(no subject)
Jesus Christ is alive and well. I know this because he's a good friend of mine, and not in the sense that some of these religious whackjobs believe he's their friend. He doesn't hang on my shoulder and tell me what to do, nor does his voice whisper things into my head. What I mean to say is that he's an accountant, he's thirty-five years old, and he lives in my building.
You wouldn't know you were looking at the son of God if you ran into him on the street. He looks normal, perfectly so--of course. He was born with dark hair but dyed it blond in college and kept it that way. He's also got that two day beard scruff going on: you know what I'm talking about, the thing that picturing in your mind right now looks stupid as hell, but he pulls it off. But no halo, no beams of light from his head, nothing. I suppose he could show them off, but he never has and I've never asked to see them.
When I moved into the building, he was already here. Lived at the end of one hallway, was nice enough but kept himself to himself. Didn't think too much of him, to be honest, except for the night that I woke up on my couch dressed just in my robe and he was sitting on the chair opposite me.
I hadn't felt like that since college: where you've been studying and going for so long that you wake up with no memory of having fallen asleep. It's terribly disorienting, and to have it happen in the privacy of your home and then find a stranger staring at you in the aftermath just puts the icing on the cake.
Joshua is his name. Of course it is, right? I asked him what he was doing in my apartment and how the hell he got in.
He gave the briefest of smiles and says, "You don't remember. Of course you don't."
When I pressed him to explain, he took me into my bathroom and I felt some dim recollection coming to the fore. The clock radio I had in my bathroom had fallen off of its perch and into the bath, bringing with it the gift of electrocution.
"I was in there," I said. I remember my mouth had gone very dry. It's odd the details that stick in your mind.
He nodded. "I brought you back. I knew you wouldn't have wanted that." With that, he nodded at the place where I had died.
We went back into the den and I poured us both drinks. I didn't even ask, I just knew I needed one and it would have been rude not to pass him one.
He told me everything. He told me who he was: the product of a virgin birth, though the girl gave that up the week after to a football player in her high school. So the miracle was muffled under a backseat quickie.
He had grown up, gone to school, gone to college, gotten a job, and moved to the city. As for bringing people back from the dead and other such biblical activities, he did that less than you might expect. He didn't run around like a superhero saving everyone, but he would step in here and there and do a good deed. When he felt it needed doing. Being God and man in one, he could turn a lot of things off, or at least down, but omniscience he couldn't tamper with. So he knew that I was going to die that night in a stupid accident involving myself and Jefferson Airplane, complicit in my death because they would have been the last thing I heard. Not a good way to go.
There, I stopped him. "So you let me die? If you knew ahead of time, why didn't you walk in when I got home from work and say, 'Oh, by the way, Bob, do yourself a favor and strap your radio to the counter'?"
He chuckled a bit. "It's hard to explain. Some things just aren't going to happen until they do." Then he started trying to explain exactly how knowing everything reconciled with knowing all possible futures and I downed half of my drink and begged him to stop. I just didn't want to have that much understanding about things.
I said, "So you save people and heal people...why haven't I seen you on the cover of the Universal Tribune then?"
He smiled, "Oh, I make people forget. It's easier that way. Otherwise, they follow you around. And that...that always causes problems."
I think at that point I finished my drink and went and got the bottle. "So why do I remember? If you are who you say you are...or not...I mean..." I had the distinct impression Joshua was telling the truth. It was just a feeling I had. But I was an atheist, and I was having problems telling the son of God that even though he was sitting in my den, I really still didn't believe in him, thanks anyway. I mean...hell, you try it. It felt like I was being a ungrateful bastard.
But he just nodded and finished the thought for me. "You don't care. I know. And that's okay. It's not like I'm offended or anything. I appreciate that." And then he finished his drink. "I don't expect you'll be following me around. And I'd like to have somebody to talk to for a change."
I asked him why he didn't just talk to his father, but he shook his head. "No, I'm his son but I'm him too. It's hard to explain, but just trust me: if I want to talk to myself I can do that in the privacy of my own apartment without having to make a collect call home or anything."
Then a thought struck me. "But, if you're here, then..."
And he knew exactly where I was going. "The Second Coming. Yes. Revelation and all that. That's already over and done with. No need to get concerned about that."
I wasn't a believer, but I was raised as a Christian, so I still remembered that according to that particular belief system, there was supposed to be some kind of event where the faithful were whisked away leaving the wicked to fend for themselves in some of kind of Mad Max movie. Or something.
He nodded and said, "The Rapture, you mean. Yes. Well, we simply decided not to go through with it."
Then he told me about meeting the Anti-Christ. They met in a open air café in Jerusalem when Joshua was twenty-eight. He had felt compelled to go to this place and knew what it must mean. So he went, and what he found waiting for him was a nervous dark-haired, pale man with glasses drinking a latte. Rather than an archenemy of mankind that needed to be fought and crushed under one's heel, the Anti-Christ looked positively terrified. He said he had a wife and a child with another on the way. And that he barely understood what was happening but that he had come there knowing what needed to be done. And he didn't want any part of it. And could he please go home to his family. Please.
Joshua told me that it was at that moment he realized that, God or not, he had a choice like everyone else. And he told the Anti-Christ--whose name was not Damien at all, it was Chris of all things--to go home to Denise and Roger and their child to be. They weren't going to do this. Not now, and probably not ever.
It was the look of relief on Chris' face that sealed it for him, Joshua said. That they didn't have to do things the same way anymore. And they could change their minds.
Joshua's a good friend. He lives by himself and stops by from time to time. We go out and grab a bite or a drink or something. But mostly he just goes to work at his office and comes home. I don't know what he does in his spare time and I don't ask. I don't ask him about much, come to think of it. He just starts talking and I listen.
Once I did ask him something, though. Something specific. I asked him if this was his plan all along. God's, I meant.
He thought about it. Thought about it for a good solid minute. Then he sipped from his beer and said, "I don't know, honestly. Isn't that the oddest thing?" And he had this terrific grin on his face when he said it.
