ezekiel: torn between worlds (written June 30, 2020) — fiction

now i'm really getting dizzy

Above: prospect park December 2021

Chapter One

I thought often about how one small accident could end it all. Whenever I was standing in the kitchen in the middle of tenth grade, I knew I was possibly seconds away from oblivion. I never knew where this impulse came from. But I was terrified every time I held a knife. I was convinced I was going to stab myself in the chest or abdomen. I knew if I did it fast, there would be no going back. I’d just die.

I remember standing there with a knife in front of me. I was about to cut some grape fruit into pieces. I was frozen for a moment, so overwhelmed by a fantasy about plunging it into my stomach that I was too scared to pick it up. When I finally did, and it pierced the shell of the grapefruit, I thought of how easily it could just pierce through the skin on my belly. I thought about how easy it would be to press it deep inside me. The process couldn’t be reversed.

I didn’t want to ever be an atheist. And I knew it was my consideration of atheism that made me like this. These theories, long rejected, were creeping into my head, convincing me to believe. That humans were an accidental outcome of evolution, that my body was the body of an animal and there was nothing beyond it. That the universe was 13 billion years old, that the Earth was 4.5 billion years old, that billions of years were before us stretching out into a black future. That amidst all that infinite time, I existed for a mere moment, my consciousness an accident or an illusion. That once I was dead, I would no longer be an entity in any sense.

It didn’t seem like enough to explain my depression. The misery I felt every day. The terror I felt in the face of the emptiness that might be reality, an emptiness I had rejected for years, an emptiness I once knew was filled by God. That terror made me both want to die and want to live; it made death scarier than it had ever been before. But my depression was bigger than that. My depression was a true hatred for my being, a conviction the world was better without me, a conviction the basis for which I cannot explain.

“Hell is even worse than non-existence, Ezekiel,” my parents had always taught me. That’s where all the non-Christians would go. They would wish they were really dead, they would wish they did not exist. I couldn’t believe it anymore, though. I couldn’t believe the idea that non-existence was better than Hell.

My fear of non-existence was the only thing that held me back each time I fantasized about plunging the knife into my belly. In a way, my creeping doubts were saving me.

And so I don’t know why I was depressed. I did try to explain it using the lens of my weakening faith. But could it explain how much I hated myself? Could it explain how scared I was that everyone else secretly hated me? Could it explain how I felt like my life was going nowhere?

“Yes, Ezekiel,” my youth pastor told me. “There is nothing darker than atheism.”

I didn’t tell him I fantasized about killing myself; only that I was very sad. I didn’t want him to tell my parents. I didn’t want to be institutionalized or something.

He told me he was an atheist for a couple years when he was a teenager. He lost all sense of right and wrong. He lost the anchor that kept him protected by God in the great storm of human life. He was consumed by terror, like me, of non-existence, a state in which one cannot imagine being, because being is terminated.

“I did marijuana,” he said. “I drank. I got herpes. I hated myself. It was a dark time.”

I prayed to God to restore my faith. But it seemed existentially weakened. My certainty of a 6000-year-old Earth, of intelligent design, of Jesus Christ’s eventual Second Coming - none of it was ever revived. I knew in my soul that I was almost just a nominal Christian now, and that I might be that way for the rest of my life.

“Strengthening your faith in Christ,” my youth pastor told me, “is the only way to get back the joy in your life.”

Months later, it was summer. I was laying with my new girlfriend, Rachel, in the grass of somebody’s backyard during a party. It was night. We were far away from the others; we could hear their voices on the other side of the yard. We couldn’t understand their words anymore than we understood the hundreds of croaking frogs and chirping crickets in the ponds and trees around us. We watched fireflies glowing as they flew in the air around us. She told me she liked listening to my heartbeat when her face was resting on my chest.

I stopped thinking about my hypothetical non-existence. I went to Rachel’s church with her every Sunday.

“I want to raise our kids in this church,” she told me in the middle of eleventh grade. We were cuddling in the backseat of my car late at night on the side of the road in a dark subdivision.

“We will,” I said.

Chapter Two

As our graduation from high school approached that May, I was sitting in a basement hanging out with Rachel and a few of her friends. Peter was on the other end of a couch while Rachel reclined on my lap, her legs stretching out toward Peter’s thighs. Her hand held mine, her fingers caressing my skin. Like her, Peter was a convinced Lutheran. They’d gone to the same church together since they were little kids. I didn’t like him. I heard him telling her once that she needed to leave “the rake.”

“I read this article in Newsweek today about reincarnation,” I said.

“Reincarnation?” Rachel asked. She frowned. “I can’t believe people believe that.”

“Well,” I said, “this article showed that it’s true.”

I noticed Peter make eye contact with Rachel and roll his eyes.

“We’re just matter,” I said. “We’re just atoms.”

“Oh my god,” said Peter.

Rachel’s other friends were less invested. They started talking about something else on the other side of the room. I heard them giggling while talking about prom, at the same time as I watched Rachel shake her head with a frown.

“When we die,” I said, “we’re just reconstructed into other things, even living things. It’s just a scientific process that happens.”

“I mean, I guess,” said Peter. “But that’s just the physical part of you. And it’s obvious.”

“Do you not believe in souls anymore?” Rachel asked.

I hesitated. For over two years, since we started dating sophomore year of high school, Rachel and I had planned on getting married and having kids one day. We’d gone to church together every Sunday. Today was Saturday night, and we were even planning on going tomorrow.

“Are you some kind of atheist or something?” Peter asked.

“No,” I said immediately. “Definitely not an atheist.”

“Well,” Peter said, sitting back and scoffing. He was much taller than me. Even just sitting on the couch it was noticeable. Rachel was looking at him. “Then what the hell are you talking about, honestly?” he asked.

“I think it’s interesting to think about,” I said, suddenly overcome with the image of Rachel making out with Peter.

It was obvious he liked her. He’d been talking shit about me to her for months. She usually defended me, but less and less. I never told her about what I’d overheard.

We’d be going to prom together in just a couple months. Then we’d be graduating and heading to the same college.

The three of us were silent for a while. Rachel’s other friends were still laughing in the corner. I didn’t know what they were talking about anymore. One of them had just dyed her hair and the others were examining it approvingly. I just wanted to get out of here with her now, to go park my car in some dark parking lot and making out with her like we often did.

“It worries me sometimes to hear you say things like that,” Rachel finally said.

She removed her head from my lap. She sat up exactly at the midpoint between me and Peter, crossing her arms on her chest, a frown still on her face.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we’re supposed to be Christians, Ezekiel,” she said.

“Are you a Christian?” Peter asked.

I hesitated. “Yes,” I said, a moment too late.

We didn’t talk much for a while. Eventually, Rachel joined the conversation with her friends. Peter and I stayed on the couch, sitting as far apart as it allowed. It was when the girls went into another room that Peter spoke to me again.

“You’re not prepared to be a good husband to her,” he said. “Or to raise her kids.”

“What?” I asked.

“You’re not going to take her to Hell with you, Ezekiel,” Peter said. “You’re not going to put these ideas into her head or into her kids’ heads.”

I didn’t know what to say, because I couldn’t honestly contradict him.

“I will always watch over her,” Peter said. “I will always protect her.”

“What do you even mean by that?” I asked.

“I will always protect her,” he repeated.

He stood up. He walked to the girls and announced he was leaving. I watched him tightly embrace Rachel and whisper something in her ear. I imagined that his lips touched her skin. I watched him walk up the stairs to leave.

The truth, I knew, is that I had barely said anything wrong. I told them I was a Christian. I told them I believed in God. But I knew from how I was raised that it had still gone too far. It had been a year since I started believing in evolution, and my parents still weren’t over it. They’d caught me reading the articles on Encarta about evolution and told me they should have kept me in the Christian schools. I tried once to talk with Rachel about evolution, but she said it made her too uncomfortable. She said it scared her to hear me saying things like that.

“I’m tired,” Rachel said, coming over to me.

We went to my car. It was late and dark outside. We drove in silence for a while.

“Want to make out?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, holding my hand over the cupholder.

It was a pattern recently. I said things that bothered her. At first, she’d withdraw and frown at me. But an hour later, she’d move on like nothing had happened. Yet I knew the discontent was building inside her. I knew from time to time, she must have been thinking about Peter.

We parked on the side of the road in the dark subdivision. We were aligned with a wide stretch of grass and trees between two houses, in the hopes no one inside would really notice us. We kissed for a long time. I ran my hands beneath her shirt. I fingered her and she stroked my shaft.

She unbuckled my belt, unzipped my pants, and put my dick in her mouth while I kept watch through the windows for any adults or police. Soon I started ejaculating; she swallowed it all.

I refastened my pants. We both sat quietly for a moment.

“I want to marry you,” I told her.

“I want to marry you, too,” she said.

I drove her home. I got back to my bedroom. I went on the Internet and researched reincarnation.

The next morning, I picked her up early and we went to church.

Chapter Three

The next Friday night, I was with my best friend, Abbad. I was very excited to go to prom in a small group with Rachel, Abbad, and Abbad’s girlfriend.

We drove to Taco Bell like we always did. We ate inside and lingered for hours, each getting a refill on our giant Baja Blast Mountain Dews, chatting as we drank.

I told him about what the reincarnation conversation from the previous weekend. I told him I was worried I was going to lose Rachel to Peter. Abbad had been raised Muslim, but he didn’t believe in any of it anymore. It made him a safe person in whom to confide.

“You think she’s going to leave you because you read articles about reincarnation?” he asked.

I sighed. “Wasn’t your family, like, extremely religious growing up?”

“My dad was,” Abbad said. “Still is.”

“So, it’s like that, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“I mean,” I said, “your dad wouldn’t marry like an atheist or something like that. She’s worried about, like, my thoughts, how they might influence her kids, I think.”

“She wants to raise a Christian family,” Abbad commented.

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”

“Christian in a very… narrow sense,” Abbad said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I don’t get it, man,” he said. “I honestly think it’s absurd. Doesn’t she give you blowjobs and stuff? Like you guys have gone really far, haven’t you?”

“But she won’t have sex until marriage,” I said.

Abbad shook his head. “Dude,” he said. “How can you put up with living like that? Do you not see how fucking absurd this whole situation is?”

“I respect what she wants,” I said.

“But it’s just so dumb,” he said. “Like, dude, you had fucking butt sex.”

It was true. We hadn’t planned on it. We were both naked and experimenting with lubrication. Our bodies were contorting around one another in a variety of knots. At one point I was behind her, kissing her on the back of her neck. She liked it when I’d just slide my dick between her butt cheeks, but up until then I’d never actually penetrated. The penetration itself was a complete accident, aided by the absurd amount of lube all over my penis, lube which had also spread all over the place between her butt cheeks.

It was during that frenzy that I suddenly felt a tight squeeze around my entire dick. Instinctively, I humped her a few more times until finally her shocked shouting forced my withdrawal.

“Ezekiel!” she shouted.

I stopped. I looked down at how the cheeks were spread out. I saw her enlarged anus. Her shouting had sounded like disapproval, but she stayed in that position - on all fours like she was crawling. And after a brief moment of silence, she repeatedly backed her ass back up toward my dick in a humping motion. I didn’t ask what she wanted; it seemed obvious. So I poured even more lubrication on my dick. I penetrated her again, humping her hard. She screamed loudly and within a minute I was ejaculating inside of her asshole.

We kept having butt sex regularly after that. She said it was okay; it didn’t count as losing your virginity. Her vagina would have to wait until marriage.

“We do have butt sex,” I acknowledged.

“Don’t you see how little sense these morals make?” Abbad asked me. “You’ve been together for two years and you haven’t even had sex based on some absurd moral principal. It’s fucking absurd. Absurd!”

I nodded.

“I’ll always support you, man,” he said. “I’ll keep going on the double dates and all that. But don’t let her make you feel bad. She’s making you feel guilty for the shit you choose to read. You want to live your whole life like that? Butt sex is okay, vaginal sex is bad, and certain articles in Newsweek are forbidden? Fucking absurd.”

I told Abbad that my whole relationship with Rachel was based around religion to some degree. I told him it was important to her that we raise our kids in a Luthern church.

“But is that absurdity something you actually want?” Abbad asked.

I told him about what things were like for me in early high school. I was terrified of God in those days. I cried often, pleading to him to save me from Hell. I struggled in my physical science class freshman year, constantly trying to stop myself from believing that the universe was over 13 billion years old. I prayed with my youth group leader sophomore year, confessing to him that I found myself convinced by the evidence for evolution in my biology class. I told him that I was often confused by global warming; I knew that God and only God could decide when the world would end. I told him about how I was upset during literature class when we read a Jonathan Edwards sermon warning about the fires of Hell. My teacher claimed it was an example of how crazy people were back then in the 1700s. I knew it wasn’t crazy; it was just the truth. And on top of that blasphemy, this teacher had a pride flag hanging from the ceiling. My youth minister and I prayed to God together to give me the strength to maintain my faith in Him.

I started dating Rachel soon after that. I left my old Baptist church and started going to Lutheran church with her. We didn’t go to any youth group there. But during the sermons, and during my conversations with Rachel and her friend Peter, it was all the same beliefs.

“But you’re freeing yourself from that,” Abbad said. “And now she’s holding you back.”

I just took another sip of my Mountain Dew through the straw.

“Don’t you believe in all of that now?” he pressed. “Evolution, global warming, the age of the universe? All that shit?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And she doesn’t,” he said.

“She hates it when I talk about it,” I said.

“Then why are you still with her?” he asked. “I’m telling you, this is absurd, Ezekiel.”

“I love her,” I said. “She loves me, too.”

Abbad scoffed. “Come on, man,” he said.

“I just,” I said. “I don’t know what I would do without her. I really don’t.”

Abbad didn’t know that Rachel had saved my life. He didn’t know I had almost killed myself sophomore year. I was too embarrassed to tell him the true extent of that inexplicably depression, the cause of which I couldn’t explain. I was always guessing what caused it. Whenever I talked about it with Rachel, I gave her a different reason for it. That scared me the most. The idea that I might have killed myself for no reason whatsoever, that idea that my depression had just emerged from nowhere and that it could overtake me again. Rachel was the only human being with whom I’d ever spoken about it. She was the only person who knew what I’d almost done. And she was the person who’d lifted my spirits to the point of a constant ecstasy my junior year.

“I do remember how happy you were last year,” Abbad said. “You were practically on drugs. But that’s not how it’s been the last couple months.”

“I wasn’t reading any of this stuff last year,” I said.

“No,” Abbad said. “You weren’t. By the way,” he reached into his backpack and passed me three books, “I finally remembered these.”

Dawkins, The God Delusion. De Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity. Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

The idea had come from an argument I recently had with Abbad. An argument where I told him that there must, logically, be a Creator, because life was simply too complex to have emerged without one. Evolution may be true, but even so, it could not develop such amazing complexity without a Creator guiding it along to a final destination.

“You should read Richard Dawkins,” was all Abbad said.

We’d gone on then to argue about morality. How could there be morals and ethics without a God? The implications of atheism were, I said, that nothing was objectively wrong. Not murder, not rape, not anything.

“You gotta read the existentialists, man,” he said. “Sartre and de Beauvoir especially. They talk about all that shit. The moral implications of atheism, I mean.”

It scared me now to be sitting here looking at these books. I knew I was going to read them. And I knew I didn’t want to believe what they said. But I was afraid that maybe I would. And I was afraid in the end it might bring me back to my days of suicidal ideation and near-attempts. I was afraid it might end my relationship with Rachel if she ever saw me reading any of it.

“I’ll read it,” I said.

“All of it,” Abbad said. “Promise me.”

“I will,” I said. I flipped through Sartre. His book was gigantic and dense, full of philosophical terms I didn’t, complex sentences I couldn’t decipher without context.

“By prom night,” Abbad said.

“By prom night?” I laughed. “In a month? These two, yes,” I said, holding up Dawkins and de Beauvior. “But this one,” I said, pointing at Sartre, “no way. Look at this text.”

“By prom night,” Abbad said. “It’s all I want for graduation.”

I laughed. “I’ll try,” I said. And I would. The idea of reading all of this in just a month was, somehow, a romantic one to me. And my fear of losing Rachel couldn’t hold me back from my curiosity anymore than it ever had in the best.

Chapter Four

I never let Rachel see my copy of Richard Dawkins’ book. I didn’t let my parents see it either. I kept it under my bed or buried under the piles of clothes in my closet.

After I finished the book in a few days, Abbad told me he wanted me to meet his new girlfriend, Maryam. She was going to be his prom date.

I was nervous to meet her. She looked very pretty in a picture Abbad showed me, which he was already keeping in his wallet. I didn’t bring Rachel when I met them for dinner at Max and Erma’s, a chain restaurant down the road from our high school. I sat across from them while we ate an appetizer of chicken soup and drank Diet Cokes.

“What did you think about The God Delusion?” Maryam asked. “Abbad told me you read it.”

I tried to explain what happened. The book had consumed me for three days. I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. All my doubts about God seemed confirmed. It was suddenly completely obvious to me that there was no such thing as any gods. It was obvious to me, too, that there was something ethically wrong with Christianity. The book had given me a sudden burst of determined energy and of hardened conviction where before there had been some doubt. “I think I’m an atheist now,” I said in conclusion.

“You think?” asked Maryam, laughing.

Abbad laughed, too. “How does Rachel feel about that?”

I stopped laughing. I looked around distressed. “She doesn’t even know I’m reading this stuff,” I said. I told them how I kept the book hidden under my bed.

Abbad sighed. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

When I hesitated to answer, Maryam added: “Wait, is your girlfriend, like, super religious?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, not super religious. But she really takes it seriously.”

“You’re going to keep telling her you’re gonna raise your kids Christian with her?” Abbad asked.

I sighed. “I don’t know, guys,” I said.

“Look, dude,” Abbad said, “I just don’t want you to keep living like this through college. You can’t stay tethered to this situation, dude.”

“It really doesn’t sound like it,” nodded Maryam, with a concerned smile.

Just in that moment, I thought about my own destiny, to die and just become nothing. I was frozen in terror, there at the dinner table, as I trembled before the inevitability of my non-existence. Once it commenced, it would be irreversible. My being, my consciousness, would be lost forever. I stared blankly at Maryam’s concerned smile, and I shuddered.

I saw myself, it seemed, from the perspective of another. There was no god who thought I was special or deserving of eternal life; there was only the other. For them, I was just one of billions of other random people in the background of their life. I remembered a person I’d known who had died; he was just a blurry memory to me, now, a depressing story about a kid who died when he was only ten. People remembered him, paused for brief silence, and then quickly moved on in their conversations. That was the destiny of everyone who dies.

“Ezekiel?” Maryam said. “Are you okay?”

I stammered. “I’m okay,” I said. “I just had… I don’t know.”

“You gotta get out of that situation, man,” said Abbad.

I looked at him in the eyes. Again, looking into his eyes, I thought about my own destiny and wondered if I was wrong. What if it was not non-existence, but Hell that awaited me? What would be better? What would be worse?

Sitting there, I thought back to all those knives I held in the kitchen. I imagined a different world where I’d done it. I wouldn’t exist. These two people wouldn’t be sitting here with me. Maybe Abbad would bring me up sometimes, but then they’d move on. I imagined the past two years, all that I had done, and I trembled at the tragedy of never having done it. Of never having been with Rachel. Of never sharing those nights at Taco Bell with Abbad. And then it was that non-existence seemed like the worst of all. The permanent end to all experience. Inherent to oblivion was the permanent inability to ever again experience anything. All those experiences I treasured so greatly would simply never have happened. And I truly feared death in that moment.

“I’m so afraid to die,” I said.

I realized the waitress was standing there beside me. “Excuse me?” she said.

I saw that she had a notepad and a pencil. Maryam and Abbad were looking at me with those terrible concerned smiles.

“Sir?” the waitress repeated.

“I’ll have a cheeseburger with fries,” I said. “Medium rare. No tomato.”

“Okay,” smiled the waitress. She walked away.

“I’m so afraid to die,” I repeated.

Maryam nodded. She seemed to understand.

“Why?” asked Abbad. He scoffed. “There’s nothing to be afraid of because there’s nothing.”

“Does that really not terrify you?” I asked.

Maryam nodded. “It terrifies me,” she said.

Abbad looked back and forth between us. He threw his hands up and scoffed again. “Oh my god,” he said, “are you guys fucking serious? This is what Christians want you to be afraid of!”

“It’s fucking terrifying,” I insisted.

We sat in complete silence for ten minutes. Then the waitress brought us our meals. I was starving. I immediately took a bite of my cheeseburger. I savored the taste of the fry. I imagined a world where I’d killed myself, where I’d never be sitting here eating this fry.

I felt like I was going to start shaking. I tried to comprehend my current non-existence.

“I love these fries,” I said.

“They’re so good,” agreed Maryam.

“I just can’t believe you guys are giving into this fear of death shit,” Abbad said.

“Why?” asked Maryam. “What’s the problem?” She smiled at me as we both ate a fry.

“We need to be anti-theists, not just atheists, to truly stop religion’s influence in society,” he said. “We need to be constantly refuting Christian and Muslim propaganda, like the idea that there’s something scary about being an atheist, like life becomes pointless without God, like - ”

“But life does become pointless without God,” I said.

Abbad opened his mouth wide, grabbed his hair with his hands, and laughed. “Come on dude.”

Maryam nodded.

“It does,” I said. “Religion gives you that confidence that there’s a concrete purpose to your life. And it assures you that after a life of hardship you’ll be rewarded with eternal happiness. That the individual purpose of your life is tied up into God’s plan and greater purpose. Your individual purpose has an almost cosmic significance. That is purpose. Atheism is a life without that purpose.”

Maryam nodded. “I’ve thought about that, too,” she said.

“So, what,” Abbad said, “you also buy into the whole atheism has no morals shit?”

“I do,” I said. “Without God, there isn’t a final judge or right and wrong. There are no real objective rules that exist beyond human subjectivity. And yes, that is scary.”

Maryam, again, showed her agreement.

“I can’t believe this,” Abbad said. “Honestly, I can’t believe it. You both need to read Sartre ASAP, seriously. You need to fix this shit.”

“I don’t understand how you can see here and not be afraid of non-existence,” I said. “You seriously never even think about it?”

“Never,” Abbad insisted. “What’s the point? I won’t exist. What could happen to me? What is there to be afraid of?”

“The state itself,” interjected Maryam.

“I’m going to read de Beauvoir and Sartre next,” I said.

“I am, too,” said Maryam. “We can start a book club!”

“Well,” said Abbad, “you guys have fun. I don’t think I can sit through another conversation like this.”

“I mean,” I said, “you’ve already read Sartre and de Beauvior.”

“You have?” asked Maryam. “You said you wanted to read them with me, though?”

“What?” I asked.

Abbad stuffed his mouth with fries and chewed slowly. “Well,” he finally admitted after swallowing them, “alright. Look, I never read them. But I read reviews and - ”

Maryam scoffed.

“Are you fucking serious dude?” I asked.

“Look,” Abbad said, “I read a lot of stuff about the books and they seemed like they’d be perfect for you and I guess Maryam as well to read.”

“Unbelievable, Abbad,” said Maryam, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, that’s just fucking unbelievable.”

Abbad shrugged. “Well, whatever,” he said.

“The definition of a fake intellectual,” Maryam rambled on.

I sat silently listening to them argue. I didn’t think this relationship would last long. None of Abbad’s relationships ever did.

I finished up my food. I loved that cheeseburger; I loved those fries. I loved the taste of the Coke in my mouth. I loved watching Maryam smile. And I was so afraid to die, so afraid to lose it all.

Chapter Five (Maryam and Ezekiel creating music together)

• Maryam: absolute conviction in favor of freedom

  • Says Abbad is just creating a new religion with atheism

  • She wants an honest exploration and the freedom to come to any conclusion conceivable

  • She helps Ezekiel get over his fear of deviating from certain doctrinal beliefs (he thinks he will go to Hell for these, at first)

  • This yearning for freedom is what inspires such devotion to existentialist philosophy

• Song

  • Maryam and Ezekiel try to create a song meant to convey, through music, the feeling of being fully free as an atheist

  • On the first few attempts, they feel the attempts are a disaster

  • They are spending so much time together that Abbad and Rachel are getting jealous

  • It is on prom night when they get a hotel for two nights and lose their virginity to each other, ignoring all expectations of how they should behave, that the inspiration strikes to create Existentialism on Prom Night

  • Then it is revealed; this entire story is the author’s fantasy in which he has written the song Existentialism on Prom Night…. He DIDN’T write that song. The girl in this fantasy DOES NOT EXIST. HE DOES NOT EVEN PLAY PIANO LIKE HE CLAIMS.

SECOND PART IS THE WHOLE EVOLUTION OF THE SINGER FANTASY… Hillary Duff, Justin Timberlake, all the songs he claims to have written (Existentialism on Prom Night), all the concerts he’s imagined.

• *****This fantasy track could be the parallel track for the Kensington pastor*****

THIRD PART - REALITY: He is living as Ezekiel, in total contradiction to his fantasies… Non-Ezekiel chapters are the fantasies. Ezekiel chapters are the reality. At the very end of the book, his fantasy is that he finally breaks with his reality and embraces his fantasies.

Maybe in the end it’s revealed he is a pastor, living through fantasy because he can’t fix how he’s lived his life? Fantasizing about how he could have lived?

• Reading de Beauvior with Maryam

• Reading Sartre with Maryam

• Commonalities with Maryam

  • Fears of exploring science and fear of what it would mean to be an atheist

  • Fear of non-existence and uncertain about the implications

• Duet

  • Ezekiel plays piano, she plays keyboard; they concoct romantic fantasies upon which they base songs they write. They always imagine being the characters. It’s a symbol of the infinite possibilities of life, they say.

  • They put on a mini-concert for Rachel and Abbad, singing duets of countless romances, which end up haunting them both

Four

Bible-Based Story Fantasy:

Ezekiel/Elijah/Jeremiah

MERGE THIS STORY with the original idea for a totally fantasy-driven life

The confusion for the reader in terms of what this is about - fantasy or conversion to atheism - will have a focusing effect that gives depth to the story

PLAY WITH present, past, future - going deep into Ezekiel’s retrospective fantasies later in life, fantasies about fantasies, fantasies about alternative pasts that become confused with reality

Fantasy-driven personality: He fantasizes about countless life possibilities and future issues he’s looking back upon. He fantasizes about these fantasies actually happening whenever he’s pretending to be signing them with the girl in his imaginary band. The nature of that girl changes over time (go deep into future, far beyond setting of this story). He then acts in ways that cause these to come true. In fact, his entire conversion to atheism is based off a dark fantasy he has reading Ezekiel that he is the enemy of Ezekiel…. The temptation to be an atheist is, in effect, a living out of this single fantasy

Fantasies based around: Songs + OT Prophets

This is Ezekiel reading the prophets. Intentionally create confusion in terms of who is speaking - the prophet Ezekiel or the character Ezekiel. Frequent metaphors that shift his interpretations as he becomes progressively less religious. Continues reading Ezekiel well into his relationship with Maryama, relating much of what is said to that relationship.

These chapters should be full of dream-like scenery and time sequences, representing pure fantasy which he desires to impose upon his actual life

Dream-like scenery gives way to Ezekiel’s song writing, the lyrics of which draw heavily on Ezekiel the prophet

Song lyrics, poems, mini-stories a paragraph long

Fantasies that he performs his songs with a girl; Fantasies that he cheats on Rachel with this girl

Eventually, these fantasies drive his relationship with Maryama

Records songs alone in his bedroom but doesn’t share them with anyone

Never even shares them with Rachel