A Priest, A Rabbi, And An Imam Walk Into A Bar And All Three Give In To Temptation

'I know you don't drink, Ahmed, but would you care to join Shmuel and myself for some good company while we wet our whistles?'

Ahmed, the imam had not been in a bar for a long, long time, and although Paddy and Shmuel had become good friends of his - the kind of friendship that would certainly resolve all problems in the Middle East if it could be replicated and and multiplied - to be seen walking into a bar, especially the likes of McSorley's, a Blarney stone, shot-and-a-beer kind of place on Brevoort Street, would be curtains.  

Ahmed al-Fikrim (aka Henry Plover) had converted to Islam ten years ago and hadn't had so much as a drop to drink in all that time.  This is not to say that he wasn't tempted, for he was; and just the sight of a bottle of Jameson's made him quiver with thirst . 

 

After his conversion Henry had been a dutiful Muslim, praying five times a day, observing Ramadan, attending services at the mosque on Fridays, being attentive to others, and doing his bit of evangelism.  As time went by and as his rectitude was increasingly appreciated by the mullah, he was brought into the ranks of leadership, and after a period of dutiful servitude became one of the chosen of Al-Berbat Mosque, and after the death of Brother Fatih, became the presiding imam. 

He took this honor seriously, for it wasn't just on any day that a Christian convert could ever be considered a serious Muslim let alone an imam.  He grew his beard long, was sure to say 'Peace be upon Him' every time spoke the Prophet's name, and never used the future tense without adding 'Insha'Allah'.  He hadn't had pork or a drink in all that time and God had become his one and only adviser. 

Yet, there always was a bottle of Jameson's etched into his frontal lobes, not only an indelible reminder of his humility, his obedience to Allah, and his service to his congregation; but also a Holy Grail (or the Muslim equivalent).  It was only a matter of time before he fell from grace (he was unsure of the Muslim phrasing), and he readied himself for it.  Mind you, he had never been an alcoholic in his Christian days, nor a teetotaler, just a drinker who liked his pint o' bitter or a Wild Turkey. 

Father Paddy O'Brien had never been anything other than a priest.  He had been an altar boy, a seminarian, an intern at St. Maurice's church in upstate New York, and finally senior priest of his own parish, St. Thomas Aquinas in Massapequa. He had only one serious failing as a cleric but one against which he fought tirelessly. 

Unlike most of this colleagues, he liked women.  Every single one of them, succulently soft and enticing, sinuously and irrepressibly alluring, were the objects of his desire.  Whenever desire struck, he prayed the rosary, said ten Our Fathers, the Confiteor, and the Mea Culpa, asking Jesus to help him out of his frustrated misery. 

It never worked, for he followed the scent of one beautiful woman after another up and down Fifth Avenue right after making the Stations of the Cross at St. Patrick's.  He couldn't help himself, confessed his desires every week, but was a man addled by desire.  Like the imam and his bottle of Jameson's, it was only a matter of time before he fell. 

Shmuel Levin-Epstein was not just an ordinary rabbi, but one in a long line that dated back to Saul and David.  A rabbinical career had been a certainty from the day he was born.  Although his father was a diamond merchant on 47th Street with significant investments in clothing and real estate, he had always wanted his son to become God's servant, not Mammon's.  

Not that his father had any shame in what he did.  The tenants in his tenements on the Lower East Side were happy to have a place to lay their heads, he gave needed employment to Puerto Ricans at his factories in the lofts of the Garment District, and traded the world's most enduringly valuable commodity - diamonds - to enhance the lives of both the rich and famous and those just starting out.. But for his son, his only son?  God was the only path, 

However it was hard for the young Shmuel to bend to the Torah when the likes of Morrie Rubenstein and Shecky Hellman, Hollywood moguls came to dinner.  Their talk of David O. Selznik and Louis B. Mayer was heady, and his father's trips to the Coast mysterious and exciting.  The more money his father made, the more and more expensive condos they lived in, finally moving to the magnificent penthouse on York Avenue on the Upper East Side, the harder the Book was to learn.  Yet his father persisted. 'Leave it to me to make money', old Henny said, 'but you I expect to get me to heaven'. 

The conflict was troubling.  Week after week he learned about the ins and outs of New York real estate, mortgages, leveraging, bond issues, zoning, the rental market, and interest rates; the cotton trade, Bangladeshi off-the-rack product, hi-tech synthetics, and the credit swaps that made the clothing business an earner; and the fancy deals with DeBeers and the South African exchange.  Even though his father headed him 'in the direction of the 'Lord God Almighty', he was being prepared to take over the family businesses, God or Mammon, the good life or the prayerful one. 

So every Monday and Wednesday when the three men met at McSorley's, the talk inevitably turned from God to other things.  It was a time to let loose, to give in to temptation in principle if not in fact.  Only among themselves could they feel confident enough to share desires.  There were no parishioners, congregants, or worshippers within earshot. 

So one by one, each in turn they shared their memories. Henry Plover, the imam, told about his young hijinks on the floats of the best samba schools in the Quarter, his bacchanals on Bayou Lafourche, and carousing in the cathouses of the Ninth Ward. These alcohol-fueled adventures were the best of his life, wild, boozy affairs with no tether or traces.   

Paddy O'Brien went on about the women in his life before the priesthood and the pursuant, ineluctable fantastical pursuit of the beautiful young things at the windows of Saks, Bendel's and Tiffany’s. He was at his most eloquent and voluble when it came to them - their hair, their Greek statuary grace, their walk, and above all, their perfume. 

And Sam (Shmuel) went on about the magnificent new high-rises in Manhattan, the elegantly, impossibly tall and thin skyscrapers towering over Central Park, or the fashion runways of Milan, Paris, and New York and the brilliance of today's Diors and St. Laurents. There was an exuberance about the masterful orchestration of product, financing, and marketing. 

'What are we still doing here?' said Father O'Brien. 

'What are we doing with our lives?', asked Sammy Levin-Epstein. 

'I'm having a drink', said the imam, Henry Plover; and from that moment on, the lives of the three men began to change, starting with a shot and a beer, ending with a male bonding such as you have never seen, and finishing up with an out-the-door new resolve. 

'Oh, God has his place', said the imam now on his own in Brooklyn, as  happy as a clam, one and done with Islam, living cheaply but well, back to McSorley's on occasion, host to the best of Green Point at all night parties in his loft.  He kept up with O'Brien and  Levin-Epstein, successful in their own rights, still young, ambitious, and once relieved of God, free and easy. 

'Ah, this is the life', said the former rabbi from his balcony overlooking the ocean on Collins Avenue, bought, bartered and sold until it was worth a fortune and now, finally, his home. 

The Queen Of Sheba Runs For Office - Kamala Harris, The Dark Ruler Of The New Jerusalem

The majesty of Sheba is deep-rooted in the popular imagination. “In the figure of the Queen of Sheba, the beckoning and voluptuous Orient becomes embodied, its imaginative territory in classical sources encompassed meridian and outlandish exoticism, sensuality, wonder and luxuries,” argues one historian. 

In detailing the Queen’s caravan of riches and lavish gifts to King Solomon, scriptural descriptions of the queen’s life stir the “antique Myth of the Orient.”  She ruled her Arabian kingdom with the power and presence of her successor to queenly rule, Cleopatra, and she had the intelligence, political savvy, and chutzpah to influence the mighty ruler of the Jewish kingdom. 

According to one early Arabian account, the Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones...Never again came such an abundance of spices as those she gave to Solomon"

However, there is an apocryphal legend that appeared in Jewish history.  Aware of Sheba's (Bilquis) arrival at court bearing gifts and concerned that her charms might seduce King Solomon and trick him into marriage, the king's jinn whispered to him that she had hairy legs and the hooves of an ass. Solomon, being curious about such a peculiar phenomenon, had a glass floor built before his throne so that Bilqīs, tricked into thinking it was water, raised her skirts to cross it and revealed that her legs were truly hairy. Solomon then ordered the jinn to create a depilatory for the queen. 

Even so, Solomon remained true to himself, thanked Sheba for her generosity, appreciated her overtures to open trade between the kingdoms of Arabia and his own, and prospered. 

'I am Sheba', Kamala Harris said to her retinue with an ironic smile, and I will convince the republic of my worth, my intelligence, and my right to rule. Now, Kamala knew little about the Queen of Sheba except that she was a woman of color born in Ethiopia or southern Arabia, that she was a mighty queen who ruled the roost in wide swaths of the peninsula, that she had the chutzpah and insight to challenge Solomon, the mighty ruler of Jerusalem, and she wooed him and seduced him into sharing the vast wealth of his Jewish kingdom. 

What Kamala didn't know was that so impressed with Solomon's wisdom, having answered all the challenging riddles with which she presented him, she converted to Judaism.  She had met her match, not only deferring to a man of far greater wisdom and intellectual merit than she, but willing to take her chances on his celestial promise.  

It was a Biblical come-uppance.  A woman reaching far above her station put in her place by a man of real power, leadership, and intelligence; a man unmoved by her caravans of spices and gold, and seeing only a woman of unalloyed ambition and pretense. 

Kamala, engaged but limited to first lines and simple stories, stuck with the imperial colored woman legend of Sheba, and embraced it as her own.  The potency - 'agency' was the current term for a woman's transformative abilities - of Sheba, her audacity in trekking through the desert with her train of camels and carts full of frankincense, myrrh, and the herbal medicines cultivated in the oases of her kingdom, her challenge of the great Solomon was enough.  It was an easy channel. 

Now, Kamala had always been an ambitious woman, one who would stop at nothing to reign whether in a courtroom or the chambers of Congress, and who was successful.  She had been known as the Genghis Khan of federal court, a savage, brutal prosecutor without restraint, compassion, or mercy; and as Senatorial member of the Judicial Committee vetting Supreme Court nominees did her best to humiliate and eviscerate Brett Kavanagh, a simple man of principle.  

As such, and treated with respect if not idolatry because of her racial, ethnic, and gender identity - a trifecta of blackness, cultural diversity, and proud womanhood - she felt herself anointed.  Her sense of destiny went far beyond self-confidence or general rectitude.  It had something to do with - there really was no other word for it - divine entitlement.  There were simply some people on whose shoulder Destiny's hand had rested.  

Sheba, the Queen of a vast empire and a just, wise ruler wasn't just given good genes and family history, she was gifted by a higher power, maybe not God, but....here Kamala's thoughts got jumbled as history, mythology, and popular idioms made thinking difficult, so she left it at that.  She and Sheba had been anointed. 

She felt queenly, and as she looked at herself in the mirror - a beautiful woman as beautiful as Sheba would have been with burnished mahogany skin, dark eyes, full lips, straight nose and a head of luxuriant hair.  She and Sheba were not just women but woman the embodiment of femininity, feminine power and authority, female beauty, and the seductive intelligence of sex. 

More than that the two women shared something equally important - imperial destiny.  They were both rulers - powerful women of color, yes, but regents (or in Kamala's case regents to be) in ability, intelligence, and ambition; and as such Kamala began to take on a more regal bearing.  

She curtailed her energy, her tedious ebullience and laughter, and looked more queenly.  She affected a bearing that was straighter, more defined, and less impromptu.  She spoke differently, with more of a pronounced cadence, and began to dress differently. She began to wear her Indian mother's gold jewelry - at least some of the more tasteful and evocative - and dress with what she felt was a greater dignity. 

She carried herself differently as well - a bit of a tilt to her head, a slower gait, a more firm and deliberate posture.  Smiles were reserved for reward not pleasantries.  All in all she was a changed woman.  Not on the inside necessarily, for she was still the take-no-prisoners Mongol marauder prosecutor of days gone by, but certainly on the outside. 

She now had to square her new, evolved persona with the campaign trail, not a very sophisticated, regal place; but she looked at Trump like some Eritrean tribal chieftain or some Nubian insurrectionist to be dealt with, defeated, and sentenced to death.  

Her handlers were not sure what to do with the new Kamala whom they expected to duke it out with the Trumpster in a UFC-style gloves off affair; but Kamala was indifferent.  The people would sense her innate power and its destiny, the right of imperial rule.  

Perhaps it was a good thing, an aide said privately, this regal bearing and all.  Calm the bitch down, get rid of the hysterics, give her a more presidential tone, shed the pit bull and channel the Labrador, give the people what they want, etc. etc.; but the lady wanted no part of it, cashiered her handlers and strode, not walked, onto the stage and welcomed the cheers, the applause, and the love of her subjects.  

The Old Man Thrown Under A Bus - The Palace Coup Of Queen Kamala

Oh, she did it right, praised the old man to the hilt - marvelous person, true leader, a man for all the people, mensch, Übermensch, great guy - and all the while buttering her bread on both sides.  If Joe totally lost his marbles and was Twenty-Fifth Amendment removed, she would become the President, run again, and as a black woman - what the country really wanted and needed - would win. If he declined to run, she would be the de facto, automatic candidate, run against Donald Trump and beat the bastard at his own game - Prosecutor vs. Felon in a smash-mouth, roundhouse free-for-all.  In any case it was in her interest to flatter her boss, show an invincible solidarity with him, and then pick up the pieces later. 

 

Obama is given the blame for what happened.  This eminence grise who passed Biden over in 2015 for Hillary Clinton did it again, engineered the resignation of his former Vice President, and put his chips on Kamala, a mulatto like him but with a better pedigree.  Besides, any fool could see how the President was making no sense whatsoever, so better toss him before it was too late. 

Insiders know that this was all Kamala's doing.  She, the heir of Clytemnestra, Goneril, Regan, and Lady Macbeth, knew precisely what she was up to.  Joe Biden, like King Lear was a doddering old fool who didn't know up from down and would never know he was being snookered by his closest ally, partner, and chief supporter.  Lear, like Biden, was an easy mark. When he made his fateful decision to divide up his kingdom before his death, he was already senile, an easy mark for his ambitious daughters who cruelly and painfully took their time in dismantling his power. His lands, his retinue, and finally his horses gone, Lear wanders out into the heath and goes stark, raving mad. 

 

So the canny Kamala, saw the same opportunity.  The old man was as daft as Lear, so the blandishments, the cajoling, the public displays of affection continued.  He was being softened up, tenderized, so that when the time was right, he would go like a baby. 

Of course Kamala knew that this would be the eventual scenario when she joined on as First Mate.  As a take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred Genghis Khan of a prosecutor, she knew exactly how to exploit a weakness, bludgeon witnesses into recanting, humiliate the defense, and intimidate the judge.  She, like everyone could see that Joe Biden would never make it through his term, and if he did he would not be fit for another. 

Kamala was like the younger woman who marries a much older man. These ambitious women were unfairly called gold-diggers back in the day, but there was never anything crass about those who reeled in the big fish, the doddering billionaires who saw these women as their last, best hope. Not only that, Old Joe had bought into the black thang, thought she was marvelous because she was from the ghetto, a real woman of the streets with a white pedigree.  

Of course she was nothing of the kind, not an ounce of homeboy, pimp, and bling in her. She was the daughter of a former advisor to the President of Jamaica and tenured Professor of Economics at Stanford and her mother a renowned scientist.  She talked big on the campaign trail - her allusions to the inner city, her suggestions that she also had an absent father, a harsh and unremittingly dysfunctional childhood, and that she was a fugitive from Jim Crow were all carefully crafted balderdash, just out of the reach of fact checkers who, given the fawning media of the day were few and far between. 

She was as canny as Richard III who seduced Lady Anne whose husband and father in law, Henry VI, King of England, he had murdered.  

Was ever woman in this humor won?
I’ll have her, but I will not keep her long.
What? I, that kill’d her husband and his father,
To take her in her heart’s extremest hate,
With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,
The bleeding witness of my hatred by,
Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I no friends to back my suit at all
But the plain devil and dissembling looks?
And yet to win her! All the world to nothing!
Ha!

She worked the credulous public and the fawning press to a 'T', convinced everyone that she was America's victim/hero, a woman of color, a defiant, unashamedly ambitious woman whose place, whose only place was atop the social pyramid. She was idolized, believed, and adored, but beneath it all she knew it was all a necessary charade.  Heads would roll as they did in the days of the Lancasters and the Yorks, and she would left standing, proud, and heroic. 

In the White House she basked in the glory of it all.  A black woman Vice President indeed! and it would only be a matter of time until she was President, and from Day One she began plotting. 

How easy it had been! She had been given a free ride because she was a black woman, a Get Out Of Jail Free card, so she had a leg up in all her palace shenanigans.  Her cadre of adoring young black women was like the Queen of Sheba's retinue, and black men bowed at her feet. Every dirty trick, every plotting deception was overlooked; and so she played her role of dutiful, prayerful woman, talked the Old Guy up in public and in private planned his end. 

Poor Joe didn't know what hit him.  He had believed Kamala's nonsense and that of his advisors and MSNBC, and felt that he was the man for the future, and then suddenly he was out, a supernumerary, a has-been, a trifle, old chewing gum on the bedpost.  As Lear said, 'an unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal'.  

However, Joe Biden was never a tragic hero, only a lifelong politician who had stayed around long past his pull-by date, believing in some inertial law of politics - you could go on forever - and that his unremarkable tenure as Congressional representative from a small, insignificant state was actually worth something, something to be honored. 

Kamala didn't care whether he was a tragic hero or a doddering fool.  He was simply in the way.