“Wanna go back to my place and check out my collection of vintage pinball machines?”
“Hugh, I’m really busy right now.”
“Oh. Sure. No problem… Hi! How about you? We could go back to my place…sit in a hot tub in front of the fire in a huge room in my even huger mansion and…let our imaginations take us where they will.”
“Thanks for the offer, Hugh, but you don’t have a mansion any more, and, anyway, I have important things to do right now.”
“Oh. No mansion? How – hey…you’re an angel. Wanna go back to my place and hear my philosophy of how getting women to take off their clothes in front of a camera is empowering?”
“Oh, Hugh, that’s not the way we do things here.”
“But…but…”
“Hugh! You finally made it!”
“Hey, Russ. How are you?”
“Well, you know, dead. Otherwise, I can’t complain.”
“Where…?”
“Oh, this is heaven. You made it, you old dog, you.”
“If this is heaven, why are the women so…”
“Frigid?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I thought that too, at first. But, actually, they’re just…spiritual. It takes a bit of getting used to, but you will. I mean, we all do…we have to…I mean, it’s not like we have a choice…”
“Spiritual? I made it with a nun, once. You know what they say about it being a religious experience? Let me tell you -“
“You haven’t done the orientation yet, have you?”
“Orientation? No, I…I just got here.”
“Oh. Ah, well, I’m not sure I should be the one to tell you -“
“Tell me what?”
“Hugh…oh, heck, there’s no easy way to say this: there’s no sex in heaven.”
“No…sex? Since when?”
“Since the Vatican decided that the idea of sex in heaven would interfere with the spirituality of the faithful.”
“But, sex…sex can be a spiritual experience.”
“If you do it right.”
“There’s a wrong way to do it?”
“You see, Hugh, when god first created angels, they didn’t have a gender. That made people dying and going to heaven to become angels…awkward. So, this was the compromise.”
“We still get to be men and women, but we’re not allowed to do what men and women do?”
“Uhh, basically, yeah. Look, Hugh, you got a problem, take it up with JP II.”
“JP II?”
“The Pope?”
“You know him?”
“Know him? I play bridge with him every Tuesday.”
“You play bridge with the Pope?”
“I know, I know – he’s not a very aggressive bidder. Still, he has choirs of angels around him to kibbutz, and that usually unnerves our opponents.”
“No sex…I don’t know, Russ. I mean, you were just as into as I was – look at the movies you made – how do you cope?”
“Are you kidding me? Have you seen the knockers on some of the angels up here? And, those diaphanous gowns – they don’t leave anything to the imagination!”
“But, that’s not sex.”
“No, but who cares? I always preferred watching…”
“But, there’s no sex! What do you do with your time?”
“Did I mention I play bridge? One time, me and JP II beat Einstein and Eisenstein – never could figure out their crazy bidding system – had something to do with the square root of negative numbers…”
“That’s it?”
“Well, bridge is just a break from our real occupation…”
“Which is?”
“Singing praises to god.”
“Russ, what is this place?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is nothing like what I imagined heaven to be. Are you sure, you know, that this is heaven?”
“Where else could it be?”
“You know.”
“Oh. Yeah. This is definitely heaven. I’ve seen the other place.”
“You have?”
“Sure. There are guided tours every month. I think the next one’s next Tuesday – you should sign up.”
“And, is there sex?”
“Oh, yeah. People screw like rabbits down there.”
“But…that doesn’t seem right.”
“Believe me, it’s not something you’d wanna be a part of. It’s like, they take all of the most embarrassing things about sex and put them front and center. Awkward fumbling to get clothes off. Strange body noises at awkward moments. There’s no passion and it’s over so quickly.”
“So, it’s just like sex when you’re alive.”
“Without the dinner and flowers.”
“Well, this is depressing.”
“Oh, Hugh, don’t be like that.”
“Why not?”
“You know, if you give it a chance, you’ll find that bridge can be very exciting…”