Twilight of the American Idol

IN THE FUTURE god will come down to earth, on a rhythmically-kerthumping escalator or what-have-you, from his (surprisingly literal) berth on a cumulous cloud. Immune to figure flattery, he will be wearing a voluminous ivory satin robe, ungathered and unsashed, which in certain irreligious asides will be remarked as a muumuu or, worse, a polyblend tarp. Some will suspect that god has a big ol’ booty, while others, that he is retaining water, still others--straining for magnanimity--that he is big-boned, excessively hale.

Halfway down the escalator, god will yank at his skirting and grimace. The hem, already frayed into choppy fringe, will have caught between a riser and the sidewall, and in a panic, he will rip a haggard peekaboo slit all the way up to his flabby pink quads. He will regret many things in that moment, but chiefly that he hadn’t bronzed his legs past his knee because this was his winter-weight shift--so why bother?

The spectators on earth, taken aback (and even afront) by god’s slow, prosaic descent, will sink with disappointment. They will have expected Yahweh to much less resemble a preoperative Kenny Rogers. God’s beard, for instance, will not stream away from his noble face in long, snowy-white tendrils but will be close-cropped and faintly yellowed in strands. His face, instead of wrathful and righteous, like Frank Sinatra’s, will seem almost dimwitted, with his eyes ever-so-slightly crossed and his teeth very-decidedly bucked. He will, in short, resemble your Uncle Shecky, who lives near a duck pond in Sarasota, where a large black woman named LaTasha comes to check up on him daily and, occasionally, to wash his prickly ass with a cold dish rag.

Needless to say, we will be unimpressed and start talking about other things in small groups: the unseasonable weather, social security: status quo vs. privatization, and the rising cost of alpaca wool. We will have scarcely noticed that god, clutching his train like a dainty bride, will have arrived on the earth and approached a podium, sans insignia or colorful bunting and surrounded by a gaggle of foam-tipped mics from local media (and even one major network).

He will seem to squirm and will sweat profusely, with amoebic stains of dirty-ivory ringing his neck and trailing down his back. He will as yet have failed to command attention, despite an occasional theatrical cough and several taps, snorts, and gravelly ahems.

One child nearest him (“Let the children come…”), dirty-faced and coarse-featured, will point and laugh at the fat pussy in the girly-dress. It will be a piercing, vulgar laugh, like a gummy-mouthed hooker’s, the kind that strikes at a frequency that tingles through each of your bones like a tuning fork.

In small klatches, the crowd will eventually grow silent in its own way and time, and this silence will prove contagious. The audience, now hot, tired, and eyeing the periphery for a concessions trailer, will have at last surrendered to this fat man: looking squirrelly and sebaceous.

Finally, breaking the long silence which descended upon humanity subsequent to the Fall and which had tamped out all life and hope, like a Manhattan telephone book keeling over a quorum of ants, god, stammering and dripping at the nose, will--yes!--speak:

“I don’t exist,” he will say, failing to make eye contact. He will consult notes he had written in purple ink on recipe cards and had tucked into the false front of his robe. His recitation will be flat, unimpassioned, and, at least twice, punctuated by stanched, airy belches. “I had supposed that millennia of disease, bloodshed, and despair would have made this declaration on my behalf, as I am indeed no master of the oratory. But no. Human beings are a tenacious animal, it is now clear. Beyond the misery of your unspeakably small lives, you will inevitably find the carrot on any stick, even if that carrot is only a desert mirage. (Please pardon the mixing of my metaphors. I am not adept at the rhetorical flourish.)

“Where was I? Oh, yes…

“You rabid little beasts! You are never to be put off your mission. Not by famine, genocide, or plague. You have been given absolutely nothing. No, even less than that. But out of this deficit you have created all sorts of chimera: wrathful ghosts, capricious gods, and even a sad-eyed Jew nailed to a stick.

“I am--if you’ll pardon me--tempted to mock you, but I can not and will never impugn your resourcefulness. Over time, you have gathered stern-looking men, learned scholars, and even a few unscrupulous scientists to pore over dusty texts and work their minds into knots. And to what end?

“To prove my existence, of all things. This pudgy, impetuous, and--worst of all--schlumpy creature you see before you. Do you, good sir, wish to spend eternity with me? How about you, madam? All of eternity--as an abysmal subset of my will? And why my will and not your own?

“Anyway, I intended to be brief and let me remain so. In case there is any lingering doubt, let me say again most emphatically: I. Do. Not. Exist. And with that I bid you adieu.”

God will then have vanished with nary a kindling of pyrotechnics. Some in the nearest vicinity will claim, however dubiously, to have heard a miniature pop, much like the burst of a lone packing bubble, but otherwise there will be no neon, fire, or dry ice fog to be seen. It’ll be something like going to a Megadeth concert only to end up with a tuxedoed Yo-Yo Ma.

The glum distension of the crowd will immediately set to work. No one will be in the mood for conversation. All that will be heard is the staccato shuffle of steps and the faraway ingnitions of myriad late-model Chrysler Town and Countrys.

Within an hour, the crowd will have entirely dispersed, but lingering in its stead will be a strange inventory of detritus: a crumpled, waxy Necco wrapper, a few orphaned shoes, several empty grease-blotched popcorn boxes, a used ribbed condom, an unvalidated parking ticket dated last year, numerous collapsed soda pop cans, a pink rain bonnet, an open-mouthed compact with broken mirror, twenty-seven rubber bands of three discernible thicknesses, a pair of orange rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses with the left arm bent against the joint, foil chewing gum wrappers, the extracted pump from a Jergens bottle, a broken Seiko wristwatch, an informational pamphlet about psoriasis, and--of course--in the distance, the still rhythmic kerthumping of the uninhabited escalator.

After another hour, short wiry men in navy coveralls will have arrived with buckets on wheels and long-armed dustpans. All they will have to say is: “What a fucking mess.” And they will smoke off-brand cigarettes and hum popular commercial jingles to themselves.