Some people think being a god means life on easy street. (And I mean a real god, not some Caligula vanity project, or Eric Clapton, or self-deified guys like Kanye.) Look at me, for instance. I might be a god, but I’ve been looking for a side hustle for about five hundred years, ever since Cortez showed up and put me out of business. So, by human standards, I’m divine, but by divine standards, I’m a bum--my worshippers are even fewer than my Instagram followers.
What is an out-of-work, down-and-out god supposed to do once smallpox wipes out all his followers? The only job I ever had was Aztec God of War, which is a pretty good position, but hard to move from laterally. Whenever I’d apply for a job, like being a guidance counsellor or maybe something in a New Age bookstore--situations that capitalized on my divinity--the best I’d get would be a dismissive “overqualified,” and sometimes a screwy look. It’s the feather headdress, I bet.
So, that’s when I started drinking. There’s this place where all the Gods hang out, like an after-hours joint, although when I say “place,” remember all we Gods exist on a spiritual plane that transcends the human three or four or however many stringy dimensions. If it were a “place” though, you’d think it was a nice, neighborhood tavern. Even a God needs some me-time now and then.
Well, I’m there a few eons ago and I’m relaxing with Osiris. He’s in the same boat I’m in--no one believes in him anymore, either. We’ve hit the skids together. But, like I tell him, at least he has Aida--Verdi and Elton John? Both? Come on! Either way, these Egyptians are very nice guys, and we both wear a lot of eyeliner, so there’s something else we have in common. Not like, say, Odin and his crowd, who drink themselves blind every night and then go busting up the furniture. No wonder he lost an eye.
So, we’re sitting there having a couple and relaxing, like I said, and in walks Jehovah. Personally, I can’t stand the guy. He’s so full of himself, strutting around, big head of white hair and white beard, Santa on steroids, like he’s the only God who created the universe. As if creating the universe was a big thing! We all had a laugh when those physicists discovered the entire universe was really just one field in which matter instantaneously transforms into energy and vice versa. You see, that’s the trick--you make a “field” and let matter emerge from it, just create it and then let it do its stuff. Cat’s out of the bag now. It took Jehovah six days only because he got caught up in the detail stuff--water and land, beasts of the field, and so on. Micromanagement.
So, anyway, Jehovah. In he walks. He really likes to throw his weight around, and it pisses people off. Even Buddha dislikes him with all that “me” talk all the time. You know “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” it’s all about him. You ever see Buddha talk about himself? Never. In fairness, Buddha walks around barefoot with a bedsheet hanging off one shoulder and clasps his hands together to say hello instead of a friendly hug--it’s a little stand-offish. He says he doesn’t judge us all, but I don’t buy it.
And then there’s the kid, Jesus. (I mean, that’s his name, Jesus.) Jehovah drags him around everywhere they go, but they weren’t always that cozy together. In fact, they used to be on the outs--the kid felt forsaken and the old man watched him die, or at least that’s their story now. But for Gods, life has a certain eternality, I guess you’d say. If the kid died, it’s something he picked up on his mother’s side. Nowadays they go on about how Jehovah so loved one of his worlds that he gave them his only begotten son. Come on. I had a son, too, and I had him by my sister (which is frowned on, I admit), but later I killed him, outright, none of this namby-pamby “forsaken” stuff. Now Zeus, there’s a father for you--Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena--that’s just the A’s!--Dionysus, Helen of Troy, Heracles, Hermes, Persephone, Perseus, the Graces, the Horae, the Muses. He had ‘em in bunches, like OctoMom. He keeps to himself nowadays, although the other Greek Gods are mixers, always looking for someone to wrestle, or a swan to screw.
Well, Jehovah walks in with the kid and looks around the place. It’s pretty crowded tonight--there’s no place to sit, and you can see it’s pissing the guy off. I duck my head down a little while I’m chatting with Osiris, hoping maybe Jehovah won’t see me. Osiris is droning on about the Nile and how it’s nicer than the Ganges when Jehovah spots me and he shouts out across the room, “Yo Huitz! Wassup?,” that fake hipster thing. That’s my name, Huitzilopochtli. It’s Aztec.
I nod back at him, trying not to engage, but Jehovah and the kid walk over and he starts up a conversation while they stand by our table. You know, nowhere to sit. “So, how’s the war business?” he asks, since I’m the Aztec God of War, right? Also, the God of the Sun and Human Sacrifice, so I hear a lot of that–how are the human sacrifices coming?–like they’re the first God who ever refused those, or they didn’t enjoy the scent of a hundred oxen being roasted on their behalf, although most of them won’t admit it now that it’s passé.
Jehovah orders a JD shot and a Bud from a passing waiter and the kid has a club soda with lime, and the old guy starts telling us how great things are, how many people are worshipping him, believing in him. But Osiris is in a pissy mood and doesn’t want to hear it, so he blurts, “So what about Falwell’s wife getting piped by the pool boy while he watched?” But Jehovah just shrugs it off--boys will be boys--and belches after he’s done with his beer. He looks around for a place to sit, but there are still no open tables. It’s a busy night.
“Pace yourself, Dad,” the kid says. “Remember--gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law, says Galatians.” But Jehovah gives the kid a perfunctory “Yeah, yeah,” and orders another round. “Sure I can’t get you boys something?” he asks Osiris and me, but we wave him off.
The kid shakes his head as the drinks arrive while they stand there. “Dad, let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, like it says in Romans 13.” Jehovah looks back at him. “Buzz off, son. It’s five o’clock somewhere.” He drains the shot and takes a long pull on his second beer, then looks around for a table again before he turns to me and Osiris.
“I like you boys,” he says. The drinks must be starting to mellow him. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You got anything going in the way of work?”
I shake my head no.
“Maybe I can help.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Sure, it would be my pleasure.”
“Hey! What about me?” Osiris interrupts.
“You?” Jehovah scoffs. “Aren’t you some kind of Moose-limb? Go ask your guy.”
“Come on! I’m two thousand years older than that dude,” Osiris exclaims, pointing across the room to Allah, who’s sitting in a corner, quietly drinking mint tea with a lot of sugar in it.
“OK then, both of you, I tell you what,” Jehovah replies. “How’d you like to be saints? I’ll make you both saints.”
I’m trying to absorb this when the kid looks up and smiles, seeing an opportunity to give Osiris and me a crash course in self-improvement. “As it says in Colossians,” he says to us, “now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.”
Osiris and I have no interest in a lesson in probity from this kid (as if he wasn’t boning the Magdalene girl--just like the pool boy, now that I think of it), and if these are the conditions for the saint business, they’re a little strict. “Maybe we should talk about this,” I say. “We might not be up to it.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Jehovah says, waving his kid off with a look like the boy invented stupid, then turning back to us. “You want to be saints or not?”
Sure, we nod, but then it occurs to me, “Aren’t there procedures for this sort of thing? Heroic virtues, miracles, canonization, and so on? Don’t we have to–“
“Forget that stuff,” Jehovah says, dispensing with it with a wave of his fiery fingers. “I have a special sainting ceremony very few people know about. Stand up and with your right hand hold your first two fingers in the air.”
I’m a little surprised that’s all there is to it and we’re about to stand up, when the kid interrupts again. “But Dad,” he says, “Matthew says ‘unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
“Keep it down, son,” Jehovah says, dismissing him without ever turning away from us, and he starts to recite the oath. “Do you swear, or affirm, you will be good, renounce sin, do saintly stuff, and so on?”
Osiris and I look at each other, trying to figure out what’s going on, but what have we got to lose? “Sure,” I say.
“Sure,” Osiris repeats.
“And you renounce your old pastimes and embrace sainthood in my holy name as your new pursuit?” We agree--this could be our ticket back to the big time, we figure, even though we’re still trying to figure it out.
Jehovah says, “Cross your heart?” And we do it.
Then Jehovah says, “Bow thy heads, so that I may bless thee.” And he mumbles some stuff in a language we don’t understand, and we understand plenty of them, and when he’s done, we look up and he’s smiling at us.
“OK,” he says, “you’re saints now. Welcome, St. Osiris, welcome St. Huitzilopochtli.”
We smile broadly, eager for the adventure that lies ahead.
And then Jehovah’s pleasant expression disappears. “Ok, so you’re saints now, not Gods anymore,” he barks gruffly. “So, get the fuck out of here. I need the table.”
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