It’s 1962 and the center is crumbling.

In Centralia, Pa. a garbage dump built over an old coal mine catches fire. The slow burning anthracite under the landfill is ignited and smolders unabated. The town is slowly consumed. The people endure heat, pollution and disease without protest.

In Union Square the Committee to Defend the Cuban Revolution preaches armed struggle against the US. The speakers are young and neat in dress shirts and pressed khakis–some even wear clip-on ties. They look over the heads of the crowd and speak through bullhorns in alien twangs–southern, mid-western.

“Resist the US Imperialist war against Social Democracy…”

An old man, trembling on a cane, warns: “Don’t sign their petition. It’s an FBI trick to get your names.”

A fat kid in overalls jumps off the platform and screams in his face. “All power to Fidel and Che and the brothers and sisters of the Revolution.”

The old man flinches but holds his ground. “Ask them who paid for the leaflets and the fancy loudspeakers.”

Across the park members of the Nation of Islam are handing out copies of their newspaper, “Muhammad Speaks.” Heads shaven, standing at attention in suits and bow ties, they surround their speaker like a Secret Service detail.

“Democracy and integration are the tools of the white oppressor,” he says. He advocates separation of the races and the establishment of black Muslim republics in the former Confederate states.

He is challenged by Mr. McManus, an elderly black Communist, veteran of the Spanish Civil War, who sells his mimeographed autobiography–”Brother Under Arms”–from a shopping cart.

“Segregation in any guise is just a ploy to fragment the working class and thwart the Revolution,” Mr. McManus says.

“Your revolution will never happen, my brother,” the speaker replies.

Mr. McManus’s voice cracks in frustration. “You don’t have the political, economic or military power…”

“Allah will liberate our people,” the speaker interrupts in implacable tones. “Your movement will be a footnote to history…”

Behind the speaker I see Andrew, a kid I’ve known since Brooklyn Technical High School. Just a week before we had split a reefer and gone to the Jazz Gallery to hear Gil Evans. I wave. He stares through me without recognition.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy has announced a campaign to crack down on Organized Crime. He has proposed legislation to make gambling a federal offense.

“It’s a message to the Syndicate,” explains Sal, the bartender at the Park Circle Lanes, across the street from the Brooklyn Riverside Memorial Chapel. “He don’t want them to think they own the White House just because old man Kennedy was partners with the bootleggers.”

Sal has a mountain of prematurely white hair, each ridge carefully tended, over thick black eyebrows and black eyes. He’ll make you a drink, take a number, book a bet, lend you money–anything you want. On Ladies League Night you can’t get near the bar. Housewives on their night out drink Seven and Sevens and Whiskey Sours . “Hey Sal, how come you never bring your wife around?” one of them flirts.

“Why take a ham sandwich to a banquet?” Sal says and they screech with laughter.

Sal’s “gummare” Diane sits at the end of the bar. “Her husband’s upstate on a business trip,” Sal confides with a wink. “An eight year business trip.”

Diane’s got a blonde beehive, wingtip glasses, boobs jutting like cow catchers, capri pants and mules– a style that has tormented me since puberty. She smokes Kools, leaving lipstick smears on the cork tips. She has a way of sucking on the cigarette that drives me to demonic masturbation.

I run back to the chapel looking for a free bathroom and am confronted by an old man in a prayer shawl.

“It’s a shandeh (shame) what’s going on here,” he says.

It’s Mr. Wolfe, a “watcher,” hired by Orthodox Jews to sit all night before the funeral and recite Psalms for the deceased.

“I found a policeman on the sofa,” he says. “Shoes off, gun on a chair, sleeping in the same room as the departed. I asked him to leave and he said the person was dead, he wouldn’t care if Hitler was in there…”

“The cops don’t understand,” I say.

“Hashem (God) looks at the sin, not the reason,” Mr. Wolfe says. He digs his nail into my wrist and whispers harshly. “I’m coming here twenty-five years. Police came in and slept. They even brought women. But they never did it in a room with a soul whose fate has not been decided. They had respect for the dead…”

I play the numbers with Sal, a dime a play. With a 500 to 1 pay off I can make fifty bucks if I hit, minus the two-fifty vig. One night Sal slips a five into my hand.

“I’m givin’ you a refund ’cause you’re such a good customer,” he says. “But you gotta do me a favor, okay.” He points down the bar to a swarthy, morose lady staring into a cup of coffee.

“That’s Terry, Diane’s sister-in-law. She brings her in to make everything look kosher. But tonight her car’s in the shop. Could you drive her home.”

In the garage police cars are blocking the station wagons, but they’ve left the keys so I move them out of the way.

Terry is waiting outside the bowling alley. She presses against the door, sitting as far away from me as she can.

“I live on E.19th. and Ave. R,” she says.

She’s silent for a while. She looks out of the window, but I get the feeling she’s watching me.

“Workin’ your way through college?”

“Yeah…”

“Medical school?”

That would be too big a lie. “Dental,” I say.

“My girlfriend Camille married a dentist. Artie Levinson. He’s a good provider. Gave her a mink for her birthday…The family was against it but now they love him. He fixes everybody’s teeth for free…”

It’s a dark street.

“You can pull into the driveway,” Terry says.

There’s a light on in her house.

“My daughter must be home,” Terry says. “She’s starting at St. Francis next year.”

Oh great, I think, she’s going to introduce me to her swarthy, morose daughter. Instead she reaches out and puts her hand in my lap.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asks.

She slides over next to me and unbuttons her bowling shirt. No bra. I almost lose it.

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen…”

“Nineteen,” she says and repeats “nineteen, nineteen,” as if it’s a magic mantra.

I’m usually done before the zipper is down. This time I grit my teeth and think about baseball. But I don’t make it past the first inning.

A few nights later I go into the bowling alley and am greeted by Sal.

“Hey kid, how’s the Revolution?”

I panic. How does he know about my secret political life?

“Revolution?”

“Yeah you know, 1776? Terry says you’re a regular Minute Man…” He laughs. “Now you know. Broads talk, too.” He slides me a triple shot of J&B. “Next time have a few of these. It’ll make you last longer.”

A few hours later I’m puking between cars on the D train to Manhattan. I see a piece of pepperoni from a slice of pizza I’d had a few days before.

At nine the next morning I go downtown to Selective Service headquarters on Whitehall Street. It’s across from Bowling Green where Rip Van Winkle took his twenty year nap There must be a couple of hundred kids. A guy in a khaki uniform is at the door.

“Down the hall…”

We enter a large room with picnic tables. An older guy in a white shirt with a lot of ribbons repeats:

“Take a form and a sharp pencil, find a seat and and fill it out…Take a form and a sharp pencil, find a seat and and fill it out.”

In the front of the room a man with a khaki shirt with red Sergeant stripes and blue pants with a stripe down the middle says in a loud, ringing voice:

“This ain’t the prom, gentlemen. Don’t look for a dancing partners. Just find a place to sit and fill out the form. Answer all the questions. Print clearly and legibly. Make sure you check in the boxes. The quicker you do this, the quicker you get out of here.”

A big, shaggy kid gets up and lumbers toward the door.

“Where you goin’, sir?” the Sergeant asks.

“Lookin’ for the bat’room.”

“Sit down and finish the form.”

The big kid keeps walking. “If I sit down I’ll piss in my pants.”

“If you piss in your pants make sure you save enough for your urine specimen or you’ll have to take the physical all over again.”

The kid sits down.

NEXT: THE PHYSICAL

JERUSALEM, Nov. 11…Greek Orthodox prelates today demanded that the Armenian side stop declaring victory in yesterday’s brawl  at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. 

“Video review will clearly show that the Armenians committed a flagrant foul,” a Greek official said, “and thus should be red carded according to the laws of God and man.”

“Replay will show that the Greeks were offside,” an Armenian priest retorted.

The church, in Jerusalem’s Old City,  houses six different Christian churches, who often fight over home field advantage.

Yesterday’s brawl erupted when the Armenian side staged a procession to commemorate the fourth-century discovery of a cross, believed to have been used in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The Greeks, demanding to be included in the celebration, sent their star sweeper into the Edicule, the structure which houses the cross and is built over what is believed to be Jesus’s tomb. The Armenians claimed that the Greeks had too many monks on the field and had sneaked a ringer in from out of bounds. They insisted this was their holiday and the Greeks vacate the Edicule. The Greeks refused and blocked the Armenian advance at midstreet. In a moment both pews had emptied. Monks were pulling beards and flailing at each other with censers and scepters.

“This is an unpardonable innovation,” Greek Patriarch Theofilus III said.

“The Greeks have created a new conflict,” said Armenian patriarch Father Pagrat. 

Serafim, a Greek monk, claimed that an Armenian struck him from behind. “They broke the lens of my glasses and gave me a bloody scratch,” he said. “I am feeling dizzy for hours…”

Israeli police, blowing their whistles, intervened and ejected Serafim and a brawny, bearded Armenian monk. They were then attacked by monks wielding stale fronds left over from another Greek-Armenian melee on Palm Sunday. 

Suddenly, a monk came running out of the Edicule brandishing a splintered board. 

“He has a piece of the cross,” several priests cried in alarm.

When calm had been restored it turned out to be the rung of a ladder that the Turks had put up in the 19th century while attempting to build a fire exit in the Edicule to conform to safety regulations issued by the Ottoman Empire, which have still not been implemented.

POPE AND IMAM TRADE ‘YO MAMA’ SNAPS 

VATICAN CITY, Nov. 11…A three day conference, which ended last week, produced a rare display of harmony between Catholic clergy and Islamic scholars. Pope Benedict  XVI told participants he had followed “the progress” of the talks closely and urged the delegates to “overcome all misunderstandings and disagreements.”

In this ecumenical spirit Imam Adsan Tair rose to say he hoped the Pope would now apologize for remarks he made in 2006, that  Muhammad had only brought “evil and inhuman things” into the world, such as his “command to spread by the sword the faith that he preached.” 

With a sweet smile Benedict said he would be glad to if his “honored” guest would admit that in Saudi Arabia non-Muslims could not worship in public and faced death if they converted.

With their delegations forming behind them, the Pope and the Imam faced off in the middle of the Apostolic Palace.

“Yo mama was so ugly she died a virgin,” the Imam hissed.

“Yo mama was so ugly she could go three days on the desert without food or water,” the Pope responded.

As his followers egged him on the Imam thought for a moment. Then:

“Yo Mama was so ugly she had to live in a manger,” he shouted.

The mullahs howled and ululated.

Benedict and his crew regrouped. Then shot back:

“Yo Mama was so fat they called her Fatima”

The papal delegation cheered and hi-fived.

And theologians on both sides hurried to the holy texts for more citations.

JEWS TO MORMONS:
THANKS BUT NO THANKS

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 11…There are 12.6  million Mormons in the world, about half living in the US.  But if the church has its way there will soon be millions more. 

And a lot of them will be Jews.

Mormons have been quietly baptizing dead Jews for years. They do it out of love, they claim.

“Baptism by water is necessary ordinance for people to return to God,” the Mormon Guide to the Scriptures says. “Baptism for the dead in Mormon temples gives those who would have embraced Christ and His Church the opportunity to do so after death.”

According to Frontline, the Mormons maintain extensive genealogical records at Granite Mountain Records Vault, a climate-controlled repository designed to withstand nuclear attack, in the Wasatch Mountains, 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. They have compiled 2.4 million rolls of microfilm containing 2 billion names, all of whom they mean to baptize. 

The process went on quietly for years with living Mormons standing in for the ones to be baptized and immersing themselves in the baptismal fount. In the 90′s however it was discovered that Mormons had submitted the names of 380,000 Holocaust victims for baptism.

“We do not ask for or want your love,” said Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. “We ask you to respect our religion as we respect yours.”

  Mormons agreed to remove those names and other Jews as well who were not related to Mormons. But the practice has continued. Mormons believe that is unfair  to deny” salvation” to  those who died without being taught the Gospel. Elder Mark E. Peterson says posthumous baptism gives them a chance to be “saved in the presence of God.

“We baptized Sigmund Freud,” a Mormon cleric says. “Now in the afterlife he has decided that sex with teenaged girls is not neurotic after all…Karl Marx has renounced communism  Albert Einstein understands that e=mc2 only by the grace of the Angel Moroni. 

“They’re all good Mormons now.”

Dear Igor,

Ahmed, my IT consultant, tells me that Jewish settlers are sending herds of wild pigs into Muslim East Jerusalem to terrorize the population and drive them from their homes. Is this Paranoia or Fact?
Arthur Treifler
Jambonia, Ohio

Dear Mr. Treifler,

This is fact.

But first a little background. The pig is an unclean animal to both Hebrews and Muslims, and has thus been a potent psychological weapon in their millennial struggle for control of Jerusalem. As far back as 586 BC it was a tradition for every conqueror of Jerusalem to let pigs rut among the sacred scrolls and artifacts of Solomon’s Temple. In 170 BC when the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes put down the revolt of the Maccabees, he slaughtered a wild boar on the altar of the temple and demanded that the Hebrew soldiers eat it. They refused to do so without duck sauce and he had their hands, feet and tongues chopped off; then he scalped them and burnt them alive. In 70 AD, Roman soldiers besieging the fort of Masada during The Second Jewish Revolt roasted pigs on the backs of their catapults in history’s first recorded tailgate party. Driven mad by the smell of forbidden barbecue the starving Zealots committed mass suicide.

Muslims, too, have been victimized by what is known by scholars as The Porcine Paradox. The Koran states that Shaidi (jihadi martyrs) will ascend to paradise as soon as they have completed their task. But no Muslim who has any contact with a pig will be allowed through the gates of heaven.

As the ultimate insult, Russian troops wrapped the bodies of the Chechen rebels slain in the 2004 Beslan hostage crisis in pig skins.

In 1911, American General John “Black Jack” Pershing was fighting a force of juramentados or Moro Muslim rebels in the Phillippines. Informed of their pig taboo, he buried their dead in mass graves next to the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. Then, he beheaded the Moro leaders and wrapped the severed heads in pig skins, which he displayed on pikes outside his headquarters. Fearing for their souls many of the juramentados withdrew from the battle. But they were speedily replaced by a force known as amucks who didn’t care what happened to them as long as they killed some Yanquis.

Pig references abound in contemporary Muslim journalism. In an instructional DVD that has just gone platinum in the Arab world Jews are referred to a “sons of pigs and monkeys.”

Jews are also forbidden to have any contact with pigs. But an obscure cult known as the Chazerim has received a Kabbalistic dispensation from Madonna and Posh Spice, and has begun sneaking pigs into East Jerusalem.

They arrive early in the morning with the pigs hidden in minivans. With their long black coats, sidelocks and high fur hats they blend in easily with the Arab population. At nightfall they open their tailgates and the pigs running squealing down the narrow, winding streets, desecrating everything they touch. The residents must perform complicated rituals to cleanse themselves and their possessions.

Because of the prohibition against contact with pigs the East Jerusalemites have been unable to retaliate in kind against the equally porcinophobic Jews. Instead, they have sent crazed bulldozer drivers and female suicide bombers into West Jerusalem to terrorize the population and drive them from their homes.

The desert theocracy, long under the iron control of Wahabist fundamentalists, is experiencing a massive social upheaval that will change it forever, analysts say.

In recent days the kingdom was rocked by news of a methamphetamine seizure in the cities of Jiddah and Riyadh. “No one even knew we had a problem,” says Mahmoud el Fatit, of the Jammal Fund, a Saudi think tank, grinding his teeth and twirling his worry beads.

But the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says that Saudi Arabia, with its small, tightly-controlled population, accounted for 28 per cent of all global amphetamine seizures 2006. The Financial Times reports that 12.3 tons were impounded in 2006,equal to the sum of six years of seizures in the UK, which is considered the largest amphetamine market in Europe.

And two tons of amphetamine about to be shipped to Saudi Arabia were confiscated last week across the Gulf in the Sultanate of Oman.

“14.3 tons for a population of 27 million, many old and young,” says el Fatit, lighting one cigarette off another. “This is an epidemic we did not know existed.”

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa says he is “very perplexed” by the upsurge. He says Saudi Arabia is not a transit point and the drug is intended for “local consumption.”
But el Fatit has an explanation. Daubing at his bloody nose with a tea leaf he says that “women are responsible.”

“They are obsessed with dieting,” he shrieks, his dilated pupils gleaming

“They are using the drug to control their weight. It is the foolish, vain women…”

Meanwhile, the Kingdom’s Religious Authority was outraged when it was announced that King Abdullah had extended an invitation to what he called the “other members of the Abrahamic faith” for an interfaith dialogue.

This meant that Christians, known as “infidels” and Jews, long described as “sons of pigs and dogs” in Saudi children’s books were to be officially received by the Saudi royal family.

Saudi officials said Abdullah was concerned about the negative view of Islam that was being promulgated in the wake of the oil shock and the terror attacks and wanted to emphasize the shared heritage of the major religions.

“Outrageous,” said Sheik Nasrany Jahoudi. “We share nothing with them. They are sexually permissive. They refuse to accept the Koran. Now they will desecrate our holy places.”

But the most shocking news of all came with the opening of an all-female shopping mall in Riyadh. The modernist gleaming glass building is host to all the major luxury retailers in the world. A walk down its hushed, cool corridors passes women, their veils off, exposing elaborate coifs and flamboyant make up, browsing in Tiffany, Prada, Gucci, Stella McCartney outlets

Up until now Saudi women have not been permitted to own businesses. The mall was started by women who were tired of having to shop at male-owned stores.

“If we wanted a bra or a piece of lingerie we had to go to a man,” says mall manager Fatima Kabiratone-Bubbis. “If he fondled us we could say nothing or face punishment by our own families.”

Women account for the bulk of the luxury shopping in the Kingdom. The mall is booming and male retailers are fuming.

“Those men who own female clothing stores will soon be out of business,” says el Fatit, pulling a scab off his face. “The trade will be controlled by anorexic amphetamine-addicted women consorting with Jewish homosexuals…” He shakes his head with a scandalized expression. “It will be just like New York.”