Oh, God! Page 2

  “You’re not involved.”

  “Listen—I keep up; I know what’s going on. Of course, I don’t read enough. I mean nonfiction I never read because, after all, I know everything. Fiction I could read more of. But mostly I prefer television.”

  “You watch television?”

  “The news I don’t watch because nothing on the news is news to me. Flip Wilson I like. He puts on a zippy show. Sports I watch. Except baseball I don’t like too much on television. It’s better in the ball park.”

  “I’m having a lot of trouble focusing on what it is you do.”

  “That’s just it. Most of what I do, I did. I created the world, which is something. In six days. I work very fast. But now I just sort of watch over it. I guess you can say in a sense I’m retired.”

  “Right. Exactly what a lot of people feel today. God is retired, absent, dead. The same thing.”

  “It’s not. Retired means I’m around, only I’m not as active. Look at it this way. In the old days, I had a lot more to do, setting things up. That’s why I put in so many more appearances back then. Now I sit, I watch, I take a walk.”

  “You take a walk?”

  “In the metaphysical sense. Don’t try to understand it. But I see everything. I listen to everything. Even the new music. I can’t get no-o satis-fac-tion. Also while I’m on this topic, there was one popular song a while back about believing that for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows. Well, I want to straighten that out while I’m here. There is some rain that just falls. It just falls. It has nothing to do with flowers.”

  I was in way over my head—was I ever!—but I was trying to organize in my mind what He was saying.

  “Well, it seems to me, if you’re not as active as you once were, maybe that’s why people are losing faith.”

  “So that’s why I’m here. I’m a little worried. People today, they’ll worship, who knows what? Like I used to think maybe they’d end up worshiping a car. God would be the 1940 Lincoln Continental. Now I sometimes think it could be an experience, like flying first-class to Hawaii, eating a steak and watching a movie. That could be a God-thing.”

  “Yes, but looking at it from our standpoint, frankly, how much more are you offering?”

  “Listen to him. I got myself a real ipsy-pipsy here.”

  “What I mean is—God finally reveals Himself in our time and what is His message? I’m not too active, so why don’t you stumble along? I hope you make it.”

  “Such a smart fella and you missed the point. Now write this down, word for word, so nobody else should miss it. The thing is—to use the expression—God lives! This is important. If God was dead or never was, then you should be plenty worried because you wouldn’t know if what you got can even work. But God is here and He’s giving you a guarantee. I’m telling you that I set all this up for you and made it so it can work. Only the deal is you have to work at it and you shouldn’t look to me to do it for you. So? That’s not hopeful?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly he gives me. Go. Tell them what I said. God says they got everything they need—it’s all built in, and on that I give my word.”

  I wrote it down word for word.

  “And make sure the story gets placed good, so lots of people will read it,” He said.

  It was apparent the interview was over. I didn’t know what was appropriate to say. Do you say “Amen?” I said, “Thank you.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll tell you what. You been such a good fella, I’ll give you a little personal advice. Your last play. It’s not bad, but you got third act trouble. If you cut a little from Act II and combine it with Act III and make it a two act play, you’ll have something good. Listen to me. I know from this.”

  3

  I LEFT THE ROOM in a numbed condition, took the elevator down and a taxi home, checking my notebook constantly to reassure myself that I had it. Yes, there it was, the Word of God just as He spoke it, in my own handwriting.

  An irrelevant comment about my handwriting. Nobody but me can make it out and sometimes I can’t even make it out. At some point in my life, I stopped trusting my ability to read back my own handwriting and started relying on memory to make out my notes. So by the time I got home I was very anxious about getting it all transcribed with my typewriter.

  When Judy came home, I was rather pretentious.

  “Honey, I can’t talk to you just now. I’ve got work. I interviewed God today.”

  “Is that a new rock group?”

  You have to understand, Judy worked for a record company, so that was her orientation.

  “No. God! Him.”

  “The Him?”

  “Yes. The Divine Power. Saying the words overwhelmed me with my own importance. Emitting beatification, I elegantly returned to the typing of my notes.

  When I was finished, Judy was waiting for me.

  “God, you said?”

  I showed her the letter, showed her the transcript and reported that I, of all men on earth, had been chosen to receive The Word of God.

  “Did you make this up?”

  “No, Honey, I’m telling you. I was chosen.”

  She read the transcript carefully.

  “Sort of a colloquial God, isn’t He?”

  “He’s talking like that for me.”

  “Well, I think it’s good satire, but I don’t think anybody will publish it.”

  “It is not satire. It is fact. Truth. Divine Truth!”

  Now my wife knows me pretty well and she knows when I’m kidding. Something about the zealot’s look in my eyes told her I wasn’t kidding.

  “My poor darling,” she said.

  “What poor darling? I have heard God. He spoke to me. I have been chosen.”

  The next few moments are subject to dispute. Judy claims I went transfixed for about ten minutes. I claim it was just, as I say, the next few moments. But the enormity of it all was beginning to get through to me.

  Somewhere I dimly heard Judy saying:

  “You know, I really do believe you believe this. Which I suppose on some level is the same as it really happening to you.”

  “It happened. It happened to me.”

  “Yes, darling, and we do have some signs—the fact that you chose to be a playwright, your need to create fantasy lives in your work, your recent feelings of rejection in this area, compounding a need to exalt yourself.” My wife was in analysis.

  Judy then made an emergency phonecall to her doctor, outlining my predicament and asking her to come over. She wouldn’t. Her analyst doesn’t make house-calls. She did make a couple of suggestions, though. First, that I definitely come in to see her the following morning. Second, failing that—we make the most of it and try to sell it to Playboy.

  “It is not fiction,” I said. “I know the difference between fiction and nonfiction.”

  “Don’t you mean fantasy and reality?”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Honey, how can this be? You’re not a religious person. You don’t even go to a synagogue.”

  “That wasn’t a requirement. He’s God over everybody. He could have talked to anybody.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to reason out with you. Why would He have chosen to talk to you?”

  “He knows my work.”

  She took my hands and spoke to me the way you’d reason with a child.

  “You’re a wonderful person and a wonderful writer, but think about it—out of all the people in the world …”

  “We should just accept it for the miracle it is,” I said, becoming saintly again.

  “I can’t accept it.”

  At this point, my answer to my wife, drawn from the depths of my theological knowledge—my three shaky years of Hebrew School and all those Bible Comics—was successful in moving her to a position of partial doubt.

  “If you believe in God at all, you could believe He appeared to Man in biblical times. If He appeared in the past, He could appear in the present.
If He appeared in the past to ordinary men, which, if you remember your Bible, He did—then He could appear in the present to an ordinary man. If He could appear to an ordinary man, He could appear to me. So if you believe in God, you could believe He could appear to me.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I replied, ready to settle for anything.

  “And I think tomorrow morning you should see my doctor.”

  “I will not go to your shrink!” I shouted. “I have just had the most important experience of my life, of any man’s life, and as my wife you have a responsibility to stand by me. Do you think I could make all this up? Why would I? Believe! That is the key word. That is why God came to us, through me, using me as a vessel for His thoughts. Oh, I don’t claim any particular uniqueness or majesty. Just that of an ordinary man, chosen by God to deliver His message. God lives! It is so. And I will go forth and deliver His message.”

  It was all pretty high-blown, but I was caught up in my newly acquired religious fervor.

  “I still think you should see a doctor,” Judy said rather quietly. But as I glared at her with my new Billy Graham eyes, she added, “Or else I think you should sell it to Playboy.”

  Playboy was certainly out of the question. It just wouldn’t do to have The Word of God in there with all those breasts. Later on somebody from Playboy did contact me and said why hadn’t I thought of them? They could have run it in the front of the book as a Playboy Interview because, after all, didn’t they do Bertrand Russell once and wouldn’t I think of them the next time something comes up, such as Moses?

  I decided to take it to Life magazine. Life had a big circulation and paid pretty well, too, but that really wasn’t a consideration, since I wasn’t sure I was going to keep the money. Already I was getting purer for the experience.

  I went to see my friend Harry, an editor at Life, who listened to my story, which by now included a very strong statement about how this was the real thing and not satire. He read the transcript, then made a phone-call. It wasn’t to another editor, it was to my wife.

  “He says he’s seen God, Judy.”

  “Not seen—heard” I said.

  “He needs help, Judy.”

  “Not help. A cover story. Or maybe a special issue, but at least a cover story,” I said.

  Judy told him she knew all about it, that she felt I was absolutely serious and she was planning to discuss it with her doctor at her next session. My friend turned back to me, looking worried. Frightened, I think is the word.

  “You say this really happened?”

  “Believe. It’s true.”

  “Quit putting me on. You’re kidding, right?”

  “It’s the Wonder of Wonders, the Miracle of Miracles.”

  “The Miracle of Miracles, huh?”

  He was looking around the office, checking out his escape routes. Wherein I re-emphasized my sanity and launched into my moving speech about believing.

  “I think the way to handle this is to say, I pass.”

  “That’s sacrilege! You can’t.”

  “All right. Let’s be logical, as if that would do any good. You claim you interviewed God. Where’s your proof?”

  “God says He doesn’t do proof.”

  “But I’m not talking to God. Where’s your proof?”

  “Harry, don’t you understand? The message is the message. God says, ‘Believe.’ If you believe, there’s your proof.”

  “Have you got tapes?”

  “No tapes.”

  “How about pictures?”

  “What’s the matter with you? This is God. No pictures.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like ghosts.”

  “Look, I don’t think I’m qualified to deal with you …”

  “I’m not nuts. You’re nuts! This is the biggest story ever.”

  “Even if I believed you, I wouldn’t believe you. But certainly not without proof. Tapes and pictures. Fingerprints if you’ve got them. No, I don’t mean that.”

  “Aha! A little frightened, aren’t you? Because maybe it is true. And maybe you just offended Him with that dumb little remark.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? Suppose I tell you He’s listening right now.”

  “It’s beyond reason.”

  “A typical lack of faith.”

  “Take it to the Reader’s Digest. They love God. Better yet, go on a long vacation and rest your head.”

  “I’ll take it to another editor. You’re not the final word around here. I won’t have God penalized for your religious hangups,” I said, picking up my material. “You deserve His wrath on you for this. You’re just lucky He doesn’t get into this kind of stuff.”

  “I know. I read your piece.”

  “Goddamn you!” I said, pausing for the full effect. “He heard that, you know.”

  At home I wrote a letter to the managing editor of Life:

  It is a measure of the lack of faith in the times in which we live, that if a man has spoken with God, he must protect himself from ridicule. He will not be believed. It is beyond reason, simply incredible, the doubters will say. But I have spoken with God. Not because of any specialness on my part, but out of God’s desire at this time in man’s existence to communicate through an ordinary man, who can in turn communicate with other ordinary men. The transcript of our conversation is available to Life magazine, and through Life, to the world.

  I am an established writer of good standing, and mention this to offset any doubts you may have as to credibility. As to the believability of the miracle itself, the transcript and facts speak for themselves. I will follow up with a phonecall to your office, to arrange for the turning over to you—without payment—of this, the most important news story in the history of the world.

  Thinking back over that note, I realize there was nothing in it to convince them I was anything but a crackpot. But you get caught up in it.

  I decided to give it more weight by sending it as a telegram, along with copies to several of Life’s senior editors. I followed up the telegrams with a series of phonecalls, but everybody was out to me. So I sent another telegram informing them that a messenger would hand-deliver the transcript to their offices the next day.

  Dressed as a messenger, I personally hand-delivered the transcript.

  Just one day later, which is pretty fast response in that business, I received the transcript back by return mail along with a note from them:

  We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Our present supply of manuscripts of this type is adequate for our current needs. We wish you success in sending your manuscript elsewhere.

  Life magazine had rejected God.

  4

  THE NEXT THING I did was to send the same telegram to several editors at The New York Times. I got an almost immediate phonecall from a Times reporter who said he was following it up. I thought that was a terrific beginning and I had visions of a front-page story with an eight-column headline right across the page. Only it turned out he was putting together a wrap-up story for a possible Sunday feature on “Recent Divine Revelations,” combining me with a 14-year-old Brooklyn schoolgirl who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary, the third Virgin Mary sighting in recent months, and an 83-year-old lady in Queens who claimed to have spoken with Joan of Arc.

  I wasn’t going to diddle around any longer, I decided to break the news of the interview on a big scale. I prepared a press release for news editors of all the major newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations, calling for a press conference. I suppose coming right at the news head on sounded just as eccentric as my telegram, but at this stage I really thought the best way to do it was state the facts just as they were.

  For immediate release:

  MAJOR MIRACLE: GOD HAS SPOKEN IN OUR TIME

  The Divine Power’s voice was heard in New York this week in the first miracle of its kind in modern times.

  In a far-ranging di
scussion with a 36-year-old American writer, the Supreme Being criticized skeptics who have said God is dead or irrelevant. He reaffirmed His Divine Presence and the viability of civilization—cautioning, however, that Man should not look to God to make it work.

  The press release then went on to fill in details of the meeting with God, some background facts on me and then called for the press conference at noon, two days later at Manhattan Center, where I rented a ballroom.

  Manhattan Center is a large building on Thirty-fourth Street in Manhattan where unions hold their meetings, public schools graduate, Polish and Latin bands play Saturday night dances—and now God’s word would be passed on to the world.

  Just a few members of the press showed up. Judy was there and there was a Newsweek reporter, a camera crew from ABC-TV News, someone from WINS Radio, a New York News photographer, and a hippy from an underground ecology newspaper called The Good Earth. Well, it was a start.

  I began with a short opening statement.

  “First of all, this is true. It really happened. God spoke to me.” I looked at my audience. There was no reaction. I then told them about receiving the letter and about going to the room on Madison Avenue. No reaction. Then I described the interview itself. No reaction. They were just sitting, expressionless. Then I went into my little speech on why they should believe. Still no reaction. So I decided to ask for questions.

  “All right, what’s the gimmick?” said the WINS man.

  “There is no gimmick. It is simply a miracle.”

  “You’re not plugging something?”

  “I am not plugging anything. I am a conduit for The Word of God.”

  “This isn’t for a book or a movie or something?”

  “It is not.”

  “Crap!” he said. Crap! And he started packing up to leave. And so did the others. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” I stepped in front of the Newsweek guy and blocked his path. “What is this?”

  He patted me on the shoulder condescendingly and said, “Sorry. There’s no story in it for us.”

  “No story?”