"Jesus Christ!" Tony yelled as he was shrouded in smoke, the exotic, tarnished metal lamp falling at his feet in the sand of the beach.
He had found the lamp in the sand where someone had been digging. He saw the dull glint while walking, had pulled it out, and had rubbed some sand off to see the obscure writing that the sand covered.
After a moment, he heard, "No, just a genie."
The smoke hung thickly, making it impossible to see.
"What?"
"I said, 'I'm not Jesus Christ. I'm just a genie.'"
There was silence.
"You know, like in that silly sitcom television show and in that even sillier cartoon movie? Really! I mean, bring on the stereotypes, why don't you?"
"Oh."
More silence. Then, the smoke began to clear, revealing the beach on a gray, overcast, late summer morning. As the smoke drifted inland, Tony could see an ethereal, manlike figure of average height standing before him. The figure had a dark complexion but did not look like he was African. Maybe Middle Eastern. He had a moustache and a pointed beard. A poofy turban crowned his head. He wore clothes that were pajama-like and had slippers with elfin, rolled toes. If someone had said, "Picture an atrocious burlesque version of a carnival sooth-sayer genie," the vision standing before Tony would be exactly what he would have come up with.
Tony immediately began thinking that some of his friends were doing some kind of elaborate prank on him. He looked behind himself for likely hiding places for a camera truck because he was otherwise far from the boardwalk and halfway down the sand to the ocean, which was at low tide.
But then Tony realized that he did not have any friends who would play that kind of trick because he did not really have any friends at all anymore. Not after he had spiraled down into anger and had lashed out at them.
Yes, Tony's was a typical story. Boy meets girl, boy woos girl, boy marries girl, and boy then discovers that the girl likes to get strange cock on the side, outside the sacred confines of the marital relationship. Then, girl screws boy in the divorce while she moves in with her lover. And all their friends knew about the whole relationship, but no one bothered to tell him.
As he considered that, Tony slowly looked around. It took him a moment to understand, but all motion had stopped other than his own and that of the genie. Tony might have been inclined to think that actors were poised at their marks like in the movie, The Truman Show, were it not for the fact that his eyes slowly took in the dog frozen in mid-air where it had leapt up in an attempt to bite a seagull, which was also frozen in mid-air as it twisted to escape.
Tony slowly turned around to look at the genie. Beyond the genie, he could see that the ocean had stopped moving. There was no sound of waves.
The genie shrugged.
"It's easier to talk, if all the background clutter is quieted down."
"So, you really are a genie," Tony said and immediately felt stupid for saying it.
"Duh," replied the genie, which did not help.
Tony stared for a moment and had to ask, "Do you really look like that?"
The genie looked down at his clothing and looked back up to regard Tony, a bit embarrassed.
"No. We're spirits. Clothing is meaningless to us. We appear this way to you to make things easier to understand. It's like how everyone in that Matrix movie sees things before Neo becomes The One. Your puny little mortal minds can't take much that's not familiar. Some compromises are necessary."
Tony wondered if he was supposed to feel insulted. As it turned out, he did not.
"It just looks like you're straight out of that I Dream of Jeannie show."
"Yeah, the templates are limited."
Tony paused for a moment.
"Mind you, Barbara Eden was hot in that show," Tony said, "even if they never showed her belly button. I saw re-runs of that program when I was younger, and I was in absolute love with her. And she was something like 35 or 40 when they made those. The 25-year-old version of her had to be even sexier."
"Eh," said the genie. "I've seen better. I've been around since the Trojan War. You know? The one with Helen, whose face launched a thousand ships? Although, to set the record straight, it was her ass. By all that is holy, that was an ass. The face, very nice, but certainly not 1,000-ship-worthy. The tits, so-so. But that butt... Mamma mia."
The genie shrugged.
"I'll grant you that I wouldn't kick a 25-year-old Barbara Eden out of my tent on a cold desert night either. Assuming I had a body, of course."
Tony and the genie contemplated that scenario companionably for a moment.
"You seem to know a lot about movies and television for someone who is stuck in a brass lamp."
"Bronze."
"What?"
"You people really don't read. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Bronze is usually an alloy of copper and tin, although you can mix it with other metals like aluminum, manganese, nickel or zinc. Human history has not had a 'Brass Age,' except maybe when swing music was popular. On the other hand, it has had a Bronze Age."
"What, have you got encyclopedias in that lamp there?"
"No. This is personal knowledge. The Trojan War? Remember? We just talked about it. Bronze Age. Although there was a History Channel thing about it the other day."
"We're back to the TV and movies question I asked."
"Oh, well, there's not a lot to do in the lamp. I've got basic cable, of course. I'd go nuts otherwise. The 700 Club makes me laugh. I did have an HBO subscription for a while, but I wished it away by mistake when I got pissed off at how Game of Thrones ended."
"I hear you on that."
They both thought for a moment about how there really, truly was no proper build-up for Daenerys going all Hannibal Lecter at King's Landing. And what was the deal with no lighting in those episodes at the beginning of the eighth season?
"Anyway," said the genie, breaking the silence, "you called me by rubbing that lamp. What can I do for you?"
OK, straight to the point, thought Tony.
"Does this mean that I get some wishes?"
"Yes. Sure. That's what the lumpen expects, so go for it."
"How many?"
"There's no limit."
"I thought you get three."
"No. There's no limit. It's just that no one ever makes it past three. You all fuck it up before the third one, leaving that number in people's minds."
"How?"
"You know what? You're the first one to bother asking. I tell everyone else, and they all say, 'No I won't.' And then they do."
"So?"
"'So' what?"
"How do we fuck up the wishes?"
"Oh, right. Well, basically, the universe is a sadistic asshole. No, sorry. That's not quite it. Let's say that the universe if very literal. It doesn't do nuance, subtext, or unspoken expectations. Even with wishes. So, it comes off as being an asshole."
"I don't get it."
"Look, say your fantasy is a sexual threesome involving yourself and two women, so you tell me your wish is that you want 'to do two chicks at the same time,' like that redneck guy in that movie with the guy with his red stapler. I say fine. I wave my hands, say the spell, and suddenly, you have two dicks, one on top of the other. I'm just the middleman. I don't control how it turns out. You get exactly what you asked for but not what you wanted. At that point, people usually wind up freaking out, or seal me back up in the lamp. Sometimes, if they are thinking rationally, they ask me to undo the spell. Then, they usually walk away. Until the next chump comes along. Present company excepted, of course."
Tony ignored the dig.
"Hypothetically and not actually wishing, what if I were to say that all I wanted was to be happy?"
'That's a good one. That comes up all the time. In that one, your brain gets fried, except for the pleasure centers and motor control sections. Basically, you sit around all day eating sweets and fatty foods, drinking alcohol, and masturbating."
"That's what I do now."
"Sure, but this is all that you'd ever be able to do, if you made a wish like that."
"Can I wish for someone to fall in love with me?"
"No. That's one the cartoon movie gets right. Best you can really get is for the other person to have low standards, but that's risky, as you can imagine. If you can't, that's a whole different problem. Someone else can wish for someone to fall in love with you, but usually that comes with the lover being obsessively devoted, which some folks have trouble dealing with."
Tony thought for a moment.
