Lately I’m bedeviled by strange thoughts. I think I’d like to be a man. A real human being, not a god incarnated in a man; no matter how skillfully executed, a deity embodied in a human always retains something of the divine. I’d like to be a man who has just one idea at a time and not the faintest notion of why he’s on this earth, or what the point of his existence is. A canonical biped perennially unhappy about one thing, anxious about another, always hungry or thirsty or sleepy or hurting somewhere, who can flip in an instant from euphoria to darkest misery.
In these strange moments I imagine I’d like to know for certain that I would die, and that so would everyone else around me. Without knowing when and how, without being able to do anything about it. To be a man is certainly a miserable condition, really quite mediocre, and from a certain point of view, brutalizing, dehumanizing, but also very romantic, it seems to me. I don’t mean to be a man for eternity—that wouldn’t even be possible except by constantly changing bodies—but long enough to satisfy the urge. To try out among other things those elusive sexual stimuli that loom so large in their existence. To get drunk on wine, sampling all the best wines in existence at once, and all the beers, and a representative sample of spirits. To experience great happiness, and immediately after, tremendous sadness, and so forth.
Some quiet, frigid evenings, when I’m passing through a dark nebula’s silicate dust-cloud, I close my eyes and imagine I really am a man. No longer a god but a homo sapiens of the male gender who through a series of coincidences comes into contact with the thin-on-top and heavy-at-the-bottom girl. Obviously I won’t tell her who I really am; she wouldn’t believe me, she’s an atheist. I’ll also stay away from any subject that has anything to do with theology, and I’ll pretend to forget, or almost, the most important things, as the most erudite humans do, and I’ll have loads of prejudices and idiosyncrasies. I’ll pretend to speak just a handful of languages, badly, and as far as genetics goes I’ll listen to her as if I haven’t a clue what she’s talking about, not a clue, as her acquaintances do. On the other hand I mustn’t exaggerate in the opposite direction or I’ll be taken for an imbecile. I must also shine, fascinate her. A difficult balance for someone accustomed to excelling.
On reflection, perhaps the gravest danger is that she’ll think I’m a simpleton. That would really be something if she saw me as unattractive and I ended up in the same class as her colleague with the sunset-colored pimples. Once I wrangle my way in, her first impression will be all-important and all but impossible to alter—even for omnipotent me.
At this point, just to reassure myself, I flood a stretch of superhighway and bring down a commercial airplane. The cause of the crash could not be determined. However, the fears and uncertainties soon creep back.
Maybe confused is an exaggeration, but I find my reasoning disturbed, my thoughts quaking, wound up in corkscrews like those of a staggering drunk. I hope I’m mistaken, but I fear these are the egoistical charms known as feelings in which the bipeds have been indulging ever since I created them. I knew right away that something was amiss. I try to chase the things off but they just cling there, corroding my divine aplomb like sly woodworms. I had no idea that such a thing could happen.