Let’s make a law that says you’re not supposed to kill. Instead of worrying about magazine capacities, and three day waiting contingencies, let’s just say, “No killing” Nip it in the bud. Then someone determined-and-crazy will read that law and say, “Oh okay guess, I'm not killing anyone today… because the law.”

Let’s compare “gun places” to “safe spaces”. Because if guns are the problem, then gun stores and shooting ranges, would be constantly on the front pages for their non-stop violent rampages. So many guns in close proximity, these body-count atrocities must be happening there constantly. Am I right?

But instead, it’s these so called “safe places” with no-guns-allowed that invite the crazies to shoot-up-a-crowd and somehow we haven’t figured out’ that maybe guns keep the assholes from coming around?

But the police, they’re supposed to protect us, right? Well our brave blue line' has a tendency to just wait outside. In two years, two tragedies-- it’s happened two times. Club Pulse in Orlando had a cop moonlighting at the door, He waited for backup and fifty people never got back up from the dance floor. The on-campus sheriff at Parkland' knew there was an armed man’ and He waited for backup and seventeen people never got back up again.

Because "no guns" means you’re at the mercy of the government. Lest we forget the orange tufted head at this country's helm. If you believe he’s compassionate and just, reasonable and worthy of our trust, then by all means give up the guns. But… if you think his regime is not as it seems, then the last thing you want to do is give up the peoples' means-- to fight back.

Personally, professionally, and perpetually.

I am a word thief, specifically the ones you can’t use around me, like “him” or “her”

I travel to find myself. You travel to misappropriate culture.

I believe men and women are equal, except for fighting wars, retaining children upon divorce... and paying for dinner.

“Let me get this straight, you want me to... suck your dick?”

"Not in so many words, but yes” God leans back, casually stretching his arms above his head. His white robe billows about him gently in the breeze.  We’re sitting together on a white park bench. In the distance I can see children running around a brightly colored playground. Birds chip in the trees overhead as glittering rays of sunlight stream through the foliage.  "Consider it... a test of faith."

“What does the Messiah's manhood look like anyhow?”

“What do you think it looks like?” God muses, prophetically.

“Like a big shiny golden dildo?” I shrug “Maybe some halos around it for good measure? And miracles shoot out the tip-- to give sight to the blind or cure polio. Or maybe God’s immaculate-ejaculate cripples you?”

God laughs. It’s a hearty sound like Santa Claus and every TV sitcom father rolled into one. “Really? I’m the same guy who dreamed up platypuses, aardvarks, and elephants… I made you in my image, and you think my divine-ding-dong is some gaudy sex toy?”

“Haha, gaudy. God-y.”

God chuckles “You always did like puns.”

“That’s the thing, you’re all knowing and all seeing. You already know if I’m going to do it or not."

“I suppose” God shrugs nonchalantly.  

“So why even bother with this conversation?”

“You watched Titanic seven times in theaters.” He scratches his beard absently.

I sit there in silence. Sometimes it’s easy to forget He knows all things.

“Yeah so?”

“You already knew the ending. That doesn’t keep it from being a good movie.” He elbows me playfully. “And how does it end?”

“Jack drowns.”

“No before that. “

“Jack draws some boobies.”

“After that.”

I sigh. “The ship goes down.”

“Bazzzing son!” God makes some finger guns and points them in my direction playfully, a wide grin plastered across his face.   

“That’s another thing. If we’re all your children, y’know lambs and such isn’t it incest to suck-off my savior?”

“Sure, you’re one of my creations. But you’re not my son” Got makes mock stigmata on his wrists, and then extends his arms out from him at his sides like a man on a cross. “You guys nailed my one-and-only to the wall, remember?”

I look down, dejected for a moment.  God puts his cross-bearing-arm around me. It’s warm and comforting. God continues: “You’re more like, if I made a crude drawing and then jerked off to it.” He gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “I still remember that by the way. You were one horny thirteen year old. Beating off to boxy boobs and triangle shaped vagainas. You’re definitely no Jack Dawson.” He’s rubbing both my shoulders now. His grip is so strong. I can feel his warm breath on my neck. It’s intoxicating, smelling like peanut butter and cinnamon.

“But isn’t it wrong?”

God smiles. “I impregnate virgin girls without their knowledge or consent.  I make fathers set their kids on fire.  I kill a bunch of innocent little babies because some people didn’t decorate their doorways the way I wanted. I drown half the planet, and give you guys a little rainbow at the end to say ‘oops sorry, my bad’... "

The will of God is strong. His hands are at my neck. Pushing and prodding my head at a slow sinking angle, like the Titanic going down, down. down.

“Heck the first guy I made… he wanted a girlfriend. And I could’ve easily made him a brand new person; I literally just made him out of nothingness five seconds earlier.  But instead, I made him give up his rib, just so he can fuck his rib. His own rib! Isn’t that twisted?  And you think a little fellatio bothers me?”

“Mhmmn mmm mhhmmm...”

“Shh… don’t talk with your mouth full my son.”

In the distance I can hear the children laughing and running on the playground.  The birds chirp overhead as the leaves rustle in the trees.  

And then, sirens.  

- - - - 

On the news that night, two men are shown led away in handcuffs: "...a local man and an escaped mental patient claiming to be God were caught engaging in sexual acts in a public park... "

It wasn't falling that hurt; no, Edna had fallen before and someone always found her eventually.  But this time hours passed and the slow and gradual gnawing began... the gnawing and clawing by her many cats, as they slowly devoured her starting with the extremities:

Toes

           Fingers

                             Nose

                                                  Cheeks  

It’s hard to imagine, but darkness is the inherent state of the Universe.

Our tiny blue - green marble spinning round’ a twinkling star catching equal parts darkness and light-- we are the illuminated anomaly in space. Populated by barely erect apes, shivering in the night' cowering in our beds clinging to our artificial lights till the relief of day comes creeping across the horizon... only to darken again with a twist of its axis.  Everything else came from the surrounding nothingness: spawned in darkness; swathed in darkness; and approaching-- in darkness.

…which is why, we never saw Them coming.   

Italian steel.  

         Mahogany handle.   

                  Befitting the cheeks of kings.

...he uses me on his balls.  

I met her while passing through the busy tourist ladened sidewalks of Waikiki. She, with ivory fair skin rubbed with far too much suntan lotion; adorned in a floppy over-sized sunhat and large Breakfast-At-Tiffany's sunglasses that covered her eyes like some sort of rhinestone encrusted insect; strappy stiletto heels; pink and white sundress; shopping bags in one hand-- gelato in the other.

As for me, I'm not much to look at: sun-kissed-punk-rock-warrior-poet, spouting a mangled mix of shaka-pidgin-and-Shakespeare, Tarzan-and-Tennyson, in a mishmash-ed glass menagerie of an English degree doodled on napkins. So when I opened my mouth, an out pouring of my carefully crafted encyclopedic wit and charming disposition culminated with:

"Hi."

And then more words followed, and somehow my stumbling bumbling buffoonery engaged her in conversation. We're standing there in the sun and the heat, talking about shopping and gelato and people are just walking past us, and it isn't until her bags are at her feet' and her dessert is melted to a puddle in her cup that I realize we've been blocking a major thoroughfare without a care for the world around us. She's not making any excuses to walk away, no artificial deadline or destination. No, she's genuinely interested in the words coming out of my mouth for some reason.

"I want to eat that." I point to her empty gelato cup. "Where did you get that?"

- - - - 

She was clever.  Instead of gelato we got beer, and over a pitcher at a tiki-tourist-bar I became all the more enamored. We spoke about politics and art, and hikes and beaches, we talked about eating animals, and the potential flavors endangered species. And the more we spoke the more, I smiled and the more she twirled her hair. One pitcher became two, and onward to a quaint little bistro by the ocean for food. As the sun was setting across the water, and the masts and sails like a thousand little toothpicks sticking out of the glowing sea. With an equal red glow on her cheeks she whispered:

“You might just be the best thing so far about Hawaii.” To which I replied,

“Volcanoes.” 

- - - -

We stumbled into her hotel room, my hands exploring the curves of her body, hot unadulterated passion radiating off our meshing flesh. She peeled my shirt off and flung it into a corner of the room. We tripped out-of shoes and heels; our faces and hands unable to separate or even look down for the briefest of moments. I flung her onto the bed, she fumbled at the skull-and-crossbones of my belt buckle.

My thumb and forefinger found the zipper to the back of her pink and white sundress dress. I gave the zipper a tug; The thin metal toggle sang as it rode down the small of her back, each unfettered tooth widening the maw of fabric, and bringing me one step closer to that beautiful moment where our genitals will high-five. I ran my fingernails playfully over her bare skin from her slender shoulders down to her well toned buttocks. I'm on top of her. Our faces-- inseparable.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" She asked me between hot mouthy kisses.

"Of course not." I replied, gasping for air. My hands working their way up the sides of her ribs, opening up the back of her dress ready to pull it off, her soft flesh dancing under my fingertips.

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

- - - -

Doctors call them "door knob questions". The patient goes in, has a routine checkup and says everything is fine. The moment the doctor is about to leave the examining room, with his hand (or her hand, because women can be doctors too) on the door knob the patient spits it out-- the real reason for their visit.

"I've got this growth on my testicle and I think it might be cancer... and I've been coughing up blood all morning..."

- - - -

She had deftly avoided the question all evening, and now right when we were at the cusp of coitus, standing at the doorstep of my ding-dong's-destiny, with her hands at my waist kissing me like she means it...

There's this awkward.

Halting.

Pause.

"...I have a boyfriend."

I laugh, because I think she's being cute. It sounded so good coming out of her mouth, it took a second to register in my brain.

"Wait, say that again?"

"He's back in New Zealand. We're on a break."

"Does he know that?" She shrugs.  

"I mean, I'm going to break up with him when I get home."

The room gets very cold and quiet. Something in the light changes: I pull my face away from hers, first by inches and then by miles. Something in me shifts. I no longer want to do this. I stand up.

- - - -

I gathered up my clothes. They were flung so casually all over her hotel room in a passionate whirlwind... and now I'm participating in the world's most depressing scavenger hunt, where the prize at the end for collecting it all is a night of self-loathing and solitary contemplation about my life's choices.

Even once I Caught em' All, my clothes instinctively fight me. It's like being a toddler again; all motor-skills flying out the window in my fevered panic to escape. My head wants to go through the arm hole, both feet in one pant leg. I don't even bother to try tying my laces; I just tuck them into the sides of my shoes. She's sitting there, scowling on her hotel room bed, her mouth slightly agape and her eyes narrowed into slits, just watching me stumble into my clothes. The back zipper of her dress is still splayed wide open, the material folded over her shoulders as if she were some life-sized-zip-up-costume just waiting for someone with character to step into her skin.

"Thank you for a wonderful night" I say to her as I exit her hotel room. I wish I had a hat. Like a bowler, fedora, or even a cowboy hat because at that exact moment I would've raised it an inch over my head and tipped it to her. I saunter off, my imaginary spurs jingling with each step.

Out in the long empty corridor, lined with perfectly cloned hotel doors end to end, I paused for a moment uncertain of what to do. "I'm doing the right thing." I said it aloud to myself in the empty hallway. And then again. "I'm doing the right thing." Louder. "I'm doing the right thing."

For some reason, I start running. Running... from a half - naked woman who wants me for purely carnal and superficial reasons, a goal I've spent most of my adult life running towards. Hotel California begins playing in my head as I barrel my way down the empty hallway and through the fire exit and down the stairwell making a mad dash in concentric circles as I descend further and further away from her hotel room to the ground floor. I imagine her giving one final piercing cackle before her room bursts into unholy purple and green flames. Because in Disney Movies, the bad guys always have purple and green flames.

I fling open the doors and spill out onto some discrete side exit flanked by concrete plant potters and shoulder high-hedges. I hear the door lock behind me with a resounding *thud*. It's in that moment I allow myself to slow the perpetual motion of my fleeing body. I turn around and try the handle. Yep, no turning back now. I tie my shoelaces and walk the rest of the way to my car.

I did the right thing.

God damn... I hate the right thing.