Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

I dreamed about Ruby and she was telling me it’s just one thing after another. Then she told me that some shit happens and then some more shit happens and then some more shit after that. There are floods, explosions, disasters, tornadoes and none of it makes any sense. It’s all just one big joke you have to laugh at.

Are you laughing?

I don’t think we had anything to do after a couple of days living together except talk. Since Bill’s mom was never around we sure as hell didn’t go to school that much. No one could make us. For some strange reason we started talking about religion.

I started giving him hell about his views of homosexuality. He repeated again that it was an abomination of God.

I told him he was just pissed because he caught his cousin taking it in the ass one day. He came home early one day from school and there was his cousin getting fucked by the next door neighbor. I told him butt-fucking usually runs in families.

Then I reminded him about his silver-dollar-size nipples and how I didn’t want him walking around with his shirt off when I was drunk because they kind of made me horny.

He grinned and just kept going on about homos being an abomination of God. Homos man, homos.

I asked him where he got that abomination of God thing from. He told me Leviticus. I asked him if Jesus ever said anything about homosexuality. I knew the answer was no. I told him didn’t Leviticus also say you have to keep your woman outside the tent if she was having her period? That shut him up. Then he quoted Leviticus.

I told him that as much as he quoted the Old Testament you’d think he was Jewish.

Bill was getting mad.

I kept telling him seems to me if he loved the Old Testament so much we ought to change his name to Crookshankzowitz.

I told him yeah you’re my Jewish friend Crookshankzowitz.

Bill was mad.

That morning I sat down at the computer and made a fake e-mail address that I could send him. The e-mail I made was called ourlordandsavior@hotmail.com.

I sent him an e-mail that went:

Dear Bill:

This is the lord. I have been listening to your religious conversations with your roommate Scott McClanahan. I would like for you to know that I am disappointed in your recent conversion to Judaism. It is a beautiful faith, and one my father started. But please understand that you must return to Jesus and the study of the New Testament or face eternal hellfire and damnation. Your friend and savior.

Jesus Christ.

The son of god.

P.S. Please quit skipping school so much. Remember, drugs aren’t cool. Stay in school.

That evening Bill sat down in front of the computer and checked his e-mail. I watched over his shoulder. He scrolled through his e-mail and started reading it. Then all of a sudden he got up from his computer and walked over to me. He was halfway grinning, but he scratched his head and said, “Jesus just e-mailed me.”

So Bill walked out of the room. I heard him praying in the other room.

I heard him praying for his grandpa and his uncles and then I heard him pray for my grandmother and me. I heard him praying for my Uncle Nathan. I heard him praying that my Uncle Nathan was in heaven. I heard him praying for a girlfriend. “I try to be a good person,” he said. “But I’m very lonely. I’d really like a girlfriend to spend some time with. I’d just like to have someone who I could talk to. I know I’m not good-looking, but I would like someone.” Then I heard him praying about his condition. He said he knew it couldn’t stop forever, but he would like for it to stop for a day. He would like the voices and anxiety inside his head to stop for a day.

An hour or so later he walked back up to me and said, “I guess you think you’re real funny, don’t you?”

I didn’t say anything.

He told me he was just pretending that I fooled him earlier.

It was around this time Bill started taking pictures of stuff. At first he bought the camera so he could take pictures of himself with his shirt off — flexing his muscles. And then he started taking pictures of other things.

He took pictures of trees.

He took pictures of flowers.

He took pictures of clouds.

He took pictures of his hands.

He took pictures of parking lots and trucks.

He took pictures of the Meadow River.

He took pictures of the sky and storms.

He took pictures of the mountains.

He took pictures of old civil war trenches.

I told Bill to take pictures of the dogshit outside the stray dogs were leaving all over the place but he refused.

Oh come on, Bill.

We watched the stray dog crapping outside the apartment. I begged him, please.

He still refused.

The next morning he was going on about the gays again and how it was an abomination of God. He went on about evolution and how he didn’t come from a monkey. I tried to correct him and say Darwin didn’t say that. He said we came from a common ancestor. He told me he didn’t care. He told me it was an abomination of God and that there would be a lake of fire to burn it all.

I told him I came from monkeys. I was a wild animal.

So one weekend when Bill went home I decided I was going to mess with him some more. I had people who Bill knew come by. We went through Bill’s drawer. Then we walked around and put his clothes on and we took pictures of each other.

And even better than that I took his camera outside too when he was asleep. The stray dogs were running around again. I went outside and saw these big piles of dogshit on the ground. The stray dogs had crapped everywhere.

I had an idea.

A week later Bill went to have his pictures developed. He stood in the middle of Rite Aid expecting to see pictures of his muscles and pictures of nature, but instead he found pictures of people he knew.

“Hey, it’s pictures of my friends.”

Then he noticed weird things about his friends. “I think it’s pictures of my friends with my clothes on.” Then he kept flipping and what did he see?

He saw trees.

He saw flowers.

He saw muscles.

He saw dogshit.

He saw giant piles of dogshit.

He saw giant piles of nasty-ass dogshit.

It was steaming dogshit that would burn into all eternity — as if the only thing that survived was dogshit. IT IS.

That night I dreamed my dream about Ruby and that the world was just one thing happening after another. I awoke and I saw that life was one big practical joke full of pain. Someone was laughing at us. Someone was torturing us. I remember being at Grandma Ruby’s as a little boy and crushing the ants on her sidewalk. I saw all of Nathan’s pain and I saw all of Grandma’s pain explaining to relatives that Nathan was dead. “It’s a debt we all have to pay.”

Then she told me again, “Scott, Nathan is gone.”

I told her I knew. I was there.

She sat in her recliner and she said again, “Scott, Nathan is gone. We have to find some way to carry on. We have our own debt to pay now.”

We were ants and God was only a child with a nose full of snot. God was crushing the ants in the sun.

I left Bill alone for a few weeks. I didn’t steal his camera. I didn’t e-mail him from ourlordandsavior@hotmail.com. I didn’t bring up religion for us to argue about. I didn’t tell him to stop checking his weight. I didn’t tell him not to tell me about the Greenbrier Ghost. Bill started going back to grunting and rubbing his hands together and playing his music. He stopped taking pictures of his muscles in the mirror. He went back to spraying Lysol.

Then one day Bill walked into class and asked me if I thought I was funny. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.