Star Born: even god needs a break (excerpt)
Life needs side projects to keep us sane. Pool-side yesterday afternoon with a little rum and orange juice a new idea walloped me in the head. New ideas can be dangerous--and distracting, but I've been fairly diligent in my greater projects as of late, so I felt I had earned a detour. I love writing in the heads of teenage boys, they're always richly amusing to me, and my current detour is no exception. So, without further ado, I give you my pool-side scribblings, a politically incorrect, and painfully honest first person account of God, or we can just call him John:
A humanoid alien, regarded as a god on his home world, comes to Earth to
live as the teenager he really is. [Comedy/Sci-fi - PG13 for language]
**This is a first draft, un-edited, you will see errors that are to be fixed when I feel so inclined**
On Earth a Star-burst is a chewy, plastic covered sweet injected with artificial tropical flavor... where I'm from it's something entirely different, it's birth. I was born in a star, you see, or I was the star or the star was me—or, I could go on forever trying to explain it to you, but it's not like you're going to understand anyway. The best way to explain it is to say that I was born from a bursting brightness hovering in the sky that extinguished the moment my eyes opened to the blackness of space. They say I'd been developing for eons, turning and churning, a meager spec that grew at a pace so slow even other stars went black before I was done doing my thing. They say I'm a miracle, the savior of the galaxy, the star born to act as god for a millennium and then some, but I'm not so sure about that. They say I'm god, but all I want to be is... me. I know what you're thinking, "Great, another pea-brain with an identity crisis," but where I'm from you're not allowed that luxury. Funny to think of it as a luxury, I bet, but choice is. I want the choice to be young and human—as I would look if the worlds didn't already know that I am the Star Born.
Maybe that's why I'm here, the pressure was just too much to handle, the people that know me making a big damn deal about this god-ship savior crap. Earth is detached, a mess of religion and people who'd rather see themselves as god than kowtow to some meandering Star Born... so, it's perfect. They think like do, doubt like I do, see nothing in the stars like I do, and most of them, the ones that look my age, with crooked smiles and raging hormones, they want to pave their own way, write their own lives. And that's why I'm here—for now—to live like I want, to forget that I'm god.
I chose the name John because apparently its common (my real name is something complicated and uncharacteristically pretentious). It's so common approximately thirty-five percent of male Caucasians in the western hemisphere are named John—see that's a bullshit stat, but I bet for a second you believed it. Point is, for the last five hundred years I've been anything but common, and you wouldn't believe the effort to took being holy, omnipotent, and prayer-answering. It's all biological, I don't have super powers, I'm not super-human, I'm just a different kind, the kind that rages about developing in a ball of fire and gas for millions of years until I'm baked just right... that's how I've reasoned it, anyway. I could read your mind, or change your fate, or make it rain thongs, but it takes a hella strain on my faculties. Like I said, being god takes effort and then the expectation, don't even get me started. More people bitch about you than love you... and people swear in your name—though that, I don't mind. Earth isn't too different, but like I said, it offers me anonymity and I figure I'm young and impetuous and deserve a rebellious stage. See, I knew this would happen, I'm trying to validate my escape. I guess I don't need to, I guess I should just tell you that I live in Bakersfield, California, and it's a shit place and it's great.
I chose it because it's as bland and nowheresy as you can get without being surrounded by extreme poverty, and there's nothing to do but drink and bang and tow trucks. It's perfect. I look nineteen, I think. I've passed for twenty-one, and I rarely pay for drinks. I'm uncommon striking, apparently. I like it better than home (Star-burst central) and the banality of the whole thing is down right refreshing. I did have a loft in Paris where I masqueraded as publishing heir, but it felt too god-like. So, I sought out simplicity, and Bakersfield cried out to me like a cheap sleaze. Like I said, it's perfect.
I live in my own apartment for the sake of my "super-human" quirks, and have taken a liking to thing called Hot Pockets. You can make any kind of argument you want about nature of the stuff, but I've eaten at Michelin star get-ups and there's really no damn difference at the end of the day. The ten years I spent in Paris eating gluttonous portions of haute cuisine and rich crème fresh should have made anyone else egregiously obese, but contrary to numerous experiments I have done on myself, I am immune.
Today I toss a pizza flavored Hot Pocket in the microwave and bask in the echoing loneliness of the studio apartment, the walls cracking with avocado green paint from the seventies, the shag carpet golden orange and stained beyond repair—it's better than home, all of it. No one's pleading in my ear, no appearances, no "miracles" or painstaking efforts against the galactic elements, just me, Friday's paycheck, and a Hot Pocket rotating around in thrift store microwave. Even the ominous whine the machine makes is a welcome sound, the flawed nature of the thing beautiful.
The mail is still in a pile by the front door, the college acceptance letters are there. I figured I'd try that out too, who knows how long I'll be here. Unlike God—the real god, whoever the hell he is, I can't change myself, I can't age, I can't alter my form or face. I'm me, probably with the same face forever, at least that's what I'd guess. It's not like there's anyone to tell me. Daddy issues aside, I'm chancing college. In ten years I've only made love, not friends, and I figure, I can risk it for four years, study philosophy or something just as beautifully banal and boring as Bakersfield.*
It has the same tone as The Ever Secret Diary of Sirius Black and the same sort of laissez faire verbal diarrhea that's easy to write and humorous to run through... eh, it's a welcome break to a world of seriousness. I've written more, maybe if time permits I will share it.
Happy Friday All!
-Ama