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The Great Experiment
By Frank Crocitto . Illustration by Leslie Bender

I’m telling you it’s got nothing to do with who can prove what! Anybody can prove anything they want. Somebody proves the moon isn’t made of green cheese and then somebody proves it’s made of gorgonzola. It’s like taste. You prove whatever you want to, whatever you feel at home with.

Scientists?! Scientists are as driven by what they want to prove as anybody else. Now, of course, if you’re talking about a real scientist—one with no agenda, who’s got nothing at stake, who’s not getting any pay-off and doesn’t have to justify his salary by some cooked-up “experiment”, and is absolutely, positively objective and dedicated to the truth above all, even above what his fellow peers would ridicule him for, and also, by the way, someone who recognizes the limitation of the human noodle, the human POV, and all the super-doofus technology (that’s nothing but the outgrowth of the same old point of view),— yeah, sure, if you’re talking about somebody like that (wherever he may be in this wide world), he might prove something.

But you can’t ask him, or anybody, any old body, to prove or disprove what they don’t have the foggiest idea about. Like this, let me tell you this: when I was in high school I had this here English teacher—so you know you can’t expect nothing much outta him to begin with—but anyway, one day he makes this pronouncement that science has proven there is no God. OK. But you can’t just leave it at that. You gotta ask, don’t you? You gotta ask where/when/how’d they do it? Who dood it? You know what I mean? You gotta ask.

So I ask this guy—because I’m interested—I ask him for more information. Mr. Tuckermann is his name and he’s head of the department. Big tall guy, that looks like Andy Gump. What do you mean, who’s Andy Gump? From the comics! Don’t you read the comics? Well, he used to be in the comics. The point is he looks like a goof and he’s making pronouncements about whether God exists or doesn’t in my English class. And if they’ve been able to prove there’s no God I’d like to know about it so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering, or acting like I expect to meet Him. And maybe I won’t have to be as good a boy as my mother wants me to be. I mean, this is an important point. Does He or doesn’t He? Don’t you agree?

And I agree with you too. So I go up to Tuckermann and I say,

—Mr. Tuckermann, where did they prove that God doesn’t exist?

And he takes a long look at me and he pulls his head up like an ostrich and looks down his beak at me and says,

—Wwwhere? What difference, wwwhere?

I wisht he wasn’t my teacher cause I wanted to hit him one. I’m a senior so I want to graduate and get outta that dump. So I pretend I’m a civil citizen in a civil society and I ask:

—Well, who did it? I mean the experiment. You said it was in the newspaper...

—The New York Times, he says with a sneer, and I could see he’s getting ready to take off. I don’t suppose you read the New York Times, do you?

I mumbled a little and I said that I did “sometimes.” Which is true, sometimes I do. Once in a blue moon. When there was an article on da Vinci once, and there was another one I read on the Egyptian pharaoh, Akhnaton. But I don’t read it as a habit. If I did I wouldn’t have time to wipe my ass. It’s a big paper. I used to know a guy that had stacks of them in his hallway when you walked in. He was always six months behind and was always trying to catch up. Not only that but my father works for the Daily News and he brings it home free.

So I asked Tuckermann point-blank if he can bring me the article. I mean since I don’t read the shitass Times. No, I didn’t say that to him, of course I didn’t say that. What am I stupid? I want to see this article. I want to see it. This could be the most important experiment in the whole history of this big ball of compost.

So he says he’ll look for it. So when the next day comes I go up and ask him if he found it. He looks at me like I got two heads. Then he remembers.

—Oh, no, no, he says. I forgot.

—Oh, I says. But I’m thinking to myself: how could this guy forget?

Well, a couple of days go by like this. And it’s getting more and more tense when I gotta go up to him and ask. He’s brushing me off. I can tell. He makes me wait for fifteen minutes while he talks to some stupid girl. One of those goog-a-lee-eyed girls who knows the answers to all the test questions that’s ever been printed. Then he tells me he’s not sure if he threw it out. Now how could this guy throw such an article out? You’d think he would frame it and hang it up in his bathroom so he could look at it every day. Shit, am I right or wrong? Then it’s the weekend. Come Monday he tells me he can’t find it but that I could go to the library—just like that. And he walks off in a huff like I’m an annoyance. I just want to know if God exists or He doesn’t. And I didn’t bring it up; he brought it up.

Now in the library there’s a really crazy lady. Libraries are like that. They attract very weird people. This library, if you mention God or religion, she gets flush in the face like she owns stock in the company. So I’m not going to mention what I’m looking for. But she seeks me out. She’s breathing over my shoulder, and she wears this perfume or something that’s so sweet it makes you want to chuck up. I don’t know why they make perfume like that. And I don’t know why people buy it. But you can’t say anything cause you know the person will get offended. Maybe she’s got no sense of smell or maybe she’s friends with the janitor and wants people to upchuck in the damn library so he does something to justify his paycheck.

So there I am—and she asks. Since I’m not getting anywhere looking page by page through this mound of papers, I tell her. And she gets these red blotches on her cheeks. I tell her I believe in God, I’m a Catholic, I received Communion and Confirmation and I go to Confession, so she doesn’t have to worry about me. First she gives me a lecture and warns me about people who say things to children and about millstones around people’s necks and how you can’t believe what’s written in the paper, and you can’t even believe what’s printed in books. And she’s a librarian, no less!

What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. She’s got some sort of directory and she finds the article, at least the listing. But when we go to the actual newspaper it’s cut out. The people that cut things out should be shot. Why do they got to cut it out? They read it, they can copy it! Why cut it out so no one else can read it? Somebody had to have a reason to do that. So now I’m not letting go. I’m going to the local library on New Utrecht Avenue and see those other kooky librarians and I’m ready to go-go all the way to the New York Times building and get them to pull it out of the vault.

As it turned out I didn’t have to do that. They had the article—yeah, in the library. Yeah, and I read the article. Big, long article, just like Tuckermann said. Except it didn’t prove that God didn’t exist, it proved these dumb-ass scientists don’t exist. It had something to do with rats and incense and pages of the Bible that they soaked in beef blood or melted cheese and whether the rats ate the Old Testament, New Testament, the Koran, the Upanishads, all kinds of holy books I never heard of. And these rats ate these pages anyway—no matter what—which proves—in a double Venetian blind no less—that there is no God! Because? Why? Because there is no such thing as God. And the rats know. So the greatest question in the world has been settled by the rats in Joe Hooglediwiggledy’s Lab-or-a-tory. I mean what can you say?

Why you asking me if God exists? Do I look like a rat? I wouldn’t tell even if I knew. Why? No, I’m not being perverse. You gotta find out for yourself. And if you’re too stupid to find out or too lazy to look you don’t deserve to know. Yeah, that’s what I think. Believe me.

You know what that freakin Tuckermann gave me—after all my efforts? A lousy C-! A C-! Jeez. If you bring a corpse in to class every day he deserves a C-. I think Tuckermann didn’t like that term paper I wrote about his wonderful rats. What the hell…