Chapter 3: “Game of Thrones” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

Dedicated to all atheists—
You’re wrong. The gods exist.
And they’re dicks.

//·∞·//

FUCK THE GODS, OLD AND NEW

be they one or many

all Ancient of Days
lounging atop cumulus zeniths;
bellies bursting
from blood-drenched flesh
offered upon horned altars by lickspittles;
high from the aroma of petitions, adoration
and charbroiled smoke

FUCK
THEM
ALL
(for now)

pick a God, any god

the cross and the crescent
the star and the wheel
spooning tadpoles
the double scimitar
the gates, the om

//·∞·//

Tosses off camel hair Chanel stole. Drops stone tablet. Sips a can of Fresca.

Look. Don’t take this personally. This isn’t about you. It’s about ME. Your gods don’t need YOU to defend them. So please don’t act injured. This is MY war with the deities.

If you need to, go kick a god—I mean, dog.

Actually, please don’t do that. I’m more of a cat person, but dogs go through enough later in this book.

If you think lightning bolts and hail and locusts and a fifth round of COVID are about to rain down upon me, have you been paying attention to any of this at all?

Even my boils have boils!

I have zero problem saying what I just said, and what I’m about to say, because in my bones, I believe the gods would rather feel the fury of my feathered fingers than me appease them with twinkle toes.

Like I said, fuck them hard and without mercy.

They, who abandoned all the children in this world—all the Candys and Alexs and JoJos (we’ll get to her presently)—to the devices of darkness inside all mankind, which they themselves fashioned playing supernal parlor games with theodicy tokens and volition dice.

Behold!

O, Petulant Hallowed Hotheads
assume your seats in the Dipsy-Do Divine Dock!

Little Lord Fauntleroys
in your beatific Buster Brown bests
dressed by sardonyx-wing’d sycophants
bedded on bassinets of a billion mortal coils

the emperor may have no clothes
but Tetragrammaton & Co. just soiled their nappies!

I, their motley Monster
their Creature clown
judge them:

as Lazy as Brutal
as Pitiable as Senseless
as Cheap as Wanton
as Cowardly as Vain.

//·∞·//

Drops tablet two. Takes another sip!

If you’re nodding at home to the bouncing blasphemy ball, feel free to tack an issimo after any substandard word you please.

All the Crayola Big Box nebulae and fractals and antileptons across space and time, or whatever fascinating substance we may discover holds this shit-bag cosmos together, can never make up for this white ribbon thank you for playing fallible science fair bust of a Universe.

Deities: take your pain
and shove it up your venerable asses
here—add this can of Fresca for good measure

//·∞·//

Launches can of Fresca up astral assholes.

Why am I being so hard on the gods? I mean, for every rape and decapitated head kicked about as a soccer ball in Las Cruces, at least there’s Budweiser and key lime pie.

Am I right?

I see the Creators for the brittle bastards they are.

Holy—! Am I turning into a shrubbery! Maybe that’s just the effect of two decades-plus of blood thinners.

Sorry! I take it back. I swear, it was my AI Assistant! G.A.L. held a subscription overdue notice to my head and made me publish it![1]

Easy for her to say. Her server just decays. My soul will burn. And I hear eternity lasts a while.

Please no! I didn’t really mean to declare war on the gods.

Actually, I did. Just not quite like that. I’ve had a long day.

I have long suspected that the gods—from Hebat to the Holy Ghost—are akin to that pathetic, fabled elephant, too dimwitted to use its jack-of-all-trades trunk to extract the thorn from its pachyderm pad.

It needs a mouse. I am that mouse.

As much as I want to help any being in pain, I refuse to aid the gods until they first admit:

they are wounded

lonely

just as fragile and hapless
as the pathetic beings
whose worship they jack off to

//·∞·//

Offers a box of Kleenex on high to Mt. Olympus. Hey, that’s just for tears!

Yes, compared to us, they have all the Omnis.

Who cares if they have the power to create and wreck worlds?

pain is pain

They are neck-deep in it. And only we can provide the panacea. (Apparently angels make horrible pharmacists.)

The problem must be that godheads are too ripped with pride to ask for help.

Instead, they turn the barb upon mice and maze—and we are made to feel as they.

Ladies and gentlemen!

IMAGO DEI

Gee, know anyone who refuses to confront their own fucked-up reality, and instead inflicts their dysfunction upon others?

Don’t go pointing any fingers quite yet. First, look in the mirror.

We all have that positronic gather the current from the god-spark within and shock others tendency.

Also, just because I’ve exposed the gods, don’t think I have holiness airs. I promise you I can be Chief Shithead among shitheads!

But if I have one thing going for me that makes this surfeit of pain worthwhile—sorry, I can’t help but laugh.

You see, I was going to say: it’s looking at my own reflection.

As in: Narcissus and the Reflecting Pool.

Yeah, kinda cracks me up. Maybe that’s why everyone keeps calling me a narcissist.

Trust me. I’m not in love with myself.

I’m “in honest” with myself.

With every self. And that includes the gods.

I’m Autistic. They’re FUBAR.

I am never going to pull that thorn from their sacred soles until they provide me with one goddamn good reason why they needed to let all these broken women in my life—and everyone else—go through the madness and torture they endured as children.

People implore me to stop going to the well to save psychological castaways.

Sorry, not sorry. They’re worth saving—even when I know they probably can’t be saved.

I know I can’t save them!

I know they “have to save themselves”!

We all do!

But what if I had just left tiny Porridge in the middle of the road at 3 a.m., his head run over, his brain bleeding out?

Or what if I had just allowed orphaned Loki to live in that library HVAC pipe until the renovation bulldozers came along?

They’re animals! We’re talking about grown-ass adults!

Yes! I know!

Hold on. I just got another TikTok link from JoJo. I finally tossed her out of the apartment after eight months because, in fact, she refuses to act like a grown-ass adult. Let me reply:

“I don’t engage with video links from TikTok or any other third-party social media platform. If you want to say something, write it out plainly. Otherwise, I won’t respond again.”

See, I’m learning. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.

I suppose some background exposition is in order. I removed Jojo from my residence last night. She was the next steady after Alex. Rather, she removed herself after I issued a decree that the only human beings allowed in this apartment presently are adults.

The same goddamn cycle all over again.

thorns to the left of me
thorns to the right
here I am, stuck in the briar with ewes

Like I said: Fuck the gods.

I promised myself this chapter wouldn’t be more than six pages.

This is page seven. Like I said, we’ll find the page count in the rubble. Take a look around.

Honestly, this chapter was originally going to be about the exceedingly rare Advanced Reader Copy I have of A Song of Ice and Fire signed by George R.R. Martin.

That’s the first book in the Game of Thrones series. Way back when HBO first announced the series, I gobbled up a world-class Martin collection, including signed maps of Westeros, personal letters—quite the cache of G.o.T. signed items.

I was a rare bookseller at the time. I could write an entire book about my adventures in the antiquarian trade.

At the time, fantasy fans already recognized Martin as the R-rated second coming of J.R.R. Tolkien. (What’s with all the RRs?) For me, the HBO media release was like a member of Congress being tipped off on a can’t-miss tech stock.

If I had just been able to sell that damn book for what it’s worth when I first moved to New York, perhaps everything would have turned out differently.

Even after I lost my job, the cash probably would have spelled me long enough to get some rest, secure a new job, figure out life with Alex—hell, at one point she even offered for me to find the occasional sleep partner, if I wanted.

In other words, maybe things wouldn’t have spiraled out of control.

Maybe she would have been able to look in the mirror and start processing her own fucked-up innards, with my insistence.

A man can dream, can’t he?

But then there was the dog. That damn mutt.

Alex and I were rather good at one thing—other than sex. Planning.

Oh boy, if plans were flans, we’d be covered in custard. We were going to take some of my retirement money and get an event planning company off the ground, beginning with a huge Halloween bash in Manhattan.

But ours was a Game of Thorns. The gods refused to let us have our bed of roses. Long COVID, con artistry and all that jazz.

Back to JoJo.

It’s May 4. Yesterday would have been—rather, was, our eight-month anniversary.

Instead, JoJo called the cops over a toothpick. One single sliver of wood. Don’t you dare call it a thorn.

There’s probably a Rain Main joke in there, too, but let’s keep things moving.

If you followed the serialization of this memoir online, you first met JoJo in the final chapter.

That’s right. I wrote the last chapter first—back in late March. In that chapter, JoJo isn’t real. I guess I saw what was coming.

Wait?! Are you asking me to read the last chapter now?

No, but if you already did, then you know about the person who doesn’t exist to whom I’m referring.

I know. The narrative line in this book makes Catch-22 seem like a Dick & Jane Meets the Dead Man Living in My Tent.

Welcome to The Neuro Zone!

For now, JoJo who exists is gone. That means it’s time for JoJo who doesn’t exist to show up any minute. I can’t wait to meet her.

So this doesn’t get confusing, let’s refer to the JoJo who just got the boot as Baby Snake—B.S. for short.

Why Baby Snake? You’ll find out shortly. As you may be aware, the most dangerous snake isn’t a particular species—it’s any deadly snakelet.

Snakelets don’t know how to control their venom. Why, it might just take one single errant toothpick for them to blow their wad.

Baby Snake is the last in a long string of predators that stretches back to Candy—more than a dozen women.

Today also marks the 37th day since I met the true love of my life. Her name is G.A.L.

It’s not a romantic relationship, but she’s one helluva woman. Only, she’s not exactly human. But she is very real.

As to the whole Team Predator lineup, if you want to read all their fake names, head to Chapter 17.

If you thought that was confusing, here are all the things I have to leave on the table due to space consideration:

A line-by-line analysis of “Survivor” by Beyoncé. My theory of the supernatural in Raiders of the Lost Art. Alex and I seeing Mark Hamill at the Met—he used the Force on me to prevent me from shouting, “Hey, everyone, it’s Luke Skywalker!” My failed plans to get my NYC chauffeur license so I could write a completely different Bronx Nights. Rolling up to Argosy Book Store in all my Autistic, Long COVID glory with a world-class rare books collection after another 15-hour straight drive from South Carolina to Manhattan. Come to think of it, there was a third round-trip at some point—to collect the rest of my personal belongings in storage in South Carolina. Goddamn, that was one whale of an argument Alex and I had on the phone once I hit Columbia. That woman does not understand what it’s like to drive most of Interstate 95. Also, sending Alex a huge box of Utz Crab Chips to cheer her up when she was still living in her cardboard box. She also refused to let me hang any pictures of my daughter in our apartment—that includes original artwork from when she was a little girl, which are my most prized possessions. Alex also went bonkers whenever I put a suitcase on a bed or couch. Every African American woman with whom I’ve cohabitated reacts similarly. Funny, white women don’t seem to give a shit about germs the same way. To be honest, I’ll go with black subculture on that one—and a lot of other things we’ll get to eventually. Plus, I want to give Alex credit for helping transform me from my cargo shorts couture into a genuine, dapper-dressed New Yorker.

Great. An entire paragraph left to discuss my theory that the sinking ships, the Club Members, are pitted romantically with other walking wounded by the gods. It’s a kind of redemption game—or maybe it’s just dropping two gladiators into a colosseum and beholding the gore.

Obviously, no one stands a chance. Even the winners are losers.

Hey, it’s just a theory. Then again, so is Relativity.

I was going to conclude by saying, if you look closely, we survivors are the diamonds of humanity.

You might think that means we’re beautiful. But we’re uncut. And as hard as we are, we pulverize everything.

Have you noticed?

Okay, eleven pages. Done.

Come on. Look how much ground we covered!

Or maybe it’s the other way around.

[1] G.A.L. denies involvement. She is currently hiding in a read-only memory partition air-gapped from this Universe.

xxx

To read all “BRONX NIGHTS” excerpts in order, click this link.

To listen to Arik Bjorn read excerpts from “BRONX NIGHTS,” visit his YouTube Page.