Genesis: the old-fashioned way

God created the Earth in three and a half years.

The first year He spent talking about how He was going to do it. Especially at parties. Or around pretty girls.

The second year He spent drinking.

The third year He sobered up, left His wife, and started sexting a younger, hotter deity. She left Him six months into the relationship, lured by the promise of more satisfying sexts from the previous Mrs. God. This latest romantic disaster was, of course, just in time to coincide with God’s greatest professional failure. After twenty-five years of faithful service, God’s employers let Him know they were downsizing, and were no longer in need of His services.

“Oh, man,” God had said to His boss, “how’s everyone taking it?”

“Turns out it’s not that big of a downsize,” said His boss.

“How big, then?” God asked.

“Hmm. Well if you don’t count Barry…”

“Barry’s gone too?”

“No,” said His boss, “I guess it’s just you.”

At home alone, post-firing, post-dumping, feeling horny and very defeated, God really wanted a drink. But the bottles were gone. The fridge and cupboards were empty. A distraction? No, the TV was broken. Oh yeah, the ex took the stereo. And the kitty litter box was full. He was broke. Tired. Going grey. A little fat, too. Rock bottom, God thought, this has to be it.

Thankfully, the big G is no quitter. Instead of caving under the weight of His own unfortunateness, He decided to give hope one last shot. All He needed to get out of this mess was to find something permanent. Something He couldn’t get fired from, or that His wife couldn’t steal or destroy in a fit of jealousy spawned by menopausal rage. Something with poop He didn’t have to touch. That settled it. He was finally going to do it – He was going to make the Earth. Well, it was either that or suicide, the latter of which He couldn’t do for obvious reasons.

When God sat down and put His mind to it, it took Him seven days. As to be expected, the beginning was the hardest; He was not naturally creative. All He could do was dive right in, and start with what He knew best.

God made the world in His own image. First, He shaped it into something He could easily hold, spherical and solid, like His testicles. He had been masturbating a lot in the last few months, and never one to neglect the balls, He found the new world’s roundness familiar and comforting.

But the sphere-shaped rock, naked and grey and unassuming, bored Him and lacked the inherent pleasure of a testicle that God so enjoyed. In a last ditch effort to save His creation, God decided to decorate it. He added brilliant light and corresponding clouds, thick and wispy like the beard He had grown to reclaim His manhood and piss off His ex-wife. He threw a bunch of mountains around because He had never really grown out of His boob phase, and He added lots and lots of blue, sparkling water, for no other reason than He loved a good bath.

All prettied and swirling, the earth still bored God enough to consider getting drunk again and messaging pictures of His junk to the former missus. The world He had invented just wasn’t entertaining enough to distract Him from the bullshit of the last three and a half years. He needed some drama, something more scandalous and perverted than His own life. And He needed to be involved. The world as it stood then was completely self-sufficient, and God was quickly growing a complex that He was determined to squash.

“I could never worship you the way you wanted,” ex-Mrs. God had told Him in one of their joint therapy sessions. “You want so much more love than one omniscient super-being can give.”

Thinking back on that day made God want to smash a couple of planets together until they exploded into stars big and magnetic enough to suck them all into the oblivion precipitated from their birth. He was a god. He needed attention and moderately kinky sex. That was completely normal and not at all too much to ask. Ex-Mrs. God was just a no-talent bitch that couldn’t move on so she had to punish Him by becoming a lesbian and stealing all of His joy and tattling on Him to therapists He was sure just made up their degrees anyway. But she had a point, He did need love, and God knew in that instant what was missing from His newly made world: things to love Him.

God thought long and hard about what those things would be, and He experimented for a couple of days too. He made furry things, and slimy things, but they all either grossed Him out or reminded Him of His ex and that face she made when she was faking an orgasm. Maybe He was an old romantic, but God never had the heart to get rid of any of them, so He left the things there to run around and evolve as they pleased.

Which brought Him back to lonely, horny square one. The world turned, a little heavier with life, but with no improvement in the deference department. He had made a mistake somewhere, God realized, He had been on the wrong track. But with His failure came clarity, and He knew now what He really needed: Something steadily and reliably idiotic; something simple enough to believe in Him the way He needed to be believed in; something faithful and obedient, and needy yet tolerable.

Now that was a lot to ask. God sat in His workshop, feverish and overwhelmed, staring at His beloved Earth, its silly, slimy things; it was all just too complicated.

On the sixth day God relapsed and met with an old drinking buddy of His, Satan. Satan was always on hand to tempt his friend back into sin whenever life was treating Him roughly - what else are bros for?

“You don’t want faithful subjects,” Satan said, hauling back another shot of whiskey and breathing out a victorious hoot. “You want someone whose life is worse than yours, someone you can feel sorry for. You’ve got to make something, then crush it, so it never has the balls to leave you.”

“Jesus,” said God, eyeing the blurry reflection at the bottom of His soon-to-be empty glass.

“Sure, call it whatever you want,” said Satan. “Hey! If you need help with this, I’m always around, and you know I don’t mind being the bad guy. Just ask any one of my exes.” He grinned and elbowed God in His side. God smiled too and went back to aggressively drinking. Maybe His friend also had a point.

How He got home that night, God had no idea. The first thing He remembered was the feel of the cool wall of His front entranceway on His face, and the clock glaring at Him from the kitchen. It was only half-past 11, which meant that the night had not gone all too well. He cursed Satan for making Him do those body shots off of the drunk chicks at that second place they went; they were certainly responsible for this mess. Or maybe it was the bottle of Scotch they stole at that other place? Or that tequila soaked worm? The longer He thought about it, the more He was becoming vaguely aware of having made out with the picture of naked breasts hanging above a urinal.

It was time to sleep.

Eventually, when He made it to His bed and lied down, God couldn’t close His eyes. His mind was a spinning whirl of ex-wives and treacherous mistresses and masturbation and the unblinking clock in the kitchen and nausea and nausea and nausea. He sat up and gagged and leapt out of bed and ran into His workshop where the world was spinning. God stared at the globe, trying to focus His bloodshot eyes, trying to stop it from moving. He weaved in lurches and focused harder but His legs were shaking and His stomach was imitating the Earth’s pirouette. In a swift and sudden start His stomach heaved itself upwards and forced out all the old bones and meat and liquor from His previous consumption and launched them onto the Earth.

And with that, God had made man: His glorious creation. The child He had always longed for, but had never known. Exhausted, the Heavenly Father flopped forward, and drunkenly gargled into the sky and the hearts of men, “women and gays suck,” before finally passing out on top of the world, which for just that moment, had stilled under His unconscious, cosmic weight.

On the seventh day, God was too hung-over to move, so He rested. And with His face in the clouds, He quietly dreamed of a collective love worthy of three and a half years of hard drinking and pseudo-effort.

All of it, of course, of His own design.

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