My name: Burnt Pepperidge.
My profession: winning.
I stand at the starting line and survey the obstacle course like a snake surveys a nest of bird eggs.
My body is the serpent. The Wipeout obstacles are my bird eggs.
Prepare, obstacles. Prepare to be gobbled up by my hungry snake mouth. My voracious mouth of serpent hunger.
I have come here to win, and I do not care what happens to my body.
I am an empty submissive vessel for the game show Wipeout to enter and fill.
Oh, with such alacrity will I be entered.
Oh, with such alacrity will I be filled.
Here, standing at the top of the course with manliness and anticipation, I feel reverent and erect.
I am full of pain and light. I am full of adrenaline and testosterone, chlorine and spit.
Buzz. The Buzzer sounds.
It is time.
Down. Down. Down. I’m running.
I’m running down the red-padded hill of the course.
My arms are swinging with speed. With such speed they swing.
I’m running toward the first obstacle: the Sucker Punch Wall. It is a wall full of boxing gloves that punch out as the contestant traverses the narrow platform adjacent.
I will not be made impotent and useless by a wall of fists. For I, too, am a wall of fists.
I am vengeance.
I am a forty-three-year-old well-hung vessel with a supportive wife.
I am a vessel of God and a vessel of Wipeout.
Running. Running. Running.
I grab the first handle of the wall and swing my legs onto the ledge below. Bang! A fist in my face. Two teeth missing. Teeth are my currency, and I am rich. Bang! Another fist to the testicles. I laugh. Hahaha.
No pain I meet is a pain I haven’t already met one thousand times over.
A little blood squirts out, you know, down there. I am traveling toward the end of the wall, toward the next obstacle. Bang! Bang! A punch to the jaw and a punch to the stomach. I vomit all over myself. It is nothing to me. It is the same as if I were paying for a beautiful ticket to the beautiful movies. I pay full price for I am very rich in virility and in currency. I reach for the next handle. Bang! Another punch to the jaw. This time my jaw fractures. My spit sprays out like beautiful diamonds. My hand misses the last handle. I fall backward into the pool below.
I wipe out.
Underwater. I open my lungs to scream, but they fill with the cold mud of failure. Filling with failure mud, my lungs are doing that. For sure. Splash! I surface like a hungry turtle. I will not be defeated. I think of my beautiful wife, Smurfette. Yes, I’m married to a Smurf. She is a librarian now. I am doing this for her. I am winning Wipeout for beautiful Smurfette. We need the prize money because our incredibly shy son has a gambling addiction. This is why it is my destiny. I would break one thousand jaws if it meant winning the game show Wipeout and bringing ten thousand dollars to my beautiful wife, Smurfette, to pay off our shy son’s gambling debts. The vision of her face is enough to pull me out of the mud pool.
HUH? I gasp. I claw my way to the next platform.
I’m soaked in freezing water, mouth bleeding, jaw broken. Before me: the next obstacle. Four enormous red rubber balls. The Big Red Balls. Wipeout’s killer. All I have to do is cross them. Cross the balls, and I will be the Wipeout champion. It is not just a want but a need. It is not just a need—it is my destiny.
I think of all the beautiful meatballs in the world. Time to do it. I crack my knuckles like a squirrel cracking a nut. Crack! I clench my fists like a squirrel clenching a nut in its claws. I am the serpent and the rodent. I take a running start toward the four rubber balls, and I LEAP into the air. I come down hard. My body folds like a folding table between the balls, my teeth clamp shut—cutting my tongue in two. P-tooey. I spit out the useless part. I need no tongue to win Wipeout. I need no soul. I only need my body, the vessel, the destiny.
Mud. Mud. Back in the mud again. The Big Red Balls will not defeat me. No way. I will try again. I claw my way to the edge of the pool. This must be how Jesus felt in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I will not fail. I will pay any price.
Another running leap should do it. I rev up like a race car. Vroom. Vroom. The race car of my body revs so. And I run. And I run. But my shoes can’t get traction, and I slide. I slip. My arms akimbo. I skid onto the first ball. Snap. I rebound. I am flung into the air.
And I’m flying through the air.
I’m flying over the finish line.
I’m flying over the other contestants.
I’m flying over the Wipeout set.
I’m flying over my wife and our shy son.
Over the city of New York.
Over the country of America.
I am flying toward a place called Heaven.
Toward a being called God.
Up and Up and Up I fly.
I fly up into the beautiful clouds.
I present myself before God—tongueless, broken arm and misplaced jaw, teeth scattered about me like confetti.
His face is terrible. I behold His terrible face.
And He beholds mine—impotent, pathetic.
I look at God and say, “Am I Good?”
I look at God and I say, “Did I win Wipeout?”
God looks me up and down.
He considers.
He strokes His beard as He thinks.
He parts His lips to speak.
“One more time, I think,” He says. And He puts me back at the start of the course.
