I could always count on Crackhead Preacher to make his grand appearance on Friday afternoons. Dressed in a red pleather suit and gold glitter shades with massive dollar signs on each lens, Crackhead Preacher would bust into the store and beseech the humble workers of Dominos to “GIVE to the LORD, so then the LORD will GIVE.”
“We were watching the same lights, inhaling the same air, and waiting for the same New Year to come, wishing the same things for our family and heading towards the same future.”
I personally didn’t confess to myself that I had an impossible crush on my RCA until about a month in, impossible because of my sexual ineptitude, and impossible because so far, his role had been less disciplinary and more parental.
At school, I no longer had to wait. I was free to do as I pleased and ceased observing the day altogether. But strangely, immediately, Shabbat presented itself to me in a transfiguring light, the radical antidote to all that displeased me here.
I first met Mike a year and a half years ago, in the month following my high school graduation. I was spending the summer in Manhattan and, for the first time in my life, my youth didn’t feel burdensome or constricting; I no longer wanted to be just a little bit older. I was studying Jewish texts during the day, and puzzling out the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic felt intellectually challenging and spiritually exciting in a way that my overcrowded public high school classes never had.
“It wasn’t that I was self-conscious; rather, I recognized how ridiculous the scene must have looked. I was half dressed with tussled frosted tips and drooping bags under my eyes. They were fully uniformed, standing at least half a foot above me and simply staring at my unkempt figure.”
