James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

There’s lots of good food in dumpsters.

No lie?

He laughed again.

No lie.

What do you find?

What other people don’t want.

And you eat it?

Of course.

Is it good?

People throw away wonderful things.

Did you find anything wonderful tonight?

He smiled.

Maybe.

I smiled.

In there?

No, I got interrupted.

By me?

By God.

Excuse me?

I was speaking to God.

Like God, God?

Yes.

God from Heaven?

No, the real God.

Who’s the real God?

If a bird dropped a pebble in the same spot once every thousand years, the time it would take for that pile of pebbles to grow to be the size of the largest mountain on earth would be equal to one second of infinity.

Yeah, so?

He laughed again.

God is infinite. And like infinity, too vast and too complicated for us to understand.

Then why do people worship him?

They’ve been tricked into believing something that is wrong but that they can understand. Humans cling to what they can understand, even if it’s wrong.

If that’s true, then how does God talk to you?

The sound you heard was me having a seizure, and my arms and legs and head hitting the sides of this dumpster. In the second before I have the seizures, I see things, and I hear things, I know things, and I am told things.

How do you know it’s God?

Because of what I’m told, what I’m given.

Which is what?

I speak languages I’ve never studied, some of which are no longer spoken. I know the contents of the world’s holy books, word for word, even though I have never read them. I understand general relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, astrophysics, quantum gravity, physical cosmology, and black hole thermodynamics, even though I dropped out of school when I was fourteen.

What’s all that got to do with God?

The first things allow me to understand God as God has been written, and portrayed, and worshipped. As people believe in God. The others allow me to understand how close we are to understanding the real God, the God that doesn’t need to be worshipped, that does not exist as we do, that does not judge us, that does not offer us anything more than what we have.

You sound crazy.

He smiled.

I haven’t told you the crazy things.

Things crazier than going into dumpsters for food and ending up having a conversation with God?

Yes.

I’m not sure I want to hear them.

He stood up, and in the dumpster he was almost at the level of my window.

Give me your hand.

Why?

I’ll show you.

Show me what?

He held out his hand. I stared at him. He was very thin, skinny like he was starving. And for the first time, I saw his eyes. They were jet black, and they should have been scary, but they weren’t. They were beautiful. And when I saw them, for some reason none of the crazy things he was saying sounded crazy. They sounded right, and I saw everything he was talking about in them.

Give me your hand.

Why?

To let you feel some of the things God tells me.

I reached out the window, through the bars that were covering it. As I watched myself do it, I couldn’t even believe it. I didn’t like touching people. I knew they didn’t like touching me. Not only that, I knew people didn’t even like the idea of having to touch me. I always believed I was a good person, and I always felt I was kind and honest, but I knew what I looked like. I had to face myself in the mirror every day. I was, and I am, fat and ugly. It hurts to say it, but I know it’s true. People have told me all my life what I am. They did it when I was a child, and all the way through school. They do it at work, even though I always smile and say hello. They do it as I walk down the street, like they think I can’t hear them or something. And it always hurts. No matter how many times I hear it. It always hurts. So I couldn’t believe this man was asking to take my hand. No man had ever done it. Part of me should have been scared. Once he had my hand, he could have done anything to me. But I guess I didn’t care. His eyes told me he was something beautiful and eternal. And even if he had hurt me, I would not have regretted it. Just to have had it happen once. To have a man ask for my hand, and to have a man want my hand.

It was a little cold. There was a slight breeze coming into the alley. The dumpster smelled like bad meat. I could hear traffic out on the streets of New York. I could hear someone yelling the word tickets over and over. The alley was lit by two streetlights. They were yellow, and one of them kept flickering. The shadows were moving with the flickers. People walking the street were moving into the shadows. I remember the moment very clearly. More clearly than anything, ever, because it’s the moment my life changed. My hand went out between the bars of the window. The bars were round and painted black and some of the paint was flaking off and my skin became cold, even though I was wearing a long-sleeved nightie. He took my hand and held it between both of his, and he smiled, and he spoke.

My name is Ben.

I had hoped to feel some kind of awesome romantic electric charge, like from a TV drama or a romance novel or even a Hollywood movie. What I actually felt was even better. It was the best feeling I had ever had in my life. My insecurity disappeared. My self-doubt disappeared. My self-hatred disappeared. My sense of disappointment in myself disappeared. The feeling that I was bad and wrong and ugly and nothing, that I was a fat, ugly failure, it just disappeared. That feeling of being alone, always alone, truly and deeply and horribly alone, disappeared. He held my hand and smiled and looked at me. I smiled back and spoke.

God.

Yes.

I let go and smiled.

Thank you.

He smiled and stepped back.

I don’t want you to go.

I need to find food.

I have food in here.

It’s not just for me.

Who else?

My friends.

Who are they?

People who want to be loved.

What’s that mean?

You know what it means. You felt what it means.

Can I get it for you?

No

I have a little bit of money.

No, thank you.

I would like to give it to you.

I don’t need money.

Why not?

Because I find what other people throw away.

And that’s enough.

More.

He started to step out of the dumpster. I didn’t want him to go. Ever. I knew that when he did, I would feel the way I always felt. The way I felt before him.

Don’t go.

He stopped.

I don’t want you to go.

He turned around.

Will you come inside, and sit with me?

Yes.

I’ll meet you in the lobby?

Yes.

He turned and climbed out of the dumpster. I closed my window. I met him in the lobby a couple of minutes later. I was really nervous before he arrived. People were staring at me and laughing. I couldn’t blame them, really. If I wasn’t me, I would have been laughing too. When Ben walked in, everyone stopped. I was worried that they would stop him, or call the police, but everyone just stopped talking and laughing and everything. They just stared at him.

He smiled at me and took me by the hand and we walked to my room. I opened the door and we stepped inside. He closed the door and told me to lie down on the bed. I was really excited. Really, really excited. Super excited. I had no idea what was going to happen. Whatever it was would be great. And as excited as I was, I was also calm in a weird way. Much calmer than I would have thought. I wasn’t shaking or feeling like I was going to cry or scream at all.