“You’re going to end up needing glasses,” I said.
“My beloved is to me a pouch of myrrh which lies all night
between my breasts,” he said. Then he added, “Wow.” Pomegranate juice dribbled
down his chin.
“May I ask what you are doing?”
“Studying scriptures, man,” he said. “Ain’t that what you
told me to do?”
I thought for a moment, then recalled. “I was rather
thinking of the New Testament,” I said.
“The old is father to the new,” he said. “Besides, this is
much more fun than a bunch of do-gooder parables.”
I sighed. “Is there a way I can have you sent back to
Falloonia?”
He crunched a bite of pomegranate and, reading from the
text, said, “Did you ever tell a girl that her body was like a rolling
landscape?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Or that her breasts were like spiced mountains?”
“Certainly not.”
“Someone told me,” he said, “that you once compared a pair
of them to a couple of watermelons hanging from the back of a wagon in a tow sack.”
“Who told you that?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Here’s some good ones: ‘Her neck is
like the Tower of David, set with warriors’ shields. Her eyes are pools in
Heshbon, her nose like the tower of Lebanon, her head crowns her like Mount
Carmel.’ Ever try any of those?”
“I’m going to report you to the Falloonian Elders.”
“Hey,” he said, reading, “did you ever tell Mrs. Big Dope
that her hair looked like ‘goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead’”?
“I hardly think so.”
“You did, as I recall,” he said, “tell her one morning that her hair looked like a band of mice had held a square dance in it.”
I said nothing.
He laughed. “You never did that again, did you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Here’s a sure-fire winner,” he said. “’Your teeth are like
a flock of newly shorn ewes which have come up from their washing, all of which
bear twins, and not one among them has lost her young.’ I’ll bet that one would
work out well for you.”
“C.W.,” I said, “I don’t think the Song of Solomon was
intended as a dating guide, sex manual, or source of pickup lines. In fact,
some Biblical scholars don’t believe someone should read it until they are over
30 years old, lest they kindle ‘the flames of lust.’”
“Thirty years old? Yuck. A lot of good it will do them then.”
“Someday,” I said, “I think we need to have a long talk.”
 |
| Some Biblical pickup lines seem to work better than others. Trust me. - C.W. |
“Your long talks,” he said, “confuse me more than your
Bible.”
“Are we finished?”
He ignored me. “So what is your take on it? This Song of
Solomon.”
“I haven’t a clue. Some say it was written by King Solomon
to his wife, or lover.”
He consulted some notes. “Which one? Says here he had 700
wives and 300 concuines.”
I groaned.
He continued. “So this crazy dame over in Kentucky will
issue 700 marriage certificates to the same man as long as none of them are for
another man?”
I closed my eyes, then opened them as thoughts began to
flood my head. “Let me take a look,” I said. “What was that about a pouch of
myrrh between the breasts?”
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