A Star is Born

One of my freshman physics labs was led by a couple of disciplinarian TAs, and in the first session they immediately warned us to take things seriously because they weren’t going to tolerate any sob stories about not having adequate time or “not getting it” – either pay attention or suffer the consequences, like low grades and/or being blinded if you stared directly into the laser. Of course, unless they’re very rich, nerds make unconvincing badasses: We were obviously suffering not by any fault of our own but because of the humiliation inflicted by their TAs of yesteryear, a grand tradition of verbal spankings endured for generations by aspiring TAs, all while meekly whimpering through clenched teeth, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”, praying that this might gain them entry into the brotherhood.

To teach us teamwork and minimize university outlays, we were to be paired with a partner that we would conduct the experiments with, and since none of my friends at the time were following the same “scientific” path as me it was a certainty that I would be paired with a stranger. The lead TA approached the table I’d sat down at and was all business: “You two – yeah, you – get to know each other. You’re going to be together for the rest of the semester,” he said tersely and then went on to repeat this verbatim with the other students in the class, salving his emotional wounds two freshmen at a time.

When we’d been addressed, I hadn’t even looked around to see who my partner was. I’d just checked to see if the TA was talking to me and was struggling to make sure he knew I was paying attention, which was difficult because the lab was on a Friday morning and Thursdays were one of the five weeknights reserved for heavy partying.  With a hazy head, I turned to find the largest Asian person I’d ever seen. This was well before the 7’6” Yao Ming would become an NBA household name and I’d had a pretty sheltered upbringing that only included shorter Asian people, so to me he cut an impressive figure: At about six feet tall and built like the Pillsbury Doughboy, he wore a faded jean jacket and a sense of disinterest accentuated by a lock of hair that fell carelessly across his forehead.

I said as politely as I could, “Hi,” but he just looked at me with a coolness and shook his head and said, “Oh man,” and let out a low whistle that suggested either minimal confidence in me or extreme fatigue. Either way, I took this as a call to action, the haze evaporating and my mind switching to laser-focus. Leaning in with a serious look, I asked just loud enough for him to hear, “Have you considered becoming an opera singer?” I apparently caught him by surprise – his face, previously a mask of either fatigue or despair went deer-in-the-headlights blank, and then regaining control of his facial muscles and vocal cords said in a surprisingly high pitch, “What are you talking about? Ohhh geez,” and again let out a low whistle and shook his head.

He contributed little to the lab, remaining perched on a stool the whole time with his arms folded. If it wasn’t for the occasional grunt and low whistle I’d have barely known he was there, and I spent most of the time doing all of the work and narrating the experiment, occasionally interjecting offhandedly that I’d heard that Pavarotti had a jet and that the opera after-parties were crazy. The lab eventually ended and we went our separate ways, he perhaps thinking that he’d just imagined this or that I’d just been feeling ill that day and that it wouldn’t come up again.

Of course, there was absolutely no chance of that. I had yet to learn anything but surface trivia about opera but I felt confident that I had the tools to mold him into a “star,” and he was in luck because I felt compelled to guide him. And I knew this was no fool’s errand – I’d once heard about how the owner of an Irish wolfhound had taken the sheddings and made a sweater out of them, only to find that it was unbearably hot and smelled terrible when it got wet, and this was completely unlike that – this was The Right Thing To Do. Like a young Mother Teresa, these were my first glimmerings of magnanimous social philanthropy.

The next lab, after the TAs had ripped us a new one and we’d started our task, I asked in him in a casual tone, “So, have you given my suggestion any more thought?”, and he looked at me and let out a low whistle. “Oh man,” he said and shook his head and this time I think he even rolled his eyes a little. Placing the back of my hand to the side of my mouth, I whispered earnestly, “You should at least consider taking a music appreciation class. Your voice is magnificent,” and his eyes widened; I sensed an opening and followed up with, “Those who have heard your gift would be horrified if they knew you were squandering it!”, and he let out a low whistle and shook his head. I did all the lab work again, narrating to him and occasionally pointing out that pursuing his dream would be “like running away with the circus, times ten” while he sat on his stool with his arms crossed, only opening his eyes to roll them.  

At the third lab, I was still in a fog from the previous night and wasn’t sharp enough to coach up my partner, and so after the requisite tongue-lashing by the TAs I began the assignment in silence. We were performing the Michelson-Morley experiment (which involved the use of a laser and the associated danger we had been warned about) when suddenly I heard a high-pitched mellifluous, “La, la, la, la, la,” and I turned and saw my partner with a big grin on his face – my charge had been rehearsing! Doubling over (but carefully avoiding the laser beam), I nearly wept, my selflessness rewarded.

Day of Reckoning: The Trailer

In preparation for a feature length release of my upcoming film, I have completed a trailer based on the preceding three chapters that I have published here.

Please let me know what you think!

Day of Reckoning

Chapter 3: Day of Reckoning

The RHONJ-fueled epiphany had given the bumbling cleric a clarity of vision. Vladimir had the facts, but, as the brainless figurehead, it was up to him to articulate the points on behalf of the other clerics that how to implement the reforms was a question of semantics, not right or wrong. After what seemed like a Super Bowl with nine scoreless overtimes, he would take the decisive step to break the tie.

There was only one way to end this defensive struggle, and it was to confront the problem head on: He would present the facts to the Dark Pope directly. In preparation he prayed that there wouldn’t be any hard questions. To reach for the brass ring was risky, but like a Groupon for liposuction, inherently worth it.

Alas, word came in that the Dark Pope had been taken ill and was said to be bedridden, feebly clutching his name-brand smartphone as he lay incapacitated. The bumbler feared yet another scoreless overtime, but, in a twist of fate, the Dark Pope’s obsession with his vision of the implementation of the reforms compelled him to propose a teleconference so that he might continue to debate the issue on said name-brand smartphone. And it was done.

On the day of the teleconference, the cardinals assembled and the bumbler presented the facts, unadorned, for six quarter-hours. And then, the evidence presented, they rested. And, as they awaited comment, all that could be heard was the labored breathing of the ill pontiff, and it seemed to go on for eons.

Finally, the Dark Pope broke his silence and launched into a litany of objections to semantic differences between Vladimir’s immaculate conception and His Holiness’s: corporations in years past had used different wording than they were proposing for the Church to “illuminate the issue”. But, other than the bumbler, the cardinals were intellectually prepared and responded to this all out blitz with choruses of “because…” for which the Dark Pope had no answer – no amount of fear-induced groupthink could derail their momentum. They were divinely inspired to speak truth to power.

The confluence of events was fortuitous: The Dark Pope was weakened by illness and his powers didn’t translate through the ether – he was crippled by his virtual presence even as he gripped his name-brand smartphone ever tighter. But like his doppelgänger Teresa Giudice, the Dark Pope would not give up without a fight.

“While you were talking,” the Dark Pope rasped, “I did a little research on the Internet. Haven’t other reputable organizations used torture and humiliation to prevent corruption? Come now - persuasion without extraordinary rendition is like trying to see in the dark without a lamp!” and the cardinals nodded their assent despite the fact that the doings of the Spanish Inquisition was irrelevant. It was this kind of hollow jeremiad highlighted by Monsignor Memoria – descents into hyperbole and outright assholicism – that had led to all of these scoreless overtimes. However, their nodding was strategic: Out of expedience they would concede points in garbage time, but not cede victory.

The Dark Pope assumed that their silence indicated tacit agreement with his cleverly argued points, and he continued: “And isn’t it a fact that we still have problems with chauffeurs pilfering the wafers and the wine from the Popemobile?”  

As the Dark Pope railed on and on about these minor transgressions, the bumbler wondered if what he’d been rhetorically asked in his youth was indeed true – did the pope really defecate in the woods? Alas, he lacked the ability to concentrate amidst the blizzard of negligible side issues and was soon pursuing other vexing questions in his inner monologue, like “How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?” but kept it to himself for even he knew these were dangerous musings in the presence of the Dark One for fear of being labeled cack-handed. And while he considered these questions, the cardinals continued to throw the Dark Pope bones about the cleverness of his observations until he finally relented.

***

Some time passed and the implementation of the reforms began. The Dark Pope internalized the decision as if he’d decreed it himself. And like converts everywhere, his devotion to this position transformed into zealotry. In a celebration of “his cause”, he called a gathering where he might pontificate at great length on the subject to underlings who would find it important to listen.

The Dark Pope selected a sweltering chamber within the Vatican of a size such that the cardinals were packed in with standing room only. He kept them waiting as he freshened up in his chambers and blew-dried his hair, teasing it into an elegant grey pompadour. When he finally deigned it time, he waltzed in in his perfectly pressed black robe and strode to the front of the room, name-brand smartphone clutched lovingly to his breast.

The Dark Pope was aptly named: Wherever he went, he cast a shadow in all directions, regardless of the location of the lights. The room had been well illuminated prior to his arrival, but as soon as he took the podium, the room grew dim. And even if over time they’d become used to his high-horsedness, the cardinals could not shake The Fear of being hazed like rookies in training camp in the presence of the Dark Pope.

As the sweating cardinals waited with trepidation, all that could be heard was the mechanical breathing of the Dark Pope as he cast a menacing gaze over them. And then he faux-cheerily began: “Let us commence. As you all know, I’ve kicked off an initiative to cleanse the church of the corruption. I’m excited about what the future holds. Why, I just recently developed a plan that Vladimir is to implement, specifying all the minute details so that he would do it correctly, and then returning again and again to grill him on the minute details. It will return the church to even more exalted heights. We should all feel good about bringing glory to God!”

The Dark Pope had long considered himself infallible (re infallible, in accordance with the First Vatican Council of 1870, the pope is infallible only when he makes an ex cathedra statement, i.e. a statement concerning “a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church”) and he approached this meeting from this perspective. It was said out of earshot of the Dark Pope that only one infallible statement (regarding the Assumption of Mary) had been made since the First Vatican Council of 1870. Pope John XXIII was quoted as saying, “I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible,” but the Dark Pope surely would have dismissed this as “applying to other popes” – did no one recall his mission-critical proclamations that he quizzed the cardinals on at regular intervals?

As the Dark Pope gently twisted the proposed reforms that had been agreed to earlier to fit his semantics, he gestured with his name-brand smartphone and exhorted them to “turn water into wine,” and gave them a moment to soak in the wisdom that he had most generously bestowed. The intent was clear: Using his tremendous God-given intellectual gifts, the Dark Pope was attempting to pump up the troops with his vision, albeit through the unconventional technique of acting as if he were Knute Rockne in a modern-day Notre Dame locker room and telling them they all needed “to row together” while projecting a slave galley on the wall to enhance his point.

As the Dark Pope paused, the room fell deathly silent save the mechanical breathing of the pontiff. Suddenly, the swarthy intellectual cardinal, in a stroke of political genius, shouted  “Yes!” a la Marv Albert (but sans women’s underpants/taped-on toupee) and then, as if in anticipation of a swarm of angry dissent being launched his way, punctuated his remark by pounding his chest like an ape in an apiary. His apparent force of conviction had caused a sombrero-shaped halo to again appear above his head, temporarily driving back the Dark Pope’s shadows. And this was not entirely for show: He was intellectually aligned with the Dark Pope at a skin-deep level. And beneath the surface he was hopeful that he would be able to strip the encumbrance of all the minor implementation details levied upon Vladimir’s reforms.

Looking to capture some of the Dark Pope’s lovin’ for himself while the gettin’ was good, one of his ghostly pale and balding sycophants tossed what seemed to be a softball question to bolster the Dark Pope’s position: “Will the reforms be specified explicitly enough so that we can be sure that Vladimir will implement them correctly?”  He’d spent hours on a special project with the Dark Pope in discussion with devout nuns and assumed that through this engagement he’d formed an elevated rapport with the pontiff, but was swiftly dispatched by the Dark Pope with an acid tone of ridicule: “Haven’t I already gone over this? Is this really the first you’re hearing of it?” and several less experienced cardinals chuckled.

As the Dark Pope’s pride swelled under these accolades and trouncings, his shadow grew darker, eventually snuffing out the light from the swarthy intellectual’s halo and even the ghostly whiteness of his balding sycophant. His brilliance was unmatched and he was convinced that his semantics would win the day. He handed off the floor to the senior cleric who would spell out the details.

The senior cleric briefly took up the chant: All of the resources in the room were to be repurposed for the glory of cleansing the church, and then adjourned the meeting, and the cardinals filed out.

But despite the obvious satisfaction of the Dark Pope as his shadows even spilled out through the now-open doors into the hallway, his attempts to create enthusiasm around what had now become “his vision” had not created a groundswell of excitement. Instead, there was dissent among the cardinals in attendance. “Implement this vision? I feel as if I’ve been put on the rack – please no!” muttered one under his breath, while others ironically complained bitterly that the solution was terribly ill-defined and they wished to return to the familiar surroundings of parishes of their youths, and the bumbler imagined their surprise when they realized that the definition down to the finest detail complete with a nasty messenger awaited them shortly. Sullenly, the sweating cardinals shuffled out of the hall to ponder the trail-mix of pain and suffering that awaited.

But after the meeting had ended, during the period of mourning that many of the conscripted cardinals were indulging in following these announcements, an event that hadn’t happened in nearly six hundred years cataclysmically occurred: The pope announced his abdication and, by implication, the abdication of the other side of the Janus that was the pope, the Dark Pope too. He claimed fatigue, as he spoke to the clerics in Latin, announced his decision during an address at the “Consistory for the canonization of the martyrs of Otranto”. He/they would be the first pope to resign since the Middle Ages (Gregory XII in 1415, to end the Great Western Schism). And many initially didn’t know what he’d said because they didn’t know Latin – understandable, since the entrance exam only required them to check a “yes” next to the Latin box on the test. But once the more well educated journalists covering the event revealed the truth, rumors immediately began to fly about some sort of “divine intervention” that would cleanse the church of the corruption once and for all and perhaps allow them to reach the Promised Land.

***

The conclave began and 1.2 billion followers eagerly awaited the decision. There was considerable hope amongst those closest to the situation that the successor would truly embrace reform, and that he would not be paralyzed by insecurities and obsessions with fine-grain detail. No obvious front-runner had been identified and it seemed a real possibility.

And finally the fumata bianca was seen: The cardinals had selected an Über-pope, and the decree would soon be handed down. The followers rejoiced in anticipation of the announcement. But when the name was read, a realization befell them: The conclave had been stacked with sympathizers of the old pope, and like a weak secondary torched by a flea-flicker, a ceremonial pontiff had been named that would carry on the same policies, through his proxy formerly known as the Dark Pope.

In a sign of the technological new world older, preceding even his old-school verbal address to the masses in St. Peter’s square, the elected pontiff tweeted his first words from his new pulpit:

@pontifex – The #lantern shall illuminate the path to glory!

And the Iceman cameth as the overtimes stretched to infinity…

Chapter 2: The Agony and the Ecstasy

A few weeks passed from the day of the meeting and, because of his outburst, the bumbling cardinal had been assigned the task of gathering the facts and then interpreting the signs. It wasn’t easy: The cardinal spent days and nights searching through dusty shelves and file cabinets filled with manila envelopes containing scrolls from years past. Nearly all of the original authors had passed on and so it was left to him to decipher the parchment alone.

His penchant for saying unusual things without reservation combined with his mental vault of secrets gathered through endless questioning left others in the clergy calling him an “out of the closet J. Edgar Hoover” behind his back. But the truth was, he was just an empty-headed fool asking lots of questions because he lacked the cleverness of his fellow men-of-the-cloth. He relied their brilliance to provide him the inspiration to “take it to the house” as was required by his assignment.

As he walked to his chambers he knew that what he really needed was a release to take his mind off the intensity of the investigation and provide inspiration – a guilty pleasure – and it sent a shiver up his spine…

… but then, rounding a corner, his reverie was broken as he nearly collided with a tall, bald figure in a rough-hewn robe. “Perdonatemi! I did not see you coming, Monsignor Memoria,” said the bumbler to the towering figure.

Memoria was a revered figure in the Church, practically a living saint, whose work formed the foundation of much of the pope’s more recent proclamations. Despite his brusque nature, he was well loved by his disciples. A lone wolf, he chose the road less traveled, but in the end his word was unquestioned as the truth, at least by the intellectually honest. 

When Memoria spoke, he did not mince words. “It is good that you have put Vladimir in charge of implementing the reforms,” he said, “but beware the influence of the Dark Pope.” Ah yes, the Dark Pope, thought the bumbler to himself, the Other. Unlike the pope of the kickoff meeting, the Dark Pope was feared rather than loved. It was whispered that puzzling insecurities drove his behavior, like his obsession with his name-brand smartphone. “He cloaks his assholicism under the guise of passion,” continued Memoria, “and retains influence through his debating skills. And he too has balding sycophants that feed him information – recall Friar Tuck of the too-short-cloak and the tightly-cinched-belt – and they possess their own agendas. “

So tall was the vicar that the bumbler normally had a hard time hearing him, but this time he had no trouble hearing the words – it was the content that left him in near-disbelief. However, because it was the revered Memoria, his words about the Dark Pope could not be dismissed. The Dark Pope’s initiatives within the church were innovative and immaculately stated and appeared pure of nature, and yet Memoria’s comments about his passion concerned him with respect to the Dark Pope’s integrity – was His Excellency as pure as he seemed? “Yes, thanks for your sage words, Monsignor. I will take them under consideration,” said the bumbler, and he hoped that Memoria could hear him from his great height. He remained uncertain as the bald vicar turned without a goodbye and was gone.

After a moment of reflection, the bumbler stored these facts away and continued his route down the hallowed hall to his chambers, and his heartbeat began to accelerate as his thoughts returned to the guilty pleasure. As he arrived at his door, he quietly opened it and then closed it behind him, locking it. Then he pulled his laptop from his satchel and stole away to the bathroom at the end of a hallway, far from the door to his apartment, out of earshot from all who might pass by outside. And then, lowering the toilet seat, he sat down and flipped open the laptop, opened a browser window, and, pulling down the bookmarks menu, selected an entry labeled “RHONJ”.

This site, for him, was like a moth to a flame. He’d visited it too many times to count, and yet the thrill never seemed to diminish. This was, of course, the official “Real Housewives of New Jersey” website, and he would leverage it to “open up the playbook”, for there was no need for Hail Marys when you had a secret weapon.

This week’s program was the “reunion” show where the cast members spent time discussing things that had happened during the last season. The host spent considerable time talking about the items they would cover, each more exciting than the last.

The first topic featured a panel discussion that included a heavily made-up Teresa Giudice, her husband Joe, and her brother Joe Gorga. Teresa had come prepared, with a revealing green dress and a healthy application of black eye mascara, almost certainly to reduce the glare of the set lights. Gripping the armrests of her chair and leaning forward, she lit into her brother Joe. “Yo’ breakin’ mommy and daddy’s heart!”

Her brother Joe, while intellectually honest, was clearly overmatched. He wanted to do the right thing, but first he needed clarification and asked, “What did you just say?” and then attempted to go on the offensive with “Please, don’t start that shit with me because that’s the worst fuckin’ thing you could do to me…”

A wicked gleam entered Teresa’s eye as a nasty smile crept across her blood-red mouth. She tipped her head back and tapped her index finger to her lips; she’d spotted an inconsistency and, mimicking him, sprung a logical trap: “That’s the worst thing you can do?” Then after a couple of beats, she opened the floodgates, turning to her husband and shouting, “Joe, can you tell him?”

Teresa’s husband Joe Giudice had appeared to be dozing and didn’t seem to have heard her, so she shrieked, “Joe, can you tell him?”, snapping Joe out of his reverie as he shook his head to gather his wits. Whipped, he managed “How are you blamin’ that on her?”

Under this relentless pressure, brother Joe punted and went on defense and, squinting into the bright lights, sold out: “Shut the fuck up!” but now husband Joe was fully alert. He may not have known much about mascara, but this was language he could understand. His shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and he gripped the heavy gold chains hanging around his neck (as well as a clump of chest hair) to keep them from swinging and, leaning forward and pointing at brother Joe, chose his words carefully: “No, you shut the fuck up! You fuckin’ shithead! Look at you and look at this. What do you know about this, stoopid?”

The drama was incredible, and the arguments sublime – particularly Teresa’s. It felt like Shakespeare bulked up on steroids combined with Perry Mason at his most convincing. At times like this, the cardinal imagined what might have transpired in the cast’s formative years to make a masterpiece like this possible. In particular, Teresa’s verbal gifts and penchant for inciting controversy via ridicule intrigued him – something about it seemed so familiar… He imagined that she had perhaps grown up a military brat and had been humbled in so many catfights that it had left her terribly insecure, and that to compensate she had gone on to acquire advanced degrees in cosmetology and had taken debate courses online from the University of Phoenix.

This exchange was followed by a lengthy unintelligible period of shouting, which led in turn to a rhetorical discussion about the merits of revealing clothing and plastic surgery. By this time, another of the ‘Wives had come off the bench: Caroline Manzo. She was a veteran of the show, older than Teresa, and much more solidly built. She’d spent years in the trenches and Teresa didn’t scare her. She leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed, thrust out her lower lip, and slowly shook her head in condescension.

Finally, after a long pause, Caroline spoke in a voice dripping with contempt: “You in yo’ Christmas pageant dress, sit back and shut the fuck up.” Unfortunately for Caroline, Teresa cast a gimlet eye on the logic of this argument and was ready with a counteroffensive, and, almost shyly, she turned her head slightly to the left and with raised eyebrows softly observed, “You have three rolls: blubbah, blubbah, and blubbah.”

This incontrovertible observation was unexpected, and for a fleeting moment Caroline’s eyes grew wide, but then they narrowed with determination and she growled in a low voice, “You know what? I fuckin’ wear ‘em proud.” and she leaned back and jiggled her wattle.

The apparent shyness on Teresa’s face vanished and was replaced with a look of cunning, revealing that she’d been playing rope-a-dope with Caroline all along, triumphantly proclaiming, “With a tummy tuck – you were hunched over fo’ fo’ months!”

Now Teresa had Caroline on her heels, and Caroline was left trying to keep the score respectable in garbage time. Raising her head high, and thereby stretching her wattle, in an attempt to preserve a shred of her dignity by way of contrast with Teresa, she said “I have no Botox, I have no fillers, I nevah had a facelift!” But Teresa was having none of this and, like Perry Mason at the end of the show, went in for the kill, dismissing this as hearsay by applying impeccable logic: “You should get some.”

The cardinal couldn’t believe the quality of the presumed University of Phoenix debate courses – is this what an argument between Supreme Court justices sounded like? And Teresa continued to dominate the conversation even as she took the witness stand. She’d been accused by Melissa Gorga of a terrible crime and, raising her hand as if taking an oath, she plead innocent, saying “I sweah on my dad, I nevah said you were a strippah!”

Melissa would not back down and replied, “You are lyin’…”

The surprise of Teresa on the defensive heightened the cardinal’s senses even more and the hair on the back of his neck stood. But this last was just a tease, as suddenly there was a rush of dramatic music and the channel went to a commercial about an upcoming episode that featured the Housewives shopping, and, just as Teresa was saying “Have you seen this new shopping app?”, the cardinal nodded off.

He dreamed of an overweight cardinal who, at one of the papal conclaves, burst into the hallowed chambers and shouted, “I have one question: Is there a reason that the one-big-one-small retinaed cardinal wasn’t invited?” The cardinal of the imbalanced retinae, who was seated in a chair directly in front of the plump cardinal, said “Why, no reason at all!” and the other cardinals concurred as the plump cardinal continued to pontificate on topics like “Having a pope is critical, and I challenge anyone here to suggest otherwise,” “Jesus is part of Catholicism,” and the like, and the cardinal wondered if Batman ever had an adversary called the “Hassler”.

Gradually, the cardinal was woken from his shopping-induced REM sleep and heard Teresa again quarterbacking the discussion:

“… because I didn’t want this to happen…” The dramatic statement brought the cardinal fully awake, and Teresa launched into an eloquent description of how the others being on the show had affected her relationship with her brother. One of the ‘Wives, Jacqueline Laurita, then related how the stress that Teresa faced manifested itself in their discussions.

Jacqueline had not used as much mascara as Teresa, and it made her squint even as she fought back tears. Gathering herself, she looked Teresa straight in the eye and said evenly, “You wanted me to call them out on everything,” but Teresa was deflecting the conversation back to the host, gently twisting Jacqueline’s comments to her advantage, and with a mournful look in her eyes she told the host “… but she would say it to me behind cameras, but then when the cameras were rolling she wouldn’t say it.”

This was too much for Jacqueline – she was injured. She began, “I didn’t say anything!”, and then, with emotion rising in her voice, she continued, “You were telling me what to say, making me uncomfortable, I had other shit going on in my life, but you didn’t give a fuck about that. All you cared about was exposing them. That’s it.”

It seemed that Teresa had been caught unawares.  The whites of her eyes bugged out of the black circles formed by her mascara and her jaw dropped. Collecting herself, she cross-examined her accuser: “Exposing them with what?” but the momentum had shifted as Jacqueline retorted with conviction, “You wanted me to call out that she was a strippah,” and she pointed at Melissa.

It seemed that all the courses in the catalog at the University of Phoenix couldn’t save Teresa now. Aghast, she mumbled, “No I didn’t,” and the juggernaut continued as Jacqueline shouted, “You wanted me to say that she didn’t get a designah badge until she was forty years old, like that meant something!” and even the normally reserved Kathie Walkie piled on supporting Jacqueline’s argument with a vicious, “And then look at their shitty house!”

However, Teresa may have been down, but not out. Setting her jaw, she crossed her arms and denied everything: “I nevah said she was a strippah.” This sent Jacqueline over the edge, gesticulating wildly with her arms and her eyes rolled up in her head, and a stream of unintelligible gibberish flowed openly from her mouth. Eventually the flow became understandable: “I swear on my child! You wanted to call her out. You are a liah! You are sick! You are going to hell!”

By now the cardinal was drenched in sweat and emotionally drained by the drama and the logic. And the scene had become a Mexican Standoff, with Teresa on one side and most of the rest of the Housewives on the other, glaring at each other, daring the other side to speak. He prayed that his battery didn’t run out…

… but his battery held up, and the silence was broken by Melissa, who matter-of-fact-ly declared “And I’m not a strippah. I’m a burlesque performah.”

And then, as a light shone from the heavens through the bathroom window, the angelic voices of a celestial choir were heard as he saw it clearly through the prism of the carefully reasoned arguments of the Real Housewives of New Jersey – the clerics had been arguing about semantics, and the comments from clergy members such as the plump cardinal of his dream and the Dark Pope of his reality had been “off-the-field distractions”, clouding their judgment. But how to convince the others to “wear the eye-black” so that they might see it as clearly as he?