God's Dick Joke

More hilarity from the King of Kings.

Me and God have something of a tumultuous relationship, but at least it's a simple one: I hate him, and he hates me. It's been this way since the day He left a banana peel on the floor of Heaven for me and I slipped on it and fell to Earth, born astride a grave, so please don't try to tell me that I have it all wrong, that God is good, that God loves me. You're way off.

I was raised in a strict Orthodox Jewish family -- no bacon, no meat with milk, no turning on lights on Saturday, following to the ancient letter the 613 rules of the Control Freak in the Sky, it's Yahweh or the highway -- in the ne-plus-ultra-Orthodox town of Monsey, NY, where the God of the Old Testament was no mere idea or philosophy, but rather a real and actual being - vengeful, furious, petty and destructive. No? He’s loving, you say? Read the fucking book. When I tell people God hates me, they call me self-centered. "Like God cares so much about you," they scoff. Then they get to know me, and some months pass by, and witnessing the vicissitudes of my life, they inevitably come to the same conclusion. "God really does hate you," they say. Many of these people are atheists, or were, before they met me. I would be an atheist, too, if I were more of an optimist. No God In Heaven would be a huge step up from the crazy son of a bitch who's up there now.

So why doesn't God just kill me and get it over with, you ask? This is a good question, one I've pondered many times throughout my life, and the answer I've arrived at as to why a cruel God would allow me to live is this: it's for the jokes.

We all need a good laugh now and then, fair enough, but it seems God finds me and my struggles particularly hilarious. Jerry Lewis said that comedy is a man in trouble, and it would certainly seem God agrees with this, particularly when the man in trouble is me.

And so it came as no surprise when, some weeks ago, I woke one morning, sat up on the side of the bed, looked down and noticed that something had gone very very wrong with my genitals.

"What do you mean crooked?" my physician asked.

She had received my panicked message and had managed to fit me in that morning.

"Crooked," I said.

"Crooked how?"

I have been going to her for some time now, and we have a casual, open relationship as one must with a physician, but this was not an easy thing to discuss.

"You know how when you're driving your car," I said, "and you're following Waze, and everything seems to be going well, you're going fine, straight as the crow flies, so to speak, and then for some reason, you lose the signal for a moment, it just sort of blacks out, and when Waze comes back on, it's like she's all confused, she’s freaking out, and she's like, "Turn right! No, turn left! No, turn right again!"

My physician nodded uncertainly.

"Yes," she said. "I think so."

"Well, it's like that," I said. "But my penis."

"Is your penis Waze, or is it the car?"

"It’s the car," I said. "Waze is a navigation app."

"I know,” she said, “but you mentioned it, so I thought maybe your penis was Waze."

"How could it be Waze?"

"You said it stopped working."

"Yeah,” I said. “The car. The car has sort of.. gotten lost."

"It's missing?"

"No, no," I said, relieved for a moment to imagine a calamity even worse than mine; you never know how far God is going to go for a laugh. "It's not missing," I explained. "I have the car. The car’s right here. It's just making some... unexpected turns."

"Let me see," she said.

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"I'm a doctor," she said. "There’s no reason to be ashamed."

“I’m not ashamed.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

The issue was more practical than shame; to add to its peculiarity, the problem was only evident during an erection. I desperately searched the thesaurus in my mind for a way to explain to her that which I didn't want to explain.

"The issue," I said, "that is to say the, uh, condition, as it were, doesn't, uh, present itself, during, uh, routine visual inspection, if you will, if said inspection is conducted at times of maximum, you know. Flaccidity."

She crossed her legs, as if to protect her own genitals from mine, and nodded more solemnly than I would have liked.

"I understand," she said.

I consider myself a well-read individual. My home is filled with books, every corner of every room – fiction, non-fiction, contemporary, classics, science, theology, history, philosophy, even some literary criticism (spine turned to the back so nobody knows I read it) and so, having encountered through my readings a vast cross-section of the experiences of men throughout time and history, I was rather skeptical when she clicked her pen, stood up and said, "This is very common." Because never, not in any book, novel, memoir, history, not in Dante's most sadistic imaginings, did I ever read word one about this, uh, condition.

I met with the urologist a few days later, a stoic fellow with cold hands who, after a too brief introduction, asked me to pull my pants down.

"This is very common," he said as he examined me.

"Penises, you mean?" I joked desperately. "I hear fifty percent of people have them, heh heh. But a hundred percent suffer from them, heh heh. Heh."

Urologists are not big laughers.

He explained that my condition could be the result of numerous factors, from genetics to injury.

“Injury?” I said. "I think I would have remembered an injury like that.”

"It could have happened at night."

"At night?"

"Yes," he said. "If you were erect, for example, and rolled over on it."

"Rolled over on it?"

"Yes," he said. "And injured it."

"Like a kickstand?" I asked.

The design of human genitalia is by any objective measure less than stellar. It’s no iPhone, let’s put it that way. Male, female, it really doesn’t matter. The next time someone tells you the designer of this world was intelligent, pull your pants down. Of the two, though, male genitals are particularly ridiculous. Penises, testicles and scrotums are the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of a Lord who wants nothing more than to laugh at us. Dicks are the substantiation of my entire theology.

"A kickstand?" the doctor asked.

"Of a bicycle."

"Is the penis the bicycle or the kickstand?" he asked.

"The kickstand," I said. "I'm the bicycle."

"But the kickstand helps the bike stand up."

"Yes," I said. "But if it broke."

"The bicycle?"

"The kickstand."

He nodded, told me to pull me pants up and handed me a protractor.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"For you," he said. "To measure."

"Measure what?"

"The curve," he said. "Of your kickstand."

The treatment for my condition, he explained, consists of a series of very painful, very expensive injections. Very, very expensive. In order to avoid paying for them, the insurance companies established a minimum degree of “kickstand crookedness,” below which they reject the claim, above which they call for surgery. And so, he continued, it was necessary for me to measure. The degree. Of the curve. Of my kickstand.

I'll be honest, up until this point, I hadn't really thought about God. Twisting my dick seemed a low humor, even for Him. The Creator of the Universe, Lord of Lords – and he's going for a fucking dick joke? As I made my way to the door, though, I considered the recent run of difficulties I've undergone. I'd lost my best friend to a rare nerve disease. I'd lost my beloved dog to bone cancer. I'm a white male over 50, and though at any other time in history this would sound ludicrous, it is difficult these days for us to find work. Money has been tight, tensions at home high. My wife works long hours to keep us afloat, and it causes stress, for us individually and as a couple. And yet, despite these difficulties, I've been managing. I've been holding it together. At times, I've even been able to laugh – at myself, as well as my situation. So what does this have to do with my penis? Well, as I said, God likes to laugh. At me. And perhaps of late, the various jokes he's been playing on me haven't really landed. It's one thing to watch a man slip and fall on a banana peel, and to laugh at his fury as he curses and kicks at his misfortune. But when that man slips and falls and laughs at himself, or even picks himself up and carries on without too much pause, well, that's not funny. And so I began to wonder if God was just frustrated, if his jokes on me weren't landing, and so, desperate as any bad comedian, he went for a dick joke. For the easy laugh.

Well, I decided, I wasn't going to let him have it.

I was going to hold my head high.

Go ahead, God, I thought, do your worst.

"And oh," said the doctor as I prepared to leave. "Make sure you take photos."

"Photos?"

"Photos," he said. "Of your penis. Next to the protractor. The insurance company is going to need to see them."

To be, unfortunately, continued.

Yours in the fetal position,

S.