It´s not good for you. What is not good for you is forbidden.
Demolition Man, 1996
Whats good for your hole ain’t good for your soul.
TikTok
Do not consider painful that which is good for you.
Euripides
“Be my matchmaker, Chris,” I finally announced to my English teacher my request over the coffee table. “You know, just… Check out your clients for potential, for me. I am sure you got some that would be good for me.”
Chris started laughing as if I had just cracked the best joke of the whole show.
“You mean good for you, or, good for your writing?”
Silence ensued.
“We can do both,” I contended.
“We can´t! They wouldn’t be the same person.”
More silence.
“You know I am not looking to settle down. I mean… just look at me. It’s fucking obvious.”
Christopher twisted his ring around his finger, then he looked at me, with a mixture of pity and surprise. Then he lustfully gazed at the bottle of rum which somehow, up to this point hadn’t existed on the table, or I had simply repressed it. My good friend teaches English, but that’s not what he does. He is an actor. He performs Shakespeare with a troupe, sometimes, an odd stunt for discount foreign production.
Among his troupe, he is notorious for another kind of performance, which he puts on a regular basis.
Whenever the ensemble celebrates premiere, he gets drunk. Pitch black. He remembers nothing, and those who retain memory, the next day don’t speak about it much. Sense of embarassment surrounds it. Chris goes around the people, whispering secret accusations of their sins to them, and sometimes, putting them on blast, loud for everyone.
That’s Lucifer. We both know it.
The actors pretend it’s something else, that he’s just being funny. As a student of the dark arts, I don’t have that luxury.
So I move my own glass towards him on the table, facing him. He fills them both to the brim. I toast him, saying, ‘In vino veritas!’ and he returns my wish in Latin, ‘In aqua sanitas!’ laughing, we get drunk. A hot sweat of shame envelops me, then tears. As we wobble back home in half embrace, I remember him blasting this TikTok meme, ‘What’s good for your hole, ain’t good for your soul,’ to which I responded even louder —
‘WHAT’S GOOD FOR MY HOLE IS GOOD FOR MY SOUL!’
