“What about me?” Kyle asked. “I’m an open book. No secrets.”
“I mean, you mentioned the whole ‘obligations’ thing. What made you become a pastor? How did you finally decide to just do it?”
“Hmm…” He looked up at the ceiling like he was searching for the right thing to say.
“I’m sure plenty of people ask you that. I’m sorry if it’s a stupid question.”
“No, it’s not stupid,” he said. “In fact, I like to answer the question. It reminds me of why I’m doing this. Keeps me focused.” He paused. “You know, my family history was one thing. I was born and raised in the church. It was all I knew for a long time. But then when I turned twelve and I thought I could go against my father and my grandfather, I decided that I didn’t want to be a preacher. I was like, ‘To heck with them and this whole church thing. It’s corny. I want to be a rapper.’”
“What happened?” I laughed. I couldn’t imagine Kyle the Rapper! Christian Kyle was funnier. “I know they didn’t like that.”
“No, my father always had this way of letting people see the truth for themselves. So he didn’t fight me.” Kyle smiled. “He went and got me a notebook and told me to write my rhymes in it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So I changed my name to MC K-Lover and I was writing rhymes, and my cousins started writing too, and we made up dances and stuff. It was crazy. We thought we were some kind of Tennessee rap group, about to take the world by storm,” Kyle said, laughing. “But then my father started asking me about the things I was saying in the songs. He asked me what I wanted to do with my music, how I wanted to change the world and touch people. I guess it had never dawned on me, because I couldn’t answer. I could think about the girls and the cars, but I didn’t know what in the heck I wanted to say in my rhymes.”
“You wanted to be like the rappers in the music videos. Like Slick Rick,” I joked.
“Exactly. So when I ran out of things to write about—there wasn’t exactly a lot of murdering and drug dealing going on in our small town in Tennessee—I just started putting little things about God in the songs. It was really all I knew. So then we turned into Christian rappers.”
“No, no, no.” I was laughing so hard I almost spit out my food.
“I swear. We performed in the church pageant and everything. Now, this was a big deal in Tennessee in the late ’80s. Then one day my father said he wanted me to do one of my rhymes for the church. In the church.”
“Really?” Even I knew folks wouldn’t like that. Rapping in the church?
“I thought, this man has lost his mind. I couldn’t rhyme from the pulpit—people would hate it. We’d lose the whole church after that for sure. So anyway, I told my father it was a bad idea and he pretended he didn’t know folks would have that bad take on it. I say he pretended because I now know the old man was just setting me up. So he said, ‘Well, boy, I think you have some powerful things to say and I really want the church to hear them.’”
“So what did he suggest?”
“He was acting like he was thinking about how we could pull it off and then he was like, ‘I got it. You can read one of the rhymes. Just read one of them to the church so they don’t know it’s a rhyme.’”
“That’s a sermon,” I said.
“Exactly, but I didn’t see that back then. All I knew was that MC K-Lover had a gig.”
“Sneaky man.” I laughed.
“Yeah, so that was my first sermon. Well, it was a rap, but it was a sermon. I read it up there and I was just overwhelmed when the crowd responded. I felt the energy moving through the room. I could see the Holy Ghost touching people as I spoke. It was an amazing feeling. I wasn’t even reading the words anymore after a while; it was just coming from inside me. Like fire. Soon, I stepped away from the pulpit; I was in the aisles, walking around, touching people. I couldn’t stop. I just wanted to preach the word.” He paused reflectively. “I was just twelve.”
“Wow. So what happened to the rap thing?”
“Please, I was young but not dumb. The women and the cars and fly stuff didn’t have nothing on what I felt in the church. It was a young love between me and the church, but it was a beginning. I never turned away again. Not once.”
“Wow” was the only thing I could say. I’d never heard anyone speak of what they did with such conviction.
While we ate, we discovered that we both loved the free summer jazz concerts at Bryant Park, and though he stayed away from R&B for obvious reasons, he loved listening to jazz. As the waitress cleared our table, Kyle and I decided to check out the opening concert coming up in two weeks. I didn’t exactly have a packed schedule, and he was good company.
I felt such a sense of relief, listening to Kyle talk. I grew to like him even more, and I was looking forward to being his friend. Plus, he was a good distraction from all the stuff with Julian. And every girl knows that a good dude distraction is the best thing a girl could have when she’s trying to heal a broken heart.
“I have another confession to make,” I said, standing beside my car in front of the restaurant.
“Oh no, don’t drop another bomb on me like last time.” Kyle playfully threw his hands up in the air. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“It’s nothing like that, silly.” I laughed. “I was just going to say I was mad at you before I came here.”
“And why was that?” He placed the magnolias on my passenger seat.