Jeremy Bushnell - The Weirdness

“It’s hard to know how to start,” Billy says. “Things are a little mixed up in my head — that’s part of it, actually — so I’m not a hundred percent sure how it’ll sound to somebody who hasn’t had the same experience I’ve had.”

“This is why I don’t write memoir,” Anil says. “There’s an inherent intransmissibility to experience that memoir purports to be able to breach? You know, thus grounding itself, as a very genre, in a lie?”

“Yeah, no,” Billy says. “Not like that. Well, maybe like that.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?” Anil says.

“I met the Devil today,” Billy says.

Anil contemplates this, drags on his cigarette again.

“The Devil,” he repeats.

“Yeah, the Devil.”

“Which one?” Anil says.

This throws Billy for a second. “Which one? You know, Anil, the Devil .”

“My family is Hindu, man. We don’t have just one devil.”

“Oh, shit,” Billy says. “I didn’t think of that.”

“So, I don’t know, if you’re really telling me that you met the Devil — and I’m still kind of hoping that you mean ‘the Devil’ as some kind of metaphor, like maybe you faced your own personal demon, or you smoked heroin or something — but if you’re really telling me that you met the Judeo-Christian Devil, with the embedded implication there being that Judeo-Christianity is somehow ontologically more real than the Hindu beliefs of my own tradition — I mean, shit, Billy, I’m not the best example of a devout practicing Hindu, but don’t take that to mean that there aren’t a fuck-ton of them out there. And I’m not saying that a billion Hindus can’t all be wrong — I’m pretty sure they all are , in fact — but if they’re all wrong, I guarantee you that the motherfucking Christians aren’t right .”

“I don’t mean to be offensive,” Billy says, cringing. “Is this offensive?”

“Yes,” Anil says. “You’re basically a racist.”

“I’m sorry,” Billy blurts.

“No, man, would you relax?” Anil says. “We’ve been friends for like ten years and you still don’t know when I’m fucking with you?”

“He did something to my brain,” Billy says, morosely. “He did something to my brain and nothing makes sense any more.”

Anil gives him a long look.

“Okay, see, now you sound like a crazy person,” Anil says. “This seems like an actual step down from when you were just going on about the Devil. Maybe you’d better start over.”

“I woke up this morning,” Billy says, “and there was this guy in the apartment.” That seems like a workable way in. He continues from there. Anil finishes his cigarette and starts a second one and doesn’t interrupt. When Billy finishes he closes his eyes, waiting for judgment.

“So what about God?” Anil says, finally.

Billy opens his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“If you believe in the Devil now, you should believe in God,” Anil says. He points upward, by way of illustration.

“Yeah,” Billy says. “That would make sense. But remember the part where I said things don’t make sense any more?”

“I’m going to say a word and I want you to tell me if you have any special feeling about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

“The word is: Jesus.”

Billy throws out his hands, exasperated. “Really, dude? Really?”

“What?”

“ Jesus? Jesus isn’t exactly an emotionally neutral word for anybody raised in the goddamn Western world . It’s maybe one of the top ten words that we have special feelings about? ‘Jesus,’ ‘taxes,’ ‘pedophile,’ and I’m sure there are seven others? But if you’re asking me if I have any special feeling about that word that I didn’t have yesterday, then the answer is no.”

“Okay,” Anil says. “That’s weird.”

“Yeah, asshole, I know. That’s where we came in, remember? Give me a cigarette.”

“I thought you quit.”

“I reserve the right to be un-quit in a mental health emergency such as the one we clearly have before us today.”

“Fair enough.” They huddle together to get Billy lit, and then they separate, standing there for a minute, eyeing one another somewhat suspiciously.

“I dunno, man, you seem normal to me,” Anil says, finally.

“I feel normal,” Billy says. “Except there’s like this one belief in my head that I just can’t make fit.”

“You know what I think?” Anil says. “I think you got pranked.”

Billy, dragging on his cigarette, shakes his head with a vigorous no, but Anil carries on: “I think Jørgen and some buddy of his got the best of you. You said he was out of town, right?”

“I guess,” Billy admits. “At the electronic music dude convention.”

“He probably had some buddy who was coming into the city and needed a place to crash. He probably got in touch— Hey, buddy, can I stay with you? — and Jørgen was like Perfect, I’m not even there, you can crash in my bed. I’ll send you the key. I got this roommate though … One thing led to another and they got into their heads that it’d be a good idea to freak you out. I mean, did he know anything about you that Jørgen doesn’t know?”

Billy considers this. “No.”

“This whole devil thing sounds like something one of his friends would come up with. You remember he spent like all of last year palling around with those death metal dudes? Guys with a kinda Jotunheim look about them? Dudes in druid robes who maybe had a White Power background?”

“Yeah, but this guy didn’t look like that ,” Billy says. “He just looked kind of normal.”

“I don’t know,” Anil says. “Maybe somebody who grew out of that stage?”

Billy considers Lucifer’s shaved head and stubble. “Could be,” he concludes. “But what about the part where, you know, where he reached in and like touched my brain ?”

“Tricky,” Anil says. “But someone who has maybe some stage magic experience? Somebody who had done some hypnotism?”

“Yes! He sounded like an R-rated hypnotist!”

“Coupled perhaps with an unusually receptive, naïve subject … it’s not ironclad, but it makes loads more sense than the alternative. I’ll bet they got the whole thing on video. It’s probably up on YouTube right now. You’d better hope you comported yourself with your usual dignity throughout the experience.”

Billy remembers cowering in the corner, and he winces. “Is that legal?” he asks. “To put me on YouTube without my permission? With an … intention to humiliate?”

“Dude,” Anil says. “You’re not going to sue your roommate just because he punk’d you.”

“Don’t say punk’d ,” Billy says. “That is not a word.”

“Don’t worry, buddy. If they did something like that, it’s cool, they’ll take it down as soon as they know you figured it out. Look, we’re going to go see the Ghoul, right? We should have left ten minutes ago, I’m just saying. If you’re online somewhere, looking like an idiot, the Ghoul will be able to find it. Fuck, he’s probably already seen it. So you call Jørgen, you admit that he punk’d you, you guys’ll have a laugh, he’ll take it down. That’ll be it. You’ll go home tonight, the quote-unquote Devil will be there, you’ll get to meet him a second time and you’ll see that everything’s cool, tomorrow you’ll be all like He actually turned out to be a really funny guy .”

Put that way it doesn’t sound so bad. Billy’s been meaning to call Jørgen anyway. And as they head out, he can almost make Anil’s version of events seem plausible. There is only one problem with it. The switch in Billy’s head, the one that tells him that this guy was actually the Devil? It’s still stuck, determinedly, in the ON position.