My Date With The Devil
By Dave Stolz
Many of us are blaming Satan for the horrors of this year: a global pandemic, a new species of hornets known as “murder hornets” and Lana Del Ray’s recent spoken word album. According to the “The Prince of Darkness” himself, however, he has been focusing his energies on a far greater evil — learning to do stand-up comedy.
Satan was persuaded to pursue a career in comedy based on advice he received from his therapist, Sigmund Freud, now forced to practice cognitive behaviorism. “[Freud] suggested I do stand-up comedy up Topside to rebuild my self-esteem. Being the Prince of Air and Ruler of the World is actually quite embarrassing. It wouldn’t be, but you humans are living on it.”
While the pandemic has put his current publicity stunts at live-events on hold (mainly what he says is unfortunately called the The Satan Enjoys series), he is still involved in Todd Montesi’s PN and Friends YouTube series, he has served as a judge for both the Ug! Comedy Show and The Muff on Zoom, has occasionally guested on Saint Jean Carmel’s Instagram show, Taking the High Road and has also recently been interviewed on Kayt Hester’s show, Artists and Comics.
While he still considers himself a horrible comedian, Satan has taken great pride in developing his own working theories about the nature of comedic performance. “Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldman has been a great source of inspiration for me in this, especially in framing the dynamic tension between art and craft. It seems to me most actors and comedians pursue their craft without truly pursuing the art of what they do.”
For his own understanding, he came up with differentiations between form and function, reactionary and revolutionary (more or less high comedy versus low comedy, but getting behind why high comedy is high and low comedy is low,) actual reality and perceived reality, and being and non-being. “I have tortured audiences in open mics by breaking down the elements of being on stage into their individual components, one set at a time and then recombining them.” The elements Satan chose were physical presence, absence of light, nudity, movement, speaking in tongues, speaking in metaphor and speaking in prose. “I did this when I came to the very painful realization that I carried more fear on stage than I had allowed myself to believe.”
Although he possesses a unique understanding for the craft, Satan believes what separates him from his comedic contemporaries is his, “brand recognition.”
Satan has also surprisingly collected a couple of friends (or as he calls them, “co-conspirators”) along the way. The aforementioned, Todd Montesi, who has been filming and editing his recent projects, as well as inviting him into his projects. Satan has enjoyed working with Montesi because, “our agendas are currently aligned.” Satan has also found himself to be in simpatico with BZ Douglas, who directed his Frigid Festival entry, An Evening of Not-So-Quiet Despair with Satan, in 2015. “He is much more competent at all these human things than I am, and helped me materialize my vision.” When reached for comment BZ Douglas confirmed he’s working with Satan, but only because he finds his work to be, “radically offensive.”
Lucifer, as people close to him often call him, shared with me a story which confirmed Douglas’ assessment. “I was walking down St. Marks Place one night, fully manifested, when a middle-aged drunk man came up to me, addressed me as Jesus and asked for a blessing. I gave him my standard ‘In the name of the Penis, the Left Testicle and the Right Testicle’ at which point he recoiled in horror, exclaimed ‘You’re not Jesus!’ and hobbled away as quickly as his inebriation would allow.”
When he’s not performing comedy or accosting people on the street, Satan can be found at his residence in Harlem, which he has found “Inspirational.” I was afraid to ask what he meant by that.
Surprisingly, (or perhaps not, considering his endless self-deprecation) Satan says he’s an Incel, not that he seems any more bitter about that than he is about anything else. “Everyone expects me to be domineering and ruthless and cold, and when they find out I’m empathetic and extremely sensitive they try to do a fucking number on me. I have to be that way though, otherwise the tortures I devise for you mortals would not be nearly as effective.”
The only connection Satan has made is with games. “I love games, especially Go, wargames, fantasy games and role playing games. I have recently been playing a lot of MTG Commander. I am terrible at all of these, which is not surprising, as it doesn’t take much skill or talent to rule over humanity.”
While he was candid about certain areas of his life, Satan was incredibly cryptic about his personal history. Apparently, the devil does not always enjoy details. When asked about his parents, Satan became tight lipped and exclaimed, “that’s against ‘The Rules.’” He was also unwilling to discuss his childhood, “you humans are not ready,” or chat about his highschool experiences. However, he was much more forthcoming, when asked about his time as an undergrad. Although there are no records to support this, Satan claims he studied at Universe University where he flunked out of their Public Relations program. He was also a member of Alpha Omega “ before they started caring about teeth.”
Since his college years, and in spite of his vehement denials, Satan’s powers have only seemed to grow stronger and stronger, which has never been more apparent than in the year 2020. But, despite his prolific year as a demon and his budding comedy career, Satan has yet to find true happiness. It’s not his fault though, because to him, “no one is really happy — God did us no favors when he made us in his image.”
