Good to Be God Read online

  Then, more significantly, a group of well-tanned, well-off women in their thirties, say one marriage down, seeking some shoring. One sitting three rows in front of me reaching down into her bag has a section of back exposed: a hard, fat-deprived coccyx with half a Chinese inscription showing. For forty seconds or so, I have an imaginary, largely physical affair with her.

  They say marriage is being stuck in a room with someone who irritates you. It’s no use trying to avoid that. The best deal is finding someone who doesn’t irritate you very much, and who 21

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  sporadically gives you something in return: money, an amusing comment, support for your exercise regime, a tasty meal. “Are you sure about this?” I’d said to my wife as she walked out. She was.

  In the past they understood things better. I remember my grandmother saying, “For years I kept hoping your grandfather would die, but now we need the money.” This was when he came out of retirement to ride with a boiler fitter, who was a tremendous boiler fitter, but who couldn’t read or write. My grandfather accompanied him to do the paperwork. Customers loved it, since they had the impression they were getting more service with two fitters turning up. My grandmother was of a generation that understood you weren’t here to enjoy yourself.

  You didn’t divorce, you hoped for a bus with bad brakes. But she stuck it out and got what she wanted: peace during the day and a few extra quid.

  I think my wife was wrong. I think I was right; but I’ve noticed that being right doesn’t do you much good. Being right doesn’t improve the quality of your life, any more than wearing yellow socks.

  “Move down to the front, please,” says the Lama, “It’s an ancient Tibetan belief that sitting in the front row is excellent for the karma.” The Lama couldn’t be more showbiz if he had a backing band, dry ice and laser beams. Within a minute, he owns the audience.

  A brief history of Buddhism follows. I know nothing about Buddhism, apart from the involvement of Buddha and head-shaving. The Lama informs us that there are several brands of Buddhism. I’d always thought there was the man, the teachings, you sign here. But no, there are several brands, most of which the Lama disposes of elegantly. Of course as soon as you get the 22

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  crowd in, the squabbling starts. No business is about business, it’s almost entirely about backstabbing. Whether you’re selling enlightenment or dog food, the paramount concern is to plant your boot on your colleagues’ windpipes.

  “What sets us Tibetans apart is our belief in reincarnation lineages and our tradition of termas and tertons,” explains the Lama. Tertons, being scripture-drivers who find long-lost or long-hidden scriptures, terma, mind-treasure. I find it hard not to laugh. Not that I’ve ever paid much attention to religion, but I know from casual television absorption history is cluttered with maniacs brandishing updates and shopping lists from God.

  “And as in many other cities, many here in Miami have become ensnared by intoxicants such as alcohol and narcotics,” says the Lama with a frown.

  “Cocaine: Toot. Nose candy. Blow. The Old Bolivian Marching Powder. Foo Foo. Merca. Mojo. Coca Puffs. Heaven Dust…

  Green gold… Mujer… Tutti-Frutti… Charlie.” He pauses.

  “Coke: that tropane alkaloid also known as White Lady…

  Snow White… El Diablo… Yeyo… Sleigh Ride… Soft… Studio Fuel… California Cornflakes… Vitamin C… Aunt Nora.

  Bazooka.”

  Pause.

  “Henry VIII… Florida Snow… Inca Message… Cabello.

  Working Bags. Merck. Dama Blanca. Reindeer Feed. Jolts.

  Grout.” Pause. “Azucar… Freeze… Double Bubble. Devil’s Dandruff. Carrie Nation. Coconut. Love Affair. Basuco. El Perico. Scorpion. Zip. King’s Habit… Chicken Scratch. Nieve.

  Esnortiar. Happy Trails.” Sniff. “Sugar Boogers. Ghostbusting.

  Mighty White. Copter. Gift of the Sun God. Rich Man’s Speed.”

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  Pause. “And I’m sure you’ve heard many other names.”

  I’ve never understood why heavy drinking or methodically doping yourself is so attractive. Getting wrecked with your pals, once in a while, when you’re younger: okay, indeed, hooray. But my indifference to booze and drugs stems from their failure to change anything: your woes wait for you. Finally, frankly, I’m too impoverished to spunk money on intoxicants. When it gets too much, my solution is to be unconscious. Go to sleep, it costs nothing, and when you wake up your luck might have changed.

  “You must not think of non-being, because non-being is merely another form of being. You must think of non-non-being,” says the Lama with a smile. He gives that digestion time.

  We’re getting deep here if you start thinking about it. What’s interesting about religions is that they all view, this, this here ride, as a bit of a nuisance, a dreary obstacle course, a ghastly bit of gum stuck on our soul.

  I ponder what sort of non-being Hollis was aiming for when he drank the wine cellar at the club I had invested in. It was the sound of “club owner” that made me invest. It conjures up hedonism and beauties in skimpy clothing, international gangsterism, liberating luridness, everything that is the opposite of being an eker and a disappointment.

  I didn’t invest very much, because I didn’t have very much to invest. I owned one per cent of the equity, so that was the ashtrays and two of the smaller chairs, but it was all the savings I had, and most significantly, I invested against the loudly expressed wishes of my wife.

  Investing in a club or a restaurant is notoriously risky, like marriage. In every age, in every land, couples have made a stand against eternity, and individuals have bound themselves together in the hope of profit. I’m still proud of my younger self for 24

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  having that gush of adventure: as when you’re fourteen and you sneak into a club and cross the dance floor to ask the girl with the fabulous breasts for a dance. You’re fearless because you don’t understand that girls with fabulous breasts not only won’t dance with you, they won’t talk to you. I didn’t understand that I wasn’t allowed to invest in clubs.

  You see others successfully breeding their money in trout farms, in pomegranate conserves, in revolutionary golf bags, and you say to yourself: I can do that. But you can’t.

  At first, we liked Hollis a lot.

  We liked him because he hired beautiful waitresses. This is the great secret of being the manager of a club: hire beautiful waitresses, because you might get to sleep with them and it’ll make you popular with the owners. Beautiful waitresses might also prevent anyone noticing that you spend nights in the wine cellar emptying the most expensive bottles, the venerable burgundies, the thirty-year-old whiskies, the cognacs whose price makes you go whoa. Hollis’s drinking didn’t destroy the club, but then a small hole in a keel doesn’t destroy a yacht either, it’s the ocean that does the job. In our case, the banks.

  Despite Hollis and incompetent accountants (who, like Hollis, had come highly recommended) we were very, very close to making it, but the banks pulled the plug.

  Wives are very ununderstanding about you losing money they told you you would lose.

  Altogether, it was a very dispiriting venture. Apart from the waitresses, all present were rather ugly and unglamorous. The only perk to come out of it is that I’m well prepared for the end of the world. Should our civilization perish, law and order expire, my first act would be to get an iron bar and laughingly beat some bankers to death, and if they’re reasonably young 25

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  and juicy, eat them, even raw if I could still get the right seasoning. I’d also be hunting for Hollis and our accountants.

  Loader too.

  “What about Tibetan divination techniques?” asks the beard-puller, as questions are invited from the audience.

  The Lama smiles. He’s been here before. He answers with a smile, although I suspect he has little time for the fairground
side of Tibetan culture.

  “Let me tell you the story of the bear and the weasel’s shoulder blades,” he says. He elaborates about the dough ball and the butter lamp, while I admire the fine cotton of his pale-blue shirt.

  Is it some ancient Tibetan shirt? It’s certainly expensive.

  “And if you’re setting out on a journey,” continues the Lama,

  “and you see a funeral procession, that’s a bad omen.” Is he having a laugh? Finally you never know. A car pulls up, the driver leans out and says to you: “This is your lucky day.” He’s selling some leather jackets or a hi-fi. You know the goods are murky, but you actually do want a leather jacket or a hi-fi, and the question still remains: is this your lucky day or not? Who will get the best deal? Will you have a hi-fi that self-incinerates in a week or a bargain? And deep in our innards, we reckon we’re owed a lucky day or two. We’re waiting to hear some good news, and if you’re not listening how will you hear?

  “What about the Chinese invasion of Tibet?” asks the beard-puller. He fancies himself as a bushwhacker; he’s been waiting forty minutes for this. “How come your divination tricks didn’t see one billion Chinese coming?” He twitches exponentially in satisfaction.

  The Lama smiles. “Our divination tricks did see the Chinese coming. They foresaw it with perfect clarity, far in advance.

  But when one billion Chinese invade your country, predicting it 26

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  doesn’t help you much.” The Lama smiles, but some darkness resides behind it. I can imagine him catching the beard-puller in the car park later on and giving him a thorough Ancient Tibetan kicking.

  Books and DVDs are on sale. I have to say I like the Lama.

  He’s a salesman and he shields the nothing well. Also for all the celestiality of his talk, he’s a lad. He’s a fan of clapping loins. In the Lama’s hotel room, the jacuzzi is bubbling, the champagne is chilling, the sports channel is on, and the Ancient Tibetan art of muff-diving is practised.

  On my way out, he catches my eye. He nods.

  I know now where I’ve seen the Lama before: in my future.

  G

  I review the unfortunate facts that are called my life.

  Most people don’t understand how easy it is to lose everything.

  This isn’t a criticism, I envy them. Luck. Everything’s luck. You can’t cross the road without it. You can’t get out of bed without it, and if you disagree, just wait. Everything’s luck, and if your luck is bad, there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Nevertheless, self-pity must be the most pointless of the vices.

  To begin with, at least, most vices are fun, but self-pity does you no good at all, and isn’t, as far as I’m concerned, even enjoyable.

  On the other hand if you don’t feel sorry for yourself, who else will?

  I’m sitting in Silver Sushi, waiting for my luck to change, eating sushi. Silver Sushi on Washington Avenue is my favourite sushi place in Miami. It’s the only sushi place I’ve been to in Miami, it’s the first time I’ve eaten here, but I’ve nominated it as my favourite place, because when you live in Miami you have 27

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  to have a favourite sushi place, and I now live in Miami. They have cool art books lying around that you can flick through while your fish is readied; it’s a small, cheap touch, but it makes a difference and I approve.

  Chief among the unfortunate facts: lack of ability. I don’t have any skills. I’m too old to sell my body, and my mind’s pretty bare. I wouldn’t even be much good at menial labour (not that there isn’t stiff competition from Haitians, Cubans and other boat arrivals on that front).

  This may sound obvious, but one of the reasons I was never successful was that I never aimed high enough. I wanted to be successful, who doesn’t? But I didn’t do anything that might have put me on course for the thick chocolate. I worked hard as a salesman, but with the business I was in, and the commissions I was on, I could have done okay, but there was no chance of summiteering.

  I used to say to my customers. “You can have anything you want. Anything. But you have to pay for it.”

  You can have Cleopatra-shaped luminaires. Rainy-morning-shaped luminaires… Anything is possible technically, but you have to pay extra. Predictably, everyone hugged the rut.

  Everything was carefully calculated, products priced to be just affordable by the clients, products with just enough commission to make them worth selling. The cheese was no bigger than required by the trap.

  My investment in the club was another example of my lack of mission. Even if the club had been a success, I wouldn’t have made anything astonishing out of it. Not with one per cent. It would have been pocket money. A good holiday. New suits. No, to make it, you need something that can grow uncontrollably.

  You tend to end up where you start. I know of two cases of 28

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  honourable travel from nothing to abundance. A young lady who married money, and one of my neighbours who was a composer. He used to force me (and anyone else he could lure into his home) to listen to his symphonies. They weren’t the worst things I’ve ever listened to, but close.

  Desperate for money, he composed a jingle for a television quiz which was syndicated all over the world and made outrageous sums of money. He moved into a country mansion, but was more miserable than before since he was celebrated as a jingler, and he eventually topped himself.

  I swish a morsel of cuttlefish into some soy sauce, and I choose the religion business.

  It’s one of the few businesses where not having an ostentatious car or cathedral-like showroom isn’t a hindrance, where, in fact, beggary is cool. For a person of holiness, lack of progress up the power tower can be regarded as a triumph.

  It’s true I know nothing about it. It’s true I have little interest in it. But its great appeal is that you’re selling nothing, and when you are selling nothing you have no product you have to invest in or to make sure is in working order; joining the God squad is about being convincing when you say “it’ll be all right” in reply to the question “do you think it’ll be all right?”

  Religion never has to deliver, it only has to promise to deliver.

  Delivery is always round the corner. Down the road apiece.

  What the Lama was offering was refuelling. He was a refueller, refuelling. It’s about being convincing, and I can be that.

  In my defence, I was honest and decent. For a long time. I wouldn’t dismiss honesty and decency if they gave you a stable income, but they don’t. They’re why I’m sitting with someone else’s credit card in my pocket and a persistent and extremely embarrassing medical condition.

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  And what’s more, I might well be able to deal out some wisdom; it’s difficult to set yourself up as a preacher if you’re twenty, but at my age I can dish out heartfelt counsel on vicissitudes.

  And if you’d like some more “non” on your non-non-being, I’m your supplier.

  Then I realize I’m doing it again. I’m plotting small, I’m thinking like a drudge. First of all, I’m at a big disadvantage in the God game, compared to say the Lama, who has all that Ancient Tibetan stuff to draw on, and who has been at it for decades. It will take me years to get to the stage where I’ll be holding forth in a plush hotel pushing the merchandise, should I manage it at all. And just because you’re in a plush hotel pushing merchandise, it doesn’t mean lurid take-home pay.

  I need to do what a gambler on a bad run is supposed to do.

  Double up. Lose, then double up. Double up, until you get back to where you started. Except I don’t need to double up, I don’t even need to quadruple up, I need to do something like centuple up, thrice. I can see everyone laughing at me back home.

  When you think they’re all laughing at you, you’re in serious trouble. Because either it means they are all laughing at you, or you’re going mad.

  I tweezer my last piece of sushi, and I
decide to be God.

  Have ambition. Aim high. Cut out the middleman. Don’t be holy, be divine. Don’t act as a scripture-driver explaining the hard-to-follow manual, give them an evening with the main man.

  I’ve pretended to be a handcuffs salesman with great success, why not up the ante? Of course, pretending to be God: tall order, but what a potential pay day. Considering my failure as a human being what do I have to lose by acting worshippable?

  Excited by my idea, I return to the counter to order some coconut ice cream to aid me in my plans. The counter is staff-free.

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  I wait for a few minutes, disappointed by the decline in service in my favourite sushi place.

  In the back room I can hear the staff jabbering away in a Miami standoff between Spanglish and Korish. There’s something funny about speakers who are keen to argue, but don’t have enough of the language to let rip, like watching two fighters ten feet apart trading punches.

  I call out a couple of times. The invective hobbles on in the back room. My impatience grows. No one has forced you to open a sushi bar in South Beach, but if you do open one and attract customers inside, you should at least take their order. I was always on call, late at night, in the bath. I always did my job, I humoured the many mentally ill and unpleasant customers I had, and yet I find myself penniless in a sushi bar, with a persistent and embarrassing medical condition, unserved.

  But that’s going to change. The old Tyndale would have fumed. The new Tyndale overcomes. The new Tyndale is unidirectional. There’s a phone by the counter; I reach for my little black book and phone England.