There Goes The Neighborhood
Before there was an Oakland, California, or a Gary, Indiana, or an East St. Louis; before there was a Playboy Mansion or a Sigma Chi House at the U of I; before guys started doing coke in Miami, or hookers in Vegas, or Hilton sisters in Los Angeles they were doing all of that stuff and worse in a place called Sodom and in another place called Gomorrah. (And actually, no, Gomorrah is not where the word “gonorrhea” comes from. I thought that too.)
As you’ve probably figured out by now, God didn’t take kindly to shenanigans of this sort. There was a limit to the amount of crap he was willing to take from sinful cities, and, when he reached that limit, there was hell to pay. You can ask New Orleans if you don’t believe me. (Note: Hahaha. J/K! LoL! Please stop sending me hate mail.)
Both Sodom and Gomorrah were well past that point. God decided to schedule them for a “Hiroshima Sunrise” and he mentioned this one afternoon to his buddy Abraham when they were wrapping up lunch. Abraham was bummed out when he heard of the coming destruction and he said to God, “What about the fifty decent, hard-working “Joe the Plumber” type guys in Sodom? You gonna wipe them out along with the tattoo artists, Youtube commenters, and Duke lacrosse players in town? That doesn’t sound like you.”
Abraham had a point. God didn’t tolerate Tom-Foolery from his cities, but he also liked to pull the good guys out of town before the stuff hit the fan. So he said, “Sure, I’ll forego the Fallujah Fireworks if there are 50 righteous dudes in town.”
You ever asked your Old Man for $10.00 and had him say “yes” so quickly that you were kind of disappointed and wondered if you should’ve asked for $20.00 instead? That’s how Abraham felt. God had been all about the 50-guy Free Ride, and Abraham wondered if he had set his sights too low. So he angled for a 45-guy Free Ride. Then a 40-guy, then a 35-guy, and on and on it went until Abraham had worked it all the way down to 10 guys.
“If there are ten Christianity Today subscribers in town who don’t cheat on their wives or their taxes and who don’t use LimeWire to download music off the internet, will you cut the city some slack?”
“You got it,” said God. “If there are ten stand-up guys in town I will cancel the barbeque.”
I bet Abraham freaking cleaned up at garage sales.
Now before you start thinking that Grandpa ‘Ham had some soft spot in his heart for morning drive DJs, Girls Gone Wild producers, or caboose cowboys, I should tell you: he didn’t. Abraham was talking God down not because he wanted to save Sodom but because he wanted to save his nephew Lot who had relocated to the city when he got a job as a club promoter.
Unfortunately, there weren’t ten Republican voters within 100 miles of Sodom so, despite Abraham’s best efforts, the sulfur shower went ahead as planned. God, however, knew what Abraham was getting at with his holy haggling, and He sent two angels to Sodom to clear out the Lot Clan.
Lucky for the angels, Lot was pretty easy to find. He was working the city gate that night, checking IDs and handing out wrist bands. When he saw the angels walking in, he got all geeked-out and invited them to crash at his place. They were like, “Naw, we’re good. We’re just gonna pass out in the Quad.” But Lot was like, “That sounds terrible. I got Pizza Rolls and Madden 1750bc on PS3.” And they said, “Done and done. We’re there, man.”
Somehow, word about Lot’s visitors spread around town faster than a cold sore at Band Camp. Before the guys had finished a single game of Call of Duty multiplayer, someone started banging on the door. Lot opened it to find every fairy and fanny bandit in Sodom standing on his porch.
“Send out those two guys who are crashing here,” they said. “We want to…ask them something.”
“No you don’t,” said Lot. “You want to do gay stuff to them.”
“Alright, you caught us,” they said. “But seriously, send them out. If you don’t, we’re gonna take you back to our place and make you watch Will & Grace all night.”
The angels had been hiding behind the door and, when they heard this, they dropped their pizza rolls and pulled Lot back inside.
It was go time. The angels told Lot who they were, why they were there, and that Sodom was eight hours away from getting flooded with lighter fluid. They told him to “grab yo kids, grab yo wife, and grab yo kids’ husbands cause they raping everybody out here.”
The next morning, Lot was in his bedroom trying to decide if he had room in his suitcase for his Scrubs Season 3 boxed-set when Angel #2 burst in and said, “Don’t you get it, man?! This place is gonna look like a Jackson Pollock painting in about fifteen minutes! Get out of town and don’t look back!”
Lot and Company booked it to the neighboring city and got inside just before the brimstone bombing began. Everyone except Mrs. Lot, that is. Lot’s Old Lady was a real sucker for volcanoes, Bruce Willis movies, and pretty much anything else involving explosions. She couldn’t help but look back at the sulfur storm over Sodom even though Angel #2 told her not to. When she did, she turned into a freakin pile of salt – just like that one guy in Indiana Jones.
And that – as they say – is that.