Strange Animals Read online

  “So let’s say you get to that point. Let’s say you’re okay with giving up all your own personal desires in order to do whatever it is that’s in God’s plan for you. The next step might even be harder. I mean, how will you know what God’s plan is? Is he just going to tell you? Well, yeah, he is just going to tell you. Isn’t that funny how sometimes God can use the simplest thing to work his miracles? But he can only do his part. He can tell you his plan, but that doesn’t mean anything if you don’t hear it. I don’t know how many times I tell my kids to take out the trash, but guess who ends up taking it out? Yours truly—because my kids, God bless ’em, might be on their Xbox or their phone, or listening to music, and they don’t hear me because they have so many distractions. It’s hard to do, but it’s a two-way street. God’s gonna talk to you, but you have to hear him.

  “So how do you hear God? You listen. Sounds simple again, right? But it’s not. How many of us in here today can honestly say we’re listening for God every day, all day? None of us can. My kids have their Xbox and their music and their phone, and you might have your bills or your job or your boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife. We’ve all got distractions. But that’s okay. God knows that. And God knows that the best time to talk to us is when we’re really listening, when the distractions are gone and we’re just open to hear whatever it is he has to say. So the best thing we can do as Christians is listen for God’s voice as hard as we can, as often as we can.

  “And once you hear God, then what? Well, then you have to do the hardest thing of all. You have to act. You have to actually do what God tells you to do. And I know that’s hard. It’s a lot easier just to say, ‘Well, God, I know you told me to get a job or to help my family or my community, but there’s some awfully good TV on tonight.’ Well, that won’t cut it. You ever hear that expression ‘When I say jump, you say how high’? That’s exactly how God wants you to react to his voice when he tells you to do something. I mean, what do you think happened when Jesus heard his dad say, ‘Son, I have a big favor to ask of you. You might not want to do it, but it’s all part of my plan, and you just have to trust me’? You think Jesus said, ‘Dad, I’d love to help you out, but I have some TV to watch’? No, Jesus went to his disciples and he told them he was going to die for all of us, and not to worry, because even though that might sound bad, God told him it was what he was supposed to do. No matter what it is, you have to be willing and ready to act on whatever commands God gives you, to complete his plan for you. And that gets a big fat amen.”

  The rest of the congregation, James Dobbs included, echoed back, “Amen.”

  James spent the rest of his Sunday at home, listening for God to speak to him, just as Minister Preston had outlined in his sermon. Just like every day prior to that Sunday, God did not speak to him. James wondered what God’s voice sounded like and wondered if he’d ever hear it. He assumed that God spoke to everyone at least once, and he vowed that he would be ready when the time came for him to carry out whatever command God delivered.

  chapter

  three

  Karen was late for an appointment with her PhD supervisor. She woke up on time but was too nauseous to leave her apartment. She had recently been feeling like her hangovers were getting worse and worse, and sometimes after what she considered a smaller than usual amount of alcohol. She tried to force herself to drink a glass of water but felt repulsed by the idea of her teeth possibly touching the glass, a fear that a hangover had never produced before. She hoped her supervisor would understand or not even bring up her tardiness.

  She had developed a certain amount of dread concerning this appointment, due to the misgivings she seemed unable to escape where her dissertation was concerned. She had started writing two proposals over the past six months, but she had lost interest in both. She didn’t want her dissertation to be the same as every other philosophy dissertation at UCLA: read by an approval committee, published in an esoteric journal, then filed away in some obscure library, where it would never be seen again. She was thinking about this as she walked across campus to her supervisor’s office, hoping that her desire to do something important, something noteworthy, would garner her some more time to settle in on a subject for her dissertation.

  As she walked toward Dodd Hall, Karen was stopped by a student she identified as undergraduate by his age and dress. “If you have a second, I’d like to ask you if you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior,” was his greeting to Karen.

  Based on all the strife and suffering in the world, it was clear the end times were close at hand. Although a college education was important to secure a good job and become a high-functioning member of society, being a disciple of Christ was much more important, and was clearly much more worthy of a person’s time than studying the knowledge of man. In the final days of the world, there was no greater endeavor than attempting to save as many souls as possible. Sexual intercourse was to be engaged in only by a man and his wife, and if God saw fit to initiate Armageddon before he delivered every man a wife, then it shouldn’t be questioned, because that would be part of his plan, and dying as a virgin would be acceptable. The fornication and experimentation with drugs and alcohol that almost all college students participated in were sins; and while they were redeemable sins, if the world ended while a person was engaging in sinful behavior, that person would be sent to hell without the opportunity to repent. And since no one had any foreknowledge about the exact moment of Armageddon, it was better to avoid such behaviors altogether. These were things that this young student understood to be true.

  Karen never passed up the opportunity to engage with religious people. It gave her a certain satisfaction to express her contempt for them openly. Karen said, “Why would you want to ask me that?”

  He said, “Because I care about your soul and about its salvation.”

  “You know the God that you pray to, that you claim loves everyone . . . He—” She paused. “You do think God’s a man, right?”

  “Well, the Bible did say God made man in his own image, so . . .”

  “What do you think this male God does with his penis? Do you think he fucks with it? If so, what does he fuck? Does he pee? If so, what does he drink in order to produce urine?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, but I’d guess he just doesn’t use it.”

  “Not even to masturbate?”

  “Masturbation is a sin.”

  “I’m fucking with you. I just wanted to make sure you thought God was a man so I could correctly identify you as the regular kind of misogynist piece of shit that usually stands out here and bothers people. So that same big-dicked God that you claim loves every person on the planet also kills every person on the planet. But before he kills most of them, he makes them suffer through some of the worst circumstances you can imagine—war, famine, disease, all kinds of bad shit. And even if you’re lucky enough to be born in a place and into a class that allows you to escape the garden variety atrocities that most of the world deals with, you’ll age, at least, and your body will experience pain as it slowly shuts down over the course of your life until you die alone in a hospital somewhere.”

  He said, “It’s true, we all age and we all die, but here, in this country, we’re blessed to be comfortable for most of our lives, so we have the ability to spread his word.”

  Karen said, “You assholes will never understand how arrogant it is to claim you’re blessed, will you?”

  He said, “It’s not arrogant. It’s actually the opposite. By admitting that everything good in your life is a blessing from God, you give him glory, and you understand that you can achieve nothing on your own, nothing without God’s divine favor. It’s actually a statement of ultimate humility.”

  Karen said, “I know you think it is, but you’re wrong. Let me help you out. By saying that you’re blessed in not having to worry about the problems most of the rest of the world deals with on a daily basis, you’re actually saying that you truly believe God likes you mor
e than everyone else he’s making to suffer. God has blessed you with a cancer-free body. Does that mean that anyone with cancer is less blessed? God must not like them as much as he likes you, right? I mean, why would he give them cancer when they clearly don’t want it and let you walk around completely healthy?”

  The student stammered slightly, “It . . . it just means that I’m thankful for what I have, and I recognize I have it because God wants me to have it.”

  Karen said, “Exactly. Other people want what you have, too, but they don’t have it, and you really honestly think that’s because God wants you to have it more than he wants them to have it. You believe you’re favored by a God you claim loves all his children equally. Which is fucking disgusting.”

  With that, Karen continued on her way to Dodd Hall as the young student called after her, “I’ll pray for you.”

  “I’m very much hoping that you have a proposal for me, Ms. Holloway,” was the first thing Professor David Noone said to Karen as she sat down across from him in his office.

  Although no scientific evidence supported the existence of a God, there were certain undeniable spiritual human experiences that made an outright stance of militant atheism impossible. The universe was vast and magnificent in a way that almost certainly attested to a design or some conscious influence in its creation and arrangement. However, it was very likely that none of the major world religions were correct in their assumptions. It was far more likely that God and the realm of the spirit were much too complex for human beings ever to understand, and that we created art and philosophy in an attempt to describe those elements of the human experience that hard science never could. Sex was an animal act, but it was also a spiritual act and one of the most beautiful acts a human being could ever perform. These were things that David understood to be true.

  Karen said, “I don’t.”

  David said, “Karen, I’ve given you more extensions than any student I’ve ever had in the program. You have to come up with something. What about your proposition from last year? I thought it was very good. I know you have a specific disdain for religion, and I really thought you were able to get past the base-level vitriol you usually rely on with any religious debate and objectively explore the sadomasochist mind-set of the true Christian. Why don’t you continue where you left off with that?”

  She said, “Everyone already knows that the basic Christian ideals are contradictory and psychologically harmful, and . . . I just I don’t want to do something that no one cares about.”

  David said, “So are you saying that every other student in the program is doing something no one cares about?”

  She said, “I didn’t say that. You did. But, yeah, basically.”

  David sat back in his chair and said, “Karen, you’re very bright, obviously. Everyone in this program is. But I think you’re failing to understand exactly what a dissertation is supposed to be. It’s not meant to change the world or revolutionize the way we think about anything. It’s meant to be a document that I can read and the rest of the committee can read to show us that you have enough understanding to warrant a PhD. That’s all. Once you have the PhD, once you leave here, or stay here and become a professor, that’s when your real work will start. And I don’t want to rain on your parade, but this is philosophy. There’s not a lot of new ground to tread, even after you complete the program. I know you’re still young, and you still have that drive to blaze a trail, but eventually you’ll come to understand that the trails have already been blazed, and it’s rewarding just to walk down them.”

  She said, “Are you serious?”

  David said, “Very.”

  She said, “So do you think you’re just walking down the paths of other people? Because the work you did on the negative costs of altruism, why it’s bad to be good—that’s why I came to this school, and that was a path that, to my knowledge, didn’t exist before you.”

  David thought for a moment, the compliment having its calculated effect. He said, “You might get one chance at something that becomes meaningful to the world of philosophy. But I did that work years after my PhD candidacy.”

  She said, “Well, think of it this way: I want to do something important now. If I fall a little short and it doesn’t revolutionize the world of philosophy, then it will still be a pretty amazing dissertation, right? Remember how you felt when you started thinking about altruism? You got that little spark and you knew you were onto something. I’m just asking you to give me a little more time to try and find that spark, and if I can’t, then I promise I’ll throw myself into my old proposition with reckless abandon and deliver you the best unimportant dissertation you’ve ever seen in your life.”

  David couldn’t help but like Karen. She didn’t remind him of himself when he was young. She reminded him of the types of girls he fell in love with when he was young. He said, “Okay. But you can’t stretch this out much more. A few more weeks at the most, okay?”

  Karen said, “Okay.”

  chapter

  four

  James Dobbs finished eating dinner in the kitchen of his one-bedroom apartment and put on his work clothes. He had had the same job on an overnight cleaning crew at Dillard’s in the West Ridge Mall since graduating high school seven years earlier. The work wasn’t difficult, and James considered how he didn’t have to deal with very many people to be a perk.

  As he drove, James thought about a girl named Rebecca. She worked at Dillard’s and sometimes stayed late enough that James would see her leaving as he was coming in to begin the night’s cleaning. He had never spoken to her, but he knew her name because she sometimes forgot to take off her name tag when she was leaving for the night. James wondered if God had put Rebecca in his life to teach him something or if, perhaps, she was the girl God meant for him. James said a prayer asking God to give him a sign that night. If Rebecca was the girl that God intended for him to marry, James asked only that God give him some unmistakable signal that this was the case.

  As he turned off Wanamaker Road and into the West Ridge Mall parking lot closest to Dillard’s, he could see Rebecca emerging from the building. James spotted her red Toyota Camry, with its Kansas State Wildcat bumper sticker, and he parked next to it. He waited in his car for a few moments longer than necessary, then got out and made his way toward the building so that his path to the door would cross Rebecca’s. He looked at her in anticipation of the sign he asked God to deliver, but Rebecca didn’t return his gaze. She was talking on her phone and looking down into her purse, completely oblivious to James and everything else around her. He silently repented for his sin of pride, for asking God for something so foolish and petty.

  And then Rebecca’s phone, precariously perched between her ear and shoulder, fell onto the ground an inch from James’s feet, cracking its screen. This, he was certain, was the sign from God that he’d prayed for. He bent down, picked up the phone, and handed it back to Rebecca. She said, “Thanks. This is the second phone I’ve ruined digging for my keys.”

  God was probably real, but it seemed that praying was a waste of time. Whichever God created Earth certainly didn’t care about what happened to the planet or the people on it. The solar system was the same thing as the galaxy and the universe—they were all just different ways of describing space, which was essentially anything beyond Earth. Science was good when it made the complications of living a little easier to deal with, by creating things like the Internet and cell phones, but there was no real need to waste time and money on space exploration or smashing atoms. Sex was a natural and instinctual part of being human, and no matter what any person’s sexual preference, as long as it wasn’t illegal, there was no need to bring religion into it. Abortion was a viable option for any girl who wasn’t ready to raise a child. It wasn’t something to take lightly, just a medical procedure. These were things that Rebecca understood to be true.

  With a confidence that came from knowing that God had ordained this event, James introduced himself and told Rebecc
a that he saw her from time to time when he was coming in to start his shift. He told her that he’d wanted to stop and say hello, but he was too embarrassed. James went on to ask Rebecca if she’d be interested in getting dinner or seeing a movie with him on a night when she wasn’t busy. James was confident that Rebecca would agree to go out with him, given that God had just given him a sign to ask her out.

  Rebecca said, “Oh my god, that’s seriously really sweet of you to ask, but I have a boyfriend. Sorry.”

  James stood in front of her, too confused to reply. She said, “Well, have a good night,” and got in her car. As he walked into Dillard’s and took the floor polisher out of its storage closet, he silently asked God if he had done something wrong, if he had misinterpreted the sign. He listened closely for any sound of God’s voice, for any answer. All he heard was the loud hum and bristling of the brushes polishing the tile floor in the housewares department as he pushed the machine back and forth.

  On his break, James avoided his coworkers and ate a sandwich in his car. He looked out his window at the spot on the ground where Rebecca had dropped her phone. The sign God had given him was a phone breaking. He began to understand that this sign was a negative sign. It wasn’t a dove flying overhead, a beam of golden light parting the clouds, an angel trumpeting from the heavens. A phone hit the ground, and its screen shattered. It became clear to him that Rebecca was a temptation from Satan, and the sign he had prayed for, the sign that was delivered by God, wasn’t meant to motivate him to ask Rebecca on a date. It was meant to warn him. God had given James a sign to say away from her.

  This is what Pastor Preston had been talking about. James assumed that God’s plan was to bring Rebecca into his life, but it had become clear to James that this was incorrect. James understood that his own human desires were clouding his ability to surrender to God’s plan. James finished his sandwich and thanked God for looking after him. He promised God that he would try to be more observant of his signs and more understanding of them. He promised God that he would do his best to suppress his own desires and his own thoughts about what should happen in his life so that he could more easily be used in whatever manner God intended.