The picture of hell that I got as a Catholic schoolboy was incorrect. The priests and nuns explained hell as a place of eternal punishment, a place where people who killed or touched their genitals for pleasure were condemned to eternally suffer agonies that we mortal humans could not even imagine. Not a few months or years or even a lifetime, mind you, but eternity. My mental image of this place had much to do with fire and maggots and people whose mouths were forever frozen in the shape of a large “O”. The inhabitants of hell were dead of course, but their eternally damned and tortured souls remained encapsulated inside their earthly bodies. In hell it is important that the human senses be maintained, lest the indescribable agonies of the subterranean torture chamber not be felt.
You see, hell is not a place for punishment, it’s a place for correction. Kind of like prisons are supposed to be but are not. Hell is where you go when you die to learn lessons of kindness and compassion before you get shipped back to another earth-like place to fall on your face again. Then you go back to hell for a while. And when you finally get it right, when you finally understand what being one with God is all about, you go to some third-world planet and you sit on a grassy hillside and educate children of different cultures while a lamb sits at your side. You become the teacher instead of the ‘teached’. And the way you learn your lessons is to experience first hand the consequences of the rules you broke in your last incarnation. In other words, you go to hell. For instance…
Jeffery Daumer will become an exploited sexual toy and food for his own kind. Adolph Hitler’s soul will be divided 6 million times (God can do that sort of thing) and each one will experience a horrific death. Wilt Chamberlain will have sex with 20 thousand women, but not a one of them will care one iota about him and will only use him as a sexual toy. The theory here is that if you experience your own sins from the point of view of those whom you committed those sins against, you will erase from your spiritual psyche the need to commit those sins again. Which leads us to my own personal hell.
It’s safe to surmise that Wilt Chamberlain committed transgressions other than the 20 thousand that had to do with women. All of us do, and our sins range from the simple to the abhorrent. So we will progress through the ‘many mansions of hell’ one at a time, staying briefly in some and lingering longer in others. Here are a few I envision for myself.
I am sure to visit the “Mansion for People Who Didn’t Spend Enough Time With Their Dogs.” I love dogs and have treated the ones I’ve owned, I believe, very well. But there are some subtle nuances that I missed. In this hell I will live with a mixed bag of dogs, some purebred and some plain ol’ mutts. Each will have a specific love and each will spend his day doing what he likes to do the most (my hell may in fact be these dogs’ Heaven). There will be a herding dog, a terrier, and most assuredly a bird hunter or two. Each morning the dogs will leave for the day and the last one out will hand me a little tidbit, an old stale Oreo cookie perhaps, close me into a small room that offers no mental stimulation and say to me “You stay right here! And if anybody tries to come in, you bite ‘em!” Then the last dog out will pat me on the head (a real annoyance; I wish they’d scratch my back instead!) and leave me on my own for 8 or 10 hours. If I get hungry there will be a bowl of corn flakes from which I may draw nourishment. The bowl will have been filled from a 50# bag of corn flakes and it is the same food I eat every day save an occasional bit of leftover Alpo after the dogs’ evening meal. And if I need water? The toilet is right around the corner.
Next I will visit the “Mansion of Addictions”. I’ll have to wait in line a long time to get in (a lesson in patience, no doubt) because virtually everyone who goes to hell will spend some time here. Upon entering a fallen angel with mean eyes and little horns protruding from its head will hand me a clipboard and direct me to check the boxes for the wings I need to visit. Just to be sure I don’t cheat, the angel will remind me that dishonesty will send me to the Mansion of Liars. As much as I’ll want to spend time in the Sex Wing, I’ll forgo it in favor of those where I truly need to spend time. I’ll check “Alcohol”, “Drugs, Light”, and “Tobacco, Smoking”. In each wing I will spend a lifetime experiencing the progressive ill effects of that particular addiction. For instance, I see it going something like this: “Good evening sir, may I take your drink order?” “Why yes you may! I’ll have a Scotch, please, a double with just a touch of water.” Mmm boy, that first one sure will taste good! And by the time I’ve finished the second, I’ll begin to feel much more relaxed and less afraid of hell. By the time I’ve finished my 26,000th I’ll be pretty drunk though not drunk enough that I don’t notice the puke all over my shirt. Or that I’m no longer drinking Dewars in a nice wood-and-brass cocktail lounge, but that I’m huddled up underneath a few pieces of the New York Times in a 40 degree drizzle with a jar of Sterno cupped between my filthy, trembling hands. I’ll end up lying on dirty sheets in a cheesy hospital wing where fat nurses with hair under their arms will ask me how I feel while not really giving a shit. My liver will die, and just before I’m about to die with it everything will freeze-frame. Then a guy will walk in, dressed in a tailored Armani suit and cradling a lamb. He’ll have long, flowing brown hair and a perfectly manicured full beard. “Get it?” he’ll ask. “Jesus Christ man, please get me outta here!” I’ll plead. Then in all sincerity “Yes, yes, I get it!”
He’ll take me by the hand and lead me out of the hospital and into a garden. After we sit and I begin to feel better he’ll set the lamb down to graze on the grass and lead me to a gate. “Go on through, I’ll see you again in about 80 years. And here, take these, you’ll be needing them.” He’ll hand me a pack of Marlboros and return to his lamb while I trudge dejectedly back toward the Mansion of Addictions’ ‘Tobacco, Smoking’ wing.
Another chamber that awaits me is the “Tuba Fitz Mansion”. This is a very personal hell just for me, named in honor of a recipient of the endless bullying I did as a grade school lad. Tuba Fitz (not his real name) was a pretty good guy, but he was fat and freckled and had red hair. Not at all the swaggering stud that me and my prepubescent friends were. So we kind of picked on him. And I was the leader of what turned out to be the pick-on to end all pick-ons.
There was a big, vacant grassy area across the street from St. Michael’s school where the 6th, 7th and 8th graders went for recess. The boys would roughhouse with one another or stand around and talk about girls and brag about all the things they were going to do when they got pubic hair and very large penises. The girls would forgo the roughhousing, but they would stand around in big circles and talk about all the things they were going to do when they got pubic hair and very large breasts. Or at least that’s what we boys assumed they were talking about. So one day I’m standing around talking to John and George and Dennis and the rest of the hoodlums I’d befriended and someone says “Let’s de-pants Tuba Fitz!” I think it was George. Being the biggest kid in my class at the time and therefor the leader of the group, (and I’m sure the only one currently sporting pubic hair and, I might add, a very large penis!) I seized upon the idea that not only would we de-pants Tuba, but once we’d gotten his drawers down around his ankles, we would hoist his bulbous fat ass over to the girl’s circle and deposit him in the middle of it. Needless to say, my brainstorm was greeted with great enthusiasm and the deed was commenced.
Four of us each grabbed a limb and carried the de-pantsed blubber-boy towards the girls. They screamed at our approach, hands over their gaping mouths, but the only ones that moved were the ones that allowed us entrance to the circle. We deposited Tuba on the ground in their midst and I could see in their eyes the wonder, the awe, the curiosity as for the first time in their lives these Catholic schoolgirls got a glimpse of what lies hidden under the trousers of a male not related to them. Though our act was nothing short of cruel, it probably postponed the loss of virginity for several of the girls in that circle. The sight of Tuba’s fat, white, freckled legs and the dingy Jockey shorts that swaddled his big butt most certainly etched in some of their minds an image of male sexuality that served to keep them chaste better than the nuns’ promises of eternal damnation.
Tuba split out the crotch of his pants during the melee and had to walk home and change. He lived close and would be back before the bell rang to end recess and, being our buddy, we knew the incident would go unmentioned. We did not know, however, that Tuba’s father was at home and that upon seeing his split-pantsed, teary-eyed son enter the house demanded an explanation. Tuba fought the fight of his life, he assured us later, trying to protect his friends and tormentors. But dads were once 7th-graders and they know what meanness 7th grade boys are capable of. As I returned from recess and walked in single file to my classroom I glanced into Sister Mary Margaret’s office--she was the principal of St. Michael’s school. Her eyes were wide and her lips were pursed. Her back was straight as a two-by-four and angled forward toward the man and the boy sitting across the desk from her, and her hands were folded as if in prayer. The man was obviously agitated and the boy at his side sat quietly with his head down, his tousled red hair shining at me like the red bubble-gum machine on top of a city policeman’s patrol car. I turned my head to face forward again, wide-eyed with fear, and I saw virtually every one of my classmates staring back at me. Their eyes expressed deep, abiding sympathy, for they knew what was sure to ensue here in the next few minutes.
I was summoned to the principal’s office and surprised by her actions. Rather than unleash the righteous wrath of God upon me, as I had expected, she very calmly asked me if I had indeed initiated the humiliating act upon Tuba Fitz. I considered lying but with Tuba and his father sitting there in the jury box I thought it best to admit my misdeed and take whatever punishment was forthcoming. “Yes Sister,” I replied to her query and hung my head to indicate the remorse and sorrow I was supposed to be feeling. And then, as an added bonus, I turned to the plaintiff and his father and apologized. “I’m sorry Thomas. I’m sorry Mr. Fitzpatrick.” They said nothing and I was excused.
The rest of the afternoon went quite normally and by the end of the school day I was feeling quite cocky again. I was barraged by questions from my partners is crime and assured them that the best way to handle ol’ Sister Mary Margaret, should the occasion ever arise again, was to simply feign remorse and apologize sincerely for your sins. Not at all unlike going to Confession on Fridays, something we were all familiar with. I boarded the school bus and went home, grabbed my mitt and joined the kids in the neighborhood for our regularly-scheduled afternoon game of baseball.
I waived to my father as he pulled into the driveway, knowing that in just a few minutes he’d be out on the pitcher’s mound, serving up gopher balls and offering advice on the finer points of the game to all assembled. But he did not show. Rather, my mother marched out of the house, stern-faced and car keys jingling from her hand. She grabbed my little brother and marched him toward her car. “Jerry, your father wants to see you in the house,” she said over her shoulder. We were not very good friends, my mom and I, but I detected a look of real concern in her eyes, a look that a mother might give to a son who was about to board a train that would eventually lead him to the battlefields of a war-ravaged foreign land. For a minute I was confused but then the cold, hard reality of what was about to happen hit me right between the eyes—“Oh shit! She called my parents!”
And indeed she had, that sly old nun. She’d been around the chapel a few times and she knew the difference between the mischievous pranks of an 8-year-old schoolboy and the outright meanness of a young adolescent headed for real trouble. And she knew when the limits of her disciplinary authority had been exceeded. And I think she must have known my dad too, or at least she suspected he knew how to steer his son in the right direction. What followed between me and my father has gone down in the annals of Grinkmeyer discipline as the coup de Gras of whuppin’s; the long-term punishment was so severe that upon hearing the details of it, the nuns began to look at me with both sympathy and respect. In fact my teacher and former detractor, Sister Agnes Regina, befriended me. But despite the penance I did here on earth that spring, there still remains unfinished business that can only be atoned for in the “Tuba Fitz Mansion”, for the need to bully never totally left me.
As I pass through the door I’ll be greeted by familiar faces, the faces of people I’ve tormented in my life. It will be a mansion full of nerds and wimps and ugly little girls, the kind of people I, always the cool and popular one, abused in order to bolster my secretly low self esteem while in the company of my cool friends. There will be band members, members of the chess and debate teams, non-smokers, non-drinkers, ROTC kids, non-athletes, people who declined the use of drugs, people who cared about grades more than popularity. There will be Negroes, old folks, poor people, retards, homeless, queers and all manner of people who were the objects of my disdain and derision over the years; these will be my companions in this manse.
Everyone in the mansion will be friends with everyone else with one exception—me. I will be an outcast, a minority, an object to be scorned. They will tease me, besiege and beset me with insults, shower me with chocolate milk and French fries when I eat, possibly even de-pants me. I’ll act as if they don’t bother me when they’re around, but I’ll stain my pillow with tears at night until the solace of sleep grants me temporary respite from the pain. Nightly I will pray the perverted prayer of one who is desperate to fit in. “Lord, let me be a Negro.” “Lord, let me be gay.” “Lord, let me be a non-smoking, non-drinking, pocket-protector-using debate team member for just one day!” But none of those things will I become.
And then, after maybe 70 or 80 years of mental anguish and emotional torture, clarity will prevail. I’ll realize that I’m neither black nor gay nor a debater, that I am only who I am. And I’ll realize that despite what others think, that’s good enough. I’ll pray “Lord, let me be me!” and into my room will walk a man dressed in a tailored Armani suit and cradling a lamb. He’ll have long, flowing brown hair and a perfectly manicured full beard. “Get it?” he’ll ask.
“Yes,” I’ll say, “I get it!”
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