James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

He turned off the TV and lay down next to me. I couldn’t believe it was happening. He started asking me questions. My name, where I was from, what my parents were like, and what they did. As we talked, and I answered his questions, he moved closer to me, and put one of his arms around me, and took one of my hands. He was so close to me that he started whispering. He asked me about my childhood. I told him it was unhappy. He asked me about school, and I told him it was always easy for me, but that I failed on purpose, because I didn’t want to give kids another reason to hate me. He moved closer, and his hands started moving around my body. It was beautiful. Totally the best time I had ever had. And it wasn’t dirty or perverted. His hands felt like they were part of my body. Everywhere he touched felt like it was absolutely the right spot, and the spot where I would have had him touch me if I could have asked him. We kept talking, and I started asking him questions. The same type of things he asked me. And he told me about his childhood, and growing up in Brooklyn. He told me his father hated him and beat him, and his brother hated him and beat him. He told me that his mother coddled him and that his sister worshipped him. He told me that he was Jewish. I had never met a Jewish person before, or at least not one that I knew was Jewish. He said his Jewish rabbis where his family went to pray had great expectations for him, and believed he would do great things, and maybe even change the world. I told him that must have been hard, that it was the opposite of my life, where nobody expected anything. He said it wasn’t hard, because they were right about what they believed, but wrong in thinking about what he would do, and how he would do it. What was hard was waiting for it to happen. Spending all of his life alone, knowing it was going to happen, and just sitting around and waiting.

We fell into some kind of talking trance. He kept touching me and feeling me. He took off my nightie. And he took off my panties. And he whispered in my ear, and I felt him move inside of me. And it wasn’t like some thunderbolt hit me, or like some passionate kiss in a rainstorm. It just felt full, and complete, and quiet. I felt like I could die at that moment and I would be okay with dying. I felt like however I had wasted my life, and whatever terrible things I’d seen and heard and felt, it didn’t matter anymore. This man was inside of me and he was holding me and I was feeling love. True love. The kind of love that really could change the world.

We stayed that way for hours. For the whole night even. He stayed behind me and inside me. He was moving the entire time. Very slowly and gently. Sometimes so slowly I could hardly feel him moving. Sometimes a little faster. We talked the whole time. I told him everything about myself and my life. I told him how I lived alone on my parents’ farm, which was overgrown and crazy. How I worked as a cashier at a superstore and tried to be nice but had people be mean to me all day. How I lived in a dead town filled with churches and bars and husbands beating their wives and children. How I spent all my nights alone in front of the TV, eating canned food and potato chips and ice cream. How I cried every night because I didn’t believe anyone would ever care for me. I told him about all my best hopes and biggest dreams and my scariest fears. I told him all I wanted in my life was a friend who I could call sometimes and say hi. How I always dreamed about having someone tell me I was beautiful, or even pretty. How I was scared I’d die someday all by myself and no one would find me until a long time after I was gone. I told him that there hadn’t been a time in my life that I hadn’t been lonely and that I didn’t want to feel it anymore.

He told me how he lived with a woman and her child in a small apartment. How he had been in jail and knew people were looking for him because he had jumped bail. How he spent his days touching people and helping people and teaching people about how to live in a world that is falling apart and dying. He talked about love. How love is the only thing in the world that is worth living for, the only good thing that we have left, and the only thing we haven’t destroyed. That true love, God’s love, isn’t about beauty or perfection or man or woman. That love isn’t about declarations made before false idols. That love isn’t what a bunch of hateful old white men decide it is. That love isn’t something that can be written into laws by corrupt governments. He said love is something shared by two people, any two people, man and woman, or man and man, or woman and woman, in whatever way makes them feel perfect and beautiful and peaceful in their hearts. He said love is what I was feeling as he held me and touched me and moved inside of me. He said that if I wanted to see God, see God as he did, and in God’s true form, he could show me. He told me to close my eyes, so I did. He moved his hand onto me and moved his body a little more and he stopped talking to me and I could feel his breath on my neck and my cheek. It built inside of me. God built up inside of me. And the more he moved, the more it built. And his breath felt hot and smelled sweet. And he kept moving, real slow, and moving real deep inside, and it built until I saw it and felt it. It was love, and joy, and pleasure, and every part of my body sang some song I had never heard but was the prettiest, most beautiful song ever, and it was blinding and pure and my brain went the whitest white ever, and I saw infinity, forever and ever, I saw infinity, and even understood it, and understood everything else in the world, all the hate and rage and death and passion and jealousy and murder, and none of them even mattered. I felt one hundred percent secure. I felt nothing bad. I saw the past and the future. It was the greatest second of my life. Really the greatest, and I knew in that one second I was experiencing God. The real God. The true God. The eternal God. The God that can’t be in a book or in a church or on a Sunday TV show or on a cross or a star. The God that can’t be explained or described or written about or taught or preached. The God that can’t be forced upon people or used to damn them. And I loved that God, that perfect amazing unbelievable true God. And I knew that none of the other Gods meant anything.

When that moment ended, Ben kept moving and breathing very slowly. I didn’t know what to say and I guess I didn’t want to say anything. Nothing I would have said would have meant anything or even mattered. So I just kept my eyes closed and listened to him breathe and felt him. And it just kept going, for the whole night, him inside of me. His hands moving all over me. The two of us loving each other. He kept speaking but I don’t know what he was saying. All I know is what I felt. God, God, and more God. God all night. When the sun came up, he stopped moving but stayed inside of me and just held me. Finally I said something to him.

Ben.

Yes.

I don’t ever want you to leave.

I’m going to leave in a little while.

Please.

Come with me if you want.

Where?

I have to find some food and go back to the Bronx.

What will I do?

Whatever you want.

What will your woman say?

She’s her own woman.

What will she say?

She’ll say hello, and welcome you.

He kissed me softly on the cheek and pulled away from me. I felt him come right out of me. And not just physically. I felt it right in my heart too. And I felt like I had lost something. But not something silly, like my keys or my gum. More like my arm or my foot or something, something that really mattered. Like something that I could live without, but would make life much harder if it were missing. And life is hard enough. Life is hard enough with everything we’re given. With what I used to think God gave us, before I knew the truth. Before I realized that all that Bible nonsense is just silly. That Bibles are just books, like any book is just a book. Except maybe Bibles are more boring and more ridiculous and harder to read. And even though they say all sorts of things, and make all sorts of promises, they’re full of lies, or lies if you’re foolish enough to believe they contain something real. I know that God doesn’t give us anything in life. So God can’t take anything away. But a real person can give, and can take away. And when Ben was no longer inside of me, I felt something was gone. Something that was more than anything I’d ever known. Something greater than a made-up God in an old dusty book.