Holy Roller: Or How to Live Among the Sinners

I recently joined a professional women's organization. They're a great group of ladies, and we get together for social, educational, community service and faith-based activities. I'm really pleased with the group so far, and especially their special emphasis on birthday celebrations. Once a month we get together to celebrate all members' birthdays for the month. This past week we went to a place waaaaaay out in Largo, MD (if you read my entry about why I hate Arlington, VA...that goes double for Largo). Anyway, one young lady brought along a man that I ended up chatting with for most of the evening. Let's call him Y.

Y, it turns out, is from my hometown of Atlanta. His father is a well-known pastor of a large church down there, and, following in his father's footsteps, Y came to Washington to study at seminary. That is, he's a seminarian. That is, he's preparing to be a pastor. You know, a leader. A holy guy. Now, when I think about being a pastor, I think of a few things:
1) People suck up to you.
2) People watch their language/actions around you, lest God strike them down for acting crazy in front of a holy roller.

...and more importantly, I just have a stereotype in my head of the way a pastor (or a pastor-in-training, in this case) might comport himself...
3) That is, pastors don't drink, curse, lie/cheat/steal, use illegal substances or do any number of things the general population might label as "fun."


So, anyway, my first introduction to Y was this: We picked up him and my girlfriend and decided to carpool to the place. Y wanted to move his car first, since he had parked in a questionable spot. We drove him to it, where he promptly removed a fake parking ticket from his windshield and placed it on the car he had stolen it from! I chuckled at this, not knowing at the time he planned to lead a whole congregation of people in deciphering right from wrong. Hey, parking in DC is no joke. You gotta be creative.

While on the way to Largo, I learned of Y's studies. I thought it only fair to warn him that the ladies with whom we'd be spending the evening tend to get a little wild and rowdy. I assumed that, as a seminarian, he probably did not drink alcohol. When I inquired, Y replied (I shit you not!), "Yes, I do on occasion partake of communion." Well, the other three ladies in the car just burst out laughing, as did he. The cat was out of the bag. Y the seminarian was a bit of a drinker.

Now, I said bit of a drinker. Let me rephrase that. He drank me under the table. Granted, I had just given blood to the Red Cross that day, so I didn't drink a lot, but I swear Y's glass was never empty. We had some really interesting dialogue about seminary and about faith and religion in general. At this point, I'm simply thinking, he's still pretty pure compared to the rest of us.

Upon leaving the restaurant, Y expressed an interest in heading to Dream nightclub to blow off some steam and "grind." He wanted to go dancing. Okay fine. I know what you're thinking. Ari, this story is boring, get to the good stuff.

Well, this entry would've never made the blog except for the fact that, when we dropped Y and the other young lady at the club, he leaned into my window and asked if I had any weed on me or where he could buy some! He said that would complete a great evening!

Now, I am not naive enough to believe that many people don't partake in many of the above-mentioned activities. Of course they do...but I ask you this: You ever sit back and get blazed with Father O'Shaughnessy? Ever grind to some Neptunes beat with your Youth Pastor? What about doing a power hour with the Dalai Lama and Rabbi Schulman? Yea, didn't think so...

...these things only happen to me...