The Worship of Mammon (6)

The story thus far:

Much to the consternation of his new girlfriend Ginny, our writer tries to give his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre. Both our writer and Ginny -- feral anthropomorphic embodiment of our writer's own misogyny wrapped in the appearance of his ex-- are shocked when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon rejects his gift of self.

And here, in a thought-form breakfast diner located somewhere in the writer's dreams, Mammon proceeds to tell our protagonists why ...
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"Yes, I understand that. But why would I want you?"

"Sit down, M'boy." He gestured to the empty seat beside him. "I'll explain." When I didn't sit, he smiled, shrugged, said: "Suit yourself." He returned to his breakfast, eating slowly, this time, giving himself breathing room to talk and chew and swallow.

"If I wanted an agent to spread fear and pain and chaos I don't need your soul. A disciple of Eros! Indeed. You're doing that just fine by simply being who you are. M'boy, you cause more harm loving people the way you do than if you hated them with a passion.

"'He labors under the yoke of great need who loves so greatly.'

“They feel your love and especially your need, and it frightens the living sh!t out of them. They just don’t know what to do with it. Or you. They cannot return it, or at least they cannot see the possibility. And they don’t want to be saddled with the responsibility for the well-being of someone else. Your love, boy, curtails their life-options.

"It's a threat to their freedom—" and he chuckled here, as if he thought the concept was quaint—"if you will. In a society that worships their televisions by faithfully watching their favorite Friends, or the medical staff at Seattle Grace hop into bed with one another, that freedom is all important.

“Meanwhile you flop about the world like a dying fish on a trawler's deck, crying for attention, but none of that's forthcoming. Nobody likes a beggar, M'boy. You approach, they recoil. You give chase and they lash out, hating themselves for being violent to you and hating you for bringing that side of them out. You ask your mutual friends for help and they are torn by their separate loyalties to the two of you. You claw at each other and you damage everyone around you.

He cut me off. “They’re fools, of course—“, Mammon said, abstracted, almost to himself. “You’ve got so much going for you. You’d be such a catch if you weren’t so… what’s the word? Emo—? I dislike ‘emo…’ How about ‘weak?’ Unsuitable? Ahm yes— Oh yes! I’ve got it—

“Inconvenient.” Then he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin.

"Excuse me?"

"I've been around. Eros and I go back a ways. I've studied him. And I've studied you. Everything your precious 'starbright ladies' tell you can be reduced to this basic statement: They do not want you because you are inconvenient."

He snapped his fingers and the sunlight outside the breakfast diner reddened, diminished. Illumination failed in the diner itself, and a spotlight shone on the pretty waitress with the glasses. Call Mammon a pragmatic shark god, but he was definitely a ham. The William Shatner fan in me just had to give the money-deity some respect.

The waitress stepped up from behind Mammon. She dropped her smile, looked straight at me said, her expression blank, Mylene’s lower contralto ringing hollowly, surreally, from between her lips: “I just want to work. I have so much to do. I have plans. I've moved on. I don't have the time... "

In fine—"I don’t want to be bothered by him.”

The earthy girl had joined her friend. Another spotlight shone on her as she spoke, another voice from my past echoing eerily from her throat. A litany of old responses to the old and plaintive prompts of 'Why? Why are you leaving me?'

There was a muted intake of breath from Ginny. Her eyes were closed. She was licking her lips. I realized that my renewed anger was feeding her. Her hands were shaking as she raised them slowly to her face, her mouth. She was taking deep, ragged breaths.

Mammon broke in on whatever thoughts were forming in my head, then and there.

"Fortunately I am not an Agent of Darkness, young man." A wink. The flash of the triangular teeth, again. "I don't see the world in your neat light-dark, good-evil dichotomies. You'll see, if you try to get to know me that I'm your best and only friend.

"I am Mammon. All things are made possible through me."

"Spare me the recruitment propaganda, Mammon. You're preaching to the choir. I'll ask you again: where do I sign?"

"Well," he said as he stood up. "If you reeeeaally want to work for me, my boy..."

I turned to the fat god, said, "I do."

"Then there's something you have to do for me first..."