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IT WAS THIS PASSAGE, reread dozens of times, that convinced me that I alone was the worthy one, full of virtue.

I lay down and slept; when I awoke a confused life had arranged itself: hadn’t I dedicated my life to helping others float to the top of their own, while neglecting my own?

And, as recompense for great-hearted service to man, wouldn’t it be right to allow leeway for my shortcomings, failures, mistakes, and deviancies?

A child of prophesy, a love child of Zeus; long-abandoned at the foot of Olympus, perishing under a Grecian sun; reborn through worldly incarnations until, in the fullness of time, when all was ripe for my arrival, I should emerge one final time in human form to fulfill my ultimate destiny.

And so, bolstered by my sense of divine mission, I sold all I owned, bought a one way ticket to Greece, and scaled Mount Olympus. 

Some mystical serendipity must have guided my quest, perhaps even the gods themselves, because I happened to arrive atop the mountain on the exact day and at the same hour when Experiantu, according to his journals, met Zeus upon Olympus.

When I reached the summit the sun had just crested over the far eastern horizon. A gentle breeze blew, cooling my face. 

And when I had caught my breath I searched and found the selfsame spot where Experiantu himself had met Zeus. 

Taking lungs full of the lofty air, I cried, “O Zeus! Behold, your son!”

For a moment the only thing I heard was a gentle breeze. Nothing moved.

So I called out again, “O Zeus, behold…your son!”

Thunder and lightning exploded around me, an earthquake of divine power rolled up and down.

A thrashing wind beat upon me. 

And I was thrown to the ground.

Suddenly a voice that shook the mountain even more and rebuked the new sun and darkened the skies cried, “What mortal dares seek my visage in this sacred place?”

The mountain quaked beneath me. Thunder pealed. Lightning tore through the darkness above.

And I lifted my voice high above the whirl and maelstrom, and vainly shielding my face from the biting sand with my forearm, I cried out, “O Zeus, almighty father from everlasting, you who rule from Olympus, surely you, O Zeus, recognize your own offspring?”

The great winds and shielding my face from the heat and brightness of the glowing eyes and the shrapnel pierce of the blowing sand, “”

“And who is that?” said Zeus.

So many rocks were tumbling around me that I thought I would be crushed.

“Many millennia ago,” I shouted, “unrecorded in the annals of the Greeks, I perished at the foot of this mountain, and after endless cycles of reincarnation have at last returned to see you, my father, almighty Zeus!”

At this the winds abated with a suddenness that left me motionless with uncertainty.

Zeus crouched down and got a good look at my face. I could smell the honey of his breath. 

“Oh,” he said, “I recognize you now.”

“I’m so glad,” I said.

“Silence!” he said. 

Then all the terror of the mountain began again.

And in a voice that ripped across the sky, Zeus said, 

“Return, O foolish mortal, and spew forth what is satirical, all that causes man mirth and laughter, and purvey all that is sustainable bullshit. Now, go!”

• • •

At this Zeus flung me from the mountain, which disappeared beneath me.

I flew for what seemed like an eternity, and falling quickly I splashed down into the sea near the island of Lemnos.

No sooner had I fallen into the sea, which was unseasonably calm and warm and pleasant, than a giant fish, who introduced itself in a squealing descant as Dag Gadol, swallowed me alive.

Tumbling into his belly, I was sure that this was it: I would die amid the refuse of half-eaten fish and the waft of intestinal gas.

For three days and nights I lived in his stomach while he swam here and there telling me his life story, which, when I added it up, made him several thousand years old.

It was a boring story of swimming, eating, defecating, copulating, and sleeping, with one minor interruption of three days in which he swallowed a bizarre individual who called himself Jonah.

This man Jonah had a strong aversion to swimming, pigs, defecating, copulating, laughter, sex, and everyone not of his race.

“He was only with me for three days,” said Dag Gadol, “and I told him the same stories I’ve told you about my life. When I was finished, since we had nothing left to say to each other, I considered it lucky when I belched and vomited him onto the beach.”

This piqued my interest.

“If you are the Dag Gadol I have read about in the Bible,” I said, “then it was God who commanded you to vomit Jonah onto the beach.”

“The Bible is full of many inaccuracies and overstatements,” said Dag Gadol.

“As far as I can remember—and understand that I have a prodigious memory—I grew tired of Jonah’s ramblings. 

“Endless discussions about the so-called desert god Yahweh and his superiority to all, Jonah’s endless hand-wringing over having offended this god, et cetera—all this grates one’s stomach. 

“There was a lull in our conversation, I vomited, out he went. Am I to believe that Yahweh manipulated my gag reflex? Come to think of it—”

Deep down in Dag Gadol’s gut came a rumbling.

“I must surface,” he said, “something’s afoot.”

• • •

We shot upward then broke through the surface. 

Dag Gadol’s belly heaved. It constricted, clenching around me so that I thought I would choke to death.

But just as suddenly he relaxed, and a strong foul pestilential storm passed through his intestines.

“Goodbye,” cried Dag Gadol. 

He had opened his mouth; the light of day crept in.

With his mouth open Dag Gadol belched with what must have been a hundred decibels of power. 

He spewed me along his slimy tongue, then vomited me onto the Texas coastline at a point on Galveston Island just south of the Valero Corner Store from which I walked home vowing to Zeus to dedicate myself to his command to spew forth.