Dubbies Part 3
Yes, yes, I know, it’s long overdue…hope you guys enjoy it!
Philidelphius and the woman called Mary had arrived back at the New York branch of Bethel after spending a brief lunch-hour chatting over a cup of coffee. Philidelphius was worried what would happen if someone from Bethel or one of the other Witnesses he knew saw him in there with a woman who looked like the earthly incarnation of Carrie-Anne Moss. Luckily she took him to an up-market bar where the drinks alone cost more than the “wages” of three Bethelites put together, so there was little danger of other Witnesses being found there, unless they considered drinking water to be a Spiritually Uplifting pursuit.
She told him a little bit about herself, and he found that the wallet she’d been carrying belonged to her husband, who’d forgotten it at home on the morning of an important deal with a big partner for his business, which meant that he didn’t have access to his bank accounts. Mary was certainly an extremely talkative person, and whenever Philidelphius thought about her, he had to use adjectives like “tsunamical” and “wave-like”.
Gushing forward, she somehow managed to invite herself back to Bethel with him, to check out his workplace. This understandably made Philidelphius somewhat nervous, but she’d been so excited about seeing the book he was working on and smiling so beautifully that he couldn’t possibly have said no. He figured Jehover was throwing him a fly ball, and he was certainly extending his bat to its maximum extent in order to get a hole-in-one, so to speak.
Once they were standing outside the big glass doorway of Bethel, paid for by the donations of 6 million willing worker bees, he found his apprehensions disappearing. Nothing bad could happen if he just showed her around a bit, right? She was a married woman after all, and he held a relatively prominent position in Bethel, and he was just showing her around. He thought to himself that he should be lucky he wasn’t showing her how exciting cleaning bathrooms was.
As they entered the small lounge adjoining the Writing Department, Ben-Shehulamiah made an unscheduled appearance[1] at the ankles of Mary, who bent down and began gushing all over the little dog. Caught by surprise, Benny the dog actually restrained his enormous libido for a few minutes while Mary said little things like “awyou’resocutemommy’slittledarlingsosweetmwamwamwamwa” and so on, which Benny seemed to enjoy immensely. In the eyes of Benny, the only time he ever saw woman was in the form of rapidly retreating ankles underneath sensible dresses, so this new form of woman, with legs encased in actual trousers, was somewhat of a mystery. And besides, she did a good tummy scratch, which the virulent Benny found somewhat soothing.
“What’s his name?” Mary asked, still tickling Benny, whose tongue was now lolling out of his mouth in non-coital ecstasy.
“Well, he mostly gets called aarghbuggeroffyoudisgustinglittledog, but his real name is Benny. I think he likes you, Mary. He likes women in general, actually,” Philidelphius said, grimacing at the prone figure of Benny, whose tail now wagged so fast he was in danger of spinning around and spraying dog-spit all over the walls, amongst other things.
“Oh, he’s so cute! You should check my handbag before I leave so I’m not tempted to steal him!”
“I just think it’s because he’s never seen trousers on a woman before. Or leather snakeskin boots, for that matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s banned for woman to wear pants in this building, if they’re Witnesses. It’s the law in here, sort of…” Philidelphius didn’t quite know how to carry on this train of thought, so he promptly derailed it and messed the conductor’s face up a bit, then said, “Let’s go and have a look at the new book I’m writing. This is Top Secret, by the way!”
Philidelphius knew that this book was ultra-Top Secret[2] within Bethel, but he strongly suspected that Mary wouldn’t understand if he went off about all that, and besides, simply judging by the way she was dressed, it was highly unlikely that she was an active Sister. Hell, the way she dressed, if she got within a hundred meters of a Kingdom Hall all the hair on the backs of the Elders’ necks would probably start rising, so he figured it was relatively safe to take her to see Porneia.
As they entered the door of the Writing Department section where Porneia was being designed, Philidelphius said: “Now, bear in mind that this book is still in the design phase, so we might change any part of it.”
Mary simply stared, for the first few seconds. This was not because she had seen any of the artwork, which was kept under lock and key, but because the Governing Body in its entirety had just rounded the corner. Not a pretty sight even on a good day, the Members shivered and moved at strange angles. Someone had probably snuck caffienated coffee into the Round Table Meeting Room’s dispenser again. At least it was not as bad as the time some enterprising rascal slipped a few grams of ecstasy into said dispenser[3]. Not knowing what to say, Philidelphius came up with “Oh, this is the Governing Body. Brother Smith is the big Kahuna, oh I mean, he’s the Chairman. Hello, Brother Smith!”
“Hi, Philly. Who’s the young lady? Sister, don’t you know that it’s disrespectful of your headship to wear pants like that when you’re working at Bethel?”
“What? What’s this guy talking about?” Mary said, in a low voice. Desperately seeking to bridge the increasingly wide gap between the two parties, one of which was still decelerating from its headlong walk down the corridor, Philidelphius hurriedly added, “Oh, she’s not a Witness, Brother Smith. Really.”
“Well, she could still show a little bit of respect. Don’t you know the rules about worldly visitors, Philly?”
“Sir, I’m a Department Head, sir, I’m allowed to bring in visitors whenever I want sir. It’s in the rules. You wrote that rule, sir.”
“Oh, I see. Well, carry on. We’re just having a look at the progress of Porneia, is all. No need to get all offensive,” John Smith said, leering at Mary.
With that, the Body slowly started to move again. After a few minutes of watching amiable Members ambling past, Mary hissed: “What does he mean, I should show respect? Who does he think he is? Some kind of tough guy? I could take him out with my pinkie finger and not even need to re-manicure it afterwards!”
“Oh, he’s just like that. Bit of a stickler for tradition, in an extreme way. He’s really a very nice man. Well, he takes good care of his nurse, at least. Oh, and he’s Benny’s owner. Where is that dog, by the way?”
“He went somewhere a sec ago. Probably running down the corridors, I expect.”
Glaring, Philidelphius muttered under his breath: “Thrusting would be a better word, actually.” Then he looked up and said: “As long as we have a rough idea of his whereabouts, otherwise the axe[4] will fall the next time I see Brother Smith. On my neck, probably.”
*
This was turning out to be a bad day for Brother Smith. First, he had lost Benny the dog somewhere in the vast confines of Bethel, so vast that it was possible for him to get lost in it, due to a problem with his short-term memory[5].
Then, a woman disrespected him. In his kingdom[6]! That was just unbearable. The last time that had happened, he had written a sharply worded letter, and the next day the woman in question had been disfellowshipped so violently that her dishcloth had been dislodged from her head by her flight out of the Kingdom Hall’s door.
He was going to have to make some changes around here. Starting with Ronny, and his pipe.
“Ronny, dagnabbit, why the heck do you keep kerfuffling about with that ugly pipe sticking out of your mouth? I thought we banned all that tobacco nonsense back in the 1970s!”
“Well, I don’t smoke it no more, but it needs to stay in my mouth ter help me think and so on,” Ronny replied, mumbling around the pipe’s stem.
“It’s disgusting!”
“No it’s not! It’s a gentleman’s way of showing that he’s, well, a gentleman!”
“Oh I see, so you’re allowed to have a dog that terrorizes the ankles of every correctly dressed woman in the place and I can’t have one little pipe?”
“Now, now, let’s not get personal. All I want is that you set a good example for the younger Brothers. Is that so much to ask? Besides, Benny’s always been that way. That’s the way Jehover made him.”
“Nope, it ain’t. He was just fine until you took him to the vet that time, then when he came back his nuts swelled to six times their original size. We almost painted ‘Two Hung Lo’ on his food bowl, you know, before Brother Nathan vetoed the idea, 3-2, the bugger. Now they look like his carrying his own personal cushions around with him. They’re the last part of him to leave the room!”
“That’s all hogwash. He’s just a normal dog, is all.”
“Ain’t. Get rid of ‘im, and I’ll get rid of my pipe.”
“Shan’t.”
“Ain’t.”
More coming soon!
[1] Benny the dog’s appearances were never scheduled. His timetable was somewhat flexible.
[2] Or “Watchtower Code Purple”, according to Brother John Smith.
[3] That day, the Governing Body commissioned the writing of 3 articles for the next Watchtower Magazine about how much they loved the Great Crowd, and also about how much they loved the Brothers in Bethel, and the Pioneers, and the Faithful and Discreet Slave Class. Brother Ronny was chastised for not supporting the Body when he noted that technically they were the Faithful and Discreet Slave, and couldn’t love themselves, because that was Onanism and Knorr had expressedly forbidden it.
[4] In reality, this would probably be an unabridged original King James Version, one of those really big ones that weighed more than junior members of the families that purchased them. Brother Smith was known for keeping such Apostate texts lying around.
[5] There were legends passed around by the people at the front desk that once he had walked past it sixteen times in one day, asking where the bathroom was, until his nurse found him.
[6] So to speak.