A couple of weeks ago, I found myself staying at a Hilton in Baton Rouge, bored out of my mind. The hotel wasn’t officially open at the time, so it was lacking some finishing touches–notably wi-fi. Thinking that I’d be meeting and carousing until late, I didn’t bother to bring a book or magazine or anything, so there I was at 9:00pm: my dinner engagement over and done, my lifeless laptop sitting beside me on the poly-cotton comforter, and nothing to watch on basic cable.
Then, I did the unthinkable: I opened the drawer of the nightstand, desperate for reading material. I expected to see a stack of cheap ecru stationery and a Gideon bible, but of course, since I was staying at a Hilton, the most prominent thing in the drawer was a glossy, paperback copy of Conrad Hilton’s Be My Guest. I cracked open the virgin spine and dove in, but it proved to be such a craptacular self-love-fest (must run in the family) that I flung it to the far side of the room, opened the drawer again, and pulled out a forest-green Gideon bible.
Now, in case you can’t tell, I’m not a bible person. I haven’t willingly perused one of the damn things in years, if not decades. And of course, the bible I had in my lap was a King James Version, the dullest of the dull–certainly nothing I’d consider light reading before bed.
So instead of sinking further down the boredom spiral, I engaged in a round of bibliomancy, dropping the book on the bed and reading from where it fell open. And as fate would have it, it opened to one of the weirdest chapters in the bible: Judges 19.
Judges 19 starts out like a Monty Python script without a punchline: some guy’s concubine sneaks out in the middle of the night and runs home to daddy. The guy goes to retrieve her, then winds up staying for several days at the dad’s home because the dad keeps saying, “C’mon, just one more night….” Finally the guy grabs his ho and leaves. (Like I said, no punchline.) Then things get weird…
Heading home, the guy and the concubine stop for the night in Gibeah (bypassing the “city of the Jebusites”, presumably because, like Homer Simpson, they don’t believe in Jebus). Some old dude takes them in, and while they’re all eating, a bunch of horndogs come a-knocking, demanding that the old guy hand over the traveler so they can “know” him. Just like in the story of Lot, the old guy denies their request, making a counter-offer of his virgin daughter. As generous as that might seem to you and me, the mob refuses. Apparently fed up and ready for bed, the traveler suddenly hurls his concubine to the slavering horde and locks the door shut behind her. Such a sweetie.
In a bisexual move worthy of Chi Chi LaRue’s Big Switch #3: Bachelor Party, the mob is satisfied, going at the concubine like Bruce Villanch on a chic-o-stick. Finally, as dawn breaks, the crowd disperses, and the concubine crawls back to the old dude’s house, collapsing on the doorstep, her fingers resting lightly the threshold like a bad soap opera death scene. The traveler gets up the next morning, finds her, and prods her to get up. She doesn’t move, so he throws her on the back of his donkey; when he finally gets her home, he cuts her into twelve pieces and sends one to each tribe of Israel. Kinda like Old Testament fruit cake, I guess, but without the jelly bits.
Then, proof that the author of the chapter suffered from serious writer’s block:
Everyone who saw this said, “Nothing like this has been done or seen from the day the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Take note of it, and state what you propose to do.”
Huh? “State what you propose to do?” You write yourself into a corner, and that’s how you get out of it? …Well, it’d never fly on the stage, that’s all I’ve got to say.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums up my trip to Baton Rouge.
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