Excerpt: What I Said to the Wise Man

Excerpt # 1 (beginning of novel)

A wise man once told me that I would live multiple lifetimes. At the time, I thought he was just another street urchin trying to get his hands on another fix but after everything that’s happened, I’m not so sure. I’ve doubted my existence, I’ve doubted our existence, and I’ve doubted my dear Alexa. There are things in this world – behind the very fabric of time and space – that keep our gears turning. When you get a peek at them, you would expect to be met with some kind of amazement, some kind of “holy shit” moment.

But, honestly, it’s pretty much the same old fucking thing. Different names, different people, different places. But it’s just one big cycle of she said this, he said that, he fucked her, killed her, raped her, beat her. There’s no right and no wrong according to human nature. It’s a free for all; myriad things you can do “wrong” but still feel so good. Nature versus nurture, pleasure versus misery. It’s not as poetic, but it works. Life’s not as clean cut, but it works.

This God people talk of. I don’t know if he exists. I don’t know if he implanted one giant wad of God-sperm into the “virgin” Mary. But I am sure of one thing: pregnancy equals penetration. Don’t tell me that bitch was no virgin. She probably got knocked up by her boyfriend and wanted to hide it from her parents. And maybe it just happened to be that that boyfriend was God.

I don’t fucking know. I think people have studied me, studied what I’ve done. Maybe I have a whole Bible written about me. Anything’s possible. You can’t tell me that Christianity isn’t just this millennium’s Romans or Greeks or Mayans. You can’t tell me that in a thousand years we’re not going to be worshiping Pepsi or tampons or no one at all.

You can’t tell me because you don’t know. You haven’t been there; you haven’t seen what is to come. Who’s to say we’ll even be here in a thousand years? Who’s to say that evolution won’t fuck us over? If we’re so powerful, then why can we get the flesh ripped out of us by a lion? Isn’t it only a matter of time before the lions turn on us – grow minds of their own, overpopulate, and kill every last one of us?

Is that what we’re destined to? Is that what we are to become?

I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

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Excerpt #2 (about 10k in)

Back in my younger years, there was this kid named Travis who used to take my lunch money from me every day for about six months. I was in tenth grade and begged my father to start making me lunch, or at least giving me the means to make it myself. He said that I had to learn to be a stronger man. And I don’t think he much minded the bruises on me anyway. Made him think he was messing with someone rough, someone who wouldn’t just submit. I guess we all have our little fantasies.

Travis wouldn’t even take my money before school started. He wouldn’t wait for me at my bus stop or pull me beside before homeroom. He would find me in the stairwells, in the bathroom. Always right before lunch. I tried not going down the stairwell, or hiding behind a group of people. But he always found me. And he always slapped me and reached into my pockets and took it.

There were a few days I was smart and didn’t bring any money. (Once I tried hiding it in my underwear. He found it.) Those days I saw a different side of Travis. There he was, rubbing me and up down and looking for his payoff. It was like prostitution, but I wouldn’t make that connection until much later in life. But those days, after he was done fishing through my pockets and dipping his hand down my waistband to see where that George Washington was hiding, he’d retreat and look at me for a second with a wild look in his eyes. His eyes watered up and he would push me down onto the ground and step on my two feet, holding me in place. At first I squirmed when he did this but after a while I just submit to it. I was good at being submissive.

I always thought he would do something. Spit on me, kick me, whatever. But he would always just stare at me for a second and say, “Tomorrow, Kevbot” and leave. I think he may have thought I enjoyed it. That game of hide and seek, that Tommy Two-Touch.

When I was in college, I found out that he hanged himself from a ceiling fan with a rainbow flag draped around his body. Maybe I was his high school boyfriend. Whatever I was, it stopped being that the next year. I started to stand up for myself. I paid some slut to have sex with me in the bathroom and moaned loud enough (on purpose, of course) for a teacher to catch us. And from then on I was the shit. From then on I was fucking Godzilla.

And where did Travis go those two years? I don’t know. Maybe he found another boyfriend. Maybe this one had some Lincolns.