27th
No Exit
I envied the fans’ reverence at a Morrissey concert tonight the way that I once envied my childhood Catholic friends who had me over for Christmas and consumed the body and blood of Jesus Christ on Sundays.
“Daddy, do you believe in God?”
“No, darling.”
“What about heaven?”
“I don’t think there’s a heaven. But we can celebrate Christmas. How about a tree this year?”
“But what happens when we die?”
“Nothing happens, that’s the great thing.”
Crying now.
“Honey, it means you’re free. What you need to do is focus on your life. Now read this play ‘No Exit.’ It’s kind of a fantasy story set in hell. I think you’ll like it.”
It really made no sense that nothing happens when you die but you could still get sent to hell by Sartre and have a bad time of it. I mean, I was 9. Back then my life was a baffling series of long division problems and a bully with freckles.
My dad bought a bible recently. Literary reasons, natch.
Sometimes we still fumble through that old copy of “No Exit” for old time’s sake. We eat spaghetti and sit in stillness, his gaze occasionally arrested on the window, distracted.
I wonder what he sees.
