The B-Side: You Won't Believe Who Made It Into Heaven
An excerpt from a piece to be published in 'The McEneaney Anthology of Literature' (forthcoming)
As trendy and exclusive as Heaven is reputed to be — the guest list is tighter than 1 Oak's and notoriously impossible to buy your way into — once you get inside you'll sometimes be shocked at the… variety of types of people who actually made it in. For every saint or celebrity, there’s an inconvenient relative or someone you had just expected to never have to see again.
Think of it as the Eternal Soho House.
Before you bust your balloons doing the minimum number of good deeds on Earth required for entry, here's a select sample of who you'll be meeting — and partying with — up there.
William Shakespeare
The closest you’ll get to Shakespeare is talking to his closest friend, Arthur Miller, who’ll get drunk and insist that all of Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Queen Elizabeth. He'll say she hired him as a front because women weren’t allowed to work in the theatre back then. You’ll want to confirm this, but no one from the British Royal Family has ever made it in.
A surprising number of personal injury attorneys
There to scrub toilets as part of a work-release program from an increasingly crowded Hell.
Your first dog
In Heaven, he will be given an intelligence 1,000 times greater than that which he possessed on Earth. Not that he’ll be a genius, but he’ll be about as smart as your average human being—or twice as smart as your average influencer. However, your reunion will be bittersweet; he’ll be so embarrassed by his behavior back when he was your pet—running when you called, chasing sticks, allowing you to cut off his testicles—that he’ll spend a great deal of time avoiding you.
He’ll let your emails go unanswered, send your calls to voicemail, and the evening that you finally swallow your pride and walk to his house, he’ll turn off the lights, duck behind the furniture, and pretend not to be home. When you finally run into each other at a party, it will be awkward.
Your grandparents
And despite the fact that money holds no value up there, you can rest assured that every year you will find that they have sent you a slightly humorous card with a check for five dollars inside, three months after your actual birthday.
Ayn Rand
And she is full-on mad about it - she keeps calling it “commie liberal hippie paradise”, and demands to pay rent, groceries, utilities. While most think she’s nuts, she calls her own behaviour “an incredible show of the strength of the individual.”
Kurt Vonnegut
And he will spend a lot of time making a convincing case that where he is doesn’t really exist.
Graaargh, the Woman Who Invented the Wheel
That’s right, sexists, the wheel was invented by a woman and she’s really bitter. Apparently, she met a patent attorney who told her how much money she’s theoretically owed in back royalties.
Still, she’s easier to talk to than Raaaaarrrgh—the woman who discovered fire, then immediately became the woman who discovered the concept of dying in a fire-related accident. Ironically, “Raaaaarrrgh” is not only her name, but also the noise she made while she made all her discoveries.
The guy who wrote the Bible
He’ll corner you at a party to complain that his original version in Aramaic was perfect—and yeah, King James made it more commercial, but also totally cheapened the vision. He’ll hand you a dog-eared manuscript labeled, “The Bible II: Back in the Habit,” which you will promise to read but ultimately leave in the back seat of your Uber home. Then, like every writer who ever lived and died, he’ll go away if you buy him a drink.
Thomas Jefferson & John Adams
Don’t get your hopes up about a reunion—they’re still not speaking. Each is convinced the other tried to ruin the country by “saving it the wrong way.” Adams will tell you that Jefferson invented democracy just to win an argument. They’ve agreed to keep their relationship strictly postal; Adams sends Jefferson endless decrees, Jefferson sends Adams snide little pamphlets in return.
Bob Dylan
ONE NIGHT ONLY! Don’t worry, Bob’s still alive. He just tours everywhere. Actually, he isn’t technically playing Heaven, but he’ll be appearing at a surprising number of the smaller cities right outside of it so get ready for that traffic if you live in the ‘burbs. And then it’s straight on to a minor league ballpark in Des Moines.
More Maître D’s than you would have expected
Yes, restaurants in Heaven still have maître d’s—old-fashioned, sure, but Heaven is nothing if not traditionalist. And good luck charming them by dropping an “I know St. Jude.” Money’s no good here, fame means nothing, and Mother Teresa couldn’t get in without a reservation. Moses had to wait at the bar for an hour just to snag a two-top. Unless God Himself booked your table, prepare to spend eternity taking your meals between the swinging kitchen door and a birthday party of saints who all requested separate checks.
Subscribers go to Heaven first. It’s in the Bible. (Probably.) Subscribe here.
Know someone who belongs in Heaven? Forward this post. I’ll save them a seat.
Comments go below. That’s where the party is.
The 'Your First Dog' one! HA! ; )