Friends.

Heaven reminds me of a country club in Virginia. Not to say that the greens or fairways are associated with heaven, I have never in my life stepped onto a golf course that charged admission. It seems that heaven itself is formed on exclusion. There is not a heaven if they let just loddy-doddy every-goddamn-body in to partake in everlasting paradise. Believing in heaven precludes any non-existence of hell. Heaven is the most exclusive of clubs, formed by the most exclusive of judges.

My one and only experience with a blue-blood country club came at the expense of a girl near and dear to me. I slaved semi-patriotically in the most blue collar of jobs, ensuring that another blue collar semi-patriotic slave waving a different flag, would die alone and without fanfare in a desert country somewhere, spectacularly minced by my handiwork. My girlfriend worked for a mortgage company. Only the most brutish of the proletariat took a job in my field, supporting and defending the right of rich men to sleep well knowing their sons were safe in college. The sons of men who ran mortgage companies.

As luck would have it, the company had a Christmas party at an extremely exclusive country club. My girlfriend was invited along with a guest. I fancied myself up in high order with a hand tailored suit from Singapore, a blue Egyptian cotton shirt tailored in Dubai and a plain black Navy issued tie which perfectly matched my plain black Navy issued shoes. There is no way to make a military fade look classy.

My luck continued to spiral out of control, eventually landing me seated at the table of the president of this quaint little mortgage company. The yuppies talked of plays and concerts. I talked of arming times and glove vanes. They were impressed, as I am impressed by a dog that can fetch me beer. One of them brought up a play I'm told is famous. It is called Les Miserables. I scratched my close-shorn head and shifted in the plush seats, I had seen this play. I had seen it in Bahrain. With a Russian whore. Drunk.

"Oh, I've seen that."

"Did you like it?"

"I don't know, I was too drunk to remember it and my buddies got us kicked out."

"Oh my goodness."

By the end of the night, I had dropped the Martinis and went into the club's stash of Wild Turkey. The old man who had boot-strapped his business up out of the mire in his younger, wilder days liked me. He also liked Wild Turkey. We became well drunk. Our women were not pleased. Neither were the rest of the guests. My girlfriend was so angry at my foolishness she married me in a thoroughly malicious manner.

The point being, I got well drunk last night and came home to spend some quality time with an old friend. The first time we met, he called me by Tom Joad. Last time I spent time with him, he called me Adam Trask, and he was correct. This time, he called me Tom Hamilton and was even more startlingly astute.

The problem is, as I understand heaven, my buddy John and I will never meet in the hereafter, which is sad because he died twelve years before I was born. We could have been great friends. His insight into me over the years is uncanny. Unfortunately, he didn't belong to the exclusive club I was born into. Poor guy.

"Thank you son for wanting to honor me with the truth. It is not as pleasant, but it is more permanent."--Samuel Hamilton to his son.

It seems like the struggle to get into heaven, that morality itself, is a struggle against natural human entropy. To be moral, a person must slave patriotically against nature in one long continuous battle of will. Obviously, there will be exclusion to the reward.

Entropy long ago swallered me whole. I don't quite revel in it, but it revels in me. Interesting thought to have at five in the morning sobering up. It made me think of bears stealing beer and a black Ford Galaxie driving a marine engineer and Luke Skywalker around. My all consuming funk may be lifting because I now know myself better. I'm not Tom Hamilton all the time, but I have been lately. And the dark side of Tom is a character named Billy.

Billy reluctantly saves the universe, you see. Maybe he's ready to fight again. He might need an assist from a poorly spelled suburbanite who sometimes deludes himself into becoming a deer.

Me and my friends may form an exclusive group in the hereafter, yet. I think Sam Clemens will be allowed in as well.

See you there, fuckers.