H E L L Fallen from fashion. A bit harsh, according to the local Sanhedrin gathered around the watercooler these days to discuss the eternal burning noise like having a million college roommates with a bad case of the yips. It’s not the devil but the screaming that eats your lower jaw. Human Rights Watch might have much to say. Waxworks and taxidermy are the extent of the vocational training in hell, and so there is nowhere between the coalhouse and the shithouse to go but deeper into the burning issue of yourself— permanent screw-up, unlovable absolute, just as you feared on earth. Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 30 Which is why support for hell flags lately; for god’s sake, God is a rigorist, a fanatic. When that part of you that pleases shame makes the part of you that is eternity smell like Pittsburgh in the s, or a barn full of gasbag glue horses expiring, then dayspring and nightspring wind the clock of gratuitous torment in hell abiding, moving, coincidentally, the slow lovely cloud-shapes and nodding flower pendulums of heaven’s mechanized arboretum. Hitler! Now Hitler, everyone agrees, is in old-school hell for sure, swimming with Stalin and child molesters, of course, and serial savagists of every stripe in a municipal pool of burning blood an inch from the sun. But most of us sinners might be better processed in minimum security outpatient facilities, in say, Rangoon, where humidity could be one of the punishments. Or Calcutta? A rabid squirrel Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 31 [3.235.139.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:26 GMT) runs up your pant-leg on the hour to ask if Mother Theresa is a saint yet. After a couple thousand years of that, we might be released to mow heaven’s deep green lawn of smug spring fescue. Stretching forever. Actually, I’m not even sure there are squirrels in Calcutta. I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina for two years once. That would be hell enough for most of us creeps. Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 32 ...