Hemorrhoids of the Gods
n the day before her twenty-first birthday when Gwendoline Papsmear first
heard the voice speak to her, a blinding white light filled her bedroom.
She had to cover her eyes against the brightness, afraid that her retinas
might melt in her sockets and ooze down her face into her shoes. The voice
was powerful, authoritative, and clearly it had taken bar mitzvah lessons.
"Gwendoline, watch for the sign! " it said.
Curious, Gwendoline asked, "Hey, is this God? Am I talking to God here? Stomp your foot once for 'yes.'" The voice did not answer. "Well, then, what sign should I look for? I mean, I've got a lot of homework here," she added. But the white light had disappeared. Gwendoline wondered if she should check to see if any of the silverware were missing.
The voice left the young girl filled with myriad unanswered questions. How does Man account for the existence of evil in a rational and sane universe? Did God create Man, or did Man create God? And, given that God is both omnipotent and beneficent, then how do you explain Howard Stern?
Perhaps there are some things that mortal Man should never know, she thought. Who can count the fish in the sea or measure the Almighty's hat size? What are the mating habits of Judge Lance Ito? Nevertheless, if God had a message for her, if He intended to reveal His purpose to her, then it was Gwendoline's sacred duty to discover that purpose. Why else would He have spoken to her in Italics?
Weeks later Gwendoline sat in a movie theater on a warm summer's night asking herself if maybe her search for the sign had been such a good idea. Her quest had revealed nothing, although she did have some questions about William Shatner's hair. She wondered if God's message might reveal itself without her having to look so hard for it. She might find it in a word whispered to her, in a sunset, or perhaps next on Oprah.
Even a stranger like Harold Throckmorton Rabinowitz III, her escort, might reveal the sign to her in a simple gesture. Perhaps his smile revealed the mysteries of the universe, or at least why Harold's orthodontist had screwed up on his over-bite. Perhaps his eyes disclosed Man's place in the order of nature, or how he was capable of pissing from a moving vehicle. Maybe the man's touch could explain what Fahrvergnugen means.
She studied Harold closely. She looked at his smile, the way he had applied Chapstick throughout dinner, several times offering to share it with her. She looked at his eyes, the way he kept directing the blue one to the small tattoo of Arizona on her forehead. And she watched his hands and the way his fingers had been inching up the thigh of the woman seated next to him.
But no sign appeared. Ten minutes into the unrated version of "Flaming Hot and Wet Snatch : The Movie" and Harold had revealed nothing more than a slight tendency to drool.
The date took a decidedly downward slide when Harold admitted that his colostomy bag had begun to leak. It was only by sheer coincidence that Gwendoline had packed a spare Depends for just such an emergency. Inexplicably, the couple to Harold's left suddenly fled the theater screaming.
Harold leaned toward Gwendoline and reached for her arm. "I think I've seen enough of this movie. Do you think it would be rude to ask for a doggie bag?"
She squeezed his hand, then wittily retorted, "I don't think this is a restaurant. But there is a pet shop in the mall where you can buy a dog."
Harold returned her smile, assuming she would need it later. "I love a woman who is impetuous. I bet you piddle down your leg just anytime you feel like it, don't you, you little minx?"
Gwendoline was a sucker for bathroom humor, often laughing herself sick at Tidy Bowl commercials. She remembered the merriment they had shared over dinner when Harold had asked if he might wear her Tampax for a bib. This blind date might work out after all. And if Harold knew any dead baby jokes, her heart would belong to him.
Love was in the air, or maybe it was raw sewage, Gwendoline thought as they left the theater. Surely God would not mind if she put her divine search for truth on hold for tonight. She reached for Harold's hand, but quickly withdrew it. Mustn't seem over-anxious, she remembered. That was what her mother had told her while having one of her multiple orgasms with the vacuum cleaner.
Gwendoline attempted polite conversation as they walked from the theater. She immediately dismissed the idea of bringing up the subject of penis size. Instead she ventured, "Your friend Zackch said you've earned a rather unique degree." Zackch was Harold's fraternity brother from Phatta Delta Burka who had arranged their blind date. He had told Harold that he believed he and Gwendoline might have something in common because each had been raised by mongoloids. Gwendoline might have discovered love with Zackch had she been able to pronounce his name.
"Scatological science was my major," Harold boasted. "I hope to soon have my doctorate in excrement and disgusting bodily fluids. In fact, I'm now writing my thesis on flatulence and the ability to hit F-Sharp after eating asparagus. Perhaps you'd like to hear my collection of tapes?" He smiled sheepishly. "Hey, what do you call four dead babies on a skewer?"
Gwendoline's heart melted, producing a mild cardiac infarction. "Oh, I don't know. What?" Take me, Harold! Oh, take me now! she thought.
"A shishkababy. Get it? Huh? Huh?" He turned toward Gwendoline and bent as if to tie his shoe. Looking down she noticed he had taken her toe firmly between his teeth. Gwendoline offered to take off her penny loafers, but Harold insisted he was a man who liked a challenge. How had he instinctively known exactly where to find her G-spot? Usually on first dates she had to get out the map.
Suddenly a thought struck Gwendoline. Harold clearly liked toes, and she had ten of them. Harold studied disgusting bodily fluids, and she had at least ten of them also! A common bond existed between them. She decided she would venture inviting him to her apartment for a nightcap. Maybe even the flannel one with the ducks.
Gwendoline pulled him up by his ear and kissed him gently on the lobe. "Sorry, I didn't know these tore so easily," she apologized. "But if you want more where that came from, I happen to keep a jar of toenails right alongside my bed. Interested?"
"Only if you've been eating your asparagus," Harold quipped.
Love comes in many shapes and forms. But for Gwendoline it had always come as one-size-fits-all, sort of like spandex but not quite as resilient and without the same selection of colors. Her requirements of her recent dates lately had nonetheless become more stringent. This month she definitely was not accepting double amputees. She had been mortified when she had misplaced that last one and found him under her bed three days later.
Yet there was something about this man who called himself Harold, some indefinable thing, something that could not be found merely in the bulge of his pants, although she intended to look for it there.
It had been a while since she had allowed a strange man to come back to her apartment on a first date, but Harold knew how to unlock that particular door. Earlier in the evening he had whispered to her "If we don't shtup tonight, you got cab fare?" The man simply knew the words to say, and Gwendoline turned to jelly whenever a man whispered to her in Yiddish. She stood at the door with her key in her hand as Harold sniffed the air apprehensively.
"You didn't mention you had cats. I've been allergic to cat fur ever since I was a kid, having spent so much of my childhood in a litter box."
Gwendoline sensed the beginnings of a thorny issue developing. Her pure white Persian and the colorful Calico had been faithful and loving companions. "Oh, you mean Fluffy and Cup Cake?" She swung the door open. "I'm having them put to sleep tomorrow." As if to emphasize her point, she picked Fluffy up gently by her fur and tossed her across the room where she splattered against the wall. "I hate cats. I just keep them around for laboratory experiments." Gwendoline's ruse seemed to work. Harold already was in the litter box making balloon animals from condoms.
Gwendoline walked to the stereo. Trying to appear feline, she slinked as she moved, and coughed up a furball. She unsleeved an LP.
"I think you might like this one. I bought it for my parakeet. The pet shop was having a sale on albums that teach your budgie how to say 'Hello.'"
Harold looked over his shoulder at Gwendoline as he snapped off his catheter. "I dunno, Gwendoline. Have you got music that might set, you know, like the right mood? I was hoping there might be some nymphomania in your family."
"Well, I also have Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits ."
"Play the bird album." He walked over to her. "You know, I've waited a long time for a moment like this, with just you, me, and that dead cat over there. How about we have a little drink, just to loosen you up so I don't have to waste my time on foreplay?"
Gwendoline simply smiled and walked over to the bar. She hoped Harold wouldn't notice she had run low on the Vodka and had substituted STP motor oil.
Harold turned up the stereo.
"Hello . . .Hello . . .Hello . . .Hello . . .Hello . . . Hello . . . "
"Yeah," he said, beginning to sway with the words. "Yeah, I can get into this." He closed his eyes and swayed from side to side. "Yeah, hello, hello, I really hello can get hello into this."
Gwendoline inched toward her bedroom door. "While you're waiting, I'll just slip into something a little more comfortable, something a little more revealing." Once in her room she immediately searched her closet for her Catholic girls' school uniform, the one she used to wear when she attended Our Sister of Perpetual Agony and Suffering.
She did not expect the miracle that followed. A flicker of white light appeared in the corner of the room near the pile of Underalls she was thinking of having bronzed. Slowly the light became a radiant glow. Gwendoline wondered if maybe her PMS had been kicking in again, but then the voice called her name. It had been years since Gwendoline had heard that voice, and at first she mistook the voice for Perry Como. But it occurred to her that she didn't even know who Perry Como was or what he might be doing in her bedroom. No, there was no mistaking to whom the voice belonged. It was just as she had remembered it, deep, resonant, and commanding, although it now spoke with a lisp.
Gwendoline stepped toward the light.
"God? Is that you?"
"Yeth, Gwendoline."
The Sign! After so many years, God was going to reveal the sign to her!
"I'm glad you stopped by, God, but as you can see I'm a little busy now. Is Thursday good for you?"
So God left.
Gwendoline felt transformed as she put on her green knee socks. God's visit, although brief, had moved her to ponder the great mysteries of His universe : Would Ghandi have considered Rogaine? When had Mother Theresa last checked her anti-freeze? How many Hari Krishnas does it take to screw in a light bulb? Tomorrow she would convert to Buddhism. Starting today she would eat only oat bran and would remain pure for her husband. Tonight she would even floss.
Gwendoline suddenly remembered that she hadn't been pure since the fourth grade. That was when little Tommy Henderson and she had decided to play doctor. She still carried his stethoscope in her uterus. Gwendoline knew she should have suspected something when Tommy had performed that triple by-pass on her little brother, then didn't know how to close. So many men since Tommy had lied about being surgeons.
Okay, she would scratch the 'pure' part.
Yet something had changed inside her, something indefinable that she couldn't name, but it felt much different from menstrual cramps and wasn't quite the same as sitting on a hot pipe. "God has spoken directly to me," she thought. "To how many people has that happened? Moses? Jesus? Bill Gates?" She realized nothing could be as it was before, so she immediately threw the pile of Underalls into her hamper.
But what was the sign that God had intended to show Gwendoline? Perhaps she had been hasty in asking Him to leave?
Gwendoline called for Harold to come into the bedroom. She had something she had to tell him. Something that might change his life as it had changed hers. Harold entered the room with the parakeet in his mouth.
"Harold, I have just spoken to God," she said. "I have experienced what surely must be a true miracle of the twentieth century. I am changed, reborn, yes, perhaps even sainted. I believe He wanted to show me a sign, something to demonstrate the glory of the universe that He has created. Something to show me that, although we amount to little more than hemorrhoidal tissue within the cosmic rectal cavity, we matter in the eyes of God! Yes, no matter how small, no matter how foul and disgusting we may be, we matter! Praised be He . . . or Him . . . whatever."
Harold looked at Gwendoline with wonderment. "You got something I can wash this bird down with?"
Their eyes met. Their lips met. Their bodies met. Formal introductions were unnecessary.
They went at each other like ferrets in heat. They made love once in the bed, twice in the sink, three times in the washing machine during the spin cycle. She felt certain God understood that even a saint can get great-toad horny.
But Harold seemed strangely unfulfilled as she rested in his arms alongside the Clorox. And again she heard the voice.
"Crest fluoride has been shown to be an effective decay-preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used as directed in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care."
"What?"
"Buy low . . . sell high."
"Huh?"
"Oh, screw it. Just shtup the poor jerk."
Gwendoline Papsmear smiled. She had been given the sign.
