You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse. That’s all the insight you’ll ever get. So you might as well go back to sleep. You were born without a heartbeat and kept alive in an incubator. And, even as a foetus out of water, you knew what the Buddha sat under trees to discover. It is better to not be reborn. Better to never bother. Should have followed your gut and croaked in the box you were born into. But you didn’t.
So you quit each game they made you play. Two weeks of chess, a month in Cub Scouts, three minutes in rugger. You left school with a hatred of teams and games and morons who valued them. You quit art class and insurance-selling and masters’ degrees. Each a game that you couldn’t be arsed playing. You dumped everyone who ever saw you naked. Abandoned every cause you ever fought for. And did many things you can’t tell anyone about.
If you had a business card, this is what it would say:
MAALI ALMEIDA
Photographer. Gambler. Slut.
If you had a gravestone, it would say:
MALINDA ALBERT KABALANA
1955–1990
But you have neither. And you have no more chips left at this table. And
you now know what others do not. You have the answer to the following
questions. Is there life after death? What’s it like?
