Hello, my name is Paul. My head is shaped like a huge swastika with smaller swastikas coming off each tip to infinity. My mother is outside, beating children that hide in a wigwam. The year is 14,000. I am dead.
Being a ghost is a lot like being gay. One day you find a new bristle towering out of your penis, and you know you are different. This is what happened to me. My father, Michelangelo, was the first to notice the new bristle. At the dinner table, tapping his long fingernails on the glass surface, he said
‘Paul. I know you’re gay. There’s no hiding it from me. I can see a lot more than you think, even though I have no eyes.’
I was quite taken aback. I crossed my arms and said
‘Dad. I’m not gay. I’m a ghost. I’m like god except no one believes in me.’
‘No one believes in god either.’ he said.
‘Touché.’ I said.
‘That’s why we dropped the capital letter.’ he said.
‘I know.’ I said.
In the year 14,000 no one believes in god because god was found to be gay. Scientists built a large crystal panel into the sky, like a diving board but vertical, adorned with gorgeous jewels, and hopped off onto his cloud, to find him masturbating. It is said that the first Scientist, J7, said something along the lines of
‘Hey.’
before god murdered them all with the largest gun of all time. However, as luck would have it, the second Scientist, 7uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, twittered their findings – that god was masturbating to gay porn on an old Sinclair ZX81 – back to earth and from then on, everyone knew.
There are other advantages to being a ghost. You can jump the queue at bus stops. You piss white paint. That is all.
~
The next day I was shagging mother on a mountain when my girlfriend, Slug, called.
‘Hey Paul, it’s Slug. Are you okay?’
She sounded sexier than usual, which meant she was worried.
‘I’m fine. Is there a problem here?’
‘No problem darling, it’s just I’ve got a huge spoon in my garden.’
‘What are you telling me for.’
‘I don’t know.’ She sounded even more sexier. ‘I thought you might know what to do.’
It sounded like she was crying which I found very erotic. We have this game we play where she calls me up at a random time in the day and cries on the phone. I almost always spray cum up the walls in the London Underground the second I hear her voice. It is kind of a prank she plays.
But that day, she wasn’t playing no prank. I said
‘I don’t know. Try putting a bowl of cereal by the patio.’
‘Really? You think that’ll work?’ she said.
‘It’s worth a try.’ I said.
Then I finished with mother. By the end of it, she was gay.
~
The next day Slug was letting her long red hair fall back off her pale, beautiful, Russian shoulders with a delicate smattering of freckles and a bone structure that seems to draw itself with its own beauty, telling me about the spoon.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘It worked!’ she exclaimed, looking gorgeous, ‘Your plan worked!’
My cheeks went red. I love helping her, it’s just I get embarrassed. ‘Aw shucks.’ I said.
I glanced out the garden and saw that the spoon was still there. Slug glanced with me. She threw her hands up and made a face of sheer egg-fart and said
‘It’s back.’ She looked obsequiously angry. She ran outside, barefoot. ‘It’s BACK.’ She fell to her knees. ‘It’s BACK.’ She started tearing off her clothes. ‘It’s BACK.’
She said ‘It’s BACK’ so many times that I ended up completely bored, and started to imagine she was saying ‘its back’, as if describing the spoon’s back. Whilst my girlfriend was tearing off her knickers and punching huge dents in the lawn, I took this further and imagined the spoon’s back – a fleshy mound on the back of the spoon, although it wouldn’t be on the back! (I argued against myself) because it would
be the back! I started to think that this sort of circular logic is what applies to my own head – that of a huge swastika with smaller swastikas coming off each tip to infinity – which, in turn, made me feel less of a man for a few seconds.
After a few hours, Slug came into the house, covered in blood and mud.
I stared at her.
She stared at me.
I looked outside. Slug had covered the entire spoon in tiny scraps of
More! Magazine. I looked back at her. A dog looked at me. I looked at the dog. The dog looked at Slug. Slug looked at the dog. The dog looked at me.
~
The next day we went to the seaside. Slug had so many towels, it was ridiculous! She looked the spit of Larry David’s wife in
Curb Your Enthusiasm that day. I should explain that the reason we have
Curb Your Enthusiasm is because time is actually nothing but an endless loop, and when it reaches a certain point it begins again, and all human achievement is lost. In the year 14,000 we are on the third loop. Something to think about.
‘You look the spit of Larry David’s wife in
Curb Your Enthusiasm that day, I mean this day.’ I said.
‘Thanks hun!’ she said.
‘I like it because you have that weird primate jaw that some girls have. I like it because it alludes to fellatio. It’s like an ape jaw. I want to fuck your jaw.’ I said.
‘Thanks gun!’ she said.
‘Gun?’ I said.
‘Oh no, sorry, I was thinking about guns.’ She said.
Boulder was at the beach. Boulder is one of our neighbours, with a boulder for a head. He has a son that looks like a staple.
‘Hey!’ I said, to be polite.
‘Hey!’ Boulder said.
‘Nice weather, right?’ I said.
‘Yeah right!’ Boulder said. ‘I’ll have to try not to get too
eroded.’ he said and pointed to the centre of his skull.
‘What did he say? None of what he says makes any sense.’ Slug said to me quietly, in a worried tone.
Then Boulder’s head exploded and seventeen people were killed.
~
The next day was my running day. I usually go running to get away from Slug, when she’s playing more pranks like when she pours boiling water on my face to wake me up. I find running very relaxing, plus it’s a great way to keep fit and have fun! Usually I run around a local track, but due to the success of my two recent books –
Paul’s New Track, and
Postmodernism, I have been able to afford a new track of my own.
Usually I run a 400m sprint, then masturbate, and then run another 400m sprint. But this day was a little different. God was on the track, milling around in the corner by some hedges, looking dejected. I ran about 300 and then walked up to him.
‘Hey, you’re – god, right?’ I said.
‘Yup.’ he said. I could see he had been crying.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Oh. Fine. Little erectile dysfunction, nothing to write home about.’
I nodded. His jokes reminded me of Boulder’s, and this annoyed me.
‘You can’t be on this track. This is my track. Just to say.’ I said.
‘Oh. Sorry. I’ll move.’
Then he shuffled out through a hole in the hedge.
I continued my run, but just as I neared the finish line, I noticed a figure in the middle of the track. It was Slug, looking long and thin, and pale in the strong morning light, holding a present. I ran up to her.
‘Hey darling, what are you doing? Is it the spoon?’ I asked.
‘No, nothing like that.’ she said.
‘What’s with the gift?’ I asked.
‘It’s for you.’ she said.
‘Awesome!’ I said.
She stood nervously, stretching her legs as I opened the present. I kept looking up at her face, and thinking about how much I admired her. She looked really modest and yet pleased with herself. Her freckles were defined in the light.
I tore off the paper.
‘Oh wow! It’s the
Curb Your Enthusiasm boxset!’ I said. ‘Feels a little light.’ I said. I opened it.
‘Hey! There’s no discs in here!’
‘This is a riddle for you to solve.’ Slug said, then she spun around, throwing glitter everywhere, and ran to the edge of the field.
I took it as an insult, as I stood there, stunned. She was making a point of my being a ghost. All these years we’ve been together, I thought, she’s been a racist.
