When did my life become such a fucking soap opera? I mean, really. It's even got the "Oh you're dead whoops just kidding!" element to it.
So no sooner do Stan and Kyle make up that Wendy decides to prove she's completely over Cartman by hitting on Kyle. Stan has his usual Wendy-induced shit fit, chews Kyle out, blah blah blah, and he storms off to his house only to find Cartman has decided to prove he's completely over Wendy by hitting on Shelly, who's back home since she flunked out of community college.
Suffice to say, it sucks to be Stan right now. Since he's pissed off at Kyle and Cartman he's decided to latch onto my side. And Stan's a good friend of mine, but seriously, he is one of the most whiny people I have ever known. Not nearly as whiny as Damien or Clyde, but still. It can be grating.
I spent the first half of Saturday tuning him out by trying to figure out how to not go to hell. Stan wanted to know why, but I didn't really want to tell him why I didn't want to mingle with the dead, so I just told him Damien was getting on my last nerve.
Stan can sympathize with that. Damien came back up to the surface for a week when we were fourteen. He immediately started tailing Kyle like a puppy, trying to serenade him with tales of how they would rule hell together, and challenging Stan to duels over Kyle's love. Stan finally took him up on it just to get him to stop leaving 'threatening' sticky notes all over his stuff, and Damien ran home crying after Stan flicked him on the forehead.
So then it came to me in a blaze of brilliance: Gary. Mormons all go to heaven! So I hunted him down to where he was working at Tweek Bros. Coffee (which is kinda weird, since he doesn't drink coffee... or tea... or diet, caffeine-free soda) and we hung out with Tweek until Gary's shift ended.
Tweek is frantically trying to figure out how to get out of a drag race. Now I know I'm really one to talk about taste in BFFs, considering Mole steals the salt shakers, napkin dispensers, and artificial sweetener packets whenever we go to a food joint, but Token seriously gets Tweek into some crazy situations.
Tweek asked me what I would do in his situation, and I told him I'd die. Because, well, I would. It didn't comfort Tweek much, though, if the uncontrollable sobbing was any indication.
Gary was overjoyed when I told him I wanted to be a Mormon; of course, Gary is constantly overjoyed. If he were ever just 'joyed' he'd be depressed. We spent the rest of Saturday at a table in the coffee shop, Gary reading to me from the Book of Mormon and Stan tugging on my sleeve and asking if we could leave. I told him he could, but whether he would or not was a whole different story.
Really, if Stan can't stand Gary so much he should just get over his Wendy-fixation and apologize to Kyle for freaking out when it was Wendy who was asking if she could tap Kyle's ass, not the other way around. I don't know when Stan's going to realize that Kyle is as likely to date one of his ex-girlfriends as he is to admit Cartman's been right about Jews all this time. Besides, Kyle has Red. And they seem rather sickeningly happy together. She's always wearing his ushanka.
I actually asked Stan, when five o'clock hit and Gary had to go home for his family get-together or whatever, why he was making such a big fucking deal over Wendy hitting on a completely unreceptive Kyle and hadn't said anything when Wendy and Cartman went on a date. Stan said, "That's just Cartman. If he weren't a self-serving asshole, we'd know something was wrong."
Which is true, though I hate to admit it.
On Sunday I went to see Gary again, Stan still tagging along. Mole met up with us, too, because he always avoids his house on Sunday if he can. Otherwise his parents drag him to church.
When Gary started explaining what I had to do to become a Mormon, Mole paused in his chain-smoking long enough to inform me of the very pressing fact that all my friends are beetches. Which is, of course, French for 'bitches.' I asked him if that included himself, and he hit me upside the head with his shovel and went back to smoking, offering some mumbled blasphemy in place of an apology for the near-concussion.
I swear the only reason he still drags that shovel around with himself is so that he can wail on me with it.
Gary says that before I can become a Mormon I have to meet with official missionaries and have a bunch formal 'discussions' about Mormon beliefs about God, Jesus, the Mormon's take on the purpose of life, and the 'Plan of Salvation,' and I have to agree to live by various church precepts. I have to read from the Book of Mormon and the Bible, pray to God to ask if the Mormons' teaching are true, and attend Sunday religious meetings at least twice before I can be converted. Then I have to have an interview with a local religious leader and get baptized before I can join the church.
The whole thing takes weeks, which I really don't have. It's already been six days since I last died, so I know I'm due. Maybe there's some sort of express route to Mormonism I can take, or something.
Stan sat around the coffee house and made discontented noises the entire time. I know he doesn't like Gary OR Mole, but he couldn't go home because Cartman was there, showering Shelly with chocolate and flowers and singing her an off-key love song he wrote himself while playing a guitar. Badly. Stan's annoyed noises were nearly as aggravating as Craig, who was sitting two tables away and very blatantly filming me while trying to hide behind a ficus. He would have been more inconspicuous if he hadn't loudly called Tweek over every twenty minutes to refill his coffee.
When Gary left at five again and Mole decided to brave his household, Stan and I started to walk back toward our houses. We live next door to each other, after all. Stan started complaining that he had no idea how converting to Mormonism was supposed to keep me away from Damien, and he didn't believe me when I told him Mormons go to heaven. He still thinks Joseph Smith was full of shit.
I said, "Stan, are you seriously going to argue with me about the afterlife?"
And he said, "Look, I'm not going to pretend I understand everything that goes on in your life - and death - but people should make religious decisions based on faith, not because they want to piss off their parents or they like the robes or they're on death row or some shit like that. I'm just worried you're trying to conform to some group just to run away from a problem, like when you were a goth three years back."
And I didn't say anything, cause, I mean, shit. Why does Stanley Fucking Marsh have to be so right, so often?
So then Stan said, "Let's go down to 8-10. I'll buy you a strawberry cinnamon bun for dinner. You must be getting tired of waffles."
... You know, Stan complains a lot, and he's sort of a wuss, and he's used to making moral judgments and then trying to get everyone else in the world to conform to his way of thinking. But he really is one of the best things to ever come out of this fucked up little town.
