The End Specialist

“I do. I think it’s more than fair. And I am committed to you. I’ve never cheated. I’ve always been there to support you.”

“And you say you love me, right?”

“I do. I love the hell out of you.”

“You said you’d love me forever.”

“I did. And I meant it.”

Sonia sat down. She didn’t look upset. She looked more as if she was trying to solve a math proof whose solution eluded her. That’s what I always liked about her. She was never unreasonable. If she had an argument with anything, it was backed up by sound logic and analysis. Not everyone I know acts in similar manner. I know I don’t.

“Then I don’t understand,” she said. “You know I’m not a needy person. I can take care of myself. But the reason I’m talking to you about this is because I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to build something with you. More importantly, I don’t want to have this conversation with you every four months. I want this settled.”

“I understand all that. But look out there. Do you see anyone getting married? At all?”

“What does that have to do with us? Are you telling me it’s peer pressure that’s holding you back?”

“No.”

“Because I know what’s going on these days. A man in my office got engaged three months ago and all the other men laughed at him. They laughed right in his face. Every guy is supposed to be some macho, shit-kicking eternal bachelor now.”

I sat next to her on the couch. She had a glass of wine on the coffee table, but she hadn’t bothered to touch it.

“It’s not just a guy thing,” I said. “I’m going to be as honest as I possibly can about this, because you deserve the unvarnished truth. I don’t have the capacity to commit to something—anything—for five hundred years, or however long we’ll both live now. I don’t have the knowledge and foresight to say to you, ‘Yes. I will stick with you no matter what occurs from now until the end of time.’”

“But you could commit to me if you hadn’t taken the cure? That makes no sense.”

“Yes, it does. I could commit to you if we knew our lives were finite. But they aren’t. I have no earthly idea what’s coming next, and it’s not fair to you to promise that from now until the end of time I’ll always be by your side. I can’t promise that, because I don’t know. And you can’t promise that either, because you don’t know.”

“But that’s what marriage is. It’s two people saying we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we promise we’ll get through it together. Being married means there’s one thing you can always count on.”

“I don’t know if I want that. I’m sorry. People got married before because they knew, deep down, that there would come a time in their lives when they would become too old, too ugly and too infirm to have anyone care about them except their spouse. You needed someone to change your bedpan in the hospital and help tie your shoes and all of that. That’s all gone now, Sonia. All of that fear is gone. And whatever urge there is for people to find some lifetime companion… I don’t have that anymore. Every guy I know feels the same way. You want something concrete from me? I love you, but I don’t want to get married, and I don’t know if I ever do. I’m pretty sure I won’t.”

Her eyes tightened, like she was about to swing at a baseball. “I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“How long?”

“Ten weeks. I just found out this morning.”

“You spring this on me now?”

“I’m not afraid to raise our child alone, John. I’m not. I’m a strong woman and I know I can do that. But I’d like you to be there. I’d like to raise him with you as your wife. It wouldn’t be a chore. It would be wonderful. Indelible. It would be fifty times more rewarding than spending the next three decades getting blasted and watching football with your friends or whatever.”

“I don’t know. I like football quite a bit.”

“Don’t be a wiseass. Not now.”

“I’m not being a wiseass. This is just… more seriousness than I want. This is more responsibility than I want.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you grew up?”

“No. See, that’s what I dislike. I dislike that, just because I reach a certain age, I’m supposed to hunker down and stop enjoying my life. That I’m supposed to leave all the fun for the younger generation. I’m not buying into that anymore, and no one I know is. This is liberation, Sonia. Honestly, why have this child now? Don’t you want to enjoy your life a little bit more before you weigh yourself down with all this?”

“It’s not a weight. It’s something I want. I’m not having this child as some sort of self-punishment. Just because I can have a child a hundred years from now doesn’t mean I want to wait that long. I’m still a woman. I still have the urge to be a mother, and to be a wife. I still have that drive. You’re telling me about liberation. I am free. I don’t have to worry about growing old and never finding a man, like every goddamn magazine used to tell me. I have the freedom now to marry whom I want when I want, and to have children when I want. And I want this child today, and I want to raise it with you. Not because I’m some wet blanket. But because I know life is going to be better with the three of us together. I want something in my life that means something. Don’t you see that? It’s not some invisible cultural force driving all this, John. It’s just me, telling you that I love you very much and want to be with you. You tell me that isn’t what you want. But is that really true? Are you really that scared you’ll miss out on partying and hooking up other women down the line? Why did you go out with me this long if that was what you really wanted?”

“Because I love you.”

“Then tell me how tomorrow will be any different.”

I had no answer. Three weeks ago, I helped our firm devise a lucrative new type of prenuptial agreement between a banker and his fiancée. It’s a forty-year marriage. Set in stone. No divorcing allowed without significant penalties. The couple agrees to be together for forty years, with the marriage automatically dissolving at the end of that time period, and assets divided at a previously agreed-upon percentage. The couple could pick up an additional forty-year option at the end if they wished. My boss has even coined a new term for it: “cycle marriage”. He says it could help raise marriage rates back up to where they were a few years ago. The reason clients like it is because it precludes the acrimony that usually accompanies divorce. You’re less likely to claw at each other’s throats if you know there’s already an end set in place. A couple marries, raises a family, then goes their separate ways to enjoy single life once more after the children are grown and well adjusted. It’s a win-win situation, particularly if you’re the lawyer brokering the deal.

“What about a cycle marriage?” I asked her.

“That forty-year thing you do for asshole bankers? Are you being serious? That’s moronic.”

“That’s all I can offer you.”

She stood up and straightened her skirt. “So this is it. You really don’t want this?”

“I don’t. There’s too much left in front of me. I love you. I really do. But I don’t have the certainty that you have. I’m not ready.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m sorry all this has changed your ability to love someone. I can’t stay here.” On went her jacket. “Will you help me raise him? Will you support us?”

“I will. I promise you that I will be the best father I can be.”

“Then I guess that’s the best I can hope for.”

I watched her collect her things and move to the door. She turned to me. She wasn’t crying. But I could see the disappointment. She had plans for us. She had envisioned an entire life for us that she thought was going to become reality one day, and she was so very much looking forward to it all. She thought I would feel the same way. She felt assured of it. She believed in me. But now that she knew the truth, she saw me as a different man, one I don’t think she liked very much.

“I’ll let you know when the first ultrasound is,” she said. “I’ll pack up my things when you’re at work this week.”

“I’m sorry, Sonia. I’m sorry I failed you.”

“Goodbye, John.”

And she left.

Date Modified: 10/31/2029, 5:33AM

I Seek The Grail

I have a friend who’s going to have a cure party next week in Las Vegas. He’s really doing it up, too. He booked a suite at the Fountain of Youth, so our trip is guaranteed to be either cheesy in a fascinating, outstanding way or cheesy in a horrible, soul-sucking way. There’s no in-between when you go to Vegas, particularly if you’re committed to staying at that monstrosity. Before the trip, my friend had a request.

“You’ve had the cure, right?” he asked me.

“Yep.”

“Do you have a grail?”

“No. That’s idiotic.”

“You have to get one. We’re all gonna buy grails and bring them. You have to do it. Prerequisite.”

“Oh, come on. Really? I have to buy one of those stupid things?”

“We’re staying at the Fountain of Youth. We have to go all the way with this. I’ll even pay for yours. I can’t have a half-assed cure party.”

“Can’t I buy it when we’re out there?”

“No, because we’re gonna drink out of them on the plane. Hell, I’m looking forward to the plane ride more than any other part of the trip.”

So I had to get a grail. Derrick’s Grail Shop is located on Christopher Street between a gay sex shop and a head shop. Derrick’s is also a head shop, but it seems they do such good business selling grails right now that the bongs have been pushed to a small section on the side. I wondered when the head shop owner next door would wise up to that fact.

I walked in and took a look. They had thousands of the things. I remember that scene from that one Indiana Jones movie where Indy walks into the grail room and sees all these shiny, golden chalices. Only the real Holy Grail was some crudely made cup sitting meekly on the lowest shelf. All the nice looking grails in the movie killed you instantly. Well, Derrick’s had no crude grails—no real grails. All the ones here were like the fakes the bad Nazi guy drank from, designed to tempt you and then suck all the life right out of you.

That said, they were all quite pretty. Some were knockoff versions of what you can get in the Diamond District, with the fake gold and the giant phony gemstones lining the rims. But there were some cool ones, too. I saw one made of stitched leather with a fake gold inlay. Oxo made a couple of stainless steel ones with comfortable rubber grips—the practical grail, if you will. They also had Goth ones, including a grail that had a curled-up dragon for a stem. If I had a van, I would definitely paint that grail on the side of my van. They had grails made of elaborately carved oak, for the environmentally friendly postmortal. None of them looked all that Jesus-appropriate. But hey, they were still nice grails.

I saw one in a Lucite box. It was made of crystal, with an engraved pattern of infinity symbols. I looked at the clerk behind the glass counter and pointed to the box.

“What’s that one?”

“That’s the DX3490,” he said. “Designed by the Swift himself. It’s the same one he drinks from on tour. You can even send away to have him sign it.” He pointed to a poster on the wall. Sure enough, there was the Swift, wearing a white suit and drinking a purple drank out of the very same grail. Spiffy.

“Do you think I could pull off rocking the same grail as the Swift?”

“Truthfully? No.”

He also showed me a room in the back where you can design your own. They had thick stylebooks you could flip through, like choosing wedding invites. You could pick the pattern, the font, everything. They even had suggested sayings you could have embossed on your grail. You could paint your own clay grail and then have them fire it in a kiln. I saw a couple up on the shelf waiting to be picked up. One said BETTY’S GRAIL. I have no clue why that made me laugh, but I nearly soiled myself when I saw it. They had matching grail-and-bong sets, which I found highly tempting, though God help you if you ever confuse the two at five in the morning.

In the end I chose a simple gold one. I wanted a grail that made me feel like a knight who had just finished a long day’s pillaging. The kind you hold in one hand while you eat a turkey drumstick in the other. The kind where you feel compelled to talk like a town crier while holding it. That’s the kind of grail I wanted, and that’s the kind I ended up getting. Twenty bucks. Not bad for the cup of Christ.

I brought it home, mixed a rum and Coke in it, and gave my usual cheers to Katy. I have to say, the Swift was onto something with this trend. Drinks taste way better when you’re drinking them out of a grail.

Date Modified: 11/7/2029, 8:51PM

Field Trip: The Fountain Of Youth

I hadn’t flown to Las Vegas since they opened Fountain of Youth Resort and Casino last year. I already knew it was the biggest hotel on earth, but I wasn’t prepared for the view from the airplane. There are familiar sights you see as you approach McCarran at night: the Luxor’s Pyramid, New York-New York skyline, the Shanghai, etc. But the Fountain now dwarfs all of them. An old lady on the right side of the plane was the first to spot it. She screamed out in joy when she saw it edging into view through her little porthole.

Everyone spontaneously broke into applause and chugged the contents of their respective grails (three steakheads from Long Island on the plane had DX3490s; I’m relieved I didn’t spring for one). I swear the jet spray shooting up from the center of the oval could have tickled our landing gear if we were flying directly above it. I read that the fountain continually pumps four million gallons of water a minute. Seeing it in person, the estimate now feels low. I assume that when they first turned the fountain on, the guy throwing the switch thrust his hips for maximum effect.

Upon deplaning, we circumvented the cabstand (the line stretched so far they had to move up the security checkpoints for the entire airport) and took the shuttle bus down to the Strip. The last time I was in Vegas, the ride took twenty minutes. This time it took so much longer that I asked the driver if there were multiple conventions going on. There were not.

He dropped us off at the main entrance and we walked into chaos. The hotel has over twelve thousand rooms, and this evening it appeared all of its occupants had decided to hang out in the lobby. We stood in the check-in line in shifts; half of us waited while the other half went to get drinks, and then we switched. When it was my turn to fetch alcohol, I walked out into the main atrium and stared at the fountain, a gigantic edifice of water that defies all reason. It’s as if the hotel is trying to put out a fire on the surface of the moon. Colored lights illuminate the mighty geyser in a painstakingly choreographed arrangement. Surrounding base of the fountain are the cure stations: small platforms with a doctor and a single chair that each soon-to-be postmortal sits in to get their shots. Like in Dr. X’s apartment, each chair has straps and belts to hold you down while you are injected. Unlike in Dr. X’s apartment, each chair is a specifically designed throne. You get to choose the theme for your chair. There’s your basic emperor’s chair (made of gold; it matched my grail!). There’s also the Poseidon: Lord of the Sea chair, which is actually a large, chair-shaped fish tank, with miniature sharks and all kinds of imported marine life swimming under your backside. There’s a Space chair, which is shaped like a giant egg and has two hot girls with big fake tits dressed as green aliens on either side of it. And there’s a Viking chair, which features a giant serpent erupting out from between your legs when you sit in it. Those are the four I remember off the top of my head. There were hundreds of these things, no two alike.

I was in awe. I turned to my friend Scott.

“I almost want to get my shots again.”

“You can do that here,” he said. “They’ll throw you a cure party even if you’ve had it done already. They just shoot you up with something besides the vector.”

“What do they shoot you up with?”

“I don’t know. Gin?”

They’ve perfected the process at the Fountain. You get your blood drawn when you check-in (separate, even longer line for that), then they have the vector ready for you three days later. In between, you presumably lose all your money and then spend the next thousand years trying to make it back. It’s incredible. After getting their shots, all new postmortals jump from the platform into the pool at the base of the fountain. Fully clothed, of course. I looked out to the pool and saw hordes of people frolicking in the water, all in soaking wet dresses, suits and tuxedoes, all drunk beyond comprehension. Baptized into the sweet life.

On the way back to the check-in, I noticed a small exhibit called Ponce de León and The Fountain of Youth. It looked like a pointless waste of time, which intrigued me.

“Hey, let’s go in that.”

Scott wasn’t as enthused. “That? That’s for kiddies.”

“We go in there, we finish our drinks, we get another round and head back to the line without anyone noticing. That line isn’t moving at all.”

“Oh, all right.”

So we went in to the exhibit, which was sparsely crowded due to the late hour and the fact that it was stupid. We walked through a dark corridor for about twenty yards, and then found ourselves in front of an enormous, scrolling diorama. A life-sized puppet of Ponce de León was sitting in an exact replica of King Ferdinand of Spain’s royal court. A voice-over narrated our journey as we watched the puppet hop onto a ship, sailing across a miniaturized version of the Atlantic Ocean (with real wind and water!).

In the year 1513, King Ferdinand of Spain commissioned explorer Juan Ponce de León to sail across the seas and find the fabled fountain of youth. It was a dangerous journey, as Ponce de León and his men battled scurvy, hurricanes, and pirates!

At this point, three pirate puppets popped up from the water and dueled with the Ponce de León puppet, who then cut off their heads. I drank to his victory. The Ponce de León puppet made landfall as we kept walking.

Landing in an exotic new land we now call Florida, Ponce de León rewarded his men with newfound riches of gold, sugar cane, delicious citrus fruits, and beautiful Native American women!

One of Ponce de León’s puppet crew then started making out with a buxom female Indian puppet. I should have been offended, but I was too busy being turned on. The Ponce de León puppet soon came upon a giant fountain, which disappeared down into the ground.

Ponce de León’s quest for the elusive and mythical fountain proved fruitless, and the legendary explorer died while trying to find it.

The Ponce de León puppet then shouted out, “Nooooo!” and keeled over.

But now, Ponce de León’s dream has finally been realized!

The Ponce de León puppet’s corpse was airlifted by his strings across a fake U.S. landscape to a miniature model of the hotel we were standing in.

Here, at Daniel Benjamin’s Fountain of Youth Resort and Casino! Do all the things Ponce de León always dreamed of doing! Dine al fresco at Fukuku Oh! See Cirque de Soleil in our exclusive new show, Eternia! Or try your hand at Texas Hold ’Em! It’s all here, along with over five hundred board-certified geneticists ready to give you the cure for death! Only at Daniel Benjamin’s Fountain of Youth Resort and Casino! Eternal life has never been so luxurious! Right, Ponce?

The Ponce de León puppet then sat up, looked at us, and said, “Sí”. We walked out.

“I don’t think that presentation was historically accurate,” Scott said.

“Well, sometimes you have to take dramatic license.”

The rest of the weekend was spent in a drunken fog, each hour as pointlessly hazy as the last. For his cure ceremony, our friend chose the Velvet Dream chair, a throne nine feet high and made of a purple fabric that purported to be velvet but was almost certainly some kind of space-age, sweat-wicking polymer. It was a practical choice. If you’re going to be stabbed by three giant fire pokers, you’re gonna want to feel as relaxed as humanly possible. Afterwards, we visited the Spearmint Rhino IV club. Every girl inside had a long, lucrative career in front of her. I’m not terribly comfortable in these places, which I find reassuring in a way.

Next to the casino floor at Fountain of Youth is a stadium-sized mall that exclusively houses shops selling cure-related merchandise. You can get your pick of commemorative t-shirts (I’M HOT…AND I’M STAYING THAT WAY was a popular choice), steel cookware with lifetime warranties, go-tox clinics for older postmortals, safes, laser vision correction, and thirty-year tattoos. There were no wedding parlors, and I didn’t see a single bachelor party the entire weekend. Just one cure party after another.

On our last day, there was a bomb threat in our section of the hotel. They evacuated our rooms and made us wait outside on the Strip. It was the only time during our trip that I was reminded of 7/3/19, and it unnerved me. The manager assured us they dealt with these threats all the time, which only served to worry me more. As we waited along the Strip, I saw a group of men pass by the hotel on the opposite side of the street. They stopped, looked at the hotel, whispered some things to one another, and then kept walking. As they did, I saw one of them wave to the building, as if saying goodbye. I ran to alert a nearby officer, who seemed unconcerned. The men turned the corner. One of them saw me talking to the cop and smirked. He held up his hands and gave me the death symbol: a cupped left hand pressed against his straight right hand, forming a crude D.

After that, I didn’t relax until we were in the plane heading back to LaGuardia. The flight was delayed for three hours due to traffic on the runway.

Date Modified: 11/15/2029, 3:02PM

A Day In The Life Of A Terra Troll

After my experience outside of the Fountain of Youth, I came across this anonymous blog posting from someone who claimed to work at the resort.

Contrary to what hotel officials say publicly, the FOY has been attacked by trolls on numerous occasions. These aren’t just simple bomb threats, designed to have us running around in circles. One troll sneaked into the fountain area, saw a fresh postmortal walking out of her cure ceremony and threw lye right in her eyes, blinding her. The entire time security personnel was wrangling him and making him eat pavement, he was giggling like a madman.

It’s not the pro-death insurgents we fear while working here. We have tight enough security to make sure guns and bombs are kept out. It’s the trolls that are the big problem. Because they aren’t looking to kill people. They just want to ruin lives. If you stay here, you always have to keep your eyes out for them. Or else, boom! A handful of lye.

—DanBenjaminsACheapskate

I’m glad I read that after I finished my stay, or else I’d have fled from the hotel like a terrified schoolboy. Then there’s this profile of a troll that P.J. Matson wrote last month for New York. I needed to take a shower after reading it.

UNDER THE TERRA TROLL BRIDGE

By P.J. Matson

XMN doesn’t like people.

“I mostly keep to myself, because other people are just annoying.” He tells me this as we sit together in a burrito shop near his home in San Jose, California. The shop has a relatively sparse crowd this afternoon, but XMN’s mannerisms say to the outside observer that he feels anxious, even a bit claustrophobic. His eyes dart back and forth. He never once looks at our waitress while ordering. He scratches his face constantly, though he doesn’t appear to have any bites or scrapes that need relief.

“When I found out about the cure being legalized, I was just crushed. Because the idea that there would be more people walking around, sucking in air like a bunch of fucking mouth breathers… I couldn’t handle the idea. I always subscribed to the theory that hell is other people. Well, here come more other people! I get sick just thinking about it.”