Story 216: The Counterpoint to a Classic

            (At a café table, surrounded by garlands, snow families, gingerbread houses, and menorahs)

            Friend 1: (While blowing on a hot drink) I feel like I can’t really relax and enjoy the ambience of the moment when my attention keeps getting drawn to those struggling baristas and their mile-long line.

            Customer: (On line next to the table) I used to be one of those – you tend to get in a zone until the shift’s over.  Just try to tip, though, `cause that really helps out.

            Friend 1: Heh-heh, oh boy.  (Runs with wallet to the tip jar and runs back to the table) What was I saying?

           Friend 2: (Having finished three cookies and working on a fourth) How you can’t relax in crowds.

            Friend 1: Yeah.  I want to fully experience the holiday season this year but since everybody else is too, it’s kind of distracting.  (Sips drink and burns tongue) And that’s now ruined.  What I should do is go home, curl up with a blanket, and read A Jolly Olde Solstice Song like I do every year.  I just love that story – it truly gets the spirit of the season and what it’s all about, know what I mean?

            Friend 2: I’m surprised you like to read that one.

            Friend 1: Why, you think it’s too sappy for me?  It is, but somehow it works.  You know, the heartfelt reunions, the plight of the poor, the importance of family and friends, the reminder to tithe – this story literally has it all!  --- ---- was a genius, I say, an absolute genius, and I never use that word on anyone!

            Friend 2: Can’t argue with that, but I’m surprised social-justice you enjoy it knowing what he did.

            Friend 1: Why, what’d he do?

            Friend 2: You don’t know?

            Friend 1: No, and get that smug look off your face – it drives everyone bonkers when you do it.

            Friend 2: Oh.  (Frowns)  I never realized I had a smug look.

            Friend 1: Then I’m the first to tell you.  So, what’d he do?  I’m irrationally anxious about this now.

            Friend 2: Well, for one thing, he was a polygamist.

            Friend 1: He was a what-now?

            Friend 2: He was married to four women and a plant – that last one wasn’t official, but in his mind it was.

            Friend 1: Ew!  Did any of the four women know about each other?

            Friend 2: Two did, but what were they going to do about it?  It was Victorian England – they’d consider themselves lucky they weren’t being beaten every night.

            Friend 1: I guess, but four wives?  Why would he even want to go past one?

           Friend 2: Basically so he could get their families’ money and produce a bajillion heirs he didn’t have to raise.  Didn’t you read his 10^th son’s tell-all?

          Friend 1: What, Father Mine, Where Art Thine Love?  I thought that was just revisionist fiction.

            Friend 2: No, it was pretty accurate non-fiction.  Family prime’s lawyer backed up most of it after having to sort through the avalanche of ----‘s tawdry papers when he died.

            Friend 1: Mm.  Well, I suppose everyone has a few skeletons in their closets, right?  It’s not as if he had any literal ones, right?

            Friend 2: Weeellll….

           Friend 1: (Slams paper cup onto the table) No.  Smug look off and tell me it’s a slanderous rumor with no basis in fact.

            Friend 2: No and no – it could never be proven, but right before A Jolly Olde Solstice Song was published there was this one guy who disappeared after a big fight at ----‘s main house, and everybody thinks the London police covered it up because the scandal would have destroyed the British Empire.

            Friend 1: And who is this “everybody”?

            Friend 2: You know, everybody.

            Friend 1: Well that’s certainly definitive.  Did anybody ever think that maybe the guy just left town?

            Friend 2: That’s the unpopular version; but there was this other time –

            Friend 1: I don’t want to hear it.

          Friend 2: Too bad: there was this other time where ---- said he was sent to debtors’ prison when he was an infant, when in fact he only had been pushed in his carriage past one.  He actually grew up pretty well off and publicly stated that he wished beggars on the street would just shove off already.

            Friend 1: But – but – the plight of the poor!

            Friend 2: He also said that he regretted that they’d always be with us, asking for money.

           Friend 1: (Stares at cold drink) I don’t understand.  How could something so wonderful have been written by someone who embodied the exact opposite of the values he was writing about?!  Why is everything like this always ruined by their douchey creators?!

            Friend 2: Who knows?  Maybe that work was his mitzvah.

            Friend 1: I don’t think he was Jewish.

            Friend 2: You don’t have to be Jewish to do a mitzvah, it’s just a good deed.  Maybe A Jolly Olde Solstice Song was his atonement for a lifetime of being a scumbag.  A balance to offset his moral pollution, if you will.

            Friend 1: I guess.  I certainly will never read it in the same way again.  I don’t even know if I can ever read it again.

           Friend 2: I wouldn’t let his sordid past bother you too much – you’d never read anything again if you knew half of what their authors were really like.