“You’re adorable!” the Other One said as night fell.
“Not what we’re doing right now? Oh, you’re so noble! You’re like the prophets of old, starved of food and starved of cunt, railing about a God as angry and horny as they! Deny! Deny! Deny! Starve. Starve. Starve.”
“I deny nothing.”
“Right you are. I’ve seen you. I am you. You have grasped all things and taken them to you. Well, now what is this?”
Other Jesus gestured to the hot bread, ripe figs and fish with its fragrant charred skin.
“This is the time to deny,” Jesus said.
As his reflection poured a darkly shining stream of wine into a cup, glug, delicious glug, and drank, he said, “You are the Son of God. And God never denied himself a thing. Any God. Any form. Zeus fucked whomever he wished, every boy and every girl. And your desert God is just Zeus with a hard on and no satisfied urges, drowning animals in floods, swallowing sinners into the ground, casting out mothers and children to die in the desert, striking dead Judah’s children for their masturbations. And you…. You are that God.”
“That is only a face of God. If it is even God at all,” Jesus said. “To be God you must be all of God. In all the stories, when one God does what he wishes, another God must suffer to set it right.”
“Prometheus tied to a rock with his liver torn out every day?”
“Or the Holy Mother driven out into the world when her holy people are in exile.”
“Um,” the other Jesus stroked his chin in contemplation, and Jesus could not tell if he was mocking him.
“But my dear,” he said in a serpentine voice Jesus had never used in his life, “what will you eat?”
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
“Well, that’s all fine and good,” the other young man said, though he already seemed to be vanishing in the lightlessness, moving further away even as Jesus began to construct his own fire . “But remember that when Ezekiel ate the word of God it was sweet in his mouth, but sour in his stomach.”
“Leave me,” Jesus said to the man he could already feel was disappearing.
“I will never leave you,” his voice said on the wind.
“And you know why.”.
He knew the Devil because he’d come to him in the hills of Lebanon, at the temple of Pan. The Devil was, after all, the God of this world, and the chaos of this world, and it was when he had been making love all night and Judas was splayed on the ground, leg apart, magnificent ass in the air like two rounded and furry hills. After he had fucked himself silly and his balls ached with spent seed, the man had appeared over him and the sleeping Judas, and he stood there on his strong calves, sex hanging fat and brown from his brunette groin, his wonderful chest golden in torchlight, and the white paint striped across his face. He had beckoned to Jesus, the horns on his head polished down to nubs, and Jesus had followed him into the darkness of the trees. All around them, as they walked up and up, he could hear the stifled moans of pleasure, and he panted with anticipation to be on his knees, to put his ass in the air His anus pulsated as Pan penetrated him. The memory of being fucked, of crying out loud and shouting into the night as Pan fucked him filled this empty place and all these empty days.
Time no longer mattered, but only the bits and pieces of revelation that came to him. Fasting was overrated, and maybe so were visions. Dimly he prepared to return to the human world, the world where his dreams did not dominate, the world where time was a thing.
In that forest, when he cried out on his knees, the same thing happened that always happened when he was being fucked. It was as if he could feel via the cock that thrummed through him, the pleasure of the one fucking him, almost as if while being fucked he became the fucker. This was who he had been in those last nights in the makeshift hut when John had said, “This is Sebastian. This is my friend.”
The soldier fell at his feet and Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up.
“The Children of God will be naked,” he said, taking his own robe off, walking naked ahead of them, and Sebastian had casts of his cloak, his cuirass, his tunic. He had taken only his sword, looking like a Greek statue come to life, and John had followed. The washing became playing and the playing loving. Fucking and sucking amidst the reeds. On the last night, higher up where everything was green, he had been like a battering ram, like some strange and unstoppable engine. His eyes bulging, mouth drying as he gave himself up to the rhythm of the fuck. Moving from one to the other, a greedy tangle of arms and limbs and hard kissing. As the morning approached, Jesus gripped the grass and was one with the earth, closing and opening his eyes while Sebastian pounded him, his anus throbbing. It throbbed even now, remembering it. This is why he came into the world, to take on every desire to give himself to all, this was why, he thought as his eyes opened and closed and a wail came from his mouth while Sebastian desperately gripped his back and pounded him over and over. Was it magic? Was it miracle, that while he was pounded he could feel himself becoming Sebastian, feel his power, feel his need, feel the pleasure boiling from the base of his balls, thrumming in his asshole, rising, rising, to spurt from his cock?
He jumped back as a geyser burst up before him, warm water shooting up and raining down, Mouth open, Jesus tipped his head back as the water fell upon him. Soaked in the early morning, he looked down upon the valley and saw the ruins of cities, stark rows of pillars, what was left of the floors of houses. Grids on the ground that might be streets, and ruins joined by occasional walls.
Sodom and Gomorrah, the chief cities of the Pentapolis destroyed by God, a reminder of the Flood that was, in some ways, worse than the Flood, where fire and brimstone rained from heaven and still lay, all this time later, on the scorched land. All beneath him, ruins and ruins, and as he watched the ruins became greater, stretched further and further and as he watched he fancied he heard speeches, saw the shadows of people becoming true people, heard the din of life, saw Jerusalem, saw Palmyra, saw Sidon, saw all the cities coming together into one, saw the Dead Sea open up to be the Great Sea, and massive ships with their sails coming into port. He saw the distant hills mounted by step temples, and all the land below him was Babalon, great Babalon, was all the cities of the world.
He saw the pleasure he had known, in the forests and in the temples, men fucking men, men on their knees sucking cock luxuriously, men pounding whores in the streets, then men taking little boys, children by the hand and leading them off into alleys. The bodies of dead boys, used and strangled, a princess, veiled and lovely in her court, covering her face while she wept alone. Now a soldier riding off to battle leaving his wife and children, and he wore a great plumed helmet and he looked magnificent as he died. Queens were there, and kings were there, plotting, and now the children who had been taken away by the men were coming out from the alleys, miserable, haunted, used and being dressed in armor by old men. Vacant eyed they were delivered to vacant eyed kings and queens, who, dull spirited, sent them into the heart of the amphitheatre—where had the amphitheatre come from?—and they ran at each other with spears, stabbing, stabbing and killing and the little boys cried out as they died, surprised by the pain they received, and surprised by the pain they delivered. The living boys, covered in the blood of the ones they had killed cried out for it to stop, but the faces of the lords and ladies, kings and queens grew more savage as they charged the boys to continue. Weeping and miserable the boys murdered each other, wailing for it to stop, and as Jesus looked on one boy looked at him. Their eyes locked, and the boy drew his knife across his own throat, and as his eyes went wide and full, blood spurted from his throat, and as he fell down dead, the crowd laughed and some hissed in anger.
“What a world!” Pan said beside him. “What a world! That could be your world.”
“All the world is God’s world?”
“Does that look like God’s world?” Pan asked. “And if it was, why did he send you?”
Jesus did not look at Pan. He looked at a little girl with wide eyes and fine hair scattered about her head. She had run from something awful, but now stood quiet in the street. A rider on a horse was trotting to her rescue, Jesus thought.
Watching the girl, Jesus said, “The world is always God’s. As you are God’s. You both just seem to have forgotten—”
Jesus shouted as the rider extended his sword and, riding past the girl, knocked of her head.
As the little girl’s head went spinning, and her little body tottered, then fell to the ground, blooding spurting from her neck, the voice of Pan said, without inflection: “Look at them, all the kings and governors and princes, the heads of every army. Look at them. Look at what they do. It wearies me. I will give you all their authority and splendor. It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
He was already on his knees, as were these boys, those girls, that poor woman being lead away to be mocked. There was the dead, headless girl, her throat shouting blood. They were all the same thing in this world owned by God. Made by him, but abandoned in this awful hour. In this moment, when he could barely speak, he trembled. The circle was not about him, but he traced it in the air with his finger.
“What do you say, Yehoshana ben Mariam?” the Hermit spoke in the sultry womanly voice of Magdalene, and Jesus answered.
“It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
A long sigh escaped the woman, and there was a crease down the middle of her face, and now that Jesus saw it, she folded like a book, and the book roared and caught fire, a pillar of flame that spent itself, then left only darkness.
When he woke it was cold, and Jesus stood up to piss. The ground under his feet was smooth and he walked blindly about before nearly screaming.
“Why fuss?” the voice behind him asked. “Why do you worry. Cast yourself down.”
He stood on the edge of the parapet of a great temple, though never having been on the top of a temple, he could only guess which one, nor did he know how he’d come to be here. Beneath him, far beneath, animals were being brought to the slaughter, and beyond the court that surrounded it was the spreading noisy, teaming city.
“If you are the Son of God, why not throw yourself down there? There is… what is that one verse that says the angels will not let you dash your foot against a stone?”
Freshly awakened, shocked by this new terror, Jesus’ voice trembled as he reprimanded, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
“Are you reminding yourself or are you telling me?” the Devil asked.
Jesus climbed from the crenel, and lowering himself down to the parapet, gripped the wall and murmured, sullenly, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“And I am supposed to be the Father of lies?
“You know, part of you wonders. Part of you still wonders. And that’s a shame, to walk out into the world and not know. To think you might be the Christ and the Christ is the Son of God, but to not be sure, to bullshit and equivocate when asked to give a sign because, deep inside, you are a coward. But you are a coward, afraid of your own power.”
“Leave me,” Jesus said.
“Or are you afraid that there will be no power?”
“Leave.”
“You can know. You can throw yourself down right now and be rid of all doubts…. Or rid of this terrible burden. It could end in glory, but I know you, I know you.”
Jesus turned to face the Devil, and was not even surprised to see himself.
“I know you because I am you.”
Jesus looked down from the dizzying heights and then, suddenly, with an ease he had not known in a long while, he swept it all away with one hand and stood on a ledge in the wilderness over the morning desert.
The Other Christ smiled, almost content.
“There, the Little Lord finally behaving like the Little Lord.”
The Other Christ sat down on a stone, his robes billowing about wide apart planted feet.
“Go ahead, what have you learned? “Tell me.”
“You weary me.”
“You can’t get away from me.”
“But I can master you. You see, I have mastered you.”
“Because you have learned.”
Jesus looked at him sternly, as he had rarely looked at anyone, and he said, simply:
“Leave.”
And he was gone.
The air was full of emptiness—if that meant anything. The world was full of life. The morning carried the sound of the lark, and the sound of the desert creatures beginning their day.
A salt scented wind came out from the distant sea, and Jesus pulled on his overcoat and slipped on his sandals, and then his satchel, taking his stick and walking west, in the direction of the Jordan.
All around green shoots were coming out of the brown earth, and see, there was an ancient tree growing from the side of the rock. He stopped at a glittering spring and pressed his face into cold water, then walked on, dreaming of food but taking none from the vegetation all around him. He would savor this hunger, and the strange transparency of starving, a little longer.
He walked all through the day, taking cover in the greatest heat, and then, head veiled, went out into the later afternoon and walked on into the evening delighting in the hollowness of his belly, delighting in the lightness of his mind and the coolness of the air.
“I understand everything you taught me,” Jesus said.
This starving, this resistance, the celibacy, the fasting, the hardness… They are also a temptation. This endless abstinence, the sternness, forty days and forty nights fasting in the wild. They are as much a temptation as is luxury. This righteous rage that burns and judges the world…. It is its own sin.
But I am sin. I have fucked and been fucked, gone to the dark and shall go to the dark again, taken the strange herbs, known the hallucinations, gathered to myself all excess, how could God come to be man do less? How can you be a man in every way but the way in which men are men? I am unshocked. I am unjudging.
As he walked through the night he resisted weariness. He could almost smell the Jordan and Magdalene’s faint perfume, and Jonni in his arms, Jonni whom he would tell everything to and spend the next night making love to until they were one. They needed to be one again. And Yochanon, who lived in abstinence and would not understand his decision not to. This was not the time of burning, but of the Bacchanal.
In the future they will tell the story of Jesus and the Devil, and I will resist the Devil three times, and the Devil will go away—for a time—and promise to return. They will not know, because they will stop wanting to know, that the Devil came to me as one question, the question I did not and would not answer while he stood in my presence.
“Why can I not leave you?”
As the flat surface of the Jordan flowing into the Dead Sea winked dully in the approaching morning, I know.
Shema, shema, Israel….
Because God and the Devil are not opposites. God is in all things and of all things. The good, the bad, the black and the white, the straight, and that which is twisted. I create weal, and I create woe. I am Christ of the Roads, Christ of the dark night, Christ of weeping maid, Christ of the drug induced vision, Christ of the temple rituals, Christ of the thunder. They sought fire, but I have come to bring a Bacchanal. They longed for Yahweh blazing from heaven, the return of the raging prophets of old. But I am Adonis, I am Dionysus. I am Pan. I am the Wanderer roving to and fro about the earth. I am Azazel. I am the Seraph Serpent.
The Devil and I are One.
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