What I'd Say to the Martians (10 page)

M
y first day in Hell is drawing to a close. They don’t really have a sunset here, but the fires seem to dim a bit, and the screaming gets more subdued. Many of the demons are asleep now, their pointy tails curled up around themselves. They look so innocent, it’s hard to believe that just a few hours ago they were raping and torturing us.

The day started off at a party at the Chelsea Hotel, where some friends were daring me to do something. The next thing I knew, I was in Hell. At first it seemed like a dream, but then you remember that five-martini dreams are usually a lot worse.

The ferry boat across the River Styx was so overcrowded, I thought the whole thing was going to tip over. In fact, some demons onboard were trying to rock us back and forth. Still, the sight of the towering cliffs of Hell, with evil, grinning dolphins swimming alongside, is an unforgettable one. “Wow, is this really Hell?” I said to the guy next to me. He said yeah, it was. I asked him again, to make sure, but that made him start crying. Man, what’s with that guy?

There’s a kind of customs station, where a skeleton in a black robe checks a big book to make sure you’re in there. It’s kind of boring, but I guess you have to do it. As his bony finger slowly scans the pages, searching for your name, you can’t help thinking, What does a skeleton need with a robe? Especially since it’s so hot. That’s the first thing you notice about Hell, how hot it is. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s
hot
. But it’s a steamy, sulfur kind of hot. Like a spa or something.

You might think people in Hell are all nude. But that’s a myth. You wear what you were last wearing. For instance, I am dressed like the German U-boat captain in the movie
Das Boot,
because that’s what I wore to the party. It’s an easy costume, because all you really need is the hat. The bad part is people are always asking you who you are, even in Hell. Come on, I’m the guy from
Das Boot
!

The food here turns out to be surprisingly good. The trouble is, just about all of it is poisoned. So a few minutes after eating you’re doubled over in agony. The weird thing is, after you recover, you’re ready to dig in all over again.

Despite the tasty food and warm weather, there’s a dark side to Hell. For one thing, it’s totally disorganized. How anything gets done down here is a miracle. You’ll be herded along in one big line, then it’ll separate into three lines, then they’ll all come back together again! For no apparent reason! It’s crazy. You try to ask a demon a question, but he just looks at you. I don’t mean to sound prejudiced, but you wonder if they even speak English.

To relieve the boredom, you can throw rocks at other people in line. They’ll just think it was a demon or something. But I discovered the hard way that the demons don’t like it when they’re beating someone and you join in.

It’s odd, but Hell can be a lonely place, even with so many people. They all seem caught up in their own little worlds, running to and fro, wailing and tearing at their hair. You try to make conversation, but you can tell they’re not listening.

A malaise sets in. I thought getting a job might help. It turns out I have a lot of relatives in Hell, and using connections, I became assistant to a demon who pulls people’s teeth out. It wasn’t actually a job, more of an internship. But I was eager. And at first it was kind of interesting. But after a while you start asking yourself: Is this what I came to Hell for, to hand different kinds of pliers to a demon? I started wondering if I even should have come to Hell at all. Maybe I should have lived my life differently and gone to Heaven instead. I was tormented.

I had to get away. The endless lines, the senseless whipping, the forced sing-alongs. You get tired of trying to explain that you’ve already been branded, or that something that big won’t fit in your ear, even with a hammer. I wandered off. I needed some “me” time. I came to a cave and went inside. Maybe I would find a place to meditate, or some gold nuggets.

That’s when it happened, one of those moments that could happen only in Hell. I saw Satan. Some people have been in Hell for thousands of years and have never seen Satan, but there he was. He was shorter than I expected, and wearing a baseball cap. But he looked pretty good. He was standing on top of a big rock, looking at some papers with his reading glasses. I think he was practicing a speech or something. “Hey, Satan,” I yelled out, “how’s it going?” I was immediately set upon by demons. I can’t begin to describe the tortures they inflicted on me, because apparently they are trade secrets. Suffice it to say that, even as you endure all the pain, you find yourself thinking, Wow, how did they think of
that
?

I’m still feeling a little dizzy, but at least the demons stuffed most of my parts back in me. But, more important, my faith in Hell as an exciting place where anything could happen has been restored. Hell, I’ve found, is what you make of it.

I had better get some rest. They say the bees will be out soon, and that it’s hard to sleep with the constant stinging. I lost my internship, but apparently I can reapply in one hundred years. Meanwhile, I’ve been assigned to a construction crew. Tomorrow we’re supposed to build a huge monolith, then take picks and shovels and tear it down, then beat each other to death. It sounds pointless to me, but what do I know? I’m new here.

M
ost people don’t realize there is an unseen, mysterious world all around us. No, I’m not talking about the world of invisible scary monsters. I am talking about the world of bizarre little animals that live alongside us right in our homes. They inhabit our clothing, our furniture, our piles of old rags, our pans of dripping rainwater—even our bodies themselves.

Some of these creatures are so microscopic you can barely even see them. Others are bigger, but you probably can’t see them without your glasses, if you wear them.

We usually don’t even notice these animals, but they’re there. Take, for instance, the little creatures that are constantly flying around our heads all day. These, it turns out, are houseflies. They can live off the scraps of food that fall from our mouths while chewing. And they are able to reproduce right in the house, in dog droppings.

Or consider even smaller animals, which live unnoticed among the hairs of our private regions. They are called crabs. No, don’t worry, they aren’t actual crabs. And they certainly aren’t large enough to eat, unless you could somehow get thousands of them. But they are with us, year after year.

Have you ever noticed how old chili beans and ground-up pieces of potato chips will magically seem to move around on the living room carpet? This is actually caused by ants. Ants? But don’t they live in caves or something? That’s what I used to think. But if you look closely, you can see them almost everywhere.

Some animals are masters of disguise. What you may think are raisins, stuck to your legs after hours of lying on the couch, are often what scientists call leeches. Where do they come from? Where
don’t
they come from is more like it. But most often we pick them up wading through the basement.

There are even organisms that manage to get into our appliances and live there undisturbed. These are rats. Many times the only clue to their presence is a zapping noise, some smoke, and a smell that can linger for weeks.

Incredibly, some little animals are able to infiltrate the very liquids we drink. They are called yeast, and we consume them by the billions, hour after hour, every day.

Other creatures are larger, but elusive. When you get up in the middle of the night for more bites of the chicken piece you left on the counter, you may have to fight for it with a raccoon. One reason we rarely notice these furry interlopers is they come and go through holes in the wall. Also, a lot of times when we fight them we’re drunk, and later we think we imagined it.

You might suppose that at least when you climb into bed you would be free of the animal kingdom. But suppose again. There, too, they are watching us, crawling on us, waiting for the opportunity to bite. These are our cats, swarming over us throughout the night.

No doubt some of these invaders can be harmful. One animal can literally eat its way through the wood that holds the house together. This is the common beaver. He is attracted to the water overflowing from our basements, which he tries to dam up. Another harmful pest is the moth, which can fly in your mouth when you’re taking a nap.

But many of the creatures living in our homes can be beneficial. Take drifters, for example. Sometimes they will go to the store to get you things (although they usually “lose” the change). Termites will often leave piles of sawdust around, which can be used to soak up stains. And mice entertain us by playing musical instruments. No, wait, I’m thinking of cartoon mice.

Through millions of years of evolution, animals have adapted to thrive in every corner of our world, from our empty Cup-a-Soup containers to the dried-up branches and dusty ornaments of our Christmas trees. They inhabit the bristles of our toothbrushes, the bristles of our whiskers, and the bristles of our cheese.

The temptation is to want to do something about them. But what? You can throw cats off the bed, but they just jump right back on. Virtually every kind of alcoholic beverage has yeast swimming in it. You can scrub the crabs off your body, but what are you going to do about your bedsheets, or your sweatpants? Wash
them
too? You could drive yourself crazy.

Even if we could get rid of all these animals with a magic wand, would we want to? Yes, of course we would—why would you even ask that? But maybe the best answer, as with most things, is just to do nothing at all.

However, that’s not what the health department thinks. They have hit me with a large fine and ordered me to “clean up” my property. But ultimately we have to ask ourselves: Do we want to live in some soulless antiseptic world ruled by futuristic robots, where dishes are cleaned every day and sinks and toilets are an eerie, gleaming white? I don’t think that we do. I think people would rather live in homes where animals roam wild and free, in our hair, in our bags of things, and in our underpants.

T
he glug-glug-glug symbol is one of the most time-honored of all the human hand gestures. This is the sign you use when you want to indicate—often behind someone’s back—that he has been drinking. Usually, your clenched fingers form a “bottle,” and your extended thumb a spout. Then you hold the “bottle” up and “drink.” You can make a glug-glug-glug sound if you want to. It’s up to you.

Scientists say glug-glug-glug is preceded in evolution only by the “over there” point and the “pee-yew” nose squeeze. Glug-glug-glug has been used throughout history. It is said that when Patrick Henry declared, “Give me liberty or give me death!” half the people behind him did the glug-glug-glug sign. When Abraham Lincoln was shot, the first usher to reach him mistakenly did the glug-glug-glug sign. During the 1960s, people experimented with new gestures, and glug-glug-glug was replaced by the “toke” symbol. But today glug-glug-glug is stronger than ever.

All I know is glug-glug-glug broke my heart.

It started when I went to try to get a job with my uncle Lou. I thought he could make me a vice president in his company. I had had trouble reaching him by phone, so I just showed up at his office. His secretary, Shirley, tried to keep me waiting, but I just barged right in. “Hey, Uncle Lou!” I shouted. But he was gone. I looked out through the open window, and shimmying down the trellis was Uncle Lou. Shirley and I looked at each other and, together, did the glug-glug-glug sign.

We started dating. We did glug-glug-glug everywhere. If we went to the ballet, and the male dancer did a perfect pirouette, we did glug-glug-glug. If he slipped slightly, we also did glug-glug-glug. It didn’t matter. It worked either way.

Of course, when Shirley and I got married and the preacher said “till death do you part,” we did a little subtle glug. Looking back, maybe we should have taken the whole thing more seriously.

Glug-glug-glug got old. Shirley and I realized that we had little in common, and that we didn’t even like each other. One night I came home with lipstick on my collar. When Shirley asked about it, all I could do was the index-finger-through-the-circled-fingers sign.

We tried counseling, but it was hopeless. In our last session, when the counselor suddenly got up and said, “I’ve got to go do something,
right now,
” we didn’t even look at each other, let alone do glug-glug-glug.

When I read the divorce papers, I did the blowing-out-my-brains sign. For a long time, friends would come by and do the let’s-go-fishing sign or the let’s-go-to-a-museum sign (where you put your hand to your chin and act like you’re looking at a painting). But I would just do the I’m-taking-a-nap sign.

Finally, I went to a friend’s party. Someone was up on a table, doing a funny cowboy dance. Even though the dance was really hilarious, something made me look away. There was Wendy, also laughing. She looked radiant and beautiful. Somehow I caught her eye. We smiled and, instinctively, both did the glug-glug-glug sign. Then I did the how-about-a-drink sign, which is like glug-glug-glug, only your hand is holding a glass instead of a bottle.

When Wendy and I walked home that night, hand in hand, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe, just maybe, some things are meant to last. Perhaps in the future, outer-space aliens will land on an Earth devastated by nuclear destruction, turn to one another and make the glug-glug-glug sign.