. In the soil-stained cup of my little boy’s hand trembled an old Morgan head silver dollar.

Awake, changed, the fog is lifting from Michael’s brain. The woman in white is a nurse. She said, “So how’s God doing today?” and I said, “You mean Michael? Very well, thankyou.” Classic was the little lipstick ‘o’ of surprise that brightened her face. She rushed out of the room like the world was young again. Memories fell from heaven like cigarettes. Susan and I used to smoke and speak of all things lovely and lewd. God is a man. Michael is a man. God is Michael and Michael is God and so is everything else. Women, babies, squirrels, grass, pigeons, dolphins, lizards, cherry trees, worms, mosquitoes, rocks, particles and waves. I laughed. It’d been a long time since I’d laughed so deep, so long. Funny thoughts, fancy thoughts. The sadness had once been too much to bear so I fled from the self. God hid behind his monotheism. Michael hid, and found himself here, in this cell, the unfree God, safe from sadness but excluded from joy, and that’s not living. Memories now fell like snow, particles of memory. Thrilling like winter’s first snow in childhood, the kind of snow you run out to catch on your tongue as mommy yells “Put on your coat and mittens!” Then the blizzard, waves of memory. Susan and David and Raven and family and so many more. The nurse returned.

“Dr. Alder will see you now, Mr. St. Clare?”

The meeting was short. Dr. Jonathan Alder bellowed his one question test. “Does God have any new insights for a poor, tired shrink today?” The tears came easily as I laughed. “No, but Michael is sorry for the inconvenience he’s caused to you, the staff, and to everyone I love who’s worried about my condition these last six months.” Well, Jonathan and I had the nicest chat. He agreed that life in the shiny, postmodern world was too much to take at times, and that we could all benefit from rest, a long sabbatical during which we recover our nerve and our wits. He even gave me a smoke when I asked and poured us each a glass of Chardonnay. “What year?” I said. “Nineteen sixty seven,” he said. “The year I was born,” I said. “You’re not billions of years old anymore?” he said. “I’ve gotten over myself,” and with that we both laughed. Then he gestured to the phone.

“You’re free to go, Michael. I’ll miss you and your teachings.”

“Ditto Jonathan,” I said to this decent man who accepted his niche. “Out of our uniqueness we give to each other what we are, and that‘s what we’re here to give--Bamm!” I pumped my fist in that histrionic way that was characteristic of more innocent times. I called my parents in Michigan, and then my friend Brandon here in Portland. He’d borrow a car and fetch me at once, he said. The nurse came in and hugged me. She smelled like Susan. Lilacs amid a gentle rain. I’ll write to her soon. She’ll be pleased that I’ve finally lived a story with a happy ending. I’ll go forth to save the sad world, not as God, but as a simple creature relating to other creatures. Not with violence, for the only thing God’s ever hit was the bottle. Michael, I mean. Maybe I’ll finish the novel, maybe I’ll join the revolution, maybe I’ll drift. Either way is a win. I will see Susan again with new eyes and abundant gratitude. And I’ll be grateful for the world too, silly and sick though it may be. Because we are in it, and I choose to care. Solipsism can suck it. It’s people that matter. That’s my happy ending. Always. Love, Michael. Love God.