Survivor

upped sales.

What happened is one day I'm in the green room waiting to co-host some daytime television project. This is way fast forward, after the autographed Bible book tour. The idea here is if I co-host and enough people tune in, I'll spin off with a vehicle of my own. So I'm in the green room trading toenail secrets with somebody, the actress Wendi Daniels or somebody, and she asks me to sign her copy of the book. The Book of Very Common Prayer. This is the first time I ever see a copy, I swear. On a stack of my own autographed Bibles, I swear.

According to Wendi Daniels, I can smooth out the swelling under my eyes by rubbing in a dab of hemorrhoid cream.

Then she hands it to me, the Book of Very Common Prayer, and my name is just so right there on the spine. Me, me, me. There I am.

There inside are the prayers people think I wrote:

The Prayer to Delay Orgasm

The Prayer to Lose Weight

The feeling, the way it feels when laboratory product-testing animals are ground up to make hot dogs, that's how hurt I felt.

The Prayer to Stop Smoking

Our most Holy Father,

Take from me the choice You have given.

Assume control of my will and habits.

Wrest from me power over my own behavior.

May it be Your decision how I act.

May it be by Your hands, my every failing.

Then if I still smoke, may I accept that my smoking is

Your will.

Amen.

The Prayer to Remove Mildew Stains The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss

God of ultimate stewardship,

Shepherd of thine flock,

As You would succor the least of Your charges,

As You would rescue the most lost of Your lambs,

Restore to me the full measure of my glory.

Preserve in me the remainder of my youth.

All of Creation is Yours to provide.

All of Creation is Yours to withhold.

God of limitless bounty,

Consider my suffering.

Amen.

The Prayer to Induce Erection

The Prayer to Maintain an Erection

The Prayer to Silence Barking Dogs

The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms

The way all this felt, I looked terrible on television. My spin-off television show, well, I had to kiss that goodbye. One minute after we were off the air, I was being all over the telephone long-distance to the agent in New York. Everything on my end of the conversation was furious.

All he cared about was the money.

'What's a prayer?' he says. 'It's an incantation,' he says, and he's yelling back at me over the phone. 'It's a way for people to focus their energy around a specific need. People need to get clear on a single intention and accomplish it.'

The Prayer to Prevent Parking Tickets

The Prayer to Stop Plumbing Leaks

'People pray to solve problems, and these are the honest-to-God problems that people worry about,' the agent's still yelling at me.

The Prayer for Increased Vaginal Sensitivity

'A prayer is how the squeaky wheel gets greased,' he says. That's how made out of cheese his heart is. 'You pray to make your needs known.'

The Prayer Against Drivetrain Noise

The Prayer for a Parking Space

Oh, divine and merciful God,

History is without equal for how much I will adore

You, when You give me today, a place to park.

For You are the provider.

And You are the source.

From You all good is delivered.

Within You all is found.

In Your care will I find respite. With Your

guidance, will I find peace.

To stop, to rest, to idle, to park.

These are Yours to give me. This is what I ask.

Amen.

Seeing how I'm just about to die here, people need to know that my personal intention all along has been to serve the glory of God. Pretty much. Not that you can find this in our mission statement, but that's my general overall plan. I want to at least make an effort. This new book just looked so not at all pious. So not even a little devout.

The Prayer Against Excessive Underarm Wetness

The Prayer for a Second Interview

The Prayer to Locate a Lost Contact Lens

Still, even Fertility says I'm way off base about the book. Fertility wanted a second volume.

It's Fertility who says, some stadiums when I'm up front praising God, I'm the same as people wearing clothes printed with Mickey Mouse or Coca-Cola. I mean, it's so easy. It's not even a real choice. You can't go wrong. Fertility says, praising God is just such a safe thing to do. You don't even have to give it any thought.

'Be fruitful and multiply,' Fertility says to me. 'Praise God. There's no real risk. This is just our default setting.'

What saved the Book of Very Common Prayer was, people were using every prayer. Some people were pissed off, mostly religious people who resented the competition, but by this point our cash now was down. Our total revenues were leveling off. It was market saturation. People had the prayers committed to memory. People were stuck in traffic reciting the Prayer to Make Traffic Move. Men were reciting the Prayer to Delay Orgasm, and it worked at least as well as multiplication tables. My best option seemed to be to just keep my mouth shut and smile.

Besides, the attendance figures were down at my personal appearances, this looked to be the beginning of the end. My People magazine cover was already three months behind me.

And there's no such thing as Celebrity Outplacement.

You don't see faded movie stars or whoever going back to community college for retraining. The only field left to me was doing the game show circuit, and I'm not that smart.

I'd peaked, and timing-wise, this looked like another good window to do my suicide, and I almost did. The pills were in my hand. That's how close I came. I was planning to overdose on meta-testos-terone.

Then the agent calls on the telephone, loud, real loud, the way it sounds when a million screaming Christians are screaming your name in Kansas City, that's the kind of excitement that's in his voice.

Over the phone in my hotel room the agent tells me about the best booking of my career. It's next week.