The Final Testament of the Holy Bible (26 page)

Then why do people worship him?

They’ve been tricked into believing something that is wrong but that they can understand. Humans cling to what they can understand, even if it’s wrong.

If that’s true, then how does God talk to you?

The sound you heard was me having a seizure, and my arms and legs and head hitting the sides of this dumpster. In the second before I have the seizures, I see things, and I hear things, I know things, and I am told things.

How do you know it’s God?

Because of what I’m told, what I’m given.

Which is what?

I speak languages I’ve never studied, some of which are no longer spoken. I know the contents of the world’s holy books, word for word, even though I have never read them. I understand general relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, astrophysics, quantum gravity, physical cosmology, and black hole thermodynamics, even though I dropped out of school when I was fourteen.

What’s all that got to do with God?

The first things allow me to understand
God as God has been written, and portrayed, and worshipped. As people believe in God. The others allow me to understand how close we are to understanding the real God, the God that doesn’t need to be worshipped, that does not exist as we do, that does not judge us, that does not offer us anything more than what we have.

You sound crazy.

He smiled.

I haven’t told you the crazy things.

Things crazier than going into dumpsters for food and ending up having a conversation with God?

Yes.

I’m not sure I want to hear them.

He stood up, and in the dumpster he was almost at the level of my window.

Give me your hand.

Why?

I’ll show you.

Show me what?

He held out his hand. I stared at him. He was very thin, skinny like he was starving. And for the first time, I saw his eyes. They were jet black, and they should have been scary, but they weren’t. They were beautiful. And when I saw them, for some reason none of the crazy things he was saying sounded crazy. They sounded right, and I saw everything he was talking about in them.

Give me your hand.

Why?

To let you feel some of the things God tells me.

I reached out the window, through the bars that were
covering it. As I watched myself do it, I couldn’t even believe it. I didn’t like touching people. I knew they didn’t like touching me. Not only that, I knew people didn’t even like the idea of having to touch me. I always believed I was a good person, and I always felt I was kind and honest, but I knew what I looked like. I had to face myself in the mirror every day. I was, and I am, fat and ugly. It hurts to say it, but I know it’s true. People have told me all my life what I am. They did it when I was a child, and all the way through school. They do it at work, even though I always smile and say hello. They do it as I walk down the street, like they think I can’t hear them or something. And it always hurts. No matter how many times I hear it. It always hurts. So I couldn’t believe this man was asking to take my hand. No man had ever done it. Part of me should have been scared. Once he had my hand, he could have done anything to me. But I guess I didn’t care. His eyes told me he was something beautiful and eternal. And even if he had hurt me, I would not have regretted it. Just to have had it happen once. To have a man ask for my hand, and to have a man want my hand.

It was a little cold. There was a slight breeze coming into the alley. The dumpster smelled like bad meat. I could hear traffic out on the streets of New York. I could hear someone yelling the word tickets over and over. The alley was lit by two streetlights. They were yellow, and one of them kept flickering. The shadows were moving with the flickers. People walking the street were moving into the
shadows. I remember the moment very clearly. More clearly than anything, ever, because it’s the moment my life changed. My hand went out between the bars of the window. The bars were round and painted black and some of the paint was flaking off and my skin became cold, even though I was wearing a long-sleeved nightie. He took my hand and held it between both of his, and he smiled, and he spoke.

My name is Ben.

I had hoped to feel some kind of awesome romantic electric charge, like from a
TV
drama or a romance novel or even a Hollywood movie. What I actually felt was even better. It was the best feeling I had ever had in my life. My insecurity disappeared. My self-doubt disappeared. My self-hatred disappeared. My sense of disappointment in myself disappeared. The feeling that I was bad and wrong and ugly and nothing, that I was a fat, ugly failure, it just disappeared. That feeling of being alone, always alone, truly and deeply and horribly alone, disappeared. He held my hand and smiled and looked at me. I smiled back and spoke.

God.

Yes.

I let go and smiled.

Thank you.

He smiled and stepped back.

I don’t want you to go.

I need to find food.

I have food in here.

It’s not just for me.

Who else?

My friends.

Who are they?

People who want to be loved.

What’s that mean?

You know what it means. You felt what it means.

Can I get it for you?

No

I have a little bit of money.

No, thank you.

I would like to give it to you.

I don’t need money.

Why not?

Because I find what other people throw away.

And that’s enough.

More.

He started to step out of the dumpster. I didn’t want him to go. Ever. I knew that when he did, I would feel the way I always felt. The way I felt before him.

Don’t go.

He stopped.

I don’t want you to go.

He turned around.

Will you come inside, and sit with me?

Yes.

I’ll meet you in the lobby?

Yes.

He turned and climbed out of the dumpster. I closed my window. I met him in the lobby a couple of minutes later. I was really nervous before he arrived. People were staring at me and laughing. I couldn’t blame them, really. If I wasn’t me, I would have been laughing too. When Ben walked in, everyone stopped. I was worried that they would stop him, or
call the police, but everyone just stopped talking and laughing and everything. They just stared at him.

He smiled at me and took me by the hand and we walked to my room. I opened the door and we stepped inside. He closed the door and told me to lie down on the bed. I was really excited. Really, really excited. Super excited. I had no idea what was going to happen. Whatever it was would be great. And as excited as I was, I was also calm in a weird way. Much calmer than I would have thought. I wasn’t shaking or feeling like I was going to cry or scream at all.

He turned off the
TV
and lay down next to me. I couldn’t believe it was happening. He started asking me questions. My name, where I was from, what my parents were like, and what they did. As we talked, and I answered his questions, he moved closer to me, and put one of his arms around me, and took one of my hands. He was so close to me that he started whispering. He asked me about my childhood. I told him it was unhappy. He asked me about school, and I told him it was always easy for me, but that I failed on purpose, because I didn’t want to give kids another reason to hate me. He moved closer, and his hands started moving around my body. It was beautiful. Totally the best time I had ever had. And it wasn’t dirty or perverted. His hands felt like they were part of my body. Everywhere he touched felt like it was absolutely the right spot, and the spot where I would have had him touch me if I could have asked him. We kept talking, and I started asking
him questions. The same type of things he asked me. And he told me about his childhood, and growing up in Brooklyn. He told me his father hated him and beat him, and his brother hated him and beat him. He told me that his mother coddled him and that his sister worshipped him. He told me that he was Jewish. I had never met a Jewish person before, or at least not one that I knew was Jewish. He said his Jewish rabbis where his family went to pray had great expectations for him, and believed he would do great things, and maybe even change the world. I told him that must have been hard, that it was the opposite of my life, where nobody expected anything. He said it wasn’t hard, because they were right about what they believed, but wrong in thinking about what he would do, and how he would do it. What was hard was waiting for it to happen. Spending all of his life alone, knowing it was going to happen, and just sitting around and waiting.

We fell into some kind of talking trance. He kept touching me and feeling me. He took off my nightie. And he took off my panties. And he whispered in my ear, and I felt him move inside of me. And it wasn’t like some thunderbolt hit me, or like some passionate kiss in a rainstorm. It just felt full, and complete, and quiet. I felt like I could die at that moment and I would be okay with dying. I felt like however I had wasted my life, and whatever terrible things I’d seen and heard and felt, it didn’t matter anymore. This man was inside of me and he was holding me and I was feeling love. True
love. The kind of love that really could change the world.

We stayed that way for hours. For the whole night even. He stayed behind me and inside me. He was moving the entire time. Very slowly and gently. Sometimes so slowly I could hardly feel him moving. Sometimes a little faster. We talked the whole time. I told him everything about myself and my life. I told him how I lived alone on my parents’ farm, which was overgrown and crazy. How I worked as a cashier at a superstore and tried to be nice but had people be mean to me all day. How I lived in a dead town filled with churches and bars and husbands beating their wives and children. How I spent all my nights alone in front of the
TV
, eating canned food and potato chips and ice cream. How I cried every night because I didn’t believe anyone would ever care for me. I told him about all my best hopes and biggest dreams and my scariest fears. I told him all I wanted in my life was a friend who I could call sometimes and say hi. How I always dreamed about having someone tell me I was beautiful, or even pretty. How I was scared I’d die someday all by myself and no one would find me until a long time after I was gone. I told him that there hadn’t been a time in my life that I hadn’t been lonely and that I didn’t want to feel it anymore.

He told me how he lived with a woman and her child in a small apartment. How he had been in jail and knew people were looking for him because he had jumped bail. How he spent his days touching people
and helping people and teaching people about how to live in a world that is falling apart and dying. He talked about love. How love is the only thing in the world that is worth living for, the only good thing that we have left, and the only thing we haven’t destroyed. That true love, God’s love, isn’t about beauty or perfection or man or woman. That love isn’t about declarations made before false idols. That love isn’t what a bunch of hateful old white men decide it is. That love isn’t something that can be written into laws by corrupt governments. He said love is something shared by two people, any two people, man and woman, or man and man, or woman and woman, in whatever way makes them feel perfect and beautiful and peaceful in their hearts. He said love is what I was feeling as he held me and touched me and moved inside of me. He said that if I wanted to see God, see God as he did, and in God’s true form, he could show me. He told me to close my eyes, so I did. He moved his hand onto me and moved his body a little more and he stopped talking to me and I could feel his breath on my neck and my cheek. It built inside of me. God built up inside of me. And the more he moved, the more it built. And his breath felt hot and smelled sweet. And he kept moving, real slow, and moving real deep inside, and it built until I saw it and felt it. It was love, and joy, and pleasure, and every part of my body sang some song I had never heard but was the prettiest, most beautiful song ever, and it was blinding and pure and my brain went the whitest white ever, and I saw infinity, forever and ever, I saw infinity, and even understood it, and
understood everything else in the world, all the hate and rage and death and passion and jealousy and murder, and none of them even mattered. I felt one hundred percent secure. I felt nothing bad. I saw the past and the future. It was the greatest second of my life. Really the greatest, and I knew in that one second I was experiencing God. The real God. The true God. The eternal God. The God that can’t be in a book or in a church or on a Sunday
TV
show or on a cross or a star. The God that can’t be explained or described or written about or taught or preached. The God that can’t be forced upon people or used to damn them. And I loved that God, that perfect amazing unbelievable true God. And I knew that none of the other Gods meant anything.

When that moment ended, Ben kept moving and breathing very slowly. I didn’t know what to say and I guess I didn’t want to say anything. Nothing I would have said would have meant anything or even mattered. So I just kept my eyes closed and listened to him breathe and felt him. And it just kept going, for the whole night, him inside of me. His hands moving all over me. The two of us loving each other. He kept speaking but I don’t know what he was saying. All I know is what I felt. God, God, and more God. God all night. When the sun came up, he stopped moving but stayed inside of me and just held me. Finally I said something to him.

Ben.

Yes.

I don’t ever want you to leave.

I’m going to leave in a little while.

Please.

Come with me if you want.

Where?