Naturally, the Throne Room of Satan is covered in graffiti. Every possible rendition of a penis is drawn, carved, or painted on the bathroom walls. It’s like the Sistine Chapel of cocks. And like any bathroom, there’s plenty of bad-boy boasting and trash talking. “Marie Antoinette gives good head.” “Mussolini is a bald fuck!” You have to watch out for the phone numbers—they’re as phony as the personals section on Craigslist. And with almost as many serial killers. Ninety percent of them will connect you with a sultry woman, who, with the voice of a young Kathleen Turner, will ask, “Have you considered the extra income an alpaca farm can bring in?”
A guy in a fancy Mercedes
Thought he had a real way with the ladies
Till he gave it a go
With a knife-wielding ho
Now he’s scratching his crabs down in Hades
There once was a man with no mirth
Who talked about Hell up on Earth
“Hell” didn’t mean gloom
Or a fiery doom
But a chick flick starring Colin Firth
There once was a priest with a fiddle
Who quizzed everyone with a riddle
“I’ll give you one guess
So please try your best:
Which altar boy did I diddle?”
There once was a man on vacation
Who was sent to eternal damnation
“I’m down here,” he cried
“’Cause the way that I died”—
Autoerotic asphyxiation
There once was a man, so I’m told
Who spent fifty years on this bowl
He pushed and he grunted
But his bowels were stunted
By a ten-pound Velveeta cheese roll
Every wall in every stall has a glory hole. Which is a nightmare for those prairie-dogging because it can be tough to relieve yourself when you’re being gouged in the side of the head by two incoming schlongs. And whatever you do, don’t even think about putting your dick in there. It will get stuck and they’ll need the Jaws of Life to cut you out as onlookers poke their heads in the stall, take pictures, and laugh. You will then have to repeat this every day for eternity.
As I took all this in, I wondered why I had been allowed into Satan’s Throne Room. Was it to meet El Jefe? But Satan wasn’t using the throne when I got there. Turns out my meeting with him was just minutes away. . . .
Meeting Satan
I woke up the first morning in hell, in what seemed to be a Motel 6 room . . . except no one had left the lights on. The reason I’m pretty sure it was a Motel 6 is when my eyes got accustomed to the dim light, I saw Tom Bodett sitting in the easy chair. He wasn’t saying a word, but then again, he didn’t need to. The only thing anyone had ever asked him was, “Are you supposed to be somebody important? Because we can’t figure out why Motel 6 put you in their ads.”
Anyway, I was famished. As I looked around the room I saw someone had slipped a note under my door. It was when I walked over to get the note that I noticed the light switch. It had a cover and the switch was where Satan’s penis would be. I turned on the light and got my first real view of the private rooms in hell. Imagine the low-roller room at Circus Circus, but with the DNA-MAGNIFYING black light on the whole time. The entire room looked like a Day-Glo Rorschach test.
The note said, “Breakfast at eight. All you can eat.”
Since I was no longer worried about my cholesterol, I went downstairs and walked into the dining room. There was a pretty impressive buffet; I was stunned. But as I approached the line, a large man said, “Mr. Shmuley, have you watched the orientation video? You don’t get the free breakfast until you watch the video.”
As I was ushered out of the breakfast line I heard two people snickering, “Newbie.” After a short walk over burning hot coals, I entered the video screening room. First there was paperwork, then a not-to-scale model of hell to look at. I never knew there was so much to learn. I thought you just died, showed up, and rotted. Even worse, there was a test at the end. “What happens if I flunk the test?” I asked. “What are you going to do? Send me to hell?”
You would think that in six thousand years (since the time the Kentucky Creation Museum said we first lived with dinosaurs) that someone would’ve asked that just once, but they were stumped. So stumped, in fact, that they had to call in the big guy. Satan himself. My question had raised all kinds of hell.
They took me to a waiting room. It was a lot like my doctor’s waiting room. A very pleasant receptionist walked out and told me, “I’m sorry, Satan is going to be a little bit late. She’s getting her hair done.”
That’s right, “she.”
There’s something you need to know about hell: Satan takes on a different form for everyone. Satan appears as each person’s worst nightmare. For some, it could be an IRS agent. For others it’s an old boss. For a few it might be John Mayer. For most new entrants, it’s the cast of The View naked. For me it was different. Satan walked in the room and I said, “Hello, Susan.” It was my first wife. Although she was still alive on earth, at least from the waist up, Satan had manifested itself in her image to strike fear in my heart.
After shaking her tail, Satan said to me, “Are there any questions you want to ask?”
I said, “What time’s lunch?”
Satan said, “I was thinking of something larger, of greater import, something that speaks to the gravity of your situation.”
So I asked, “When’s dinner and is there a dessert cart?”
Satan looked at me thoughtfully. “First of all, it’s called a dessert trolley, and second, tell me what you said downstairs that has everyone thinking they’re going to hell in a handbasket.”
This was the moment. We were, for a brief few seconds, equals. I had something Satan wanted to hear—the ultimate question. I looked at Satan and asked, “What happens if you flunk the orientation test? Do you go to another level of hell? Are you sent back to earth?”
Satan stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. In fact, it may have been eternity. Then she said, “Damned if I know.”
Our meeting lasted for hours. But let me sum up: of the 666 major things you need to know about Satan, these are the most important:1. As noted above, Satan always takes the form of something designed to scare you. For me, it was my first wife. For others it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s maid in full daylight. But eventually you get to see Satan in his true form: six foot six, three hundred pounds, fire red skin like an old Jewish person on the beach for the first time. But without the hat, sandals, and black socks.
2. Satan is iliterate. He can’t read or write. However, he’s incredible at texting, where spelling doesn’t matter.
3. Satan’s horns are actually implants. He got them at a body-piercing studio on Melrose.
4. Satan does not have normal desires. He’s completely different from anyone you’d meet on earth. He actually liked Sex & the City 2.
5. Many of the things we know about Satan are false. For example, Luther (that would be Martin Luther, not Luther Vandross) recommended that we enjoy music because the devil cannot stand gaiety. Not true; he just doesn’t like certain types of music. The only music you’re allowed to listen to in Satan’s presence are Paris Hilton’s album, “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd, and KISS tracks from the no-makeup years.
6. Satan’s job is to tempt, and he knows just what each person’s weakness is and how to use it. For instance, if it’s Internet porn you crave, you’ll be led to a windowless room with a six-foot monitor and goose-down tissues stacked to the ceiling. Then, right as you’re about to log on, the only thing you’ll see is . . .Loading
You see, in hell, they don’t just get you with fire and anger and torture. Sometimes it’s even worse than that. It’s boredom. Satan has AOL, Afterlife Online. Think about ordering Bleached Starfish 8, then buffering for four thousand years.
7. Satan is a fallen angel, much like Kendrys Morales. He was cast from heaven for
questioning God’s infallibility. In retrospect, Satan was right, Netflix is better than Blockbuster. And Satan, un-like the guy in the office next to you, also knew LaserDiscs would never catch on.
8. Satan has a lot of hobbies. He’s a gamer. You know that guy you can never beat at World of Warcraft, the one who seems to be online twenty-four/seven? That’s him, Mister I’ve Got All the Cheat Codes. He’s a video game fanatic, which makes sense, since technically he also lives in his father’s basement.
9. Satan is incredibly smart. He can explain complex things in the simplest of terms. For example, I asked him how to define the difference between art and porn. He said, “If you hang it on your wall to impress women and get laid, it’s art. If you masturbate to it instead of getting laid, it’s porn.” Later on I asked him, “Why is the sky blue?” He said, “When God designed the place, he felt it was too small. The decorator told him blue would make it feel more spacious.” “Amazing,” I said. “So do all planets have a blue sky?” “No,” he answered. “It’s brown around Uranus.”
10. Satan is Santa for dyslexics. It is also “a Stan” for people who hate Stans. Think about that the next time your child brings home Flat Stanley.
11. Satan is a Cubs fan. This explains some of the anger.
12. Satan does not sit on your shoulder, like in the cartoons, arguing with an angel about what course of action you should take. The Master of Mayhem is much more subtle; he whispers things in your ear when you are asleep. This works especially well with air traffic controllers, who are never awake. Satan is the one who told the captain of the Hindenburg, “Hey, pal, it’s your zeppelin, you can smoke if you want.”
13. Satan invented the wrapping they use for CDs and razor blades.
14. You know the saying “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings”? There’s a corollary. “With every new spring blade of grass, Satan gets a piece of ass.” He is insatiable. Seriously, he’s tapping some new little devil fifty or sixty times a day. And always in his favorite position—missionary.
15. The most interesting thing about Satan? He’s married. This explains the rest of the anger.
What was fascinating was that even though we had just met, we had a connection. And a real one, not like the kind on eHarmony where the only thing those twenty-nine dimensions of compatibility means is that the computer has matched up two identically superficial people. I got the feeling that Satan liked me, or at the minimum he was lonely . . . or that there was something about me being an accountant that intrigued him.
Satan cleared his throat, a sound that I will never forget. It sounded like a chorus of tuberculosis patients on a bad phlegm day. He said, “Let’s get to know each other better. Let me ask you, why do you think you’re here?”
Instantly a flood of memories came rushing back. When I was in college I got drunk one morning and plowed into a school bus full of kids. And the worst part was it was a school band. One of the kids needed a trom-bonectomy.
Or was it the time I prank-called the night watchman at the Fukushima reactor and distracted him?
Was it the time I falsely predicted the Rapture so that half the people in Arkansas would put their possessions on eBay, where I picked them up cheap?
My life passed before my eyes. Then Tom Cruise’s life passed before my eyes. I would tell you what that was like, but who needs that lawsuit? Then it was back to my life as I tried to remember every bad thing I had done.
Telling the blind person the light said “walk”?
Not being kind and not rewinding once in the 1980s?
Giving News of the World and Rupert Murdoch a way to hack into my office voice-mail system?
Moving copies of Hustler magazine into the Oprah section of the bookstore?
Even worse, moving copies of O, The Oprah Magazine to the adult section?
Satan’s answer was “Nope. You know what it really was? It was April 21, 2004. You were in the Medical Arts Building on Wilshire. Do you remember?”
I stared in amazement. “Do you mean the time . . .”
Satan nodded. “Yep, you farted in the elevator. And blamed someone else. Do you know how many times we’ve heard ‘He who smelt it dealt it?’ Hell is full of guys like you. Why do you think it smells like this down here?”
Looking back, that gas had been pretty bad. (The night before had been “International Night” at the Shmuley household, and dinner had consisted of borscht, kimchi, and haggis.) Several people in there with me passed out, and the elevator itself dropped three floors before recovering. Still, I didn’t think that alone warranted eternal damnation.
“Level with me, Satan,” I said, “an innocent cutting of the cheese isn’t why I’m here, is it? What’s the real reason?”
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but we’ve had our eye on you for a while.” He smirked. “Look into your heart, think back. After hundreds of misdeeds in your life, the elevator incident was just the icing on the anus.”
My eyes glazed over like an old man with cataracts.
Satan said, “Here, take a look at your file.” In a flash a minion entered carrying a stack of file folders taller than Gary Coleman. Ironically, when he set them down, I saw it was Gary Coleman. He smiled, said, “What you talking about, Satan?” and left.
I took a cold, hard look at my life, and all the wrongs I had done while I was alive. “Was it the incident with Mr. Fredericks?” I asked. “Ha, that was a good one,” Satan said and chuckled. “You were off to a nice start.”
When I was a kid, Mr. Fredericks was the old man who ran the corner store in my neighborhood. He was blind in both eyes, deaf in both ears, and mute in both mouths. He was the product of first cousins who had sex on top of a nuclear test site. One day as a joke I decided to start sending him letters from a “secret admirer.” The letters began innocently enough, then became more and more steamy and graphic. Eventually I arranged for this secret admirer to meet Mr. Fredericks. Using a mannequin I’d found behind a department store, I set up the unsuspecting old guy on a date. Being a nuclear mutant who’d never had a real woman, he couldn’t tell the difference and fell madly in love. He began to carry the mannequin around with him wherever he went, as people snickered behind his back. They stayed together until his very last day.
“Oh, come on,” I protested, “that was kind of cruel, but no one really got hurt.”
“Oh, really?” Satan replied. “But there’s more to it, my friend. What you don’t know is that Mr. Fredericks and the mannequin consummated their relationship. And because of his nuclear-radiated sperm, he was able to impregnate her. That’s right, they had a child.”
“No! It can’t be,” I cried.
“Oh, yes. A hideous half-human, half-plastic child. And today, that child is Heidi Montag.”
I was overcome with guilt. Was I really to blame for six seasons of The Hills?
Satan pushed on. “Think about your other shortcomings.”
“My penis?”
“No! You know, character, personality stuff. Your behavior.”
“Was it my driving?” I asked.
“Well, you never were the best behind the wheel,” Satan said.
I guess I had been through my share of driving-related incidents. The time I throttled an old lady for taking too long in the crosswalk. The time I wiped out a family of bald eagles by drunkenly smashing my car into their tree, knocking their nest to the ground, then stepping all over the hatchlings when I stumbled out of the car.
“And don’t forget the blow job while driving,” Satan said.
“That was one time, and it was the only way that guy would give me a lift.”
“No, you idiot, the other time.”
“Hey, she was a student driver, did she want to pass or fail?”
“Guess again. . . .”
“Oh, that. Look, I’d been practicing for months trying to limber up and stretch. I could finally reach! How was I to know it’d cause a twenty-car pileup? You take your eyes off the
road for one minute. You know, I can still see my teeth marks down there.”
“And let’s not forget, you don’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to the holidays, either,” he laughed.
I always had trouble remembering and observing the holidays. I’d spent a lifetime making last-minute excuses. When my kids had hit me up for Christmas presents, I had explained to them that we were Jewish. When they asked what we were doing for Passover, I told them I had recently converted to Buddhism. When they wanted to know the path to nirvana, I quickly told them we were now Muslim. When they asked why I was stuffing my face with bourbon-crusted pork in the middle of Ramadan, I said, “Your mother and father are pagans now.” Eventually I found it was easier to convert several times a year than to plan a family holiday.
As for forgetting our anniversary, I told my wife our marriage was technically null and void because she had slept with the preacher. Though I thought I made that up from whole cloth, it alarmed me that she didn’t argue.
“You’ve made a mockery of religion,” the devil charged, “and that’s my job. And you did the same thing with the legal system. Remember?”
I had once been on the jury in a capital murder trial. The evidence was nothing more than circumstantial, and the defendant had a solid alibi and DNA evidence that put him five hundred miles from the scene of the crime. Still, that weekend it was going to be Mike Tyson versus Cicely Tyson in a celebrity boxing match on pay-per-view. Not to be missed. In a rush we found him guilty and recommended he be skinned alive, then drawn and quartered. We were so convincing that the judge allowed our precedent-setting verdict and the defendant was hauled off to meet his maker. Which is where I should be now instead of down here in hell. “Who’s laughing now?” Satan asked. “Probably Cicely Tyson,” I said. “Can you believe she won?”
Hell Is for Real, Too : A Middle-aged Accountant?s Astounding Story of His Trip to Hell and Back (9781101571026) Page 3