Hell Is for Real, Too : A Middle-aged Accountant?s Astounding Story of His Trip to Hell and Back (9781101571026) Read online

  I continued to rage at God. I took his name in vain; I used more curse words than a rapper with Tourette’s. But each slander against the Lord only sealed my fate. Begging and pleading got me nowhere. Regardless of what I said, Oscar had the same quizzical look that my wife had when I told her about the tradition of oral sex on the wedding night.

  Finally Oscar said, “Look, you need to calm down. Would you like me to have a doctor prescribe something for you?”

  Being a typical middle-aged American male whose life is spent gobbling Lipitor and Xanax like Tic Tacs, I said, “Yes.”

  Oscar snapped his fingers and a physician magically appeared. It was Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

  It finally dawned on me. I really was dead.

  The Five Stages of Dying

  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was right. There are five stages of dying and I had already been through two of them: denial and anger. Before I could move on, I had to deal with the next three.

  First was bargaining. I looked upward, where I imagined God to be. I beseeched him. “God, if you get me out of here I promise to be a good man. I promise to follow seventy percent of the Ten Commandments. I will never hack into Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account again. I will never use the word ‘irregardless’ again. And I will give one percent of my income to charity.”

  No response.

  “Two percent.”

  Nothing.

  I realized this was the time to throw deep. I said, “Two point five percent. And off the gross, not the net.”

  Nothing.

  I felt a hand gently touch my shoulder . . . then another touched my ass. One was Oscar’s. The other hand was a TSA agent’s. Why they need to look for concealed weapons when you’re dead is beyond me. I later discovered that TSA agents aren’t in hell; they just like to volunteer there, for fun.

  Oscar gently told me, “It’s too late.”

  I said, “You mean this is it?”

  Oscar said, “No, it’s too late in the day. This is Friday and God takes off at noon.”

  Lazy bastard. So it’s more of an “on the seventh day he rested but he takes off early and has long weekends” kind of place. I don’t remember that part of Genesis.

  I became depressed: that’s stage four. Nothing could stop me from crying like a twelve-year-old girl who just had her cell phone taken away.

  Kübler-Ross said that this is the stage when one becomes aware that nothing can be done, that it’s hopeless, like starting for the Miami Heat in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.

  Tears began to flow once again. Which is the worst thing that can happen in hell because Satan feasts on human tears. And on Del Taco. Which explains the odor.

  This leads to Kübler-Ross’s final stage, the one you need to reach before you are allowed to move on. This is the stage of acceptance, when you realize that you are in fact dead and there is nothing you can do about it.

  Oscar could see from my face that I had finally arrived there.

  “Shmuley,” he gently told me, “you are ready to meet your new neighbors.”

  And then he told the TSA agent, “Let go of his ass.”

  The Rooms of Hell

  On the lecture circuit the first question I’m always asked is, “Who and what do you see the minute you get to hell?”

  Actually that’s the second question. The first is, “Is there sex in hell?” The answer to the first is, “No, but like sex, there is often an unpleasant burning sensation.” Regarding the second question, here is an overview of the types of people you’ll see as you enter those onyx gates.

  Your introduction to the other residents of hell begins once you’re done with Oscar the greeter. He takes you to a moving sidewalk. As you step on and begin to motor along, you pass a number of rooms where you can see those warehoused in the “coach section.” Yes, hell is like flying on a discount airline or living in India in 1935; there are sections divided by class.

  The first residents you’ll see are child stars. Hundreds and hundreds of child stars. It’s no big deal to them since their lives had become a living hell anyway. There’s actually an entire room full of Coreys, Corys, and Coris. Plus, at the end of the room is anyone who ever named their baby after where he or she was conceived: Paris; Dakota; Buick.

  That next room in hell is full of parents who ever had a bumper sticker that read, “My child is student of the month.” (There are no Asian parents. Yes, it’s hard to believe a cold, verbally abusive Tiger Mom can get into heaven and you can’t. But you know what? Turns out God doesn’t care that your kid plays club soccer; he cares that your kid plays the cello. And is polite. And is better at math than Stephen Hawking. That would be the Stephen Hawking who when he gets to hell will wish he hadn’t announced there is no God or heaven. Anyway, compared to the Tiger Mom’s kids, all of ours are on the short yellow bus.)

  The next room of people in hell is full of snarky men and women writing blogs about hell. Each one desperately trying to sell enough ad space to make a full-time living so they can quit their job at the Verizon store in hell. Which is redundant.

  The next room is an odd combination. Half of them are those midlevel city officials—you know the type. The ones who would close down a little girl’s lemonade stand because she’s operating it without a permit. The other half are the little girls themselves, who flagrantly violate the law and think the rules don’t apply to them; those basically weepy little trollops with obese parents who either shoved them into “toddlers and tiaras” beauty pageants or forced them onto the evening news to whine that their lukewarm E. coli–filled lemonade stand was shut down. Whatever happened to sleeping with the guy from the Bureau of Licenses to get around the permits? I bet Tiger Mom would have given that bureaucrat a tumble to keep little Brittany’s lemonade stand open.

  Next is the room reserved for anyone who’s ever swirled a glass of wine for more than ten seconds before drinking it. In hell, they’re forced to wear an artsy black turtleneck, which grows progressively tighter year after year, cutting off their olfactory senses until they can no longer discern between a five-hundred-dollar cabernet and a bottle of Thunderbird.

  Next to that is the special room for people with OCD. This room is unlocked, with a doorway that leads directly to a back stairway out of hell that goes straight into heaven. You’re free to leave at any time. Unfortunately no one is willing to touch the doorknob, nor can they get their feet positioned just right on the tiles in the foyer.

  Then there are a series of gloomy, miserable solitary confinement cubicles, reserved for anyone who’s ever used the phrase, “I just need some ‘me’ time.” So it’s for everyone in L.A.

  Yet another hellish room is the one full of all the folks who have ever gone to sex rehab. God knows there is no such thing as a sex addict—and Satan knows it, too. In fact, everyone knows it except the therapists who claim it is a real condition. Satan’s idea of punishing them for their horny self-pity is to lock them up together, load them with Viagra and ecstasy, and then put them in chastity belts.

  Soon you start to hear construction noises. That’s the room in hell actually undergoing a remodeling. It has been under construction since the dawn of time. If you were an overachieving go-getter in life who needed things done “yesterday,” your fate is to live in this remodel. You’ll spend all of eternity being told by contractors “Just two more weeks.”

  Did you know you could go to hell for tweeting? There’s a special group in hell made up entirely of people who post photos of every single meal they eat at a restaurant. If this is you, you’ll be stripped naked, hog-tied, and placed on a large platter with an apple in your mouth. You’re surrounded by six-foot-tall sweet potatoes, pork belly sliders, and red velvet cupcakes that take photos of you all day long while commenting how this dish looks “a-ma-zing.”

  Then comes a rumpus room of sorts. It’s for anyone who has ever called California “the Left Coast” or has consistently used the term “chief,” “sport,” or “ace” to address total stranger
s here on earth. They serve their sentence being backslapped by other chiefs, sports, and aces until their vertebrae shatter and their spine falls out of alignment. When they mention the pain, they’re henceforth addressed as “total pussy.”

  The next room is filled with overweight, bald, hairy-chested New York expatriates, you know who I mean. These are the ones who would ruin any Super Bowl party by saying, “You can’t get good pizza anywhere but back home.” Their room is catered in perpetuity by Little Caesar’s.

  Imagine a giant hall filled with attractive, single young women, each one of whom was struck down in the middle of the road while wandering into the street oblivious of traffic while talking on her cell phone. If you think stretch marks ruin a good twenty-year-old flat belly, try tire marks. The worst part is even now, they’re still talking on their cell phones.

  The adjacent room has exactly seventy-two people in it. The famous seventy-two virgins, the ones who comfort “martyrs,” but it’s not what the jihadists had in mind. It’s a trap. Those who have access to this room think this is a great deal. Except for one little problem. Remember that fat chick your freshman year at State College, the one you popped after two bottles of Gallo Spanada? Remember how clingy she got for the next four years? Imagine an eternity in the same room with her. After deflowering, each one of these girls will cling to you as the first love of her life forever. It takes four thousand years to duck out of committing to each one of these girls. And in hell, they can find you . . . Satan gives them your phone number and he’s banned caller I.D.

  Next door to the seventy-two-virgin room is a room for men only, with great, comfortable chairs and wall-to-wall televisions. All showing Kathie Lee and Hoda.

  And then there’s the room that is empty except for one woman. She lived in L.A., was forty-five years old, and everyone knows why she is there alone except her. Let’s just call it “oversharing about her digestive problems.”

  Next is a room filled with local news anchors. Hundreds of almost-attractive people all grouped by fours: the blow-dried white guy or uptight Asian guy paired with either an African American or Latino anchorwoman, the wacky weather guy, and somebody named Fred doing sports. There are thousands of them sitting at their desks staring straight ahead or slowly turning to camera from a side pose to give you that full frontal shot. They are there for eternity, getting makeup, having fake banter with each other, and rearranging papers on their desks as they wait for the big story that will never come. These are the folks who have never learned that with the Internet, we don’t have to wait until eleven p.m. to find out about the local missing trailer park woman.

  The next room has the tightest squeeze. It’s all the major league baseball players who used steroids. There are only fifteen guys there, but with their giant heads and ridiculous biceps, the room is really crowded.

  The room after that doesn’t look like it belongs in hell because it is full of gorgeous women. All supermodels. Then you realize why. In a world of hunger and famine, no one appreciates people who choose not to eat. Or even worse, the ones who eat and then purge. Forget purgatory, this is purge-atory.

  And then the final room. It is best described as a bad spa day at the Dead Sea. Millions of Europeans in Spee-dos. All of them. Imagine a place with commingled sweat, mud, and chest hair coupled with rude French waiters, humorless German comics, and bad English food. That’s where hell warehouses those God never wanted in the first place. Remember, God made the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. That’s the day Satan made Europeans.

  Some places in Hades are not actually rooms, they’re destinations. Really bad destinations. Like taking a departing flight from Camden and landing in Newark. You arrive in the worst heat imaginable. The hair on your body singes off like a three-dollar Brazilian wax at a strip mall. Just as you think you can’t take it anymore, you walk outside to a pool. A beautiful, crystal clear infinity pool, overlooking a scenic lagoon. Perfect temperature. There are only five other people in the pool. Their faces aren’t clear, but you can tell they are neither ugly nor attractive, not really men or women. Think Chaz Bono. You get in and begin to swim around. It’s cleansing, it’s refreshing. You begin to think, “If this is hell, then let me sin.” Then suddenly you hit a warm spot. Then another, then another. That’s right, this is for people who peed in a pool. If this includes you, you better start repenting. What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they know that even hell has bathrooms? Which leads us to . . .

  The Throne Room of Satan

  My first Christmas back among the living, I picked a story to read. It was an old fable about two women who live together, each with an infant son. Well, to be honest, it was actually a Facebook page made by two women living together, and I’m pretty sure they both have kids. All right, fine, it was a video about two horny MILFs who both want to bang the handyman. You happy? Anyway, desperate for his affections, the two women practically tear him in half while fighting over him. It reminded me of what they call “the Solomon solution.” I think it was because King Solomon once, while sitting on his throne, threatened to split a baby in half, and it turns out this handyman kept yelling, “I’m gonna split you in half, baby!”

  My point, and I had one, is that whenever I think about Solomon sitting on his throne, it reminds me of one of the most treacherous places in all of hell, the Throne Room of Satan. It is where Beelzebub does his filthy business while reading the financial page—he likes to see how his minions on Wall Street are doing.

  The Throne Room of Satan is right past the door to room 10. As the moving sidewalk ends, there’s a gigantic door. It has a sign on it that reads, “Abandon all stomach contents, ye who enter here.” And to make sure those who went to public school understand, it has a picture of a stick-figure man doubled over clutching his stomach. No one tells you whether to go in or stand there, so after what seemed like an eternity, I decided to enter. And though I’ve tried to block it from memory, I’ll describe it as best I can.

  The Throne Room of Satan . . . imagine an outhouse at a Tijuana cockfight in August. Now imagine while you’re in there, some local kids do the old “push it over with the door side on the ground” trick. Now imagine you wait so long for a rescue crew to arrive you’re forced to survive on reclaimed tomato skins and corn. Compared to this, that’s the Ritz.

  For starters, every toilet in the Throne Room of Satan is broken. Ever try getting a plumber to show up in hell? You know what that costs? And weekends, forget it. The stench is overwhelming. And why bother lighting a match—you’re in hell.

  Now, Colton Burpo described the throne in heaven as “a chair that only the king can sit in.” It’s the same way Al Bundy used to describe it on Married with Children. From the outside, Satan’s personal throne looks like an ordinary stall. It’s when you go inside that you realize hell is really bad. There’s no floor space to lay a newspaper down on, as every square inch of Satan’s private throne is filled with the largest ceramic bowl you’ve ever seen. It’s really, really big because Satan is the biggest guy you’ve ever seen. Think of Mark McGwire the year he hit seventy. And he really, really loves chili, and cabbage, and lasagna with hot peppers. And you wouldn’t believe how much he likes bran muffins. Satan could take a dump anywhere he chooses, but he always chooses to go in a large public restroom to inflict as much suffering as possible.

  You know how they say cleanliness is next to godliness? Not so much in hell. Coming from the stall beside Satan’s, I heard grunting and splashing, then someone cursing in German. At first I thought it was one of those Berlin Scheisser videos I’ve heard so much about. I peeked over the top of the stall, and there was Adolf Hitler. I could see by the veins bulging in his forehead that he was clearly constipated. Or angry. Either way it explains a lot about World War II.

  From another stall I heard Arabic. At first I thought I was back on earth at a gas station in Queens. Then I peeked over the top of that stall, and there was Osama bin Laden. Also trying in vain to “purge the de
mons.” Screaming that he wished he had a good Jewish gastroenterologist. Which shocked me. All those lentils and hummus, you’d think he’d get something. I mean, Hitler I understand; a diet of bratwurst and schnitzel will bind you up until the end of time.

  Now it all began to make sense. Hell isn’t about concentric circles; it’s about bathroom stalls. The worse you acted in life, the closer you have to shit to the devil and his Mount Vesuvius of an intestinal tract. And you can forget about a courtesy flush. Never. Just the smells of burning phosphate and methane.

  As I walked out, I was in a daze from all I’d seen. That’s when I met Larry. Larry is the guy who works as a bathroom attendant in the Throne Room of Satan. He has a little setup with mints, candies, and, since it’s hell, plenty of Axe body spray and Drakkar Noir. Which is just his excuse to stand by and check out your junk as you’re urinating. He learned it from George Michael. The guy just stands there staring; he won’t offer you a paper towel because nobody washes their hands in hell, even if they handle food. He’s like the WNBA: there, but for what real purpose?

  At that moment, the details of my life began to pile up like the stack of Polaroids I used to have before I started filming girlfriends on my camera phone. I thought about how I treated my fellow man back on earth. Was this where I was to end up for eternity, in a shithouse with Hitler reaching under the stall wall asking for the sports section? “How’s that Jesse Owens doing?” he’d ask.

  I sat down on some cracked porcelain to think and decide what to do next, as my eyes took in what I call the hellholes of hell—the toilets.

  Every toilet, and I mean every toilet, is overflowing. And the seats are wet. The newspaper left behind is just the want ads and they’re soaked because every flush sends a geyser of water in a random direction. There are only three sheets left on the roll of toilet paper and those aren’t Snickers bars floating neat the surface. And it also turns out that not flushing here on earth can land you in hell. Especially if you do it at work.