A place. There are two chairs facing the audience, occupied by TERGIVERSATOR and JOHNNY.

[Lights up.]

TERGIVERSATOR: [nonchalantly] Hey, what do you think of the Professor?

JOHNNY: What do you mean?

TERGIVERSATOR: Oh, I don't know. Do you like him?

JOHNNY: He's okay, I suppose.

TERGIVERSATOR: Do you ever think that maybe there's something, I don't know, weird about him?

JOHNNY: Weird how?

TERGIVERSATOR: I don't know. Just...funny.

JOHNNY: Funny? A bit odd? A little queer? A little light in the loafers?

TERGIVERSATOR: No, that's not what I meant.

JOHNNY: You think he takes it up the ass?

TERGIVERSATOR: No!

JOHNNY: You think maybe he's wallpapered like his entire house with photographs of totally huge cocks?

TERGIVERSATOR: No!

JOHNNY: Like every time he sleeps with his wife he's secretly fantasizing about going down on the entire football team? Like in his spare time he sits around w--

TERGIVERSATOR: [interrupting, near tears] Why do you always do this to me? Every time I try to talk to you...

JOHNNY: [is-that-a-factly, a bit confused] He's not gay?

TERGIVERSATOR: No! He's an evil golem creature made of dough who eats babies!

JOHNNY: [considers that for a moment] That's fucked up, man. Are you sure he's not just gay?

TERGIVERSATOR: [shouting, in tears] I don't know! All I know is that he's made of dough, he's a golem, and he eats infants!

[The PROFESSOR enters from offstage. There are raisins stuck to his face.]

PROFESSOR: Is there something you'd like to share with the class, Mr Tergiversator?

[Suddenly everyone freezes except TERGIVERSATOR, who turns to the audience.]

TERGIVERSATOR: [informatively, even eagerly] Tergiversator's Tale: tergiversator. Noun. One who equivocates, or deserts a cause, or turns renegade. From the Latin tergiversatus, perfect passive participle of the first conjugation deponent verb tergiversari, to turn one's back, in turn derived from a combination of tergum, back, and versare, to turn often or whirl about. It entered the English language around 1654. My parents fucked me up in the head.

[Everyone carries on as before.]

TERGIVERSATOR: [ashamed] No, Professor.

[The PROFESSOR exits.]

JOHNNY: [whispering] He's so gay.

[There is pause while TERGIVERSATOR regains his composure.]

JOHNNY: Aren't golems supposed to be made of clay?

TERGIVERSATOR: They can be made of dough, too. Look at Play-Dough. That's clay, and it's like a dough.

JOHNNY: This whole golem thing is just stupid. He isn't even Jewish.

TERGIVERSATOR: That doesn't matter. [pauses] If he's not made of dough, why are there raisins embedded in his skin?

JOHNNY: They're not raisins. They're probably just warts, or something. Maybe they're cockroaches burrowing into his flesh. How the fuck do I know?

TERGIVERSATOR: Look at his mouth. You can't tell me that isn't a baby-eating mouth.

JOHNNY: Well, you've got a point there. It does curve down evilly at the ends, perfect for slurping up newborn blood. But that doesn't make him a golem. Certainly not some kind of [makes quotation marks in the air with his fingers] 'dough-golem'.

TERGIVERSATOR: I think that's a toasted almond.

JOHNNY: Where?

TERGIVERSATOR: [pointing] Right there, right below his left ear.

JOHNNY: [squints] Hey, you're right! I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for that, though, revolving around the fact that he's gay.

TERGIVERSATOR: [upset] Come on! He's an evil baby-eating dough-golem.

JOHNNY: Let's settle this once and for all. Professor!

[The PROFESSOR enters, looking sour.]

PROFESSOR: Yes?

JOHNNY: We need you to settle something. He thinks you're an evil golem creature made of dough who eats babies. I think you're just gay. Who's right?

PROFESSOR: [emits one bark of forced laughter] Well, Johnny, you're both wrong. I'm a healthy human male with a wife whom I fertilise regularly.

TERGIVERSATOR: But you do eat babies, right?

PROFESSOR: Every nine months, as regular as clockwork.

TERGIVERSATOR: But you're sure you're not made of dough?

PROFESSOR: [looks shifty] Certainly not. That would be silly.

TERGIVERSATOR: [hesitantly] So you wouldn't mind if I...baked you?

PROFESSOR: [fidgets, looks around for an escape] No. Not at all. Why should I?

TERGIVERSATOR: [with growing confidence] So you wouldn't mind if I baked you...right now?

PROFESSOR: [speaking too quickly] Sure. Why not? Go right ahead. I have nothing to hide.

[TEGIVERSATOR rises, takes a deep breath, and pulls out some matches or a lighter. He screams and lunges for the PROFESSOR, who screams and tries to run. Suddenly everyone freezes.]

PROFESSOR: [to the audience, objectively] The Golem's Tale: once upon a time, there lived a man who sought to learn the secret harmonies of all things. He studied mathematics, metaphysics, astronomy, music, all in vain, for he came to understand a painful truth: the human mind is capable of thinking only in symbols, and therefore the essences, the hidden meanings and significances, of what is must always remain hidden beneath the symbols we use to apprehend them. By now, alas, the man was quite mad, and in his delirium he decided to create something other than human, something with no consciousness or 'soul' to isolate it from the true nature of things behind a curtain of symbology. By a remarkable coincidence, one day sitting in a deli he found the secret to life itself in a box of crackerjacks. Do people still eat crackerjacks? With this potent formula, he fashioned his soulless creature for the pursuit of purest truth, his golem, of 112 cups matzo meal, 504 large eggs, 14 cups of rendered chicken fat, 14 cups of soya oil, and a hint of salt and pepper for flavour, mixed well and refrigerated an hour to firm it up. But something went wrong, dreadfully wrong. The year was 1984, and Ronald Reagan was winning a second term as president, and soullessness was the in thing. The golem, far from unfolding deepest symmetries, fled its creator to join the Republican Party, got a wife and a nice house, became a professor of electrical engineering at a Big 10 university, and started eating babies, as any good American should. God bless America.

[GOD enters, wearing a sign reading 'GOD'.]

GOD: I bless America!

[GOD exits.]

[They unfreeze. TERGIVERSATOR tears out the PROFESSOR's throat; he falls to the ground, dead, while TERGIVERSATOR eats his corpse.]

TERGIVERSATOR: See? I told you he was made of dough.

JOHNNY: [shocked, disgusted, terrified] Holy shit, man, you killed him! You killed him!

TERGIVERSATOR: Is that a problem?

JOHNNY: I'm calling the police. Can I eat that almond first?

TERGIVERSATOR: Maybe you're made of dough, too...

[JOHNNY recoils and screams as TERGIVERSATOR roars in bloodlust and leaps for him with outstretched hands. They freeze.]

JOHNNY: [to the audience] Johnny's Tale: I never asked to be born. Did I? I don't remember being consulted in the matter. You might as well blame me for the Thatcher years, or raccoon attacks, or cholera. Did I ever ask for cholera? I think not. David Bowie's 'Black Tie White Noise', I sure as hell didn't ask for that. Did I ask to die? I feel pretty sure I would have remembered. I did ask for that toasted almond, though; are you going to eat that? Why are you dumping all of your emotional baggage onto me, man? I never asked for you to be so gay. [choking up] Kiss me.

[They resume; TERGIVERSATOR kills JOHNNY, who falls, and TERGIVERSATOR begins to rend his prone body asunder. GOD re-enters, with the ANGELS waiting off to the sides. TERGIVERSATOR freezes.]

GOD: God's Tale: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God did a whole bunch of other really great stuff too, don't you forget it. God invented masturbation; how fucking cool is that? I'll bet none of you can say the same. And then God invented sin, to stop you doing it. [giggles] That God; he's such a kidder! If you could only see your faces. You like that? You whack off, don't you? Hey, are you whacking off right now? [points into the audience] Sinner! Stop that. Stop that right this moment. All of you, onanists, autoeroticists, self-flagellators, rabbit-thumpers, carrot-polishers, penguin-pounders, you'll all filthy sinners and naughty in God's sight. You're losing your immortal soul with that load of spunk, punk. But Me... [points to self, smiling] I'm God. I can do anything I want! I can give myself a three-hundred-thousand-mile-long dong and knock the Moon out of its orbit. That baby [gestures widely] can put out the Sun when it comes! How fucking cool is that? [giggles] I'm such a tergiversator. [fills with divine wrath, shouting furiously, pointing at TERGIVERSATOR] And you are a murderer, your hands forever stained with the blood of innocents, your nightmares forever haunted by the faces of your victims locked in their final moments of terror and pain as you ended their lives, your every moment spent waiting for the darkness to which you condemned them, forever lurking just behind your eyes, to creep out at last and claim you as well...

[TERGIVERSATOR unfreezes. GOD puts his arm around TERGIVERSATOR, who dons a halo.]

GOD: [chirpy and cheerful] But it's okay, since they were both mere golems and had no souls.

TERGIVERSATOR: They taste like salvation!

ANGELS: Hallelujah! [The ANGELS continue chanting 'Hallelujah' as the lights dim.]

[Fade out.]

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©2001 Luke Gutzwiller. I really mean it. Violation may result in the unwanted collapse of your state vector. God will smite the doughy infidel, just you wait and see.