I was going through some old letters and came across some rolled up parchments that I hadn’t looked at since I collected them last October. Halloween, to be exact.
Can you guess what I dressed up as for Halloween last year?
So, I have four or five contracts signing over the souls of several friends into my keeping. They came rather cheaply, as I recall. A massage, a sandwhich. A quickie in the bathroom.
Here’s my question: if you had to sell your soul – and for the sake of this excercise, you do – what is the one thing you’d want in return? (or at least comes close). It can be anything – mind-reading capability, prince charming, that nice hand-made doe-skin flogger you’ve had your eye on…
Me? A tavern. Something well-made, but broken in. Smooth oaken bars, solid wooden tables. Comfortable chairs. Lantern-bright. Good food (pretzels, shrimp, nachoes, pastachios). A couple of real pool tables, not those bar-sized ones. A dart board. Jukebox hooked to my music collection – I’ve got playlists that cover everything from sultly summer nights to jammin’ spring evenings. Microbrews, top-shelf liquor, and a decent wine collection (with a few really rare vintages for those special ocassions, such as, oh, every Friday night). A piano. Baby grand. Smoking blonde in a black dress to accompany it. Back-room with couches so those without designated drivers can sleep it off safely. Make the hours from four in the evening till whenever the last person leaves. Have it make just enough money to cover expenses.
And good friends to make it a home. Yeah. I’d sell my soul for that.
How ’bout you?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing comes to mind. What is my soul in this matter? My free will or my ability to sense? My sense of self or my emotional wiring? I don’t know. The word is so big that no earthly possession seems like a fair or desirable trade. I guess my soul is a high maintenance, expensive bitch. No quickie in the bathroom will buy her out.
But maybe, just maybe, the promise of access to that space. Whenever I want to. Maybe that would do.
The soul? In this matter, I would have to say, it is, by definition, indefinable. It means something different eo each person.
…if you had access to that space, whenever you want, you might never leave it.
Complete indestructibility for both me and the man that I love, so that death would not overcome us. It may sound cheesy, but after a couple of generations of our posterity dying, we’d fake our deaths and run off away, traveling the world, a year or so in desired locations before finding an eternal home on an island somewhere. No disfigurations or changes allowed, we would be as we like, and enjoy our bodies and minds that do not deteriorate as the rest of the world does. I’m sure there’s a flaw in this plan, and if you would point it out, it would fit you so well.
The only true flaw is boredom. With no physical fear, with no end, how is it possible to enjoy what you have now?
It is the brevity of our human lives that make them so precious.
I would relinquish my soul in exchange for being able to have whatever I wanted, or whomever I wanted, whenever I wanted it, for as long as I wanted it.
As spoiled as it makes me sound, there it is.
But what would you have to look forward to if you had everything?
Look forward to? I haven’t the faintest idea. But if I’m going to give up my soul, then I’d bloody well better be getting the world in return…or a close enough approximation to make me content for the rest of my natural life.