(Sound of reaching for chips in a plastic bag, a match being lit, and a smoker taking puffs. Son opens door, home from a vacation, the Dad doesn't getting up to greet him.)
Son: Hey Dad! (Dad coughs on the weed from startlement) Are you OK?
Dad: (recovered but out of breath) I'm fine, I just didn't think you'd be home so early.
Son: Wait, are you?... You're just eating falafel balls out of a bag!
Dad: Anything wrong with that?
Son: No... But can you open a window at least? The house wreaks of pot!
Dad: This is the fourth century, there are no windows.
Son: Oh...
Dad: I know we talked about my not smoking weed in the house, but I thought you wouldn't be home until prima noctis hora, so I figured there was time to air out the house. Besides, don't you Christians preach all that forgiveness stuff?
Son: Father Theodosius says I need to work on forgiving you more.
Dad: Y'know, until this moment he always seemed to me like an idiot.
Son: You should listen to what he has to say sometime. You might find it helpful.
Dad: What would be really helpful is if you got some more falafel from the cabinet.
Son: Which cabinet?
Dad: It's in the hayat (balcony) underneath the chamber pot.
Son: You really shouldn't keep it there.
Dad: It's all going to the same place eventually.
Son: Shammai says that if the place were more hygenic you'd be alot healthi...
Dad: Shammai can suck it!
Son: He's just trying to help.
Dad: That sheeny can help by getting the hell out of my business.
Son: Come on Dad, sheeny won't be a slur for another fifteen hundred years, and Shammai's the reason you still have a business!
Dad: It's his business, not mine.
Son: He's just trying to help you get on your feet!
Dad: With interest...
Son: I don't know why you're always so down on a guy who helped you stay open during seventeen different drought seasons.
Dad: He's didn't help me out of kindness.
Son: What'd he do it for then?
Dad: Mo...
Son: Don't say it!
Dad: You were the one who asked.
Son: Alright, let me get your shit falafels. (goes into the other room)
Dad: (takes opportunity to smoke)
Son: (returning to the room) Don't you want to hear about my vacation?!
Dad: You'd tell me all about it anyway.
Son: It was so amazing!
Dad: (interrupting) Of course it was!
Son: So our youth group leader took us to the oldest cathedral in the Byzantine Empire! It was, like, fifty years old!
Dad: (bored) That really is amazing.
Son: It had a painting of Jesus healing the paralytic at Capaernum.
Dad: Healing the what?
Son: I told you about that! Jesus made a crippled man walk!
Dad: Oh! That's right... And I suppose this guy turns water into wine too...
Son: (interrupting) And a painting of the Three Marys at the Tomb of Jesus!
Dad: Three what?
Son: Three Mary's!
Dad: Three Mary's?
Son: Yeah?
Dad: Three women? All named Mary?
Son: Yeah.
Dad: (interrupting) You told me about two Mary's, the one who's the mother and the one who's the whore.
Son: She's not a whore!
Dad: Yeah but in a thousand year's they're gonna think so...
Son: What?!?!?!
Dad: Never mind. Anyway, of course I remember the conversation. You told me there are two Marys. And I wondered how the two most important women in your book can both be named Mary. So I asked if people ever got to thinking that maybe there was only one Mary, and people got confused because the story got told so many times?
Son: If God says that Mary mother of God is not the same person as Mary Magdalene, then they're not the same person.
Dad: And now you're telling me there's three?
Son: Well,... actually there's five.
Dad: FIVE?!?
Son: The Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus...
Dad: (quasi-interrupting) Yeah, that's not weird....
Son: Mary Magdalene, who you think is a whore, Mary of Jacob, mother of James the Less...
Dad: That's not a distinction you wanna have....
Son: What is?
Dad: Who wants to be known as the less of something?
Son: Well, the other James was the brother of Jesus.
Dad: Wait, so the virgin had another child?
Son: She had at least four more: James, Joses, Jude, and Simon.
Dad: So she didn't stay a virgin...
Son: DAD!
Dad: I'm just saying, you'd think that mothering the son of God would be a full time job. And he wasn't even the son of God until pretty recently. Your avus (grandfather) remembered when it happened! Three hundred years, he might be the son of God, he might just be the Messiah, isn't it enough to be the Messiah? Then, the Nicean Council happens, two months, BAM! Christ the Messiah!
Son: Is it too much to ask for you to ever be a little respectful?
Dad: I'm just telling you how good things used to be! Anyway, I want to hear more about these Marys.
Son: OK. There's the Virgin Mary, there's Mary Magdalene who you think is a whore, there's Mary of Jacob, mother of James the Less, then there's Mary of Cleopas.
Dad: ...That's a stupid name.
Son: Dad! Respect!
Dad: Is Cleopas the town she's from?
Son: No. Cleophas was either her husband or her father.
Dad: Probably both. Those fucking Jews, they're all goddamn hicks.
Son: Don't swear Dad!
Dad: Whatever. And what's the venerable Mary of Cleopas's claim to fame?
Son: She doesn't really have one. She might just be Mary of Jacob.
Dad: Oh, what a surprise.
Son: What do you mean?
Dad: Go on, I want to know who the fifth Mary is.
Son: Mary of Bethany.
Dad: Was she married to Bethany?
Son: Please stop this Dad.
Dad: It can happen! You heard about those two wives who went to Lesbos!
Son: Women shouldn't be marrying other women!
Dad: And I suppose my Christian son doesn't think men should lie with other men either. Typical liberal bullshit. Next thing you know, revolutionaries like you are telling us that monogamy is what human beings are biologically programmed for.
Son: Look, Dad, I just think you should respect my choices.
Dad: I didn't throw you out when you told me you practice that thing, what did you call it? Ethical monogamy? ...Alright, so my son only wants to marry one woman and thinks that sexuality and gender is not fluid, it's not the end of the world, it's just that the world's changing and I'm too old to understand it. Anyway, back to this Mary of Bethany thing.
Son: I told you about Mary of Bethany!
Dad: You didn't tell me what she did! That is, if this religion of yours lets women do anything at all.
Son: She's the sister of Lazarus.
Dad: That guy who rises from the dead.
Son: The one which Jesus... (annoyed) Yeah that's the one....
Dad: (a little insistently) And what did she do?
Son: She washed Jesus's feet with nard.
Dad: The perfume???
Son: Yeah.
Dad: That's the most expensive perfume there is! She could have lived on that for a year!
Son: (Angry) Alright that's enough Dad, that's exactly what Judas said!
Dad: Judas must have had a good head for business.
Son: This is what I'm talking about! You always do this!
Dad: Do what?
Son: You always ask me questions just so you can make fun of the answers!
Dad: What's wrong with fun?!?
Son: I don't want to say any more about it because I'm really trying to respect you now.
Dad: What's the point of showing respect?! All I'm trying to do is have a good time with you and all you want to do is ruin it!
Son: I don't want to have a good time!
Dad: Well what do you want then?
Son: I want your respect!
Dad: You have my respect!
Son: Then why can't you show it?
Dad: I wouldn't try to have fun with anybody I don't respect.
Son: Dad, please forgive me for what I'm about to say.
Dad: A blessing on your house, my son. Say whatever you like?
Son: What has having fun ever done for you? What did it ever do for avus or pro-avus (great-grandfather) or generations of the Iovivuses before us? For as long as anyone can remember, all we've done is gone around smoking hash, never farming enough to sell anything to anybody else, always cutting the work day short so you can take me down to the tavern to listen whatever new Bouzouki jam band you love. You and Mom always picked up a different woman and had a threesome in the middle of your magic mushroom crops.
Dad: Yeah, but wasn't it a lot of fun? You should try all that sometime! You might see what you're missing.
Son: Alright, I'm going over to Shammai's.
Dad: Come on son, stop this.... (tries to figure out what to say) What happened to you?! You were such a fun loving kid!
Son: I'm sorry Dad! I want more! I want to believe that my life has a purpose. Well we can't all get satisfaction out of going a million pedes (Latin for footsteps) out of our way from us to every music festival! Didn't you go to one last year where they burned some guy alive?
Dad: Come on. I had to go to Burning Man at least once.
Son: That's hardly the only time you've been at something like that. But think about how that guy felt! He was a living being, and now he's not one, some part of him might have been a divine too, and getting rid of that divine part of him probably caused him enormous pain.
Dad: That's why we always give the sacrifices opium before we do them in!
Son: Can't you hear the screaming?
Dad: Sometimes, but that's part of the fun!
Son: Well if you really want to know, it was that public mass execution you took me to when I was eleven. Once I saw that, I never wanted to be part of that again.
Dad: (sigh) Yeah, you were never as into sports as your brothers. And you were probably too young to see that. I'm sorry about that, really I am, but is that enough reason to turn your back on everything your family believes in?
Son: What do you believe in?!?
Dad: ...Y'know, I know you never met your avia (grandmother), but she was a great lady. And she had this great saying that I don't think I ever told you about. It was so poetic. She would say: "And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine, let us eat...:
Son: ..."let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Isaiah 22:13
Dad: Oh my god you know that!?
Son: That's from the Christian Bible! And the verse before that is - 'And in that daay did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth!' You were supposed to do the opposite.
Dad: So your Lord God wants you to be miserable? What kind of miserable God would allow that!
Son: The real one!
Dad: If this God is such an asshole, why don't you just worship a different God?
Son: Well, if you must know, it's because of something Shammai said to me.
Dad: Oh can that fucking Heeb keep his huge nose out of anything at all?!?
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