Whether you believe or don’t believe, both can take some solace in the idea of a final judgment. It allows us to be remembered, and at the secret heart of everything, that’s what really eats at us. Erasure. We really know what’s coming to us, and it’s a big gaping maw of nothing. The last person that remembers you turns out the lights as they leave. Whether God venerates you or finds you wanting in that final judgement of all the living and the long, long dead; so long as you’re remembered, you have been resurrected, and for the damned, ain’t that some sweet salvation in itself (if only for a moment)?

That’s supposing, of course, that God exists in the first place.

And that really is enough for most of us to suspend our disbelief and it’s enough for most of us to even believe in hell, even if we know we’re going there, even if it doesn’t exist, even if it’s absurd, because torture in hell means someone cares enough to torture you. Someone remembers the things you did wrong, and is punishing you because you weren’t always wrong-you must have went wrong along the way somehow. It was against your better nature. You were remembered fondly as a child (haha or if God is cruel, “as a neighbor that kept to themselves”) if only to be judged harshly in eternity.

Most drunks believe in God in their Alcoholics Anonymous meetings because they believe just about any shit you shovel at them so long as it keeps them from drinking, and so long as they have people around them that care about them and together they stop themselves from the drinking that nobody wants to keep bringing up (drinking). Don’t forget they threw away everyone else that used to care about them- They talk about an absolute bottom, and what do you think that is? Many of them are persona non grata with their family, friends, a lot of them lost their jobs. They don’t exist as people anymore, at least not as they recognize themselves or in their isolation think anyone else in our society would recognize them (we aren’t allowed to say “crippled” anymore, but these are some REALLY FUCKING CRIPPLED PEOPLE). They’re already in hell, forgotten. Worse- purposely forgotten. Embarrassing. Erasure after embarrassment. Still walking like zombies. Hell, If you believe it.

Regret is the absolute zero of the human soul. If the lowest circle of hell’s icy inverse clime is cold Judecca, Satan chews on our regrets, not Judas (or the other two great traitors), but everything we lost along the way and everything we should’ve done differently. Regret is a horrific knife, because in its reflection we can see the decision we should’ve made, the life we could’ve lived just before it cuts away at even the last bits of the person we were, and what we lost (foolishly) along the way. Regret is a sinking cold that has such a gravity it can pull all of the warmth around it into its pit; a lightless star, a hungry black mouth of traitors. I think the three faces of Satan chew primarily on us as we were, but in all of our peripheral view we see Satan eating everything we could’ve been, everything we left or burned.

If you believe it.

And hey, you have to have some sympathy for the devil here-he just has to keep swallowing a lot of bullshit for eternity. All that would’ve should’ve could’ve are things that never really happened, he’s just eating empty calories in front of you. It’s no wonder he’s voracious.

If you believe it.

In the movie Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton’s character has a commercial on TV (or at least the afterlife version of TV)-he’s advertising to the newly deceased and he sings “I’ll eat anything you want me to eat, I’ll swallow anything you want me to swallow” Not withstanding the idea that this is a comedy, I think that’s pretty apt. “Chew on a dog”. I feel like alcohol anonymous is about the closest living thing to the bureaucracy of the newly deceased in Beetlejuice. It’s a bunch of well-meaning people who know exactly how thin that line is, but Maybe just don’t know exactly how to navigate it. There’s a handbook for the recently deceased (diseased, mistaken by Adam, Which, by the way, is first discovered by his wife and shown to him). Anyway, it’s a bunch of bullshit that really just mimics the same kind of shit you already do, but now you have to recite these totemic fucking idiotic things, And knock on doors three times or whatever just to get some fucking help. Does that sound familiar?

I find both of these things entertaining and terrifying. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but maybe I’m thinking that if the afterlife, and specifically the Judeo Christian afterlife really exists, it would be the mother of all bureaucracies. I’m talking about the reckoning of every single solitary sin, or good work, or morally gray decision or thought or word you’ve ever spoken or thought, In a long line of every single human being that has ever existed before you. Fuck me, that’s a lot. And I mean, what sort of concessions do we get while we’re waiting? Are we like walking through a field of wheat? Do we have soda and some pizza? Can I get a blowjob every couple of miles or whatever? That’s honestly what I want from the afterlife, Hell or heaven besides, I’m just really not into walking through fields of wheat. I need to be motivated.

Shit, I was just imagining the Beetlejuice afterlife is the real thing, and I totally went off track. I just want blowjobs in fields of grain. Actually I think that’s pretty patriotic.

So that’s why I am running for president of the United States in 2020.