The Jamaican Preacher Lady is a new addition to the New York God Team of street preachers. Stalwarts include the silent Vietnam Vet looking guy in Times Square who stands at the entrance to the N,R,Q and W trains holding a sign saying, "Jesus is coming. Find him now," and the middle aged Haitian man who's straight out of the 40s in his suit and hat on 96th Street. He holds the bible high at the entrance of the Broadway subway station and just screams, "GOD!!! GOD!!!! GOD!!!! GOD!!! GOD!!! GOD!!! GOD!!!! GOD!!! GOD!!!"
The Jamaican Lady has a more involved sermon. She stands in the middle of the subway car and shouts in her thick Jamaica accent with classic preacher cadence and inflection, "Repent your sins! Jesus is coming. Repent your sins! Jesus is coming! He died for you! He died for the murderer! He died for the rapist! He died for the child molester! He died for the lesbian!" Okay, now you lost me. I was down with the murderer, rapist and child molester, but with lesbian you lost me and my amusement with you has now turned to annoyance. But, she continues undaunted, "He died for the homosexual. If the man touch anudder man he has sinned and Jesus died for them!" People in the subway car started laughing which only got her angrier, "you laugh! But it's true! All you lesbians will burn in hell if you don't repent your sins!!!"
I thought, "Man, she would be singing a different tune if she got double teamed by two hot chicks, right?" Can you imagine her rhetoric then? "Fuck girls often! Girls lick my pussy so fucking good! I thought I was gonna die and go to heaven those chicks made my vagina feel so nice!! I love the lesbian sex!!" And then I thought if I just started screaming my stream of consciousness thoughts, people would really get to witness a crazy person. I realized just how nuts I am a few years ago. I was walking down the street thinking about something that annoyed me and blurted out, "Fuck him, fucking asshole!" and a woman walking by looked at me askance as she passed having heard my unsolicited outburst and I realized at that moment that nothing separated me from that "crazy man talking to himself on the street" you see all over New York. The metamorphosis had been completed. I was officially insane.
So, my rant that moment in the subway would have gone something like, "God saved my tooth, but I'm sure these headaches I've been having all week aren't from the stress of finding out what was going to happen with my tooth and writing my book and the change in air pressure and temperatures going crazy since it's fall but because I am riddled with brain tumors and am going to die in a month! God saved me from the tooth only to kill me with the brain tumor!!! And anyway, I got AIDS from kissing that girl last week even though you can't get AIDS that way!!! I'm a dead man!!! I need to jerk off!!!" I would make the Jamaican woman and the "God, God, God" guy seem like rock-solid citizens. And furthermore, when you're screaming "God, God, God," it's hard to be obsessing on your life. So who's really crazy? I wish I had the balls to make the choice to spend my entire days just screaming the name of God; I'd have a lot less problems.
And by the way, I did go to the doctor last week to get an HIV test from having kissed a girl, my 53rd in the last ten years, and I never ever have unprotected sex and it's always been with girls. While I was there I told him about my migraines and he said it was probably stress but gave me all the best tests there are short of an MRI and CAT scan. You know these tests? Walk toe to heel in a straight line? Look up? Close your eyes and touch your nose with you index finger. I passed them all. "No, you don't have a brain tumor," he said confidentially.
"You're telling me those are the most sophisticated tests you have? We can play fucking golf on Mars but 'touch your nose with you index finger' is the best you can do for brain tumor detection?"
"Yes. It's very telling. If you had a brain tumor you couldn't do that."
"I just don't believe that."
"Okay you want a more advanced test?"
"Yes, please!"
"Okay, close your eyes, stretch out your arm..." I was going with him, excited I was finally getting the "advanced test."
"And now touch your nose with your ring finger." I did it, again successfully.
"You definitely don't have a brain tumor."
"You're joking right?"
"No."
"The ring finger instead of the index finger is the ultimate clincher. You can let me walk out of here with complete medical certainty and without any fear of a malpractice suit that would gut your practice and leave you wandering the streets looking for food from dumpsters to feed you newborn daughter, that I don't have a brain tumor because I can look up and touch my nose with every finger on my hand."
"Yes."
"Okay. See you soon. Have a good weekend." And I left to go call my Mom to tell her I loved her and make funeral arrangements. Somehow, my mind locked onto that in the subway when I was thinking about what I would be yelling if I were the Jamaican Lady so once again I was persuaded I was going to die soon and was terrified.
But it can all turn good just as fast. I left the Jamaican Preacher Lady on the subway, went home and got my workout stuff, heading for the gym. I hailed a cab and this is when, on that God Day Supreme, God countered the Devil again. He wasn't interested in letting me go this day for some reason. Like a half day on Friday before a Jewish holiday in LA when no one's really working and you can get your agent on the phone right away, God must have been having a slow day because he was all over my shit.
I got in the cab and said, "76th and Amsterdam please." My driver was a young, maybe 23 year old Middle Eastern kid who immediately said, "How are you today?" He said it as if he knew what had been going on in my mind my whole life. He spoke to me with such love and real interest and concern and with a tone of such warmth I almost burst into tears on the spot. I got chills. This was God talking to me. It filled up the cab, this God.
To be continued...
Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 11:56 AM