Transparent Christian Magazine

I played a show Monday night.

At the end of the last song I felt weird so I dropped my guitar on the stage and walked across the room and out the front door of the club.

The air outside felt like a splash of cold water that froze the sweat on my face. I walked down the steps and turned left onto the sidewalk and kept walking.

As I passed the Mexican restaurant next door I looked at my reflection in the window and saw my whole body was steaming. Wow, someone should take my picture, I thought.

My ears were ringing but I could still hear the honkytonks on lower Broadway buzzing and popping like an AM signal, four blocks and one universe away. I stopped and listened for a second. Electric guitars and train rhythms. The southern version of amplified desire. I scrunched up my face and played a lick on air guitar and started walking again.

I rounded the corner and looked across the street at a telephone pole. One poster was fastened to it, for the show I just played. My name in bold type.

“Korby Lenker,” I said out loud.

Then I shouted “Korby Lenker!”

No one was on the street to hear me so I listened to my voice echo off the empty brick buildings and disappear into charged crackle the of the noisy city. My city. Music city.

I turned left again, into the alley.

It seemed darker there than it should have been. The moon was out, but here it was all shadows and half-seen things. I walked on, listening to the crunchy rhythm of my feet on the gravel. I wasn’t paying very good attention so I was genuinely startled when I tripped over something that felt like it didn’t belong.

It was a man. The kind of man you would expect to see in a dark alley on a cold night. He was in a sitting position but slumped in a corner doorway, like a pile of a person. I stood in front of him and let my eyes adjust. He was wearing a pea coat that looked military but it was filthy and the left pocket had been torn away. He was totally passed out. I knelt down to get a look at his face but he smelled so bad I stood back up. I could see he had vomited all over himself.

I stood there just looking at him.

An oily despair flooded through me. I thought to myself, This man is suffering. His is a used-up rag of a life. If I were good, I would pick him up, take him to my house, bathe him and give him my bed to sleep in. That book I used to read tells me this man is none other than Christ himself, waiting for me to come to his aid. But i know what i will do. This world is full of empty gestures.

I walked on down the alley. My car was parked there, behind the club. I keep random things in the back seat, or rather, random things tend to end up there. One of those things was a blanket, so I opened the door and pulled it out and carried it back to dark place in the doorway. I shook it out and laid it on top of the sleeping homeless soldier. He shifted and grunted and turned his face to the wall. I could see the vomit was frozen. ‘oh man’. I said out loud.

I was shivering now. I put my hands in my pockets and walked fast back toward the car. I had left the door open, so I pulled it shut and kept walking. In a few feet I reached the end of the alley. I turned left. The street was well-lit and I saw some people walking back to their cars from the show. I smiled and waved. I was freezing.

One more left turn and i stood in front of the club. My friend was waiting just outside the door.

She handed me a shot of bourbon. Makers, neat. I took it down in one swallow. It tasted so good.

“You look cold” she said.

“Let’s go in.”

She held the door open for me and I went back inside and cleared my gear off the stage and thanked my friends for coming, sold 10 CDs and got raging drunk.

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