Dear Sir or Madam,

There was a time when I thought that God and I had a special arrangement: I don’t doubt His existence and in exchange He doesn’t exist. I’d believed We’d reached an understanding for I’d lived comfortably in a world of blasé sinning and public agnost for many a year hence and furthermore I believe that if an omnipotent being were to object, They would likely do it in an obvious way. However, as I recently learned, the adage states that He works in mysterious ways, not honest ones.

I was pondering as I took my morning constitutional whether or not I am merely an ordinary mind in a world populated by underachievers and whether or not this line of thinking meant I could add “humble” to my repertoire of excellent qualities, when I came upon a large Gothic structure with people in front. Scores of people, pleasant in dress and demeanor, smiling as if they believed in Life Everlasting or some such privel. Also, they were selling cakes and puddings, so I investigated.

It was not long before it dawned on me that this structure was some kind of franchise temple of worship — for God. Must have sprung up overnight. Thoroughly irate, I cut through a nearby queue, using a Gentlemanly wave of the hand as my passport, and pounded my fists upon the plastic stand at its head dramatically. “Who told you about God??” I thundered to the stout woman behind an array of baked goods. Hesitantly, she pointed to a man in a rather unflattering black frock. “Obviously, this poor transvestite has come to confuse prayer with merely getting on one’s knees,” I surmised.

Before the lady could waggle her crimson jowls in reproach, I snatched one of the mini-cakes off her table and popped it into my mouth. Baked with blind, stinking love and too much butter. Delicious. “I’ll take the lot,” I crumbspat, “Wrap them up.”
“There’s over two hundred cakes and pies here,” she protested, “You couldn’t eat them all.”
“What I’ll do,” I began, using an abstinence pamphlet as a napkin, “Is fill one of my more spacious bathtubs with the confections, rest my nude self among them, engorge until I am full, continue until I am sick, vomit, and then repeat.”
“That’s vile!” she trilled.
“That’s for starters,” I said. “Next I’ll use the remaining sweets as pigment to make extreme, pornographic tableaus on my gallery walls. The remainder shall be lubricant for my next secret public orgy, which might be held in the same gallery. Oh, and also I demand a discount for one of the many reasons I deserve one.”
“OK, that’s like twenty-nine sins,” she sputtered.
“It’s considered improper to count them.”
“Jesus died for your sins, you know.”
“Pity. These cakes are to die for; my sins need not sponsorship.”

And so it went that this fatmongering Goddette went about the task of convincing me not only that He exists, but also that He is very, very cross at me. She went through the whole dance, Pascal’s Wager on down through Rochemsoch’s Robot, and I countered each argument with a mouthful of cynicism and chocolate ganache. Finally, she put her heavy head down on the counter, thoughts leaving her like rats from a sinking ship and croaked, “There must be a God, because you are The Devil.”
“Silly, pious pie woman,” I laughed, “The Devil is a Roman misconstruction of Venus paired with a Hebrew misspelling. I am The Gentleman. I am not a mistake.”

I left unceremoniously with the confections in tow and did exactly as I had said with them — give or take a blasphemy — and now that I think of it, I don’t think I paid a cent. Ah well, fair play to me. Whether or not God truly exists is of little consequence to me. I will carry out my daily business undaddied, thank you. However, to tell the truth I do like the idea that a Superior Being is out there, wherever There may be, steering the Universe with His guiding hand. It keeps me humble.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site