In Which I Tell Strangers My Uncle Is Satan

When the time is right, I go: You wanna hear something fuckin’ crazy?

This is five-or-six-drinks-in kind of shit. For rooms that smell like stale beer and coke sweats. For strangers on barstools. For girls ugly-crying in the bathroom. For nerds in corners. There’s an art to it, and you can’t go fucking it up. Not after starting like that.  

I go: My uncle is Satan.

This isn’t my story, but I tell it anyway. Nothing too crazy about me. Grew up nice and safe in a little subdivision. Summers on the lake. Straight A’s. Spring breaks in Florida. Two parents that stayed together. Two college degrees. Two dick boyfriends til I had a nice one. What do I really have to say about myself at a party?

I go: Uncle Satan wasn’t always Satan. Satan used to be Brian, and Brian’s a political shit disturber. There were clown suits and Godzilla costumes involved. Have you heard of the Rhino party? Google that shit. Yes, like the zoo animal. They platformed repealing the law of gravity and putting the national debt on VISA. Wild shit. Anyway—Brian became head Rhino.

I tell this story to strangers because I couldn’t tell it to Dad. Shame because Dad has a real good sense of humour. Loves absurd shit. Instead of writing term papers or whatever I was supposed to be doing for my fancy little degree, I googled Brian instead, and there he was: crazy Uncle Satan. With my laptop humming and hot on my forearm, I followed Dad around the kitchen and he said Jesus Christ, enough. I don’t wanna hear it.

I go: Anyway, Brian and the Rhinos wanna be big shots, so he sues the fed for party status. Now, here’s where it gets fuckin’ crazy. Brian falls in love, right? She said she’d only marry the devil himself, so Brian changes his name. Satan, or Sa Tan, haha. She turns him down. He sues the fed for fifty mil and because this country’s a constitutional monarchy, because this son of a bitch fell in love, the lawsuit gets filed as—get this—Satan versus Her Majesty The Queen.

Dad doesn’t wanna hear it because he’s lived the shit that compels a person to become the prince of darkness on paper. Fathers that drank too much and mothers in psych wards and other brothers, ones that died before they hit thirty. Foster homes and fractured lives. Things I know nothing about, because it’s a minor fucking miracle he chose to be steady—not Satan. I tell this story because the real one is too sad.

I go: Here’s the kicker. Last week my aunt emails me out of the blue. Tells me we’re direct descendants of Christ himself because we have red hair, and she fires a YouTube link in there to prove it. Who the fuck am I to argue with a YouTube link? So now you can leave this bar and say: today I met the devil and god. Next round’s on you.