No Good Friday

Dear Kate,

Much will be said this Good Friday, by you to yourself and to the world, and by the world to itself and to you, and our feeding on each other's regurgitation will keep the show go on, as if the trial and death of Jesus--if ever had anything to do with anything at all--has nothing to do with what we are doing with our lives now.

Not too long ago you told me, once, your work computer broke down (or needed to go through some sort of update, which is a nice way to say things are fated to die and our lives have mostly to do with patching them up to evade the eventual for the time being), and you were left with three idle hours on your hand and knew not what to do with them.

You went for Thai food, if I heard you right, and your consequent stomach that night you eloquently attributed to such misstep and future preventive measures subsequently finely articulated, your usual gospel about food hygiene and blah regurgitative blah.  If you could only hear yourself (none of us could, so don't feel bad about it).

Your choice was about right.  You could have chosen something less greasy, maybe, or take more bites to break the grease down, as observed in your homily, but the tenet of your faith was affirmed and shall be practiced again and again till the end of time: Thou shall pleasure (and profit) thyself when thou art given the chance to.

Now that got me thinking.  Without the cross, without checking out Jesus from the foot of it and fearfully making the daily choice to follow Him however feebly, what would I have done with three idle hours in a spring afternoon, it being good and possibly a Friday too?

I would have quickly, first, jumped on the internet and checked out some porn.  Now, before you let your indignation about me or men in general bloat your stomach, please understand: We don't mean nothing by it.  Really, we don't truly (a very important adverb, mind you, to speak about the sincerity in what's to come) give a fuck about the spectator sport of pedestrian fucking, even less than what you truly meant by having Thai food that afternoon: it's mildly pleasurable, for the three minutes or less it lasts, and we would always, like you did, acknowledge it's a misstep in life that we could have easily done without but did it anyway only because it is still a hygienic way to go about things if we are so dead set on lapping up inconsequential filth.  (I don't need to mention it is "free," do I?)  It could have been worse, a real fuck-up, but we did the right thing to adhere by the preventive measures.

But that would only be three minutes, including the cleanup.  Now what else do you think I would have done?  I would have made some money, good money, good for a Friday or any day.  Let me humbly remind you again that I graduated with honor from the most prestigious business school in town, and in that three hours minus three minutes I could imagine myself making three thousand dollars in the stock market and what have you, future potential of my mighty act discounted to the singular moment at the end of my 180 minutes journey in idleness, my hands in air grasping the glory of spring sunshine properly mine.  I could have been a much richer man than you know me now: Oh, the many goddamned possibilities of idleness!

If it feels to you that I have nothing to speak but vulgarity this morning, you are feeling and hearing right, most fitting to the comically--and cosmically obscene occasion.  Happy Easter! someone said to me yesterday, and with a choice smiley.  What da hell can you possibly mean by that? in my heart I answered.  I would rather he spit on my grave and tell me the truth for once that if no Friday of ours has ever been truly good, Good Friday is the worst of all: the perfectly innocent, one pure victim will be judged and killed, and none of us will truly give a fuck.

Yours, Alex