“As it happens, the Bible censored his name,” God said about the Holy Ghost. “His real name was the Holy Goat.”
The poet Dylan Thomas drank 18 glasses of whiskey in Manhattan’s White Horse Tavern and died shortly thereafter. Reputedly, his ghost haunts the Tavern, and if you listen closely, you can hear it uttering the words “Where are my five and country senses?” over and over again.
God and I were having whiskeys ourselves in this same establishment, and I listened for the deceased Welsh poet’s ghost, but when I didn’t hear it, I asked my drinking companion about a different sort of ghost — the so-called Holy Ghost. How, I wondered, can a ghost impregnate a woman?
“As it happens, the Bible censored his name,” God replied. “His real name or rather his nickname was the Holy Goat. For whenever he saw a woman, he would go after her like a ram in heat.”
“Were you comfortable having this perpetually horny guy beget your son Jesus?” I asked.
God drained his glass of whiskey, then quickly ordered another, doubtless because liquor would make my question a lot easier to answer.
“Okay, let me begin with a confession,” he said at last. “I once tried to circumcise myself and, well, I missed. Ever since then, I’ve suffered not so much from erectile dysfunction as erectile nonexistence. But I still wanted to have a kid, and the obvious solution was the Holy Goat…except when he had VD. Given his reputation, I knew he would do a good job at begetting.”
“How did the Blessed Virgin feel about this ram of a guy?
“Mary wanted him to deflower her. After all, her fiance Joseph had failed to do so. And she had a crush on Billy, as she called him. More than once, she told me she wanted to be (in her words) ‘Billy’s ewe.’”
A revelation — Jesus was the product of a maculate rather than Immaculate Conception! I now asked God about the Holy Goat’s life after his fling with Mary.
“Well, he had flings with Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, even Mary Magdalene — almost every famous gal in the Good Book. But he made a serious mistake when he decided to have a fling with the giant Goliath’s girlfriend Buffy. Goliath caught them in the act and smashed the Goat to smithereens.”
“The poor fellow!”
“I thought it would be appropriate to bring him back as a love potion,” God said, “so I collected what was left of him and tried to turn the pieces into something like Viagra. But I somehow screwed up, which, as you know, I often do, because I turned his remains into a bowl of Hungarian goulash…”
The frown on God’s face was replaced by a grin when I told him that I would much rather eat a bowl of Hungarian goulash than swallow any sort of love potion.
Part of a series detailing Lawrence Millman’s experiences with his drinking buddy, God. Soon to be gathered together, assuming a publisher is interested, as a mini-memoir entitled “Drinks With God.”
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