Slacking with Jesus' Son
Everyone wanted to hang out with Jack, the Son of the Son of God.
After our housewarming party, word spread among the reborn and the daemonic that there was a new heaven in town. Soon the Slack Lodge was an unending parade of the coolest figures from history and mythology, all just looking for a place to chill.
I got to witness David Bowie, John Lennon, Freddie Mercury and Schroeder start an impromptu jug band. I listened while Georges Carlin and Burns shot the shit on a sofa for an entire afternoon. I caught Betty White and JFK sneaking off to find a room together, and I cheered when Ben Franklin beat Mark Twain at arm wrestling. Bob Ross offered daily painting lessons.
The Grim Reaper spent a weekend, promising he was off the clock. He organized a Guitar Hero tournament, which Tom Bombadil won.
Then there was the night Julia Child got plastered and managed to knock over the Christmas tree on an ill-advised dare, but it was long past time for that thing to come down anyway. She made it up to us by cooking everyone crêpes the following morning.
Alan Ginsberg, Johnny Appleseed, Sammy Davis Junior, Deadpool, Frank Herbert, Shaggy, Mitch Hedberg, Daria Morgendorffer, John Muir, Little Boy Blue, Ella Fitzgerald, the Caterpillar from Wonderland and Zoot all signed the guestbook.
We even got the occasional local from the quaint little town down the road. Someone would get really high, go for a walk in the woods and just end up at our place. They weren't reborn, but it was cool, they were chill. I didn't think you could even find the place if you weren't chill. For some reason, the Slack Lodge didn't show up on Google Maps.
We were a clothing-optional resort, but other than that one time Lincoln and Liberace's floor show got out of hand, we kept the public sex limited to the upstairs bunkrooms. The bunkroom with urinals in the bathroom was for the gay orgy, and the bunkroom on the other side was for the bi orgy. Our straight and lesbian guests were content to keep that sort of thing to their guest rooms, as they do, so this worked out for everybody.
Jack and I were sharing the master suite at the center of the third floor. It had two bedrooms, so we each still had our own private space. And it meant we were still actual roommates, and not just residents in the same building. We certainly didn't mind the constant stream of guests, but our friendship came first. We always ended the day smoking a bowl together, just the two of us.
I finally got to meet Jack's "Uncle" "Paul" the "Apostle" after missing him over the holidays. Paul was a bald, wiry guy with glasses, not unattractive, but normal-looking enough to make me feel a bit better about my own looks. He wasn't really Jack's uncle, just an old friend of the family. He also wasn't really an apostle—he didn't jump on the Christianity bandwagon until quite awhile after Jack's Dad ascended. He wasn't even really a Paul, for that matter. He was kind of a bullshitter.
"I practically invented the Holy Spirit!" he bragged to us one night. Paul, Jack, King David of Israel and I had taken some edibles and were relaxing in the first floor hot tub.
"You weren't even Paul yet when they created the Holy Spirit," David scoffed. David had side-swept dirty blond hair, a genuinely macho mustache, a permanent five o'clock shadow and the kind of lithe lean-muscled body that a man earns through physical accomplishment rather than formal exercise. If you didn't know he was royalty, you might think he could fix your roof.
"Yeah, well, I perfected it," Paul explained. "Before I came along, the Spirit could only do Aramaic, Hebrew and a little Greek. Without my crux capacitor and iconic drive, most folks would still be worshipping Zeus. I'm the one who said, hey, it shouldn't matter if you're Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman, we can all share one OS-independent codebase if we utilize a runtime engine!"
"I don't think that's how they phrased it in the Bible," I laughed.
Paul rolled his eyes. "I blame data degradation and generation loss from copying it too many times. Those letters weren't supposed to be copied at all! A guy goes out of his way to tailor his words to his audience—talk like a Jew to Jews, talk like a Gentile to Gentiles—and next thing you know, folks are stripping all the context from your memo to the Thessalonians and treating it like the Word of God! I didn't write half of what they said I did, anyway. You might as well attribute it all to Churchill."
David's foot kept brushing against my own. I was pretty sure it was intentional.
"So, Jack, I heard you had quite the party crasher recently," Paul said, changing the subject. "Old Scratch himself, huh?"
"Yeah, it was messed up," Jack said. "He claimed Peter was buying damned souls and throwing them into the Lake of Fire. Can't believe a word that liar says."
"Eh, that does sound like something Pete would do, though," Paul shrugged.
"What's the Lake of Fire?" I asked.
"Death for the undying," Paul said ominously. "They say a soul cast into the Lake of Fire can never be resurrected."
"Well, there's no such thing," David said, his foot working its way up my ankle. "I've been to every corner of the known world, and there's no place that resurrection tech can't reach. The Lake of Fire is just a story they tell devils to keep them in line. Wasn't that one of yours, Pauly?"
"No, that was all Johnny," Paul said, "that one time around when he was doing all the shrooms."
"Ah, yeah, we were all on some crazy shit back then," David reminisced. "Good times!"
His foot found my calf.
"You do look really familiar," David said to me. "Are you sure you're firstborn?"
I had learned that "firstborn" was the polite word for people who had not yet died and been resurrected.
"Yup," I said. "First time around the track, yet to do the dirty d-word. Putting it off for as long as I can!"
"He would've known by now if he had past lives," Jack said. "Death-induced amnesia never lasts after this much exposure to the reborn."
David's toes slipped into the leg of my swim trunks.
"So, David, how are you related to Jack?" I asked, before his foot could go any higher.
They all laughed.
"Which side?" Jack scoffed.
"You're related through...both?" I asked, confused.
"Dude, who isn't related to King David?" Paul laughed. "This man is second only to Genghis Khan when it comes to spreading his seed."
"Hey now," David said, "The game ain't over yet!"
"Easiest prophecy ever fulfilled!" Paul chuckled.
"You sure you don't remember any previous lives?" David asked me, not dropping the topic of my lineage. "No dreams of dunes and fig trees?"
I shook my head. David raised a questioning eyebrow and looked around at the others.
"You guys are putting me on, right?"
"Sorry, dude," Jack shrugged.
David blushed and withdrew his foot. Just before it got to the good part!
"Mmmm, I think those gummies are kicking in," Jack said, sliding down deeper into the water. With sounds of agreement and pleasure, everyone else did likewise, and we all had a good soak.
Afterwards, when we were toweling off, everyone kept their swim trunks on except David.
"Hey, I think I'm going to head up to the bunkrooms for a bit," he said, wringing his trunks out and throwing them over his shoulder. He gave me a wink and his ass walked away, taking the rest of him with it.
I turned to Jack.
"Would it bother you if I..."
"Go for it," Jack laughed, "everyone else has!"
I did hook up with David that night. And the next morning. And a couple times after lunch. Between sessions, he talked my ears off about all the places he'd explored: continents beyond Atlantis incapable of sustaining human life, lands ravaged by storms of hydrogen and helium, vast seas of liquid methane, rocky deserts so cold you counted degrees in Kelvin. David had been around since the early days of resurrection tech, and seen more than just about anyone. Listening to all his stories reminded me a bit of my early days listening to Jack, back before all these gods and monsters became part of my everyday life. I was enjoying myself with David, and it took a bit of finesse to extract myself and go spend time with my roommate.
"Jack and I hang out together, just the two of us, every night," I explained to David. "It's just to touch base on domestic stuff, and I already skipped it last night. It's nothing personal. I'll find you in the morning, I promise."
"Aw, go on, stud," David said. "I'll be upstairs on the gay side if you change your mind later."
That night, as Jack and I sat in our den sipping our weed vapes, I asked him about David.
"Tread carefully there, dude," Jack cautioned. "He thinks you're his first love, Jonathan. Greatest romance in the Bible—ended tragically for Jonathan, but landed David the crown. This was like a thousand years before Dad. They had resurrection tech, but it was relatively primitive. Long story short, David never found Jonathan after he came back. He looked everywhere for him—and I mean fucking everywhere. It's pretty rare for a soul to just go missing like that, but it does happen. The whole thing is super sad."
"Is there any chance I'm him, and I just don't remember?" I asked.
"I really doubt it," Jack said, "But tomorrow we can get a home test kit to confirm your status. It'll take a few weeks to get the results back from the lab in Atlantis, but then you'll know for sure."
After that night, David backed off a little, just enough that I didn't have to worry. We still had a lot of sex, and he still told me stories, but he gave me some space and wasn't so clingy. He spent a lot more time in the bunkrooms than I cared to, anyway, though he did get me to hang out on the bi side a couple times. I couldn't bring myself to do more than watch, though.
The test to confirm I was firstborn involved Jack rubbing some oil on my forehead, placing a shroud over my head and saying a prayer. This somehow left an imprint on the shroud that looked kind of like my face. We boxed the shroud up and mailed it out to the lab.
Over the days that I waited for the results, I played around with the idea that maybe I was reborn after all. It would help explain how easily I had accepted everything that I'd seen over the past year. The local firstborns who found the Lodge seemed to quickly write off the experience as a dream. And if I was reborn, I'd feel less like an exception to every rule. It would mean that I fit in.
For his part, David clearly tried hard not to mention the possibility again. There were a few slip-ups. One day he was regaling me with tales of his military conquests and all the enemy foreskins he'd collected. I made an ick face.
"Sorry, dude," I said, "I'm not really into all that war stuff."
"You never were," David laughed, but he quickly corrected himself. "I mean, you don't seem like the kind of person who would be."
Other than that, though, things stayed chill. We became fast friends. It wasn't quite like it was with Jack. Jack and I were similar enough that we could practically read each other's minds, but David and I baffled each other sometimes. He was the sort that needed to be doing something constantly. I preferred a slower pace to life. But it worked out. There was always something to keep him entertained—shooting off model rockets out back with Carl Sagan, making paella with Carmen Miranda, that sort of thing. And there was always something for me to vape while I was watching him.
In the meantime, Jack had taken on a project. One day when we were out walking around the town square, he found a flyer for a fundraiser. Apparently the town's elementary school needed new desks for the kindergarten classroom. Jack had a seemingly-bottomless bank card that was given to him by his Dad, so he went ahead and bought the desks for them. After that, he started reading the local newspaper (so quaint!) looking for other causes he could contribute to.
"Everyone's already calling this place a heaven," he told me. "Might as well spread it out."
Someone or another was in charge of overseeing the day-to-day maintenance of the Lodge, and they did their job well enough that I never had to meet them. But Jack still had to make sure that everything he bought with his card got paid, and I still had some debts from my old life that I needed to square up. The front office on the top floor had the mail slot and a clunky old computer, so it became the place where we dealt with these sorts of things. We dubbed it the Room of Responsibility. We eventually discovered Jack's card did have a limit, and he had to renege on a promise to buy new book carts for the library, so I walked him through the basics of budgeting. He ended up spending an hour or two every morning up in the RoR. He even cut back on the wake 'n bake.
David and I were sitting on the back porch swing one day, looking out over the gold-dappled meadow of remnant native wildflowers that stretched to a distant treeline, when David asked me to travel with him.
"Nothing dangerous or strenuous," he promised. "I just want to show you the waterfalls of Hvergelmir, the pleasure domes of Xanadu, the purple mountains of Gillikin! They all have drive-up visitor centers with great views. You wouldn't even need to walk up a hill."
"How long of a trip were you thinking?" I asked.
"As long as you want, love, and not a day more or less," he assured me. "We could spend years seeing wonders, and never be more than a few hours saucer ride from the globe."
"Let me think about it, ok?"
"Of course! No rush at all," he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
We held hands and watched the sun set.
One of my favorite things at the Slack Lodge was the breakfast buffet. Jack started off hiring a caterer to provide breakfast as a Sunday morning treat, but our guests loved it so much that Jack declared every morning was Sunday morning. The buffet had all of your breakfast staples: bacon, eggs, sausage, ham, hash browns, home fries, corned beef hash, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, build-your-own belgian waffles, a full omelet bar, fruit, oatmeal, grits, cereal, bagels, english muffins and every kind of bread you can toast. It also had all those nice things that you used to see back when fancy restaurants did this sort of thing all the time, like smoked salmon, sliced prime rib and quiche, plus an elaborate dessert bar.
I was digging into my morning pile of deliciousness the next day when Jack called down to me from the top floor.
"Dude, John, it's here!" he yelled, waving an envelope.
I grabbed my plate and headed for the elevator.
"So, what's it say?" Jack asked as I sat reading the letter in the Room of Responsibility.
"Firstborn," I said, munching on a slice of bacon.
"Told you," Jack said. "Anyway, congratulations! Now you know for sure, you've only ever been you!"
"Hooray," I said halfheartedly. "It's cool, though. We knew this already, but I guess it's nice to know for sure. I'm just not sure how I'm going to tell David."
So I didn't.
I spent that day going back and forth on whether I wanted to travel with him. To David's credit, he didn't pressure me at all. It definitely sounded like a good time, but I was having the best time of my life right there at the Lodge. And I didn't want to just abandon Jack after all we'd been through. So that evening, during our chill session, I asked Jack what he thought.
"I say, go for it!" Jack encouraged.
"You really think so?" I asked.
"Sure!" Jack said. "It's not like I'm going to be taking you to any of those places anytime soon. I'm growing roots here right now, and I've seen it all already. You shouldn't pass up the opportunity, though. Those are all great destinations he's talking about. Your room will still be here for you when you get back!"
So I told David I would go with him.
He was thrilled, and the sex that night was extra passionate. We made plans to leave that weekend, which seemed a little rushed to me, but I couldn't think of any good reason to delay. The fact that I was looking for a reason should have tipped me off.
I didn't sleep a wink the night before we were due to leave. David was snoring next to me in bed, which didn't help. We had been sharing a bed for the past few nights, ever since I said yes, as we would presumably be doing throughout our upcoming adventures. I was still getting used to it after a lifetime of sleeping alone. I thought it was probably going to take me awhile to get used to it.
I told myself it was just nerves. I'd never been much of a traveler. I'd always been happy to find a good spot, plop down and stay there until it stopped being good. But now I knew there was a whole infinite world of mind-blowing experiences out there waiting for me. The thing is, knowing the possibilities were infinite just seemed to make me more content to stay. I could never see it all, and I could spend lifetimes looking for a spot as good as this one. The Slack Lodge felt like the place I was meant to be, and Jack felt like the man I was supposed to be there with.
So what in all hells was I doing leaving?
I pretended to be asleep when David woke up the next morning. I listened to him humming softly to himself in the shower. It was a tune he hummed often, and the only tune I ever heard him hum. I had a good guess why it might be so meaningful to him. I realized it wouldn't make things any easier if I kept stalling, so when I heard the shower stop, I crawled out of bed and made my way regretfully to the bathroom door. He was drying his hair.
"David, I'm sorry," I said. "I can't do this. I can't go with you."
His arms dropped, and he clutched his towel in front of him like a rosary. He didn't say anything, but the look on his face was breaking my heart.
"It's not you," I continued, "this just isn't me. I'm not an adventurer like you. It's not about climbing a hill or anything like that. I just...I don't think I care all that much about seeing the world. I'm happy right here. And I kinda promised Jack's Dad I'd keep an eye on him..."
David walked to me so quickly that I almost flinched, but then he placed his hand tenderly on my cheek.
"I've searched all of history for you," he whispered, a tear rolling from his eye.
I gently took his hand from my face.
"I'm not who you think I am," I said quietly. "I'm not who you want me to be."
He wrapped his hands around my own, then kissed my fingers.
"I know," he whispered, withdrawing his hands and turning away from me.
To give him some space, I threw on some clothes and headed out to the Great Hall. I wasn't hungry, but I stood leaning against the back windows, watching the door to the master suite. Jack came out, saw me and headed right over.
"Dude, did you dump him?" Jack asked.
"Sorta, yeah," I said. "I just couldn't do it."
"I get you," Jack said.
"Was he crying?" I asked.
"No, just packing," Jack said. "Really somberly packing."
When David finally came out from the suite, he had a bag slung over his shoulder and was dragging a suitcase behind him. He gave us a forced smile and waved.
"Hey, guys, you gonna come up and see me off?"
Jack and I headed upstairs and met him at the front door. I was glad I had Jack with me.
"Where are you off to next?" Jack asked.
"I think I'm going to climb a Mount Olympus," David said with a smile and a large sigh. "Tallest one I can find. It's been awhile, I need the exercise."
"Send us a postcard when you get there, we've got a mail slot!" Jack said, shaking his hand. "And know you're always welcome back here, whenever you feel the need to be bored for awhile."
"Don't worry," David laughed, "I've got to hit those bunkrooms at least once more this lifetime."
Then he turned to me. I started to say something, but he held out his hand.
"John, it was really nice meeting you," he said with sincerity as we shook hands. "Let's do this again sometime."
"It was nice meeting you, too, David," I said, "and definitely."
He sniffed and nodded, then with a final wave, he turned and walked out the door.
"You look like you need some bacon," Jack said, throwing his arm around me and leading me back down the hall.
And so it was that I came to call the Slack Lodge my true home, and life there was good, for a time.
Next: Dying for Jesus' Son