“YO, OILY JOSH!”
“Sup?”
“This dude says he needs his hand fixed. He’s, like, a carpenter or sumthin.”
“Yeah? I did some carpenterin’ in my day. Send him in.”
A young man in a dirty robe hobbles in carrying a hammer. His right hand is mangled and bloody.
Oily Josh—a big man with long, greasy hair, a fly goatee, wearing nothing but a loincloth—is sitting on a pillow next to a low table spread with bread, wine, and other non-pork products. He’s surrounded by a small harem of former prostitutes who look about like you’d expect. Around the table sit eight other guys in various states of dress, all chowing down on what sits before them. Another of the Greasy Bois stands by the door where he just let the carpenter in. Two more are washing each other’s feet in the corner. (We won’t linger on them.) God only knows where Jud-ass is.
“Yo,” Josh yells, wagging his hand in a vague come hither gesture, “watchu need, my man?”
The carpenter stammers, “Sir, uh, if you wouldn’t mind… see, a beam landed on my hand today while I was putting a doorframe together. And, you know, I kinda need it to work. So…”
“Step up, bruh.”
The carpenter moves to Josh’s side. Josh takes the mangled hand in his own, closes his eyes, and quivers his lips as if in silent prayer. Then, he squeezes the hand as hard as he can (which is damn hard). The carpenter lets out a throat-scraping scream and lands on his knees in among the harem. Still, Josh holds on and keeps squeezing. Blood drips between his big fingers.
Finally, he lets go as the man’s wails fade and he faints, collapsing to the floor.
Josh wipes his bloody hand on the hair of the woman closest to him–her name is Nadine and she’s none too happy about the blood–and stands up. “I can’t friggin stand when people have the balls to mix Oily Josh and the Greasy Bois up with that group of holier-than-thou beatniks over in Judea. Christ on a cracker, that chaps my ass!”
Jud-ass walks in, a large bong in his hand.
“Finally!”
Later that day, high as canaries and all but pissing wine, the Greasy Bois don their leather robes, hop on their suped-up donkeys, and head into the streets of Nazareth. Josh kicks over a basket of pomegranates and chuckles evilly. Jonboy knocks a turban off a priest who looks after them, nonplussed. Jamie (not to be confused with Jame-dog, Jonboy’s brother) slaps a young baker’s wife’s ass as he rides by.
The Greasy Bois were, without doubt, the baddest donkey gang in all of Galilee. You could hear their steeds braying and honking from cubits away and half the marketplace would flee to the synagogue when they came clip-clopping down the Roman road. But, there were some Jews with the chutzpah to take no bupkis from the likes of Oily Josh and the Greasy Bois. And one of them was Jeremiah of Hoboken.
While the Bois harass the ladies in the marketplace, Jeremiah is boiling bagels in a small alleyway off the main square. He is a small man, but fast and wiry, and smart as a whip. He hears the commotion and knows immediately what’s going down. He pulls the last bagels from the water and threads them onto a drying rod, then stands, adjusts his yamaka, and strides out into the street.
Oily Josh is looking the other way when his donkey rears and lies on its side, pinning his leg and giving him a none-to-comfy roadburn. The rest of the Bois pull their rides to a halt and look with shock at the little man with the wooden club in his hand. Josh’s donkey wakes up a moment later with a knot already rising on its noggin and struggles to get up. No one speaks for three moments.
When Josh can stand again, he is red in the face. His leather robe is dusty and his loincloth hangs askew. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, ya freakin’ assmunch?”
Jeremiah slowly pats the club into his hand and stares the Bois down one at a time.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, asshole!” Josh takes a step forward and doesn’t even see the wood blurring into the side of his head.
The rest of the Bois are completely at a loss as to what to do. They’re fighters, alright, but they’re also followers, and their leader is lying dazed and motionless on the road next to a woozy donkey. They look at each other, then at the wiry little bagel maker who’s slowly patting his club into his hand once again. Then, as one, they back up their donkeys and slowly clop away. Jonboy gives Josh a hand standing up and supports the big man as he schleppes behind the group of donkeys.
Slowly but surely, dozens, then hundreds of people begin clapping and yelling “Mazel tov!” Jeremiah stands like a tree in the middle of the road until the Greasy Bois are out of sight. Then, with a few nods to the cheering crowds, he makes his way back to his bagels.
A few hours (and a few hits of frankincense from Jud-ass’s bong) later, Oily Josh sits among his whores and grumbles. “Who was that dude? Seriously bruh!”
The Bois are all walking on eggshells around Josh, knowing their reaction to the attack had been less than stellar. But, Matty dares to say, “I’m pretty sure he’s the bagel guy.”
Josh whirls on him. “The what?”
Wincing, Matty replies more quietly. “He makes bagels in the marketplace. I think his name is Jeremiah?”
“You asking me, or are you telling me?”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Josh. It’s Jeremiah the bagel maker. He’s from Hoboken.”
Josh stands up, knocking one of the girls sprawling. “You seem pretty chummy with this sumbitch. You two shmoozin’ it up, huh?”
“Naw, Josh, naw. I just like bagels, ya know?”
“You like bagels, huh?” Josh sinks his fist so far into Matty’s gut the poor man soils his drawers.
Josh looks around. “Any more of you uncircumcised dickheads like bagels?”
They all shake their heads and avert their eyes.
“I didn’t think so. Now listen up: I want Jeremiah of Hoboken taken down, and I don’t mean gently, ya got it? I want him rubbed out until he’s just a smear on the street.”
The Greasy Bois get it.
Several days later—Sabbath, in fact—Jeremiah steps from his humble home into the early evening air and looks at the stars. Then, a moment later, he sees stars (in the figurative sense, since what he is actually seeing is the aural representation of the concussed nerve fibers in his visual cortex exploding in a mass of confused signals in the second between when a heavy stool crumbles across the top of his head and when he completely loses consciousness,) and, unbeknownst to him but beknownst to us, collapses to the dust and is quickly dragged away.
When he awakes, his head pounding and his attitude none too chipper, he finds he is tied to a chair by the upper arms and lower legs. Instantly recognizing this configuration as both foolish (on the part of his captors) and convenient (on the part of himself) he relaxes and looks around. His curiosity is rewarded with a haymaker to the jaw. He grunts, spits something red, then glares up at his attacker.
“Hi Jerry,” Oily Josh says, his leering face inches from the bagel maker’s, “glad you could join us this fine Sabbath.”
Jeremiah says, “Thou shalt not do any work on my holy Sabbath…”
Another punch, this time to his abdomen. He wheezes and his mouth works like a fish.
Then, he looks up again and continues, his voice airy, “thou shalt not harvest and winnow grain on my holy Sabbath and thou shalt not beat the grain with a stick—” and at ‘stick’ he straightens his body with a burst from his shockingly toned quads and his head catches Oily Josh directly beneath the chin, sending his teeth through his tongue and his feet three inches off the floor. As Josh falls to the ground, Jeremiah whips his chair around and leaps as far into the air as he can before raising his feet and tucking his ass to land the full weight of the chair and his body on Josh’s chest. The big man whimpers and squalls as the chair crumbles around him.
Jeremiah stands up and looks around the darkened room, but no Greasy Bois remain if they’d been there at all. A short wooden door is swinging slowly, letting in the dim twilight. A whirl of dust spins near the door, perhaps indicating twelve cowards had bolted as their ‘fearless’ leader hit the ground yet again. He brushes pieces of the broken chair off of Oily Josh and hoists the man to a sitting position against a wooden post in what Jeremiah now recognizes as an abandoned manger.
Josh’s lips are wet with blood and more dribbles out as he coughs and whimpers. His oily hair hangs in eyes that are angry and scared at the same time, but he doesn’t say anything.
Jeremiah uses his own bindings (which are now loose since the chair has shattered) and ties Josh to the post behind him. “Listen, you numbnuts. I’m leaving you here to think about what you’ve done. And, when I get back, we’ll see what G-man thinks. Sit tight.” Jeremiah walks out into the night.
The next morning, his back and tailbone aching like a son of a bitch, Oily Josh hears the unmistakable sound of a bunch of sandals padding up to the door of the manger. “Jame-dog! Jonboy! Matty! Get in here you pussies and untie me!”
Murmuring outside makes him second guess his assumption that the Greasy Bois had returned. Then, a few moments later, in walks Jeremiah of Hoboken. And with him, a tall, thin, beautiful man in white robes and carrying a basin of water. He has a towel over his arm and a beaming smile on his face. Jeremiah stands off to the side as the tall man walks up to Josh and bends to untie him. At this point, Josh notices the small crowd of men peering in from the doorway. There are twelve of them if he is counting correctly. (He is.)
He says, “You’re that dude’s been wandering around Judea feeding and curing people, ain’tcha?”
“I am.”
Oily Josh brings his hands around his body and rubs at his wrists, but doesn’t get up. “You’re on my turf, pillowbiter. Ain’t nobody walks into Oily Josh’s—”
The tall man kneels down and, using the water and towel, begins washing Josh’s grossly dirty feet. Even Jeremiah cringes as the man uses a small stick to dig years of grime from beneath scoop-like shingles of toenail. Josh just stares, growing red in the face. Then, he kicks the basin away, the water sloshing in the tall man’s face before spilling off to the side.
For the first time, the smile falters. The man looks up at Oily Josh and slowly dabs the water from his face. He stands up, takes off his robe, and folds it neatly before placing it on a bail of hay. Then, his gaunt physique clad only in a loincloth, he turns to Josh. “Verily I tell you today, Oily Josh of the Greasy Bois, your judgment has been cast both in heaven and on Earth. For never shall I suffer a God-forsaken sinner like you.” And, with that, he lowers slowly into a fighting stance.
Josh stands up, a grin forming on his face. He shrugs off his own dirty robe and cracks his knuckles. “I’ve heard about you, Jee-zus. You’re a lover not a fighter. You’re bitin’ off more than you can chew.” Then, they both glance toward the door at a commotion growing outside. Disciples are being yanked bodily from the doorway by unseen hands and, a moment later, the sound of fighting begins. Jud-ass steps in for a moment to throw some dirt in the unsuspecting Jeremiah’s eye, then says, “We’re back boss. Kick his ass!”
Josh smiles and launches himself at The Lord.
It’s been noted by a great number of scholars that all four Gospels skip a sizeable chunk of time near the end of Jesus’ life when, otherwise, they record events on an almost daily basis. Between Nisan 2 and 5, 33 CE, nothing seems to have happened, despite reports of miracles and preaching tours on the first and the sixth of the month, and straight on to Jesus’ death on the fourteenth.
Your humble narrator believes this gap is the period when Jesus and his twelve disciples were verily recuperating after their holy rumble with Oily Josh and the Greasy Bois on Nisan 2, 33 CE, in a small suburb of Nazareth.
Josh lands a haymaker to Jesus’ jaw that spins The Lord around. Christ follows through as he spins and comes back around with a roundhouse kick to Josh’s ribs, eliciting a squeak of pain. Then, the two men fall into grappling, biting, and clawing (in which Josh holds the advantage thanks to his disgusting, overgrown fingernails).
Outside, the Greasy Bois and the Apostles are pretty evenly matched, but the fight is slowly leaning in the Bois’ direction because they know how to fight dirty whereas the Apostles are mostly fishermen.
Jonboy takes on Nathaniel in a rolling scuffle, but then pulls a small shank and punctures the young disciple’s side. Nate is hobbled with pain after that and has to back away after throwing a few more solid punches.
Matthew lands a hell of an uppercut on Rascally Pete—who goes down hard with blood splashing between his teeth—but Pete has the presence of mind to kick Matt in the balls from where he lay and Matt falls to his knees. Jud-ass is nearby and takes the opportunity to kick Matthew in the kidney, and he’s out of the fight.
Judas—one of the twelve Apostles, but a pretty shitty one, and the cousin of Jud-ass, coincidentally enough—hits and kicks members of both sides indiscriminately, and as a result, barely gets a scratch on him. The other Apostles note this later in the day and never quite trust the little bastard again, although, in all the confusion, they can’t quite remember why.
Peter is the oldest of the Apostles and is known throughout Capernaum as a helluva boxer. But, when Tommy-boy comes at him with an ox yoke that’s partially splintered, he runs off like a pussy-ass shiteater. They find him on the way home, curled in the fetal position in an alley and weeping. After cleaning up, though, he does remind them he’d knocked two of the Greasy Bois out before running off, and they concede as much.
Meanwhile, inside the manger, Jeremiah is desperately washing dirt from his eyes with whatever is left in the basin. He can barely see through his scratched corneas, but he’s horrified to find Jesus bruised and bloodied and seemingly losing the fight against the bigger and meaner Oily Josh. Not (yet) a follower of Jesus, Jeremiah is not yet compelled to fight clean. So, he picks up an iron ox goad from the floor and waits until Josh’s back presents itself. Then, he swings it like an as-yet-uninvented baseball bat and knocks Josh flat, writhing in pain. Then, he commences kicking the big man over and over again in the side and head and, after a moment, Jesus joins him (though he closes his eyes as he does so).
They walk out, leaving the unconscious Josh, to find a slowing scuffle in the road. Everyone is worn out and bloodied. Some from both sides are unconscious on the stones. The dust they’d kicked up fills the air, so it’s become impossible to fight and no one complains when the action naturally stops.
Jesus speaks up, his scratched and streaming arms raised beatifically. “Brothers, be at peace. We will concede the whole of Nazareth and the surrounding territories to be the domain of Oily Josh and the Greasy Bois until such time as they accept me and follow the way of peace. If you are with me, come.” And, with that, he begins walking (limping really) up the road that leads through and out of Nazareth. The Apostles and Jeremiah follow him, nursing their various wounds and injured pride.
The remaining Greasy Bois pick up their wounded, including poor Josh who is battered worse than most, and limp back to their headquarters in the bowels of Nazareth’s redlight district. Hurt but mighty proud, they go on to rule Nazareth with an iron fist for years.
The Apostles stay in and around Jerusalem for the rest of the time Jesus is alive, and only come back to Nazareth a few times to preach, and only in twos and threes. The Bois give them space, albeit begrudgingly, and there are no more scuffles between them.
And so ends the tale of the day Oily Josh and the Greasy Bois found religion.
And kicked its ass.