Oh, God!

by Avery Corman

  We decided to rent a house in the woods near Sag Harbor out on Long Island. Sag Harbor is largely a middle-class boating community, the poor sister in The Hamptons area. It doesn’t have the chic of say, East Hampton. And if God didn’t want me on television attracting attention, He certainly wouldn’t have approved of me in East Hampton, a smug little town that prides itself on its number of show business stars, pretending to ignore them, while really staring at them. When I was away, nobody in Sag Harbor recognized me or cared, except for one girl whom I’ll get to, but in East Hampton where I went to the movies twice, I was stopped twice, by one person who was sure I looked familiar because I was one of the Beatles, and another who thought I was Elliott Gould.

  We rented a house for the month, and rented a car, and I got to wondering would I have needed this vacation which required me to take all this money out of personal savings, if I hadn’t been under a strain from my experience? Plus if you add up all the money I spent on printing and supplies, to say nothing of the salary I paid Judy—and it wasn’t just bookkeeping, she had her own bank account—I was now out over $3,500 on the deal. The cost of seeing God has risen since Moses’ day.

  Well, it was vacation time for us, but you don’t just take off for vacation in New York—leaving the city is an entire anti-burglary project. I took Judy’s best jewelry to the vault; hooked up all the living-room lights with a timer to make it look like someone was home; pasted burglar-alarm stickers on the windows, even though we had no burglar alarm; had the post office hold the mail; packed our hi-fi system and television set into the car, since they were the most expensive appliances we owned and didn’t want anyone stealing them—and wondered if I’d ever reach the point of being able to ask Him to keep an eye on the apartment when we were away.

  A few days later, while lying on the beach, I turned to Judy and trying to be funny, but also meaning it, said, “Isn’t it nice to be relaxing here, while back in the city we’re being burglarized?”

  “Don’t worry, Hon. We have the man with the signs.”

  “He’s probably our burglar.”

  “He’ll keep an eye on things.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “He said he would.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “He’s very nice.”

  “He’s a religious fanatic, or some kind of fanatic.”

  “Now, dear, some people would call you the same.”

  “Well, I’m sure he knows we’re away. He saw us going.”

  “Honey, relax, I told him we’d be away a month—and to make sure everything would be all right, I gave him a key.”

  “What? You gave that nut a key to our house?”

  “You have to have faith in people, Darling. He’s very smart and gentle. Did you ever read his signs?”

  “You gave him a key? What’s the matter with you? Why did you give him a key?”

  “So he can water the plants.”

  Of course, nothing went wrong in the apartment. We were to return home to find the parade of sightseers had diminished somewhat, but was still going on, oblivious of the fact that we left and oblivious of the fact that we were back. It had a life of its own without us. And the man with the signs was still there. He had watered the plants.

  It was out on Long Island where we had the only trouble.

  Is GOD IN EAST HAMPTON? said the headline of the East Hampton Star, going on to report that someone thought they had spotted me in town, and did that mean that God was summering in East Hampton? It sounded tongue in cheek, but you couldn’t tell. You see, they’re so proud of who summers out there, God would have been a real coup.

  It made me cautious about appearing too openly in public. I really didn’t want a lot of scenes on our vacation, and sure enough, some hysteric insisted she saw God sitting in a local potato field and that was good for a story the following week. Then it all died down. I stayed close to the house except when we went to the beach, and luckily, we found a fairly secluded beach where we’d go each day. We even stopped buying newspapers and I tried to get God off my mind for a while. I figured if anything really urgent came up that He wanted to tell me, He could just show up or float me a note in a bottle or something.

  Judy decided she had been getting too much sun, so on this particular afternoon she stayed back at the house. I went to the beach alone, setting myself up a couple of hundred yards away from the handful of people who were there. As the day went on, they gradually left and I was sitting there alone. Then I noticed this absolutely beautiful suntanned girl walking along in a bikini—long legs, small waist, lovely breasts—an incredible figure. She had to be one of the best-looking girls I ever saw in my life. She looked at me, then walked right toward me. She stopped in front of me and was staring.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  “It is?”

  “The Miracle Claimant.” It really sounded odd hearing it in speech like that,

  “I think you’re mistaken. I’m Elliott Gould.”

  “No, I’d know you. It’s you. My God, it’s you!”

  “You’re really mistaken—”

  “I was just walking along—and it’s you!”

  “You have me confused—”

  “God’s will has brought me to this crossroads.”

  “I don’t think He gets involved in beaches.”

  “It is a sign from Heaven.”

  “You’re exaggerating, Miss.”

  “On this beach. You. I.”

  “Now, Miss—”

  “What was I before this?”

  “Excuse me but I was reading—”

  “I was a piece of driftwood on life’s shore. Thank you, Lord, for sending him to me.”

  “I was just sitting here—”

  “His ways are strange. But it is ordained. So be it.”

  “So be what?”

  “In a summer of searching, comes this spiritual happiness.”

  Then she dropped to her knees, looked into my eyes and said, “My love, my heavenly love. Fuck me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Fuck me. Enter me with your holy presence.”

  “Now, look—”

  “Sanctify my womb.”

  “Lady!”

  “Give meaning to my life with your golden staff.”

  Then this gorgeous thing started to remove her bikini, murmuring, “It’s a sign, a sign.” She was now completely naked, kneeling in front of me with that body of hers saying,

  “Love me, my heavenly love. Squirm with me until the heavenly juices flow.”

  I was in some spot.

  She leaned forward, as I sat frozen in my beach chair, and put her arms around me.

  “I’m warm and moist for you. Feel how warm. Oh, my God, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”

  Nervously I put my hands up to push her away and found her breasts in them.

  “Uplift me. Purify me!” She looked pretty clean to me.

  Catching myself—“Now listen here. I’m a married man.”

  “There is no one to see us.” Which was true enough.

  “Only God, who Himself ordained this.” I think that was stretching it a bit.

  “It’s a miracle. A miracle.”

  “It’s not a miracle.”

  “It is.”

  “It’s a chance happenstance.”

  “It’s a miracle. Enter me. Enter me with your holy presence.”

  “You are very mistaken.”

  “Enter me with your holy presence!”

  “Look, I am not holy. I’m no part of God. He’s just an acquaintance.”

  And I got up, my erection and moral upbringing showing, gathered up my chair and towel and started to leave. After all, I don’t mind selling my unsold plays off of knowing God, but using it to commit an act of adultery with a crazy chick on a public beach …

  She followed along the sands, clinging to me.

  “Let the heavens rejoice for our song of love.”

  “Yes, yes, wonderful.”

 
; I started walking, then running, this naked creature groveling after me. I was flopping across the beach, my feet halfway out of my sneakers, the beach chair banging against my leg, running away from one of the best package deals of the summer tourist season.

  “Do not reject God’s will!”

  If that was God’s will, Job was never so lucky. We had now reached the path through the dunes where the cars were parked. There were some stragglers packing up to leave and they saw us bursting over the crest of the dunes, this naked girl clutching at me, and me with my beach chair, huffing and puffing—a scene out of a perverse porno movie. We were Tessie and the Geriatric.

  “Animals!” a woman screamed, scooping up her two children. An older couple looked on, furious at this ultimate insult from “the summer people.”

  The girl stopped. “My love, my holy love,” she called out. Then she slowly ran her fingers across her naked body and arched her middle toward me.

  “I’ll be waiting—waiting for your golden staff through eternity. 324-6179. Sonya.”

  It all happened fast as a sudden shower and that is what I needed when I got back. Judy asked me why I seemed so nervous, but I said it was nothing. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her and never did until now, and I know this is kind of a cheap way to tell you, Honey, but look at it this way. The same guilt and sexual inhibitions that prevented me from saying anything to you, also prevented me from doing it with her—so I’d say it’s a tie ball game.

  But can you imagine a beautiful girl like that groveling after me? It was better than being a doctor.

  15

  ALTHOUGH WE WEREN’T READING newspapers every day while we were away, we would catch a glance now and then—and there was one running story about the latest developments on that international conference of religious leaders. At that point, three weeks after we left New York, they were still confused, still picking a site and nowhere on an agenda. Elsewhere, the pot having boiled, it continued to simmer with reports of God-sightings, which now regularly found their way into the news as filler items. One thing I had done was put the Virgin Mary sightings out of business for a while.

  God was said to have: shown up in Sarasota, Florida, as an extra umpire in a Little League game; turned up in a laundry room of a Dallas housewife, and as the woman reported it, He gave her advice on the best laundry detergent to use; made a flamboyant appearance on the Israeli border where, according to an old Israeli farmer, “He shot an Arab guerrilla in the tuchis.”

  He hadn’t visited me in Sag Harbor, although I could have sworn I spotted Him down by the water drinking beer during the Whalers’ Festival. Is it possible He enjoys doing little walk-ons like Alfred Hitchcock?

  The month’s vacation was coming to a close and we were going to wind up by eating some major meals at the house. I went into town to help Judy with the shopping and there in the Sag Harbor A & P, the vacation ended early.

  The store, which sometimes sells paperback books in cardboard racks alongside the cookies, had set up an enormous paperback display. It was the first thing you saw when you came in. It was created for one book, featured one book, and that one book was The Man Who Saw God. It was my life’s story. My life’s story! I never told anybody my life’s story. I didn’t even know it. And there was this unauthorized, pirate biography, my face on the cover, $1.25. I bought a copy. I paid my money for a copy of a book about me. It was written by somebody named F. X. Franckks, which sounded like a made-up name to me, and I just hoped for sentimental reasons that it wasn’t written by some struggling playwright selling out for money. The Man Who Saw God. The gall! My life was my life. It wasn’t public domain. Actually, when we got home and read it, we saw it wasn’t even my life. Under a chapter, “Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness”:

  In his childish innocence, he had heard the expression, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Thinking this was a way to be near his Lord, this sweet child bathed often, sometimes as often as three times a day. This delightful anecdote shows the emerging kinship he felt with God even at the tender age of thirteen. It was only when his father said, “My sweet son, it is only an expression.” “An expression?” he answered. “Yes. A wish that people should be clean, but not to be taken literally.” “Oh,” he said. “I hope I have not offended God.” Offended God! Little did he know that God sees all and God would remember!

  I love that “delightful anecdote” for a couple of reasons. One, my parents were divorced when I was six and I haven’t seen my father since. And two, we only had a shower, we never owned a bathtub.

  From the chapter, “A Man of Prayer”:

  … from the earliest he would say his prayers at night, always the same prayer, “God bless Mommy and God bless Daddy, God bless everything that grows and the animals and the children of all nations.” Could God resist such a charming tyke?

  So open was he in his faith, so unashamed before his God, he was to repeat this prayer every night of his life before he went to bed, even when he had grown stronger and taller of limb, into his teens, into his twenties, even into his thirties. The child grown to a man, still saying his prayers at night, the same prayer, “God bless Mommy and God bless Daddy, God bless everything that grows and the animals and the children of all nations.” Who among us can say the same for ourselves?

  Who indeed! The book jumped back and forth from completely fabricated episodes to episodes fabricated from an occasional fact. The fact is, as was mentioned earlier, I had once sung in my high school chorus. The writer probably dug up a copy of the DeWitt Clinton High School Yearbook, and this information became—“A Young Rebel”:

  While other young men were venting their aggressions in sporting pursuits, he chose a more solemn path. He was to become the soloist with his high school chorus, lifting his voice on high in performances of great hymns in praise of God. Yes, God heard!

  In high school, the closest I ever came to a solo was my big “Dry Bones” number and, ironically, God might have heard, because the whole solo consisted of me stepping in front of the stage and shouting, “Yeah, Lawd!”

  I figured out what Mister, or could it have been Miss? F. X. Franckks’s game was—or perhaps it was the notion of the publisher, Reverence Books. Reverence Books? I never heard of them and I’m sure it was formed for the sole purpose of publishing this thing. They figured if they told the story about me straight, people would think—is that all he is? What’s so special about him? God could have talked to me. And they’d start resenting the hero of the piece. Better to put me in a saintly category for people to look up to and think—he is such a pure, Godly person. Is it any wonder God chose him and not me? What a wonderful, inspirational story. They were going right after the people who like to read that kind of wonderful, inspirational story.

  And they cleaned up any sex life I had. I mean I wasn’t a Warren Beatty, but I certainly wasn’t, as the book told it, “A Man Restrained.”

  In a world of lowered morals, of adultery and pre-marital intercourse, of immorality in word and deed, in film and book, in song and story, he moved through this world, a man restrained. The temptations were many. Living in a city such as New York with its Greenwich Village, he was easy prey for what has become known as The New Sex. It is a climate in which girls walk about freely without wearing foundation garments. So he carried in his wallet at all times for protection …

  The lewd among us probably think that F.X. was about to say, “for protection … a rubber prophylactic.” For shame, easy preys of The New Sex.

  … he carried in his wallet at all times for protection … a poem:

  The sins of the flesh can break a man

  Destroy his moral carriage,

  But God prefers a Godly man

  Who saves himself for marriage.

  Anon.

  Judy he also cleaned up. Not to say my wife needed cleaning up, mind you. She was, before I met her, a terrific lady who held a job, had an apartment, had a social life, with no major skeletons in her closet. She was not,
however, “The Heavenly Maiden.”

  His Judith. They met at an interdenominational retreat.

  We met at a noisy party.

  They courted by making rounds of religious services of all faiths. A religious person, her first words to him were, “My only desire is to keep a kosher home.” In the Jewish faith, a kosher home is orthodoxy, a maintaining of the Old Testament rituals, and these were the first words she spoke to him, to establish between them a rich God-bound relationship.

  Her first words to me as I recall, after we had danced to an entire Aretha Franklin album without speaking were, “I just want to get something straight about tonight. I’m not going to bed with you.”

  He then went on to my encounters with God, which were told pretty much as I had reported them, Reverence Books operating on the assumption no doubt that this part of the story was too well publicized to embellish too much.

  And then a concluding chapter, “The Man Who Saw God Looks to the Future,” which was the most extraordinary of all because it quoted me at great length saying inspirational things like, “We must all pull ourselves up by our religious bootstraps.”

  And what of me? Well, that’s what the book said:

  What of him? What is there left for a man who has seen God? We ask too often in our competitive world for a man to prove himself over and over again, as though one great noble deed has no virtue. It is clear that he need do no more than he has done to earn our respect. For he passed among us …

  It sounded like I was dead.

  … and he touched the heavens. This then is his story. Let it stand as thus, without further exploitation of him. This then is his book. Let it stand as definitive without further books attempting to make profit from or be disrespectful of—The Man Who Has Seen God.