Highway (Back) to Hell

I've accepted a new job at Satan's Journal. This time, the powers-that-be wisely divvied up the workload. So instead of filling four different positions, my new title is simply "editorial assistant."

For the first time in a long while, I'm literally twiddling my thumbs and watching YouTube clips of The 700 Club.

I look over to see the new intern Kevid smacking his lips to my friend Ryan about my penchant for Pat Robertson. Of course, I decide to mosey over to the cubicle and proceed to chew his ass out.

Kevid cowers in the corner, shielding his face like I'm some goddamned wife beater. "If you have a problem with my watching Pat Robertson, you should come over and tell me like a fucking adult. Grow some goddamned balls," I tell him.

And I pivot smoothly and decide to clean up the office restroom. What else am I gonna do? I'm watching episodes of The 700 Club for chrissakes.

While scrubbing the toilet, the CEO chums up beside me with a glint in his eye. They've hired yet another intern.

"Be nicer to this one, too," he goes. "I've been talking to Kevid again."

"Well, Kevid is a fucking idiot, so of course, you'd side with him," I tell him, looking up from scrubbing the toilet. "It's the one trait you've managed to a tee: hiring fucking idiots."

The CEO steps back and throws his hands up in mock resignation.

"Bye bye," I say sweetly as he ambles out the door. The acid in my voice could burn the enamels off your molars.

As I look down at the doodoo-encrusted rim, I think to myself, "honestly, didn't I quit this job weeks ago?"

Purgatory

I wish to make it implicitly clear that I use disparging terms such as "Satan's Journal" to describe my job at a fourth-tier subpondscum bar rag for reasons that I find morally objectionable.

Morally objectionable, not as a "Christian," whatever connation that terms dredges up in some people, but as a forward-thinking feminist and homosexual.

To see comely male bodies, slathered in oil, packages neatly enshrouded in layers of spandex to deliver that one-two punch of homosexual males as nothing more than cases of meat, subject to their own hedonistic whims. Well, to me, that is nothing short of pure evil. I don't care if I did get to interview Tori Amos and Cyndi Lauper.

For my roommate's birthday, I smoked a bowl, of course. And my mind and inner consciousness thought about the daily moral struggles I encounter there.

"I really need to find another job" was the common refrain.

And in dreamland, my mind continued on that same, beaten path.

There I sat, in a sterilized Chelsea veggie burger joint, my napkin crumpled after a fit of tears. Happyhappyjoyjoy was there. While others consider their job to be a mindfuck of Office Space and Requiem for a Dream, Happyhappyjoyjoy thinks Satan's Journal is the best place on earth. A homo DisneyWorld.

"You will have miles to go before you sleep," he told me. "Miles to go before you sleep."

Keep your eyes on the prize

I'm meeting with the big fish of Satan's Journal. He's peering down at me from behind his wood-paneled desk and rattling off his usual list of offenses while I sit on his couch with a measured indifference.

"I find your little feministy digs at this organization to be abhorrent," he says. "You need to go out and schmooze at gay clubs more and masturbate to porn every once in awhile."

While he impugns my gayness further, I begin licking myself like a bloodhound dog, my leg jutting against the wall as I lick my crotch.

"What the hell are you doing?" he wants to know.

There's a dead pause, and without missing a beat, I say, "I think I might have chiggers."

I crumple to the ground and begin smudging my ass against his carpeting. "I'm pretty sure I have tapeworms, too," I tell him.

"Jesus Christ," he goes, "and you call yourself a Manhattan homosexual."