Listening to Proud Mary in a cab after taking “more than two” Es, Moby bemoans God’s cruelty to that night’s charitable companion, Lauren. “‘Lauren, you are so beautiful,’ I said, and kissed her. ‘But why doesn’t God let us feel like this all the time? … an omnipotent God could give us any resting neurochemical state, so why doesn’t he let us feel like this from the time we’re born until the moment we die?’”
Later in the book, Moby wonders if he is “actually divine” himself (“Maybe I was a new god. A benign god. But a complicated god, with a secular dominion over sweetness and filth,” he goes on).
For now, he and Lauren meet up with Bono, Michael Stipe and Salman Rushdie at the club, and Bono tells Moby he loved the Animal Rights album, and that he loves him. Moby tells Bono he loves him, too. Moby goes back to Lauren’s house to have sex. She has a dog as well. A rottweiler.