Sex as God’s Cosmic Joke

Sex as God’s Cosmic Joke names the bitter absurdity of Raymond Peepgass’s predicament: an encounter he had regarded as a novelty becomes a paternity suit, a child whose existence cannot be waved away, and a threat to his finances and standing. The idea is not presented as an abstract maxim. It takes shape in the humiliating particulars of a deposition and the sound of a baby crying outside a lawyer’s office, where Peepgass’s attempt to reduce the affair to something inconsequential gives way to consequences he cannot control.

From Novelty to Deposition

Peepgass tries to describe the encounter with Sirja Tiramaki as something he neither liked nor disliked, merely a novelty. The repetition of that explanation in the deposition makes it sound less like a confident account than a defense already losing its force. By then, the issue is not simply who initiated the encounter. Peepgass thinks either version leaves him in the same sordid position, facing a paternity suit at forty-six and feeling that the remains of his resources are being drained by a lawyer charging $400 an hour.

The questioning reconstructs the meal at the Grand Tatar in incriminating detail. Peepgass is made to consider, under oath, whether Sirja rubbed his leg beneath the table, proposed a quieter place to talk about Finnish art and look at her slides, and suggested his suite. The sequence turns an intimate encounter into a list of disputed actions, while Peepgass, demoralized, barely attempts to defend himself. The deposition is only a preliminary legal proceeding, not a trial, yet he already feels unable to endure it. The comic disproportion is central to the concept: what he had treated as a passing novelty now demands a public account, and even the question of who began it offers no escape from the consequences.

The Child and the Reversal

The decisive reversal arrives as Sirja reaches the door and the baby begins to cry. The immediate crisis passes when the child gets his breath, but the scene transforms Peepgass’s understanding of the contest. He had reduced Sirja to a sexual caricature; hearing her soothe the baby, he recasts her as the Eternal Mother and sees himself as a satyr who cannot win against that role in court. His fear extends beyond losing the case: even a legal victory, he thinks, would still leave him exposed to the shame of his children, Betty, or anyone else learning the details.

The baby’s presence makes the matter more than a dispute over Peepgass’s account of the affair. The infant cries, breathes, and occupies the lawyer’s premises; the narrative gives that physical reality an imagined voice insisting on its existence and name: “I exist! I'm real! I'm not just a bad joke on a foolish middle-aged man! I eat-every day! I grow-and just try to stop me! I occupy space on this earth-and I will be heard from! And you will know my name!” The imagined declaration overturns Peepgass’s effort to treat the encounter as a novelty. A child cannot be made trivial by the story an adult tells about how the pregnancy began.

The Joke’s Uncontrollable Consequences

The child’s name is itself part of Peepgass’s anxious comic vision. He cycles through possible forms, from Pietari Paivarinta Peepgass to Pawy Peepgass and Pete Peepgass, imagining a boy who will be a Georgia child despite the Finnish circumstances of his conception. The contrast between Helsinki, Finnish art, and a future DeKalb County boy with a strong voice makes the outcome feel ludicrous to Peepgass, but it also underscores its reality: the child will have a name, take up space, and be heard. The narrative’s joke is not that the child is unreal; it is that Peepgass’s attempt to make the affair small cannot contain what has followed.

This is why the line that sex was God’s cosmic joke lands amid concrete dread rather than carefree wit. Peepgass fears that he will have no money left when the dispute is over and may not have a job. He has already had to invent a pathetic lie to explain his absence from the bank that morning. His private sexual history has become entangled with work, legal expense, family shame, and an uncertain future. The joke’s mechanism is escalation: each effort to imagine the situation as manageable brings another consequence into view.

The Parallel with Croker

Peepgass’s thought of Charlie Croker offers a sudden, practical counterpoint to his helplessness. The previous day, he had gone with Zale and others to PDK to confront Croker and take control of the G-5, in front of Croker’s guests. Although one of its engines mysteriously failed when they tried to move the plane, PlannersBanc had secured the G-5 and Croker’s N. C. Wyeth painting. Peepgass takes this as evidence that the bank has Croker’s attention and can offer relief from ruin in exchange for his property deeds.

The juxtaposition connects the two men through different forms of exposure. Peepgass is overwhelmed by the consequences of an intimate encounter; Croker is facing a lender’s seizure of prized property. Peepgass imagines that the bank can use Croker’s vulnerability to negotiate a surrender of deeds, even as the baby’s cries continue outside the door. His hope of gaining money or a new life does not resolve the paternity crisis; it shows how quickly he turns from private humiliation toward financial leverage. The concept therefore binds the comic, bodily, legal, and economic strands of his predicament: the encounter may have begun as a novelty, but neither a dismissive description nor a business maneuver can make its consequences disappear.