Personal Jesus

When I was 15 I met a man who said he was Jesus. And if he told anyone they wouldn’t believe him anyways, so there was no use in telling people. I on the other hand knew he wasn’t Jesus, but I had to believe because that’s what a faithful Christian would do.
He lived in an alleyway about a block from my house, and every day after I met him I decided to bring him our leftovers from the night before. My mother wasn’t prone to making the best meals, and she didn’t like the fact I was bringing Tupperware- nonetheless her Tupperware- to a bum in an alley who called himself Jesus. But I did it anyways, because that’s what a faithful Christian would do.
I continued this ritual for about two years, until I was a senior in high school. I couldn’t keep bringing Jesus food every day, because I had a girlfriend and basketball or football or baseball or soccer- something to do. If I hadn’t made plans to hang with my girl, I had made plans to play a sport or hang with the guys.
Jesus didn’t really mind I don’t think. He understood that I couldn’t always be with him, though he swore he was always with me. I wasn’t sure if He was talking about a metaphorical sense or if He actually followed me to school and whacked off in the bushes, but I wasn’t going to ask.
It’d be weird anyways, especially if He happened to really be Jesus. It’d be a little embarrassing to die and go to Heaven to have God’s first words to you be “Why’d you ask my son if He was whacking off in the bushes?” It was not a very Christian thing to ask.
I never saw him perform any miracles, though He told me three- and only three- stories over and over again. He would always tell me about how He fed a whole group of bums with a single loaf of bread and a single fish. He swore, there were thousands of bums that were able to eat, and by the time He was done passing out he didn’t have any left for Himself.
I preferred to hear about how He got the fish and bread though. He told me He was walking along when a nice Christian lady happened to have bread cooling on a windowsill. So He knocked on the door, told her He was Jesus, and explained He’d love to have that bread to feed himself and others with. He then promptly had the door slammed in His face. But apparently, she really wanted Him to have the bread because the door slamming made the bread fall right into His hands.
He yelled a goodbye and thanks to her and went off. It was the Christian thing to do.
And as He was walking along a bridge with the bread he noticed a stick with a line cast into a river. Not a fishing rod, but a stick with nothing but a line of string attached. And when He pulled it up, there sat a dead fish. He didn’t know how it was dead, but He swore it had to have been huge and was somehow on the end of a small string and stick.
Then there was the one about how He could heal people. He’d tell it if I happened to have a new scratch or bruise on me when I visited. He told me about one woman, a bum of course, who had gone blind from eating out of a garbage can. And so He smacked her and bing, botta, boom she was back in business.
There was another one whom He said was deaf, an old man. Well sure enough, He went up to the old man and peeked inside his ears. Within seconds he had the ear uncovered by all the hair the man had on his head and was able to clean out the earwax. He swore that man could carry on about World War II like there was no tomorrow.
My favorite was the leper. He told me he was in a hospital one time, because the police made him go. And while He was there, He spoke to this guy who was a leper. Next thing He knew, the guy went nuts. Crazy almost. The doctors had to rush in and subdue him and he became better due to Jesus being there. Now whether it was an actual leper or not I don’t know, because when he mentions the hospital it’s usually Saint Victoria’s. And Saint James is the hospital you go to around here, Saint Victoria’s is if you’re crazy.
But He swore to it, and I believed him. It was the Christian thing to do.
His last story was rarely told. I had brought a friend one day, not by choice, and as He started his usual story she had to go and ask why He thought He was Jesus. Not why He was, or why He knew, but why He thought.
Now this, this made Him angry. And He told the girl- He didn’t think, He knew. He knew because He could see things that no one else could. He told her I had thing for her, which I did, and that she would go out with me. It was no surprise we did, because why else would I have trusted her to meet Jesus?
It was really the only time He showed His powers to me. All the other times, He would mention nothing about this or that or even try to show me a card trick. It was just one of His three stories. I knew the last one wasn’t a story, but He’d always remind me about it. And I didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell Him she didn’t believe, though she pretended to. And it was obvious the girl and me liked each other, but I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the Christian thing to do.
The summer before I went to college He told me a few things. I had known Him since I was 15, though I was almost 16 at the time, and it had been about two years or so. He told me that He wasn’t going to be there when I got back, that He was going away for awhile. But it didn’t matter, because Jesus always walks again at some point and is resurrected somehow. That I should just be faithful, and so I was because it was the Christian thing to do.
When I came back home He had wound up dying of starvation. Though I also heard it was suicide, and that He swore up and down that He would come back and walk again to prove He was Jesus. That He could do anything- even die and come back- just to prove He was Jesus.
But he didn’t come back, at least not since I’ve been home. I pass that alley now, and think to myself about him. I put a cross with the depiction of the older Jesus down there, but it got stolen so I did some graffiti on a wall about him. No one dare touches it. It’s beautiful, as if Jesus had in fact had a hand in it.
I sometimes think, that maybe He did. Maybe my right hand is now Jesus’ right hand. Not the Jesus you all know, but my Jesus. My personal Jesus that I believe in so faithfully, because if I didn’t, well…wouldn’t be very Christian of me.