The most shocking part about Hell is that Hell is actually pretty nice. Something about this seems kind of intentional. It’s like Hell’s first and harshest torment is upending your expectations. Disbelieving in Hell and being underwhelmed by it is one, entirely pedestrian thing. Believing in Hell, fearing its horrors all your life, and finding you’ve settled far more comfortably than in any other plane is a different revelation altogether. Eternal damnation somehow ends up being the easiest job you’ve ever had.
Make no mistake: Hell is serious business. Hell has infernal aspects aplenty. Reversal of fortune is a big one. They’re super into that. If you lived sinfully with expansive views, you will be damned to look out at high, blank adjacent walls on either side. But if you sinned in a more cramped situation, you will have all the space you need but nothing with which to fill it. A sinful workaholic will have endless leisure time and access to every—literally every single—streaming service. A sinful lazy person will have to fill out unending and absurd paperwork for permission to use the bathroom, and by a certain deadline. If they don’t meet the deadline, they will be punished and have to start over. A sinful distracted person will have nothing but a Rubik’s Cube. A sinful focused person will moderate social media. A failed writer (which is less a sin than something that tests God’s patience) will churn out a mind-numbing succession of how-to guides.
All this seems pretty daunting, but an important, and again very surprising, part about Hell is that it is flexible. You are damned in Hell, not imprisoned. The managers of Hell understand that the logistics of deathless toil are a little loopy. It turns out it is as challenging for them to oversee it effectively as it is for you to endure it consistently. So there are some outs, albeit temporary ones, that are not given willy-nilly. They have to be worked for or, even better, discovered when you’re not even looking for them. This is no less true when it comes to dating in Hell.
Couple no. 1
Ex: What a lovely scarf.
Oh: Thank you! That is a gorgeous sweater. Is it cashmere?
Ex: Thank you. And yes.
Oh: It suits you.
Ex: Your scarf suits you.
Oh: Never in my life did I think I’d wear such fine clothes.
Ex: Yes, I never managed that myself.
Oh: How does it feel?
Ex: Dismal.
Oh: I agree with you that it feels dismal.
Ex: Very dismal.
They touch hands.
So far as anyone can tell, dating was not built into Hell’s original scheme. It was a safe assumption that romantic entanglements made in Hell were directly related to the earthly circumstances that got you there in the first place. For anyone else to engage in them seemed like a glaring enough glitch that, if it wasn’t reported, was certainly noticed. That it continues likely means that Hell’s managers allow it to continue for an end they don’t care to disclose.
Hell’s managers probably understand the human view of dating in the broad strokes. They understand its base difficulty; that it is consistently humiliating, contingently pleasant, and very easy to become wrapped up in its pursuit at the expense of its intended outcome. There are probably just enough relationship experts under their observation to tell them that. But Hell’s managers are a lot like most other managers. They have their blind spots; they understand things mostly insofar as they are useful. I don’t think Hell’s managers actually know that much about life on Earth. Like dutiful clerks they see the sin, process it, and take the next in line. I don’t think they’ve wrapped their heads around the underlying miasma of survival, need for security, biological imperative, and personal aspiration in which we bathed ourselves in finding a partner. And in fairness, it probably took the damned a while to realize the extent of their own liberation.
Something you realize not long after coming into Hell: you are a bad person. That hope of redemption inherent in us all did not come for you. Why? I have no idea, what did your caseworker say? That you didn’t believe it? That you believed it but didn’t take it seriously enough? That you thought it’d be easier to get than it was? There’s not much you can do about it now. But once you accept that you are, until the last star burns out at the earliest, a bad person, you find that you are not alone. You are among an endless supply of bad people, a great variety of them, in fact. Bad people from all walks of life and degrees of severity, from the morally oblivious to outright sociopaths. You are now on a multifarious spectrum of badness. Being human, you will want to find your place on it, to compare yourself against others, and, seemingly without even trying, meet new people.
Couple no. 2
Ex: This is my lake.
Oh: This whole lake is yours?
Ex: Every inch of it.
Oh: That’s amazing.
Ex: Every day I sit on this bench and look out at the lake.
Oh: The bench is yours, too?
Ex: Yes. My son’s name is on it.
Oh: How sweet.
Ex: If you look closely enough you can see my son drowning in the lake.
Oh: Is that so?
Ex: Dead center of it.
Oh: I’ll be. That’s sort of impressive.
Ex: Sometimes I’m not even mad.
They softly embrace.
Dating on Earth is a language game. It is a process of pitches, propaganda, evasions, quality tests, and countless unsaid sayings to determine the worth of prospective mates and to obscure or dress over anything you felt made you unworthy. It seems all very nefarious when laid out in this way, but it was a natural outcome, about which most of us were greatly ambivalent at best. If you were lucky, you’d find someone who would make all the inevitable sacrifices and compromises you’d never have made on your own somehow worth it.
Hell is a different matter. The terrible secrets you’ve long kept in the dark are fully disclosed, and all the pettier embarrassments you worked up your blood pressure to conceal are laughably trivial. Better yet, language is significantly streamlined in Hell. It is a place of few words; in many cases no words at all.
Some other things mitigated in Hell:
There is no actual money. As needed, there may be experiences based on money. One person might be panicked at the lack of it, another paralyzed by its abundance. Hell has no goods you can consume or services you can render. There is certainly nothing to do; there is no amusement or recreation, no frisbee golf or pickleball. You can, I guess, kick someone’s back and forth, or see who can land them onto pikes at the greatest distance, provided the possessor of the heads consent. There’s still consent in Hell.
There is no need for employment; none in the traditional sense anyway, that facilitates a business and acquires profit. Your business is what’s given to you, it defines you, it’s yours in perpetuity. There are no pink slips, there is no severance, no overtime, and no retirement.
There are no ailments, no health scares, no surprise crises; no debacles over insurance premiums, deductibles, or preexisting conditions. Hell’s pain is rather painless, all told.
There are no children in Hell, which is a plus.
Still, dating in Hell remains somewhat difficult to comprehend. There are issues of compatibility and of long-term cohabitation. Can one damned person and another damned person be vulnerable in a dire situation and then sustain it over eons? A fair question, nevertheless answered in the absolute affirmative. I can’t think of a better place to develop relationships—again, quite by accident in its design. Hell is a place where no one grows, where no one changes or adjusts. No hugging, no learning, as they say. It removes every incentive or obstacle to growth but one, perhaps the most important as it is the most equalizing: our penchant for suffering. If there was one language fitting for this world it is “mutual suffering,” making for a stronger bond than any walk-up apartment lease or dual checking account could ever manage.
Couple no. 3
Oh: Excuse me. I’m so sorry. But I must use the restroom.
Ex: But you just got back from the restroom.
Oh: I know.
They rupture into maggots.
Someone once said that “Hell is other people.” That on its own is not a very compelling notion. But language is about context inasmuch as damnation is all about attitude. After all, someone entirely different once said that being alone is a matter of being “in bad company.” Coming to Hell because you deserve to be here is an example of a bad attitude; never mind its truth. Leaving behind bad company into the wailing and gnashing of other people can, through ingenious shifts in perspective, constitute a positive self-adjustment, of turning an indefinite curse into a perpetually creditable blessing. Hell is as effective a cure for loneliness as you’re likely to get anywhere. And I’m not just saying that because I am being forced to under threat of some physically repulsive, unintentionally funny penalties. I’m also saying it because you are awful.