FALLEN

Have you ever stumbled upon that special someone–say at a party or a dinner–allowing yourself to be talked into certain indiscretions, spending a night in a bed that was not your own, only to learn the next morning that you have become the most recent incarnation of a long line "mistakes"? Perhaps it has been as simple as looking into the face that you loved with one kiss, only to see a face you despise with another. Maybe you anticipated that first kiss, only to curse it at some later date when you’ve discovered the misery to which that kiss had led. Do you still try to convince yourself that "It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," when you truly believe that one mental illness or delusion is no better or worse than any other? If so, maybe you can begin to understand the nature of damnation.

 

No one knows hell better than the devil; therefore, no one knows love more than him. Perhaps that’s a notion that is too scary for the moment. Maybe it’s just a little to startling to find out that the devil loves. Is it really so astounding to learn that the devil has been in love and that he falls in love? I guess most people would rather go through life with a simple construct: god good, devil bad; god love, devil hate. But what is hate except love that’s become angry and fearful? Ask any divorced couple how they move so expertly from pledging their undying love to hating each other so much that they can only talk through lawyers–the answer is simple: they got angry. Any psychoanalyst will tell you that anger is a product of fear. So hate is just love that’s scared and lashes out. So the more honest construct would be: god good, devil hurt; god love, devil scared and angry, but still in love.

 

Now I suppose that this is something that most people would rather not know. A truth such as this would ambush their comfortable presuppositions like attacking Indians in old Hollywood westerns. They would be forced to discover that the new world built upon this new truth would require more courage, or if you would allow me to use the expression, faith, than they could ever hope to muster. Perhaps, during the vacant hours of the night, somewhere between sleep and consciousness, they’ve even guessed at the truth, not exactly verbally, not even cognitively, but in some pre-vocative twinkling of a second–perhaps only then they’ve glimpsed at the truth, not the truth that they’ve been told their all their lives, but the true truth, only to find it much more comforting to sacrifice this new truth upon an altar of conformity, long before their minds could ever find the concepts, or the beginnings of a vocabulary, necessary to even set in motion any form of articulation of this new truth, allowing the public relations of spineless, complacent values, proffered by the average and the unimaginative to convince them of that which they genuinely want to believe. If I were not the devil, and if I were not aware that my reputation is mostly the result of spin and clichéd public relations, I myself would probably be a little shocked to find out that I have loved. But I am the devil and I can assure you that I have loved and I do fall in love.

 

Actually, I fall in love quite a lot. It’s sort of a hobby with me. I see a beautiful woman and I fall in love. That, however, is where I like to leave the matter. My hobby is falling in love, and I’m quite good at it, but my hobby is most assuredly not being in love. Being in love is far too much effort, which inevitably ends in far too much disappointment. Love, after all, is a delusion, and being in love is nothing more than a mutually shared delusion. It is a flimsy contract filled with terms that are too difficult to negotiate and too easy to renege. That is why I limit my activities to falling in love, no effort, no disappointment, and I briefly get to live within the delusion, however fleeting, that there is another being whom I can connect. For a brief moment I am allowed to forget that I am the devil, Satan, the Adversary, the Slanderer, or whatever face of evil I have been slated to be.

 

For the record, I am not that lone-ranger figure of Milton and others who "would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven." I don’t particularly remember having any choice in the matter. Apparently I serve heaven by living in hell; or, perhaps it would be more correct to say that I live with hell. Hell is not a particular place. It is wherever I am. I carry hell within me like a bowling ball sized gallstone. And it is never more heavy than when I visit heaven.

 

There is a myth in circulation that I have been kicked out of heaven. That is not entirely true. I left voluntarily and I generally stay away because the hell that is within me grows whenever I visit the family. So I choose to restrict my visits as much as possible. I do make the occasional appearance, showing up for Thanksgiving and Christmas and other assorted holidays. Being the black sheep in the family does not excuse me from certain familial responsibilities, so I make my required appearances with a big smile, pretending that hell is not within me, and they pretend that all is forgiven. God acts as if nothing has happened between us and I let god indulge in that fantasy for the tenure of my stay. God is so infinitely delusional, after all god is love, and that infinite, divine denial seems to be the only manifestation of grace in my life.

 

Human beings did not invent living in the past, or whatever place one chooses to live in which is not the actual present moment. Never underestimate an infinite being’s inexhaustible ability to veto what is for what was, or could be, or should have been. Whenever god looks at me I know that god sees something that I no longer am, or perhaps never was. And when god holds me in a welcoming embrace and kisses the top of my head, I know that god is holding and kissing someone who only lives inside god’s imagination. And hell grows with each ticking second of the clock. I want to shake off god and declare who I really am in no unmistakable terms, demanding to be seen, forcing god to have the courage to see the creature which stands before it – but I just hold my breath, bracing myself for the long, hard squeeze and let god pretend.

 

The only positive thing about the situation is that god never brings up the incident, and nobody else wants to upset god so they never talk about it. It amuses me how they all treat god like some frail, old man who will somehow be demolished by the slightest emotion. So it just hangs in the room, unspoken, unacknowledged, but ever-present, licking the edges of conversation and dancing in darting glances. That’s only when god is around. After dinner, when god is dozing in the recliner before a raging fire, snoring to the dull, dronings of the evening news, the arrows are launched, usually by Michael, who always feels the need to defend god’s honor. "If you really loved god you’d stay away," he always says.

 

Whenever he says it, and he always does sooner or later, I experience this peculiar condition where I laugh and cry in the same exact instance. It always confuses me like when it rains on a sunny day or when snarling dogs wag their tails. And I always answer, sooner or later, "If god really loved me, god would let me stay away." Then I walk to the kitchen, pilfer a beer from the fridge, and relive the incident.

 

At some point, god decided to create a universe. At that time there was only god and chaos, and in order to create, chaos had to be subdued. So god organized a piece of chaos into a throne room and created me. "Go and subdue the monster of chaos," god commanded. I was given armor, a sword, and a large army and sent on my way. It was a long, bloody campaign, but the forces of creation eventually won. Chaos was defeated. I remember how I felt on my return, right before I opened the huge doors that lead to the throne room. I stood tall in my armor with what remained of chaos in my back pocket, which I planned to throw at god’s feet like a tribute so that god could have the honor of stamping out the last vestige of anything that opposed god’s will.

 

I kicked open the large wooden doors, declaring, "LORD, I return in victory! The monster of chaos is in chains, its forces are no more! The universe is yours!" Instead of the accolade of a victorious general, I viewed a sight I was not prepared to witness. In the center of the throne room, before the very throne of god, stood a muddy-colored, puny creature, to which the entire court of heaven bowed. I was crippled by the scene. I removed my helmet, unveiling my confused expression, demanding to know what was happening.

 

"My dear Morning Star is returned from battle! Come! Kneel before my creation!"

 

"Your creation?" I repeated, "Kneel?" I examined the words in my mind from every possible angle but they just didn’t make sense. God had long ago command me, commanded all the angels, that we could not bow to anything other than god itself. But now god commanded me to bow to this creature. I examined the pitiful object. "What is this creature that causes all of heaven to disobey your first commandment?"

 

"This is a man," god stated plainly. "He is the purpose of creation. You have prepared the universe for his kind to live. You have served him your whole life and now it is fitting that you bow down before him."

 

I remember not being certain if this was some kind of practical joke. I fancied that while I was walking toward the throne room, god said to the angels, "Here comes Morning Star, wouldn’t it funny if when he came in here he saw all of heaven disobeying the first and most serious commandment? And wouldn’t be funny if what you all were bowing to was something that no one in his right mind could ever bring himself to bow down to? Here’s what I’ll do, I’ll whip something together and when he comes in, you all bow to it, okay?" But as I stood and surveyed the scene, I began to understand that this was no joke.

 

"LORD," I said, "I cannot bow to this . . . thing. My love for you forbids it."

 

"Just this once, forget my first commandment and bow."

 

This is the part of the story that everybody gets wrong. I didn’t want to take over heaven. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it! I simply wanted to serve heaven as I had done form the beginning, but heaven had changed. My mind struggled for some understanding that would make this new, unfamiliar heaven conform to the vision of heaven that I remembered, the heaven that I had been fighting for all this time. I looked deeply into the blinding face of god for answers, imploring with my expression a way out of this situation. I desperately wanted to bow but I couldn’t do it, not out of defiance, but out of love. I want to make that point perfectly clear. If I rebelled, it was because of love. Suddenly, one of the beams of light which continuously radiates from god struck the creature in such a way that its shadow fell upon me. It is at that precise moment that I fell. It was at that instance that I lost my innocence, not because of my arrogance, or my ambition, but because of the contradictory demands of affection from the only one who mattered to me, and I lost it.

 

That’s why it called falling in love. You cannot experience love without experiencing a fall. Gravity works in both directions with love. You can fall out of love as easily as you can fall in. And I fell. Hell was born within me in that instant, carried upon a shadow of paradox, and I was annihilated by an antithesis.

 

I drew my sword and walked toward this "pinnacle" of creation. Michael rose to intercept me, alarmed as to what I might do. God halted Michael with a simple motion of god’s hand. I pressed my blade to its flesh. Amidst gasps I sliced at its skin and something leaked out.

 

"What is this?" I demanded from god.

 

"Blood."

 

"It bleeds?" I asked incredulously, "You want me to bow to something that bleeds?"

 

"It is mortal, Morning Star."

 

"Mortal?" I had never heard that word before, "What is ‘mortal’?"

 

"It dies. Its life has a limited span and then it ceases to be."

 

That blew my mind. The concept of death and ceasing to be alone was enough to blow my mind, but demanding I bow to something that was so limited and ephemeral was outside the of realm anything that made sense. God demanded that I treat something that was finite as if it were infinite.

 

"What do you want from me?" I demanded. God said nothing. "You know, I hate it when you do the silent thing!"

 

"If you really love god," Michael said for the first time, "you’ll do what you’re told."

 

I turned on Michael with a swiftness that surprised even him, grabbing his throat with my left hand, "I am doing what I was told! What in heaven are you doing? If god loves me, would he put me in this position?" (It was the first uttering of what has become such an old and tiresome argument). Michael rebutted with a pout, which he does all too well, so I pushed him away. I turned back toward the man, "If this creature dies, let it die," I said as I raised my sword, intending to cut the man into oblivion. But I stopped the blade before it struck the man. I couldn’t destroy what god created. I threw my sword to the floor, ripped off my armor, and headed for the door.

 

"Morning Star," I heard over my shoulder, "Where are you going?"

 

"I don’t know," I yelled back, "I just have to be somewhere else."

 

"Morning Star, where are you going?" god’s voice was almost pathetically pleading. I wanted to stop but I kept walking.

 

"Where are you going?"

 

"Let him go," I heard Michael say as I walked through the doors. That was the last time I ever set foot in the throne room.

 

It’s usually about this time in my musings that Jesus comes into the kitchen and asks if I’m okay.

 

"Super," I always respond sardonically, "I just love these family get-togethers," or I say, "It would be nice if just once I were invited to dinner but not on the menu." Jesus usually laughs as he grabs a beer and joins me at the small kitchen table where we talk about politics and whatever. I really like Jesus. He’s the only one in heaven who seems to understand me. He doesn’t live in denial like god, and he doesn’t demonize me like the others. When I look into Jesus’ eyes, I feel a peace of knowing that someone can look at me and see me.

 

We get together about once a month for coffee or beer. I prefer it when we go out for beer because if there is a geographic location for hell, it’s a bar. There is something about bars that reek of excess soaked in decadence mixed with self-pity. You can smell it! Regardless of location, regardless of time of day, regardless of date printed upon calendar, regardless of clientele, you can always smell the sweet aroma of failure and unrealized dreams. Walk into any bar and inhale deeply the room’s scent – it is a smell without a vocabulary to describe it, a smell that is only adequately described by the expression of the perennial, luckless fool seated on a barstool, roasting his reflection with his stare, while simultaneously trying not to see that same reflection with which he is far too familiar.

 

Since decadence and the devil seem to go together like skinned knees and childhood, I spend a lot of time in bars. There is a certain comfort level. It may simply be the consolation of sharing hell with others, but it is more than that. I go to bars to revel in the absence of temporality. It is the universe’s only time-free zone. Whenever I am sitting in a bar with a drink in my hand, there is no past, no future, only a moment, a moment void of any clear consequences of what came before and of what will come after. The consequences stay outside. The bar room is hallowed ground to them and they cannot enter. But they patiently wait outside, hiding behind bushes or in dark alleys, ready to pounce like a heartless thief on Christmas Eve. That is what makes the bar room hell so insidiously addicting. Life is firmly fixed in a context, in a history with consequences. To be alive is to have consequences imposed upon one’s existence – some we create for ourselves, some attack us like karma with rabies, but to escape these consequences is to escape what it is to be alive. We are all born to bathe in the life which washes us with its painful, consequence-laden water. The bar room opposes this life. It presents the warm, consequence- free, timeless realm of death. People may think that they feel alive after a few drinks, but what they truly feel is death, and they like it.

 

Jesus keeps me informed about heavenly matters whenever we get together. I tell him what I’m up to. "Dad really misses you," he’ll eventually say.

 

"Well . . ." I usually spit out quickly, but that’s as far as I ever get, and Jesus seems to surmise that the feeling is mutual.

 

"Why don’t you give Dad a call," he suggests, "or stop in for a visit."

 

"Why would I do that? Thanksgiving’s still a month away," I reply, feigning a country-bumpkinesque innocence. Jesus laughs and I order another round. When Jesus stops laughing, he looks at me with this serious expression, that only he can pull off, which cuts through me, until I promise to at least call god sometime during the next couple of days. He knows it’s a lie but he seems to feel the need to get me to say it. And I always say it just to escape from his stare.

 

Sometimes I drink too much beer and demand to know if I was wrong or right all those years ago. I’ll ask, "Was I right to hold on to my convictions?" or "Was it fair for god to demand such a thing?" Jesus usually just smiles and takes a sip of his beer in response to my question. If I’ve had a lot of beer, I say something like, "Don’t give my that smile bullshit! Give me an answer!"

 

"Oh," Jesus says in that situation, "I think you just did what you had to do. I guess now it comes down to the tired old chestnut of a question, ‘Would you rather be happy or right?’"

 

"I’d rather be both," I rebut, "because I’m only happy when I’m right."

 

"Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with being right or wrong. But whatever you had to do then doesn’t mean you can’t go home now. The past is the past. And you know as well as I do that if Dad says ‘It didn’t happen,’ then it didn’t happen."

 

"Hmmn," I say as I mull the words over, "perhaps it’s time to put the past to bed." I say this of course mainly to placate Jesus because it did happen and I’ll always know that it happened. It is always about this time in the conversation that I spot some random beauty at the bar and fall in love.

 

"Uh oh," Jesus says, "I know that look. You’re in love again."

 

" . . . Speaking of bed . . ." I say as I rise to dazzle the unsuspecting woman with my irresistible charm.

 

Somewhere behind me I hear Jesus say, "Isn’t time that you tried being in love instead of just falling in love?"

 

"I tried that once," I reply over my shoulder while heading toward the woman, "remember?"