There are a few details I want to make sure are in place before my eventual death, chief amongst them being that if I end up buried, I need someone to check that a video camera has been installed in my coffin. Or, if I'm being religiously worshiped by then, my tomb. I'm concerned about waking up. Maybe you'll say this is an impossibility, since I'd be embalmed and it would be hard to wake up without my blood. However, I say back that I'm an abnormally pale person, and I see how there could be a series of misunderstandings at the mortician's, like he might think he already readied me because he's got a lot of responsibilities at home and so has been very distracted at work, and my similarly abnormal low blood pressure hides my pulse from him, and then suddenly I'm waking up in my gold-plated tomb with my mummified dog positioned next to me, and there's no intercom to buzz. Writing that, I'm realizing that I'd be okay with an intercom system too, if that's cheaper to install than the camera.
My mom would say that I'm worrying about all this for nothing, as this week she informed me that if I get that sixth tattoo I'm thinking about, the Jewish cemetery won't have me. According to her, it's the sixth one that's really going to push them over the edge. I don't love the idea of cremation, but if I can be flash frozen and then ultrasonically vibrated like they've started to do in, I believe, Sweden, I'd just appreciate it if someone can poke around in my dust and make sure I'm not going to pull myself back into a whole being like the mummy in The Mummy, then find myself trapped in a steel box. Not that I'm saying this is a likely ability I'll develop by that time, but I do think I have a great deal of unrealized potential, so it would be stupid to rule it out.
Another pre-death concern is that I leave behind some obscure Seigel material for the Seigel completists, who I hope will grow in number beyond my parents before I kick it. In preparation I'm releasing some of my output through more ephemeral, alternate channels than Barnes and Noble, creating a veritable treasure hunt for the goth teens of the future, one of those projects being the non-fiction "book" I wrote this summer and am releasing under a pen name. This "book" I will mention once on this blog when it's available and then never speak of again. Another crumb on the trail might be this story about (hey!) a gay mortician that appears in the current issue of H.O.W. If you think you might ever become a Seigel completist, then you should pick the journal up now, not only because the price includes a donation to help orphans with AIDS, but also because it's a limited run and in 2042, your sullen great-niece is going to finally want to have a conversation with you when she spots it on your attic shelf.
The first page, so you can decide if you'd like to read more:
BEAUTIFY THE DEAD
She was lying on the slab, and for once I had no idea where to begin. The girl was fourteen, and she was ugly. She had little eyes. Large eyes can often be the one saving grace when everything else is wrong. Not so much once you’re dead because I have to shut them and glue them down. But in life they are helpful. The girl on the slab had a pinched nose with nostrils the shape of acute triangles. She had sunken cheeks and then the distended mouth of a bottom dwelling fish. I pulled back her lips and saw little teeth that looked like God’s molds for her nostrils had been inserted into her gums. If she had lived longer, I think that she might have had problems getting dates, although there are ugly guys in the world, too. I’m just not drawn to them myself. Since I am not handsome, I discovered somewhat late in life that I needed charisma. But, because I’m not convinced that I was born with it, I decided to take this job. It’s not everybody that can be around dead people. Now I’m as fun as a horror movie.
I have eyes that are not big and not small, and often I think that God gave them to me because he realized that I was going to be a romantic nonentity.
Usually, families give me a picture from a tropical vacation or a wedding, pretty pictures that make death look like it was unfair to their dead. The girl’s family had given me a picture. What was keeping me from starting was that it wasn’t just flattering but a different person completely.
Guys on online dating sites also favor misleading photos. They put up pictures from before they were fat and ugly, or if they were always ugly, pictures taken from deceptive angles that make them less so. Two wrongs aren’t supposed to make a right, but dim lighting and a deceptive angle can create the appearance of being fuckable...
