God does love a good joke - 1

[redux]

God does love a good joke – first part
By crazf


Let’s call my name Michael, I will not tell you my real name, or anyone else, it would be no good for my career; and let me resume my life: I’m a fashion photographer, a very well-paid one. And I love my studio, my photo covers, my friends… I love my life, of course, if you don’t count my teenage years. But that’s behind me now, I’m 25. Those bullies would cry now if they saw the super models that pose for my lens. Not that I hate them, is just despise. Is past now.

Was just juvenile jock stupidity, you know? ‘hey faggy, wanna check my guns again?’ and Thomas would flex them in the class, creating laughs over me, from girls, from everyone around. They would provoke me, chase me, hurt me, they had something personal with me. Maybe because I hated that ‘faggy’ thing so much.

Now is different, because of them I dropped school, the best thing I ever did. I took a real job in a pretty young age as a studio photo assistant. I always knew my talent, it was on my DNA, and now my click worth thousands.

Of course that not everything went smooth, I had enemies, female enemies I can tell. Models that made my breakthrough in magazine covers and now are too old for them, I don’t let photoshop my business. They felt that I was in debt with them, but my reputation couldn’t allow photographing nothing less than outstanding perfect faces and bodies, it would contaminate my holy name. One day, at my studio apartment one of those enemies was drunk and slamming my door.

‘Go away! Or I’ll call the cops!’ I said to her by the door.

‘You fucking asshole, you ruined my life!’

She was right, my word is gold, if I said to my editor that a model wasn’t worth, he would remove her from the limelight right away. That was my power, and I used without any second thought. To say ‘yes’ to a model, needed to say ‘no’ to a hundred others. But in this case, some months ago, I said ‘no’ to her because I wanted her and she said ‘no’ to me. She knew it.

She stop her yelling, but thru the door I heard a muffed voice coming from her, like a pray. With the security camera I saw her holding a little doll made of bamboo strings. ‘What the fuck, she’s doing voodoo on me?!’ Then I feel my arms burn ‘what the hell?’

I heard she laughing ‘can you feel it?’

That scared the shit of me ‘what you’re doing?’

‘You messed with the wrong girl, bastard!’

‘I’m calling the cops, crazy bitch!’ then my fingers were in pain, like my nails being ripped off. I heard her laughing and going away as the pain faded. I knew voodoo too, but never felt something so powerful.

I knew whom to call immediately, to New Orleans, to the most expensive unknown voodoo specialist in the market: Laveau Voodoo Protection, Inc.

‘She made my arm burn, my nails… what should I do?’ I had to be quick, is more than a hundred dollars a minute.

The old man over the phone spoke aloud but veeeery sloooowly: ‘I sense thou have very unprotectable destiny… God already given thou second chance… and thou treated people with no good… God will do not any more thing for thou’

‘Wait, wait… what do you mean? That I’m the bad guy? That I should pay? I already paid in school! It was hell!’

‘Thou understand. God is displeased with thou… thou created hell for others… he’ll not help you… No voodoo works for thou. Thou protection expired yesterday’

‘How much? I have money… how much it will cost me to get it fixed?!’

‘No money can pay God’

‘Can I at least know what kind of voodoo… people are doing on me?’

‘Yes. Wait minute… we registered more than a hundred voodoos on thou. Is serious problem for thou’

‘Shit. A hundred?’

‘And without God’s help, thou have more voodoos than thou soul can hold.’

‘Meaning?’

‘More voodoo on thou will make thou enemies stronger’

‘What enemies?’

‘Thou worst enemies’

‘What should I do?’

‘There is nothing thou can do, everything thou have will belong to your enemies, and after that, without God protection, any voodoo on you will make them stronger, healthier, richer and everything to make thou misery.’

‘So, I’m fucked, that’s it.’

‘That’s thou destiny for now’

I put the phone down, trying to not believe in that voodoo crap. But something was telling me that it was the end of my lovely life. I lightened up a Marlboro when the phone called. My assistant, my graffer, was calling: ‘you should come here!’

‘Why?’

‘Your boss resign’

‘Why?’

‘And you don’t believe who… I heard… going to be your new boss…’

‘Fucking shit… who?’

‘Dereck’

‘No! Fucking Hell! Not him!’ Dereck was a young gay “creative director” that always criticize my work. We never came along, he was the kind of guy who felt superior to people all around him. Arrogant little shit. In all people, only I could see it. He was intelligent alright, winning all discussions, but, in a great BUT, my old boss always took my side. I’m the photographer, the real worker, he was just a… critic.

I needed to go to the staff office to change things fast. In the street, calling a cab, I saw a truck parking and two huge men getting out, I knew them. I fucking knew them: Mark and Thomas! I hide myself fast; they were the last people I wanted to see in face of earth.

‘Where are they going?’ I asked myself, as they enter my building. In my expensive, beautiful Greenwich Village building! They seemed bigger than before, in school they were already buff, now they looked bodybuilders.

I didn’t have time to loose. I took a cab and went to talk to the CEO, no one less.

‘She is in reunion with Dereck, Michael’ said the receptionist.

On my blackberry, my assistant said that we gonna have an official meeting in a hour, I knew it. It will be shit. All signs are showing that voodoo grandpa was right, I was doomed.

And Sheila, our beautiful CEO, always starts the meeting with her pompous common places: ‘the Vikings were forged by the cold winds of the north blah, blah,’ and then she said the real deal: ‘we are going for a downsizing’

The room with dozen people frozen silent, and she continues ‘two of our magazines are still going very well, the other two don’t’. Shit, I guess one of them is my pet magazine ‘But we’ll not shut them down, we are merging the editorial staff, and that means we have a new administrative structure. This process will be held by Dereck, now the youngest editor in NY’ and all the stupid people applauded him.

Dereck comes and makes everyone comfortable with the process, that everything will turn up good. Good liar. Only I could see that he’s a bad actor? But he bought them out.

After the meeting, I heard Dereck behind me ‘Michael, could I speak with you for a second?’ He was a little shorter than me, thin, but I could see he was rather athletic, something that I wasn’t.

‘Sure, but first let me give you my congratulations, editor’ I said trying not to be cynic as I sounded.

‘Thank you, I’m going to do a little party at my apartment, would be nice if you show up’

‘Ok. I’ll go, surely’

‘Good, so we are friends?’ he gave me his hand.

‘Friends’

And so I arrived his ‘little party’; ‘little parties’ have other definition for gays. Not only the music was loud, but it was crowded. Dereck’s apartment was way bigger than mine, portrayed in mags, that dream apartment in the middle of Soho. All people were there, all models, critics, fashion designers, owners, and the all fan-crowd of Dereck, the fucking youngest editor of this fucking city.

I needed a drink, a heavy one. Of course I had my fans, but strangely, none of them appeared. And then something really, really worse happens:

‘Red Face?’ I heard that voice. Fuck me, is that voice. ‘Mark, looks who’s here’

‘RED FACE! RED FAAACE!’ Oh, shit, I was in school again. I was an adult, that shit couldn’t be happening again.

‘Hi, Mark, hi Thomas’ I said up at them, my old bullies were oddly taller than I remember. Thomas seemed blonder in his long hair.

‘Man, you changed nothing!’ said Mark.

‘And you two look… big, very… big’ I said drinking the whisky. Mark makes a muscle that makes me spits the whisky ‘holy shit, are you a professional?’

‘No, but Thomas is, didn’t you see the news?’ Asked Mark looking at Thomas.

‘No… what news?’

‘Thomas, make a muscle’ If I was impressed with Mark, Thomas was from another race, never saw so much and many muscles packed in a arm.

‘Thomas is the new Mr.Olympia, with 24 years old. He is like… the new Arnold!’

‘Indeed... congratulations’ Thomas was broad as my refrigerator.

‘Feel it’ Said Mark.

‘I can see from here, is big’ I still could not look at Thomas eyes, just like in school.

‘No, feel it, is fucking hard!’ Mark said as Thomas had a curious tone on his face looking at me.

‘Ok, okay’ How strange is the sensation of touching such muscles, hot, diamond solid but alive, there is nothing like it. I saw Mark’s biceps and it was big as Thomas, but without such sharpness. ‘Are you competing too?’

‘Is not my thing, I just like being big, and when you have Mr.Olympia as trainer…’ Mark shot a biceps, his too tight long sleeve seemed to explode. Two guys squealed behind me, the two tormentors of my life were sucking up all attention from the party.

‘Hi, hi, hi there’ said Dereck to them ‘so Mr.Olympia gave the honor for being with us’

‘Hi Dereck’ both of them said.

‘You know each other?’ I had to ask.

‘I can say that Dereck was one of Thomas’ sponsors’ said Mark.

‘Really?’ shit, it was a convergence of my worst nightmares coming together.

‘So you found an apartment?’ Dereck asked them ‘did you see that one in the Village? Is Michael’s building, isn’t?’

‘Yes, we made the deal, here’s the key… Red Face lives there?’

‘Who?’

‘Michael, over here. We were buddies at school’ Mark grabbed me under his biceps like the old times. I saw his keys, they’ll move to the same floor as mine! In my front door!

‘Isn’t this cool?’ replied Dereck.

Two of my models approach to my ear ‘Who are them? They are hot!’ I could see their nipples being attracted by their male super gravity.

‘They are… my new neighbors’ I said in as a matter of fact.

‘You got lucky’ Said Andrea. Fuck, Andrea was my creation, my little angel that I protected from this crazy industry. And now she was eye contacting Mark. I swear, I just blinked, and she was in his arms. Amanda, my last cover, was holding Thomas’ arms, his muscles to be more exactly, flirting with him in the most obvious routine. It was a conspiracy from the universe against me; I couldn’t stay there, I got out of the party and took a cab.

‘Tough night?’ asked the driver.

‘You are Indian… don’t you? There is a way to restore friendship with God… or Gods?’

‘I don’t believe in God. I’m a computer scientist’

‘Sorry’ I kept in silence reviving those moments in school in the cab. Mark was a bully, but a normal one, in the way you expect they should be, like a stupid big brother… but Thomas was different, I saw in his eyes something strange, he was way more violent, and he wouldn’t need a crowd to humiliate me. Sometimes he did it in silence, kidnapping me from class to an empty room to torture me. I always thought of him being a real fucked up kid, using me as a way to express anger, and that I was his choice because I was an easy target. But in his eyes I could see another reason.

And now he is Mr.Olympia.

Life is a bitch.

I’ll continue it later, I need to crash.

[Ender]

Well, God may love a good joke but it's appearent from Michaels lilfe, mine and the general state of the world, that He has, without doubt, the worst sense of humor in the Universe...

Ender

[redux]

Originally Posted by Ender

Well, God may love a good joke but it's appearent from Michaels lilfe, mine and the general state of the world, that He has, without doubt, the worst sense of humor in the Universe...

Ender

and how about:

"god is no seinfeld"

makes a better title?