To the Artist's Page                   To our home page

To Joseph O'Leary's previous piece     To Joseph O'Leary's next piece

The Man Who Fucked God

He was nothing. Time and time again, that was what everyone had told him, or at least implied. You’re nothing. You’ll never amount to anything. He would want to spit in their faces.

You’re a waste. Who had said this? Did it matter? Was it true?

He was contemplating this thought when his mother burst into his room and complained that he had left the toilet seat again. He thought of complaining that she always left the toilet seat down when he preferred it up to pee, but just muttered a general insult under his breath and went and sat by his window. Some of the obnoxious neighborhood kids, all a few years younger than him, were playing stickball in the street. In the background he could hear his mother stomping down the hall saying something about responsibility. That was one thing he didn’t want to hear.

He wondered if he had ever been given a chance. He wondered if there was anything that had made him who he was; a guy, nineteen, a college dropout, spending his days sitting in his room, writing simple songs on his beat up acoustic guitar, smoking pot, writing stories and poems that would never see the light of day. The characters he dreamed of were the most insipid kind, uninspiring and repetitive. He wondered why he couldn’t dream, or at least write, of life.

Looking out his window further still, he saw a blond haired kid playing stickball with the rest of the group. He recognized this kid from around the way, thought his name was Jim, thought he would probably be an All-star first baseman for the Yankees, thought he might be a seventh grade math teacher who would get his rocks off thinking about how all the thirteen year old girls in his class had crushes on him. One of those guys, he thought, that when they walked by you just got an overwhelming urge to punch in the face. He would grow up happy, carefree, accepted and sewn into the normal stitchings of society. He poked his finger at where the window pane would be, and thought, I wish I was like you, easily amused... He had heard that in a song somewhere.

He watched as the kid took a swing and missed. He laughed.

He sat back in his bed and turned on the music. Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It was one of his favorites.

“I got a strong urge to fly
But I got nowhere to fly to...”

To kill time, he decided to roll a joint and get high. He took his weed out of the cigarette case under his bed and broke it up on one of his notebooks, removing all the seeds meticulously. He had this down to a science. He was the only one of his friends who knew how to roll a quality joint, so having him around when they wanted to get high was beneficial for all. He figured that this was probably the only reason that they hung out with him at all. That, and the fact that he was the only one with a solid dealer connection made him extremely valuable. But nobody called him today.

Outside, he heard his front door slam. He looked out and saw his mother walking towards her car. He smiled. Now he could smoke in the house. Not that he minded smoking outside; sometimes he preferred smoking outside because that way he could take in the scenery, and get some fresh air. And it was even better when he would bring his headphones. He would just chill out in the woods for hours, listening to his headphones and smoking lots of pot. Drowning out all sound, closing his eyes. But he didn’t go out to smoke much these days. When he would, he’d just smoke so much that by the time he had to get back home, he was incredibly tired and the walk back sucked.

I’m incredibly lazy, he thought.

He promptly sparked the joint upon finishing rolling it. He sat on the window sill, watching the kids play stickball in the street and blowing the smoke out the window. Every so often he would cough. But he was young, and healthy, and didn’t worry about it.

The music filled his head and drifted him off to places he saw only in his dreams. However, he did not find these very exciting, so he shut off the music and decided to play his guitar. He fiddled around with the G and C chords.

He stood up, dropping his guitar on the floor.

He thought of something. Something different.

He wondered if he were meant to think this, if it was real, if it was do-able. He decided it was, it had to be, nothing this great, this relevant, this profound, had ever made itself known to him. He snapped his head back and forth, trying to think of how he would do it.

Think, god damn it, think, he told himself. He went to the bathroom.

His hands rummaged through the drawer under the sink. He saw shampoo, conditioner, his mom’s tampons, Vaseline... but nothing he needed. He popped up and opened the medicine chest, avoiding his reflection in the mirror. And it was there. He smiled. He picked up his father’s razor and went back to his room.

He sat down on the bed and sliced his forearm to see what it would feel like to cut his own skin. He barked out for a second but then lay back calmly, panting, holding his arm, flushed.

He was delirious. He wanted to leave a note. He got a piece of blank sheet music paper and scribbled the words, “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity”. He had read that on a bathroom wall somewhere.

He cut his left wrist. Blood dripped onto the paper. Onto the carpet. He winced slightly at the pain and started writing stuff on the paper. He had no idea where the words were coming from. They popped into his head and he was forced to write them down.

Was this what it was like to have written the Bible? To have God write it through you? He wrote that down too. For good measure.

He started writing frantically:

God is a murderer, I am not.

Worship this.

He looked at the paper. I’m not religious, he thought. Why now? He saw the blood forming a little puddle next to his pillow. He coughed. He threw the pencil across the room. He became angry. He held the razor up to his right wrist.

“But I don’t even give a fuck!”

He cried. He took a few deep breaths. He coughed again. He sniffled. He looked out the window. The kids were cheering. That blond kid had just hit a two-sewer shot. Fucking amazing, he thought. He ripped a part of his sheet and tied it around his bleeding wrist. He stood up and began to feel lightheaded. Coughing again, he threw the razor out the window, hoping it would hit that blond kid as he crossed home plate.

To the top of this page