Chapter XI

	I wake up Wednesday morning to Lucy and Joan talking. I try to go back to sleep,
but it's just not happening. I roll over in bed and pull my sheets over my head.
I say a prayer to the patron saint of insomniacs.
	Patronage Pending.
	I'm serious. You'd think that in all the centuries, there would be a
saint assigned to this. Especially for something as hellish as being
awake for hours, trying in vain to go to sleep. But no, you've got a
patron saint assigned to all the twitches out there, but nothing for us
guys who wish that they could just get a few more precious minutes of
sleep.
	I try to shut out their voices, but it's no use. I assume that they're
talking about some aspect of my personality that they can gang up on and
berate me about today, but as I listen closer I find out that I'm wrong.
As far as I can tell Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, is talking about
a sitcom.
	"Yeah, my favorite episode was definitely the one where Ricky and Fred
get the idea that staying home all day is much easier than having a real
job."
	Then I hear Lucy say, "Oh, I know! And the girls feel the opposite and
end up getting a job at the candy factory!"
	Joan says, "You know what's interesting is that Clare of Assisi actually
received a prayer for inspiration on that one. The writer was getting to
close to deadline with no ideas."
	What they're talking about is an episode of "I love Lucy," if I remember
correctly the title of the episode was "Job Switching," but pretty much
anyone you talk to is just going to call it the candy factory episode.
	The saint they're talking about is Saint Clare of Assisi, patron saint
of television writers.
	I pull my arms up above the sheets to see them talking across the chasm
between my arms. I look next to Joan to find that Christopher is gone
again.
	I sit up and swing my legs out of bed. Looking down to put my slippers
on I see Christopher curled up and sleeping on my left foot. I poke at
him with the big toe from my right foot, and he stirs.
	"Good morning!" I yell down to him.
	He does his stretch/yawn thing, and then he starts to climb up my leg. I
tell him that I think it's funny that he's always asleep on the job.
	He says when you're dead, sleep is one of the things that you miss,
despite what a great place heaven is. He says sleep is one of the things
he likes most about these assignments.
	"So I'm not the first?" I ask.
	Christopher says that no, I'm definitely not the first, though, he says,
I am certainly the most unique. Most of the times he's been sent back
here to appear has been on a medal or to move in a painting. In those
cases he just kind of hung round dozing until the recipient of his
message happened by, and then he delivered it. This time, he says, it's
a bit more complicated. He says that I'm a bit of a problem case, that
simply telling me something once, simply delivering a divine message
isn't good enough. He tells me that they're here to baby-sit me; each
saint is here for a specific reason. They're here to guide me. They need
me to be at the right places at the right times. They need me to fulfill
my greater purpose.
	I tell him that I'm the one who decided what tattoos I got, not God.
	He says, "That's exactly what God would want you to think."
	So great, I'm on a mission from God. I ask him what it is.
	Lucy speaks up and says if they tell me at any point, then there's no
point in continuing. Where I am now in my life, she says, I won't want
to do what they need me to do.
	I look down at her as Christopher climbs up my leg. I give up on the
mission thing for now, and I ask Lucy, what about her? What does she
like to do when she gets sent on these missions?
	She says that heaven as far as I could comprehend it is one eternal
worship ceremony. She says it's not something that's forced; she says
that any being subjected to the glory of God would be compelled to do
nothing except worship him for all eternity. She says that consequently,
one thing you don't get to do in a never-ending praise session of the
almighty is to watch or talk about television. She says it started back
when St. Anne got her patronage to television writers, and word kind of
spread from there. She says she catches a little bit every now and then
when she's called back for an assignment, but none of what's on
television today is anywhere near as good as it was fifty years ago.
	I say, "So heaven is just a bunch of people standing around and gushing
about how great God is? That doesn't sound too ideal to me."
	She tells me that once I'm in God's presence I'll understand. She says
once I see him, she's sure that I'll be doing the same.
	This catches my attention, and I say, "You just said Him, so you're
saying God is man?"
	She laughs, and she says that God is God. God has no need for gender
roles and certainly has no need for a penis.
	I say, "Everyone has need of a penis, if they say otherwise they're
either lying or they haven't given it enough thought."
	She says God doesn't lie.
	I say, "I'm sure if he sat down and gave it a going over he could figure
out something to do with it. At least he could swing it around and knock
over some galaxies."
	As an afterthought I tuck my feet into my slippers and hope this gives
me enough electrical grounding from a possible smite. One of my theories
of the nonexistence of God was that if he ever paid attention to me I'd
probably end up getting extra lightning for the kind of shit I'm always
saying.
	My alarm goes off with me already sitting up in bed holding a
conversation with my skin. I turn it off and start sorting through
piles.
	At work today its tropical shirt day. The basic idea is that if you come
to the office in compliance with the theme of the festive dress day, you
can also wear jeans and tennis shoes rather than the regular business
attire. I'm not kidding. They do this kind of stuff all the time to
raise morale. Tropical shirt day is a staple of this kind of event.
Also, you'll run into favorite sports team shirt day, pajama day.
	Crazy hat day.
	Like I said, it's supposed to be good for morale, but really, all it
does is frighten me. There's nothing quite as unnerving as seeing a
graying 50-year-old with all his dreams for what he wanted life to be,
crushed under a corporate grindstone. You watch as this guy walks up to
his office building stands outside and looks up at it towering above
him. Then this guy, this poor bastard sighs, puts a beanie with a
propeller on top on his balding head, and walks inside.
	The problem with these days is that if you don't conform, you don't get
to dress down, and I don't have any tropical shirts. I don't have any
crazy hats, and I definitely don't have any sports team shirts. I sleep
naked, so pajama day is always a wash.
	I'm tossing through my pile of clean shirts, and I come across a black
Bikini Kill T-shirt. It's white on black lettering with a picture of an
old suitcase record player. I hold it up and sniff it. It passes that
test, and it's probably the closet thing to a tropical shirt I have.
Bikini is an island in the Pacific, after all. That's tropical. If that
doesn't count they can send me home.
	I go through my morning routine without too much interference from the
saints. They go about their business while I go about mine. They make
small talk. Christopher wanders around on my body. To me this seems like
I have some kind of infection. Divine skin parasites.
	
	The subway system in my city is all yellow on gray. This is probably the best
example of non-human interaction you can find. Here you'll find hundreds of
people and little to no communication. Everyone buries themselves in their
newspapers, their magazines, their Walkmans and MP3 players. On the subway
everyone looks down, or they stare at one of the advertisements or maps on the
walls. Everyone is either sitting or standing. If they're standing they're
gripping the overhead rails so hard their knuckles are white. Everyone is afraid
that when the train stops the inertia will end up pushing them into someone that
they don't like the look of.
	The subway system is all fear on fear. Not necessarily terror fear,
although there is some of that from time to time. Everything is the
color of paranoia. Everything here is shades of disquietude. No one here
wants to make eye contact with anyone else.
	Not that they have anything against the people they're surrounded with.
Put these people in a bar, and you'd have no problems. People would be
talking, laughing. People would be making friends, talking about books
that they're reading, sharing anecdotes from television shows they like.
People would be exchanging phone numbers and asking each other out to
movies. People would be taking other people home with them, having sex
with them, except some people call it making love. It all depends on how
much you like to kid yourself.
	None of this happens in the subway, and I've never really been able to
figure out why. I can understand that everyone in here is destination
oriented. Everyone is going from somewhere to somewhere else, but that's
no reason to desperately try to ignore everything around you.
	Everyone here is wearing a mask of boredom to hide this temporary
agoraphobia. Either that or they're really bored. Who knows?
	Maybe I'm wrong about all of this, but I sit down next to an older
gentleman who's not reading a paper or a magazine, and I say, "Hi, how
are you? My name is Jude."
	He turns his head toward me, but not all the way, and he kind of
half-talks, half-mumbles something like, "Fine thanks." Then he just
stares furiously at an advertisement for some chewing gum.
	He gets up at the next stop, and a girl who was standing up sits down in
the vacant seat. She's about five foot five, Short blue hair that she's
got spiked up in the back. She's wearing ripped blue jeans that she's
drawn all over the thighs of with a ball point pen. She's also wearing a
red on white three-quarter-sleeve Ramones T-shirt.
	I was well aware that she was watching me before she sat down, and I
make eye contact with her when she does. I start to say, "Hi, I like
your shirt," but I realize that I'm talking over her. I apologize and
say, "What was that?"
	She laughs and says, "I was just going to say that I like your shirt."
She adds, "Hi, my name is Alison."