This Week on Private Lives!

[editors’ note: we’ve herein done our best to preserve accuracy to the text of Dr. Thomas Lemmon’s firsthand account of his famous interview. We will provide clarification within the text where issues of clarity or necessary cultural literacy present themselves.]

I grew up under two lapsed Catholics, so I did not know much about my source when I turned on the tape recorder that Thursday night for her tell-all interview. But I was tired of broadcast journalism anyway. I’d been clawing out eyes and kissing asses for almost a decade to get where I was, but it had become clear it was the chase, not the job, I actually wanted. A climber atop a summit stands for only a moment before scanning the horizon for yet loftier peaks.

“Well, think about it from my point of view,” she said over a glass of wine. “Here I was, seventeen years old—think about what a girl is going through at that age. And, one night, all of a sudden—I’m asleep—and oh! there he was, an angel…” she shivered, at first with nostalgia [editors’ note: and what else, we humourously wonder], then with icy hostility. “… But no, the conception had to be immaculate, didn’t it?”

I felt myself straining to hurry up and finish the interview. After all, the boys would be waiting in the bar downstairs and I hoped to make it for a bit of gin before they gave up and left. Plus, the buzz I’d worked up before the show was fading. And this chick was manger-trash.

“So I’m suddenly pregnant. And listen, honey,” she briefly placed her hand over mine across the interview desk, “I was on The View last week, and those women… they really understood my predicament like no one at the time really could. I didn’t want to be a saint!—I wanted to be a newlywed. At least a year of long walks on the beach and—married stuff, ya know? And what did I get? A baby—that every cop for a hundred miles wants to arrest. You saw Juno, right? Yeah? Fuck Juno.”

“So, let’s get to the good part, shall we, Mary?” I said. “So you’ve finally overcome all the obstacles—challenges that all virgin mothers have to face every day. How terrible that must have been for you, but anyway—so Jesus is born. What’s the first night like?”

“Well, I’ve heard the stories that a lot of people tell—all the people that, you know, find out you’re Mary, Mother of Jesus H Christ, and want to reminisce with you about how fucking magical it all must have been. No… Now I don’t know how many of you women out there have ever given birth with your husband as midwife [editors’ note: she pauses, and the audience begins to laugh and applaud]… but try doing that in a barn, in the middle of winter, in the desert.” [editors’ note: according to Mary, Jesus was, in fact, born on Christmas. Later hypotheses of a mid-summer birth appear to have been miscalculated.]

“Keep in mind, it gets cold in the desert at night,” I said to the laughing studio audience.

“And so these Wise Men appear. And, see, you people think ‘wise men,’ you’re thinking, like, Santa Claus at the mall. No. Wise men have, like, warts, hair growing out of crevices you and I don’t even have; one of ‘em was missing an eye, pus dripping everywhere.” Titters from the duly horrified audience.

“And they’ve got packages! These guys are grade-A, shut-down-the-airport suspicious. So Joe and I are cowering in fear, in the corner of this two-bit manger cause Joe’s unemployment had run out already and it’s not like I had a job…

“Anyway, I’ve got little Jesus right here, and we’re all convinced we’re about to die. And these guys start bringing out, what?—incense! Did it not occur to them I’d basically just given birth in a refrigerator? Under what circumstances would incense be, you know, just the thing? How ‘bout some blankets, Mohammed? To be fair, the gold was nice, but Joe couldn’t get over the idea that the best use for it would be to open a dental practice and use it to fill cavities—open a business! Of course: classic Jewish,” she patted her husband’s hand. He smiled meekly. A few people in the audience laughed nervously, sneaking glances around to see who else had indulged.

[editors’ note: she seems to get lost in memory as the dialogue here drags on. Admittedly difficult to discern, it is, however, our professional opinion that Dr. Lemmons was asleep for at least part of the following.]

“And once Jesus died, all Joe had to do was tack up a sign that said ‘Joe, Father o’ Jesus: I May Have Taught Jesus Everything He Knew, But I Didn’t Teach Him Everything I Know,’ and the suckers would trample each other in line to get their cavities filled [editors’ note: it appears clear in light of recent research that Jesus came from a family not of carpenters, but of dentists, and himself briefly operated a practice].

“Oh, but then all those homeless-looking ‘early Christian’ types would come around—I swear, a bigger lot of self-absorbed, pretentious hipsters I have never, ever seen. Really all they did was tell jokes full of obscure references to all these ‘gospels’ Joe and I had never even heard of. And I try and tell them that Jesus’ favorite bath toy (until he was eleven!) was this mermaid Barbie that was out at the time—it was so cute, I could have died—and this Paul fellow starts talking to me, saying, you know, I’m blaspheming, talking about little Jesus like that. I could have slapped him. You remember, right, Joe?”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that. It was…”

“… hard those first few years—Joe rarely had work, and my hands were more than full caring for the goddamn King of the Jews and all.

“But Joe and I could finally start knowing each other on a regular basis, though, which was a welcome stress-reliever.” She nodded in her husband’s direction, shifted towards him in her seat. “God, what I’d wanted to do to you! For so long!” She growled at her husband like a panther. I cleared my throat and she faced me again.

“And Joe keeps getting mad because he can’t see how this immaculate birth business doesn’t count as cheating, right? And I’m like ‘Joey, baby—we’ve got bigger things to worry about now. This is the King of the Universe right here.’ But he struggled with it. Definitely.”

I was nursing a thick headache by this point, and was not sure where in her story my mind had wandered. I could not help but chide myself on such sloppy journalism as letting my attention drift during an interview. Oh well; it’s all getting recorded, I thought. Plus, I knew Henry was going to love this, and I’d get about two days of happy tranquility before he was back, screaming and flailing into my office wondering who my next big name was going to be. I turned my attention back to Mary, who was lighting a Virginia Slim.

“It was so confusing for me.” She clicked shut the Zippo as a halo of smoke formed around her head. “I hadn’t asked for any of it; I didn’t want any of it. I loved Jesus and I loved Joe and I did everything that was asked of me. And then the Romans killed Jesus and left me and Joseph wondering what it had all been about. I mean, you look at your husband and suddenly it’s thirty-five years later and you both go 'wait—what just happened?' You’re older, but you feel like now your life has to go back to normal, you know? You just bore and raised the Son of God and watched him get crucified and all that—what am I supposed to do after that? Knit another shroud? There’s just nowhere to go from there.

“But it’s always like that! When you’re a kid, you don’t even realize what’s going on around you. You know, the entire world is as big as ‘I want that orange.’ Then you get to be a teenager, and the world is full of possibility and pain. You’ve got these dreams, and they’ve got a little more substance than they did as a kid: you don’t want to grow up to be a garbage collector or a police officer anymore, but you still don’t know anything about anything, not really. Then, bam! Suddenly you’re a grown-up and nobody’s telling you how to do it anymore. You still have those dreams left over, but suddenly they’re looking real washed-out and all you can do is focus on making sure everything’s taken care of, just those bare minimum staying-alive things.

“And all these problems with yourself and with the world start popping up, and there’s no Mom to replace the toy when it breaks now—oh no, you’re an adult. You deal with it. But you’re not, not really. Nobody’s ever old enough to act their age. At least not anymore. What God in His right mind would give his only son to a little girl?”

“What a compelling story, Mary. How have you coped over the years?”

“My bust is in every cathedral in the world. I’m the most famous woman there is. My son was the King; Madonna’s a namesake, bitch. Who wouldn’t want to be in my shoes, right? But I’d take back all the busts, the stained glass, the parleys with angels, all of it—if I could just have my son back.”

The audience broke into cheers just then. In New York, audiences are like that. They're not precisely a religious bunch, to tell the God's honest truth. And I felt like that was a great place to bring the interview to a close: my headache was getting intolerable, and a quick glance at my watch told me the boys downstairs were getting ready to settle their tabs and go home.

“Wow. I don't know how you could top that, Mary. And that's about all the time we have for tonight, so...” She interrupted me.

“But Henry said...”

“Thanks to Mary for joining us this evening, and make sure you tune in next week for another exclusive Private Lives interview with me, Dr. Tom Lemmons!” Music played, and the crowd applauded wildly. When it died down, they filed out of their rows. I saw a few of them later, downstairs in the bar. They congratulated me on a great interview with a great guest. Pasting on a gracious smile, I raised my glass and humbly thanked them whenever they did.