God help me, I used to be sweet. Sweet as in truly nice; sweet as in the whole world was going to be mine someday; sweet as in I understood that I had to wait my turn, pay my dues before the world turned up en masse at my door stop. Sweet as in I played hostess all the time because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t go so far as to befriend the homeless; but I came close.
I dreamed I lived in California and was indicted for some crime. I’m not sure what crime; it wasn’t murder or dealing drugs but some sort of felony. I wasn’t allowed out on bail because I had no substantial ties to the community.
Then the dream morphed to Centre Street in Manhattan, a street I know well from jury duty and Law & Order. I was happy. The judge was an old friend of the family. In real life he’s dead, but in the dream he began singing and tap dancing with a cane.
- You don’t deserve bail
- You don’t deserve to live in this society
- You blew all your chances to get married
- You never had a baby
- And you still expect me to
- let you roam the streets
- Tough
- I see you argue that you have
- substantial ties to the community
- So you own an apartment
- And have a little business
- And have never committed a crime
- against another person
- You think that makes you
- superior, or worthy of
- freedom
- when you don’t know the meaning
- of the word
- worthy people have chutzpah
- Worthy people go out and get what they
- want. They don’t wait to deserve things
- You are so lame.
He danced around me pointing the cane so that it ended in my eyes. Justice is blind, he said, and justice serves those who can manipulate it.
I tried waking myself up out of this nightmare; but instead became more immersed as he recited every one of my failings and how my parents only pretended to not care that I was best at turning down marriage proposals.
“You see this is what happens to girls who get cocky. Not that you acted cocky. You just thought that you had time. Your punishment is a life consigned to almost making it. To almost being published big time. Everyone around you will live good lives while you will watch. Because damn you, sweet is syrupy gobbledygook.”
Then I realized that this wasn’t a dream but real life. There might not be a hell up there or down below, but there sure is one on earth and I’m living in it. He changed the punishment to make it an example.
I have to watch the people in Africa and Arab nations who have nothing and are being mutilated and/or gang raped. I have to watch the bad everywhere. I can only intercede to help the rapists, thieves and murderers. That takes ten hours of the day.
For the rest of the day, I come back to the USA and have to sit at the feet of people who have made it through it chutzpah, wash their feet, dirty underwear, and do whatever things they want me to do–perfectly in two minutes flat. If not I don’t get to sleep. When I do get to sleep I’m only allowed to dream about my past and the roads I didn’t take that would have led to sure fired success. I can dream about the people I helped mutilate and kill; listen to their begging, and say “sorry, I’m only following orders.” I can understand and speak all third world languages. I’m not allowed to speak, understand, or dream in English–except for the commands, of course.
They wake me after an hour and I have to begin my tour of world hot spots, come back to the faux celebrities and do their bidding’s and start all over again.
My other punishment is eternal life on earth’s hell. I will watch from a distance the children I love grow up, make mistakes, and die eventually and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. They’ll probably die in the most horrid of ways just to make me feel even worse.
They finally told me my crimes. I cared too deeply about other people; I didn’t have a child–me who could have been a breeding machine. They showed me pictures of what my children would have looked like. They showed me movies of my lives with the various men I rejected.
- Snob–for the crime of rejecting decent but not exciting men you get another eternal life.
- Idiot–for rejecting exciting men you get to be their grand children’s slave
- For being truthful you get to help begin another holocaust
- For trying to spare people’s feelings you get to have one good dream a decade, and then forget it
- For never being in debt you get to see your family and friends from a distance in heaven all together wondering where y9u are. Then you get to watch them forget that you ever existed.
It doesn’t matter. Once you’ve licked Joan Rivers feet, there is no further place you can possibly go down. Actually there is; they invented a machine that makes me feel good for one minute a year and to remember that feeling. They invented another machine that probes my brain and makes sure I feel properly tortured.
And this all began because once I was genuinely sweet. Let my story be a warning and wake-up call to the three sweet people left on earth