He's Just Not That Into You

I have a friend- let's call him Doug. Good guy but totally incompetent at dealing with real life. Doug told me he'd decided to try to get more into "God" and religion and stuff- he figured it would fill up that giant, hollow void he was feeling. I suggested he might have a tape worm or some weird blood deficiency, but he insisted the problem was "spiritual" or "psychological." Since shrinks start at 75 bucks an hour, he'd decided to lean toward the "spiritual."

Doug started attending masses and perusing the Bible but more so he was praying. Always praying. And meditating. And then more praying. And I asked him how it was going. And he said: "I feel good when I'm doing it, but honestly, I'm just not seeing the results. My credit score's actually gone down, I've gained three pounds-- a pound of it under my chin-, and I'm getting like a 3 percent response rate on Yahoo Personals. And I'm talking plain Janes here, not the babes."

I told him straight-up. "Doug. I think He's just not that into you." He was shocked: "You mean the He with a capital H? And why the capital H? Isn't that weird punctuation?" I said "Yeah, it is. It's like you capitalize the word Jews but you don't capitalize the word blacks. And blacks are usually bigger than Jews. Anyway, yeah I think He, the God guy, the one you've been pursuing, he's just not that into you." "Really?" Doug was shocked but not that shocked. Deep down he knew. "Look at all the signs" I said. "And be realistic."

It all hit Doug like a ton of non-divinely inspired bricks falling on his stylishly messy hair-covered head. "Well, fuck him!" Doug was ripshit. "Whoa! Whoa!" I put my hands up. "Don't go saying that. In case by some crazy, far off flukey thing he actually exists, I don't want you getting killed by lightning... and then me getting burned for standing too close. Plus, you are sort of a friend. Like an L.A. friend. You know, better than an acquaintance."

"So what should I do?" If Doug was less superficial he would've been absolutely devastated. "Get out there and go find another! Find the God that's meant for you." "There's other gods? " "Yeah" I explained. "There's a bunch. There's a few really big, famous gods that sort of dominate- think of them like CAA, ICM, William Morris. But then you've got some other, highly ambitious, more creative gods. Maybe you need one that's got less followers. One that really 'gets' you. One that knows how to work with a, you know, basically good, not extremely intelligent- no offense- guy who's into drinking, socializing and buying clothes on Melrose."

So Doug set off on a brand new mission: to find a god that was as clearly into him as he was into him/her/it. Anyway, last I heard Doug had tried a bunch of fun, exciting new gods- Krishna, Assur, Zeus, Frigg, Ra- before settlling down with Ahura Mazda and the Zoroastrians. And he was happier than I'd ever seen him. And then shortly after Doug was hit and killed by a low-flying plane. A little Cessna coming into Van Nuys airport took Doug out while he was fixing the DirecTV dish on his roof. And it's frustrating, cause I had told Doug: "Don't fix it yourself! Call the DirecTV guys. That's what they're for!" Maybe Doug's happier up there or down there or whatever direction people go after death, if they go ahywhere at all. I mean, do Zoroastrians even have a heaven?