Not Angels Or Demons, Just Human Beings

I met an angel on Saturday,

And a satanist cat-lady on Sunday.

The angel was reading the bible next to me at a coffee shop.

My hands started sweating when I considered talking to her. She was beautiful. If she wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have talked to her. I have no problem talking to beautiful women. That’s not what was making me nervous. I’m rather good at it. I was nervous because I wanted to ask her about her faith. 

After twenty minutes of sitting next to her, pretending to write something, I finally asked her what book it was she was reading.

She said, “The Bible.”

I laughed. “I know that much. I mean, which book in there are you reading?”

“I’m making my way through the new testament. Currently reading Jon,” she said sweetly, smiling at me. Golly, she was pretty. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Tan skin. I reckon she was in her early twenties. Her reading Jon was perfect, I wanted to ask her about Jesus. 

“One of the gospel’s, huh? That’s the story of Jesus, isn’t it?” I asked, pretending like I didn't know. 

“I think so. ‘The gospels’? Let me google it . . . Yeah, you’re right, it’s one of the gospel’s,” she looked up and smiled at me while playing with her hair.

“Uh . . . Do you think I could ask you a few questions? . . .” I said, my voice shaking, my eyes on my shoes.

“Sure,” she said in her young perky voice, seeming eager to talk about her faith with someone. 

I asked her about Jesus. And I asked her about Paul. And I asked her about the old testament God. And I asked her about Adam and Eve, and the tree of knowledge. And I asked her about the last thing Jesus spoke while he was on the cross. I was so damn nervous. I kept rubbing my palm with my other hand and biting my lower lip.

“. . . Jesus’s main message was to love everyone. If you could boil everything down, that would be it. Everyone is worthy of God’s love. It’s why we have equality today . . . Maybe ignorance does equal innocence, like you're suggesting, and once we know what sin is, and we knowingly do it anyway, that’s when it becomes wrong . . . I think people forget how much Jesus suffered on the cross . . .  I’ve never thought of it like that. That’s interesting . . . I’ve never heard of— . . . how do you say it, ‘Friedrich Nietzsche’?”

I told her about the book I am working on. And I tried to explain Nietzsche to her, but I don’t even understand Freddie. You sound crazy trying to explain Nietzsche to a young christian lady. And you sound kind of crazy trying to explain your books to people, at least, I do. 

I think we talked for thirty minutes to an hour. And afterwards, I was pretty sure I had met a real angel. 

She asked me for my name as I was leaving. I told her and then asked for hers. 

“It’s Jade,” she said with another smile. She was always smiling and laughing sweetly. I could’ve fallen for that angel if I wasn’t me. I really could’ve.

“Thanks for sharing, Jade. I really appreciate it.”

And I really did appreciate it. She was the first person that I ever interviewed for a book.

Jade was on my mind every minute of that day, and every minute of the next day. I really hoped that I would see her again in the future. But I doubted I ever would. How often can we run into the same angel? I think probably just the one time.

Then I met the lady that was covered with tattoos. Just about every centimeter of her skin had ink on it. Some demonic tattoos, too. She was also beautiful. Of course she was. They’re all beautiful, aren’t they?

We were doing a photo shoot inside of this lady's house—a photo shoot for a cannabis company. My good friend had asked if I would model for it. I had to wear a suit and smoke a joint. It was great. 

Five cats had greeted us at the door, two of them were Bengals. 

And then an ancient looking dog slowly hobbled over to me. 

“Hey puppers,” I said. “Who are you?”

“That’s Lucy,” the lady's voice called out as she walked into the room.

My heart dropped. 

“Is Lucy short for—. . .” I couldn’t say his name for some strange reason.

“Yep! Short for Lucifer! He’s an old man.”

“How old?”

“20.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, he’s a bit sickly.”

I knew at that moment, even before seeing the upside cross, and the other satanic shit in her place, that I needed to interview this lady, too. I needed to hear both sides of the story. 

They had rented a limo for the next part of the photo shoot and the tattooed satanist was coming with us. 

We drank champagne and pretended to smoke joints as the limo drove us around town in the middle of a snow storm. 

I tried not to look at her but she had changed into this black dress for the limo ride, and my eyes kept getting pulled to her legs. She was a babe—a real inked up hottie. I had no idea how old she was. My eyes avoided hers. 

We got drunk and accidentally had a fun time. 

The next day, I messaged her, asking her for an interview. She agreed to meet at her place. I was hoping we’d meet at her place, I needed to feel the energy that was in there again. 

She rescheduled four or five times before I finally got the interview. 

Turns out, she isn’t even really a satanist. She just had one of the worst childhoods I’ve heard about. An abusive father. Meth at 10 years old. Sexual abuse. Trauma. Pain. So much pain. She left her house at 16 and started doing sex work. Uppers in the morning, downers at night, all washed down with booze. She became a dominatrix at 19. Married to a 40 year old abusive piece of shit by 21. Divorced by 23. She had a hysterectomy a few years back and her brain and hormones haven't been the same since. She struggles with brain fog and fatigue every day. She’s been sober from hard drugs for over a decade. And at 36, her current age, she is the property manager of a huge apartment complex on the east side of this town. 

She laughed and smiled as she talked about her horribly fucked up life. She was a sweetheart. Honestly, she was. She loves food, nicotine, booze and weed. She showed me her favorite books and her favorite movies. We listened to a record as we drank and talked. She does believe in ‘energy’, not in Satan—or Lucifer. Sometimes, when a child goes through so much abuse, they grow up to reject the world—they rebel against it. Her Satanic stuff was just how she rebelled against the suffering she went through as a kid. I could feel her kindness. I could feel her patience. 

I had assumed that she was the opposite of Jade. But, no, she was an angel in her own way. An angel covered with ink, smoking dabs in front of me. I felt guilty about my assumptions. 

Somehow, her kindness felt more meaningful to me than Jade’s. To be kind and patient after having experienced such a raw hand in life, is—and will always be—admirable. 

I started to wonder what kind of childhood Jade had. I assumed that she has lived a pretty comfortable life so far. It’s a lot easier to believe in God and Jesus when you’ve hardly suffered, or when you’ve hardly seen good people around you suffer. 

I probably shouldn’t compare the two ladies, but that was the point of these interviews. I wanted to talk to people who believed in opposite things. What I found out, though, was that they weren’t too different. They looked like opposites, but really, they were both just human beings—and not angels or demons. They were just two nice ladies.

CH 4/9/25