“Look, I admit, I may not look much like Jesus-”, he said.

“May not look- may not look?”, I sputtered, indignation making my face flush red and my cheeks puff into a parody of my normal staid expression. “You don’t look a thing like Jesus!”

He winced at my words, blue eyes dropping down to the floor in shame. It filled me with a certain dark glee to know he was ashamed. He deserved it. But then something seemed to come over him, his face becoming very still, his hands balling into tight little fists.

“But you have to give me one thing.”, he muttered, voice so low it was barely above a whisper.

“Oh? And what in the world could that be?”, I scoffed, my lips twisting into a harsh sneer.

“You have to admit…”, he began, and raised his gaze to meet my own. When our eyes met, I was transfixed: I no longer saw the cut-rate Jesus-imitator who had dared charge me a hundred dollars to come entertain at my great-aunt’s birthday party. What stood before me was something far more than that, something older, and deeper. Something that tugged at memories from my long-forgotten youth.

“… admit… what?”, I stammered, taking a step back, suddenly nervous before this man, trying to find a place to hide from that piercing gaze. But there was nowhere to hide. Not for me.

“I talk like a gentleman!”, he shouted, and the force of his words nearly brought me to my knees. I tried to summon up my strenght, to somehow stand up to him, but in the face of his pure truth, I was as naked and weak as a newborn babe. It was true. I could not deny it. He talked like a gentleman.

Like I imagined.

When I was… young.