The Real Housewives of Sodom and Gomorrah
Pilot Episode: Keeping up with the Jonahs.
Archeological finds keep pushing civilization back along a timeline that ends up being much longer than what experts have previously proposed. Not only are the Egyptian pyramids, the Sphinx, and many other megaliths across the world older than initially thought, but recent finds like Gobekle Tepe in modern-day Turkey, dated to 11,600 BC, show a sophistication thought only to belong to humans going back no farther than Sumer/Akkad, originally thought to be the forerunners of modern cultured humans.
Recent papyri dredged up in the Golan Heights while laying foundations for Israeli settlements bear a written script between Chaldean and early Hebrew. A team of British cryptographers, along with a team of Israeli paleo-linguists, have discovered what looks to be a completed script for a pilot episode meant to be pitched to the Bronze Age equivalent of the Bravo Network.
Readers of said script, produced in its entirety below, will notice many facets of dialogue reminiscent of modern reality shows wherein pettiness, runaway materialism, chicanery, alcoholic hi-jinx, and occasional bonhomie prevail over a backdrop of hausfrau indolence and decadence. Such exchanges make the modern reader not only shudder but keenly wonder if such depravity is largely to blame for the total devastation unleashed upon the two cities where the drama takes place. A just god may have found such lassitude to be much more an abomination than any so-called unholy acts named after the first locale of—
THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH
[Script for Pilot Episode:]
“Keeping up with the Jonahs.”
[Deck chairs overlooking the Dead Sea. Four Canaanite women in the prime of their beauty, nursing margaritas while playing with limestone rectangles, a precursor to dominoes.]
Rachel: There is a new thing all the ladies are doing. It's called exfoliating. They induce the topmost layer of skin to leave. It leaves you fresh.
Elisheva: So now we're snakes, molting our own skin? Just because the Egyptians do it, we do too? If an Egyptian jumped off an aqueduct, would you?
Sarai: First baths, now this? I can’t keep up.
Rachel: Keeping up with the Jonahs is a tough business.
Sarai: Since getting facials by brimstone light is troublesome, due to inconsistent lighting, I think we should postpone spa day to when things calm down.
Rachel: Agreed. Also, all these earthbound fireballs are making my service dog skittish.
(Above: Either Sodom or Gomorrah during the initial godly aerial bombardment)
Elisheva: I just don't get this suddenly random total obliteration thing. All of us are to perish except that good-too-shoes Lot? Him and his gated community.
Tamar: I wouldn’t mind me a lot of Lot.
Elisheva: He is quite a catch. But his wife's a hussy. She tends to get uppity. And salty.
Tamar: Salty, surely.
(Above: Lot's wife, after consuming too many Gomorraritas)
Rachel: Lot's wife be like, “You cheated on me. And with God!” I get it. Such resentment invariably leads to alcoholism. And saltiness.
Elisheva: We Sodomites have the better cisterns due to being closer to this here sea. You Gomorrans are stuck with that River Jordan Water.
Tamar: Yeah, well you Sodomites are so gauche. Your bread's all leavened and shit.
Elisheva: Damn fireballs. Made me spill my drink.
Sarai: You girls complain too much about these fireballs. Wait until you start getting hot flashes.
Tamar: I'm going inside for another Gomorrarita. Any one of your girls need a top-'er-off?
Sarai: Yeah, me!
Rachel: Me too! Oh, and a bit more salt around the rim. Salt from Lot's wife's hips.
Elisheva: Me three!
Rachel: Have you girls heard? There's these two dime pieces about town—tall, dark, handsome, winged—so becoming these lads are that some of our cities’ guys tried to lure them into their homes for a little town welcoming.
Tamar: Ha! Rump rangers. What's new?
Elisheva: I'm not a slippery-slope girl, but know this: it wouldn't have become a thing if we hadn't got rid of stoning.
Rachel: Immigration is definitely beginning to be a problem. Who let those winged ones in? Why should they get free amenities while good working men like my Hosea and others pay their fair share of taxes?
Tamar: Rachel, I would never take you for a xenophobe.
Rachel: I'm not a xenophobe. But we have to safeguard our cities. Who do you think is behind all the fireballs? The winged ones, that's who. Me and Hosea were at our time share at the Ur ziggurat last weekend. We couldn't even enjoy our penthouse dalliance because a few uncircumcised local Sumerians took liberties to rap on our door to sell statuettes.
(Above: an ancient Sumerian statuette)
Sarai: You are xenophobic. Though I must admit, it goes well with your blouse. Me, I love those Sumerian god statuettes. Very rustic. That's why Shlomo and I have them all over our summer home up in Lebanon.
Rachel: Slumming it, are we? I'd call cultural misappropriation if you didn't look so damn adorable.
Tamar: Is that not the point? Why else kohl our eyes like the Egyptians?
Elisheva: These important conversations are making me hungry. Anyone up for matzo ball tacos? I'll place an order.
Tamar: Uber Eats delivers here? Wonderful. I'd place an order myself, but I haven't updated my tablet from cuneiform.
Rachel: You are adorable.
(Above: A modern reconstruction of two Gomorraritas made from glass sherds found with the papyri. Notice the uncanny resemblance to the modern margarita. Two things can be deduced from this: (1) There is nothing new under the sun, as the Book of Ecclesiastes says; (2) Sodomites and Gomorrarans had technology like glass-blowing)
Rachel: We have to inject meaning back into our sexless lives. Since we've been made extraneous by our own men going native, I say we find out just where these two foreigners are hiding out. Tall, dark, handsome, winged, and running away from our men's eponymous behavior? They have to be fetching!
Tamar: That's your tenth Gomorrarita talking, Rachel. By the way, I thought you were having a dry Nisan. It's the third of the month and you're already drunk out of your gourd. When are you going to cut back?
Rachel: When the Dead Sea runs dead of salt to line the rims of my margs, that's when!
Sarai: Here here!
[A recipe for the Gomorrarita below breaks the action of the script]
GOMORRARITA
2 ounces distilled Sinai cactus juice
1/2 ounce orange liqueur
1 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce agave syrup (optional)
Ice (crushed or cubed)
Lime wheel or wedge for garnish
Dead Sea salt for rimming the glass (optional [though is it really?])
Tamar: At the rate you're going, the Dead Sea just may dry up!
Rachel: Listen. Do you have a problem? What is your problem? I think you have a problem!
Tamar: Not all of us can get our clothes spun down by the Nile, is all I'm saying.
Rachel: You arriviste bitch. I found you under a rock and hired you to work for my Hosea's firm. Until you went and decided to know him. Go back to Gomorrah [throws Gomorrarita at Rachel's head]. Or the land of Nod.
Tamar: Your dispomania will ruin us all. No wonder God is visiting devastation upon our drunken heads!
[Fire and brimstone overtake the stage]
Modern scholars have unanimously deduced from the script above that it was consumption that brought catastrophe to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, sealing their fates, and not, as has long been believed, certain activities relegated to the bedroom between consenting adults. God was, is, and always will be a don't-ask-don't-tell god. Amen.
Thank you for reading Third-Eye LASIK.
My latest novel Crushed Trachea Blues is available in ebook and paperback. It's a fun murder mystery featuring suicide by Jiu-Jitsu, AI Charles Manson, and tacos.
"It's the third of the month and you're already drunk out of your gourd. When are you going to cut back?"
Something one of my superhero characters would be asked, seeing as she has a...problem...