Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise by Adam Spielman Read Free Book Online Page B

to fuck Cleopatra, that’s what.  So Cleopatra’s got, like, a billion dudes playing Every Rose Has It’s Thorn at her window, and that’s a shit deal.  For everybody. So she rounds up all the scorchers, you know, your Marilyn Monroes and your Marie Antoinettes, and they all march on Lucy.  And Lucy’s cool – have you met her?  Yeah, you seem like the type.  Anyway, they set up this whole infrastructure and assign teams of angels to field requests.  It’s all very organized.  Now Cleopatra just gets an email every week, and she doesn’t have to hear that damn song anymore.
    “It all sounds good, except Cleopatra – just Cleopatra – needs a thousand angels to sift through all these requests.  There’s a shortage of angels.  And there’s a billion dudes that are pissed off about the selection process.  They know damn well that Cleopatra isn’t gonna blow some clerk from New Jersey.  So there’s hardly an angel in paradise that isn’t reading love limericks, and everything with a dick is crying foul.  It’s a fucking mess.
    “So Lucy comes out with the lottery and the Pussy Pact.  She tells Cleopatra and every other scorcher that if they forego free will once a year and spread their legs for some Jack, she’ll give them angelic privilege.  That’s, like, they get to be angels but they don’t have to wear the uniform or do any work.  And to the Jacks she says, Listen, you’ve got an eternity to win, and if you don’t like it the Truth Road is that way.  That cooled everybody off, and we built Lay Lady Lane.”
    And Jim said, “So this is just saying that I might not win.”
    “Pretty much.”
    “Thanks.”  And Jim went to take his chances.
    4
    The casino was filled with the men who did not have the gravity of fate under them.  Though Jim did not count them, he thought that this was probably most men, for they were many.  He wondered if accepting a light fate might have been better than taking a fat chance.
    He rattled the glossy red dice in his pocket and looked for a craps game, but he couldn’t find one.  Nor could he find blackjack or poker or roulette or any slot machine.  There wasn’t even a bar.  There weren’t even hookers.  It was the damnedest casino that Jim had ever seen.
    But there were balloons.  He came to understand that there was a balloon for every man, and inside a single balloon there was a ticket to Cleopatra’s villa by the sea.  So he mulled about through the fateless men and searched for his lucky balloon.
    He mulled too long.  Now there were only two balloons left.  One of them was red, and the other was blue.  He chose the blue, for it was the color of the sea.  But as he chose it, another man chose it as well.
    “This one is mine, thank you very much,” said the irrelevant gentleman.
    “I don’t know,” said Jim.  “I think I touched it first.”
    “I mean to have it.”
    “Is there a moderator around here?”
    As Jim looked around, the irrelevant gentleman tried to take the balloon.  But Jim’s grip was firm.
    “Hey, that’s not cool, man,” he said.
    “I have been coming to this lottery for two hundred years, and every year my balloon is blue.  I mean to have it.”
    “I’ll do you paper-rock-scissors for it.”
    “And take two chances while everyone else takes one ?  I am not an idiot, sir.”
    “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
    “Of course that’s how it works.  If the ticket is indeed in one of these two balloons, I will choose the correct balloon half of the time.  And assuming that we are equally matched in the game of paper-rock-scissors, I will defeat you half of the time.  To perform both in consequence requires a half times a half, and I am reduced to a quarter.”
    “But there’s just two balloons.”
    “I will not trade my half for a quarter, sir.  I mean to have this balloon.”
    “Yeah, but that doesn’t make any sense.  The ticket might be in the red one.”
    “So why don’t you take