Carissa and I planned to work through the week and take off to tour the country on Saturday. But we’ve both grown pretty bored of Tel Aviv by now, so we said “fuck it” and rented a car on Friday morning instead.

Carissa makes all the travel plans. She tries to read the Lonely Planet book to me, but my head just fuzzes out whenever I have to listen to boring travel literature. Over the course of our trip so far, I have spent at least two hours completely ignoring Carissa while she rambles on about hotels and visas and who knows what else (oh yeah, and her obsession with riding a camel). So it’s a good thing she’s here or I’d probably still be in Tel Aviv.

We got to Jerusalem Friday afternoon, a few hours before sundown. We parked just outside the wall of the old city, on a street with dozens of “no parking” and “tow away” signs and also dozens of cars. We were a little scared, but figured they’d have to tow the 50 cars in front of us before they got to ours, so we assumed we’d have a few hours to move it. Once inside the old city, we wandered around, trying various hostels to see who had a room. Eventually we found a spot in the Christ Church Guest House.

After getting some food, we went back to the hostel because we couldn’t really find anything to do after 8pm. We saw Reuel, the man who a few hours earlier had helped us park in their parking lot and also warned me of the terrible dangers of the Hayward Fault and how certain death would befall me if I stayed in SF. He repeated this warning at least two more times through out the night. We asked Reuel if there was anywhere he could recommend to get a drink. He took us to this amazing new place that had just opened. It was a bar in a converted alleyway. They had put a door on the entrance to the alley, put chairs and tables on the street, turned one shop into the kitchen and the other shop into a bar. It was absolutely adorable.

We asked if Reuel wanted to get a drink with us and he said he’d love to. In short order, the conversation turned to how Reuel, from Atlanta, came to be living in Jerusalem for the past 2.5 years. It was the most obvious question to ask this stranger. But without realizing what we’d done, we’d walked right into a trap of our own making.

We spent at least two hours talking about God. Reuel was a perfect politician. He launched into his well-rehearsed stump speech about finding God after years of bad parents, sex, drugs, and rock & roll. (Actually, he never mentioned the rock & roll, but I’m assuming it was involved somehow.) When we asked questions, he’d first compliment us on a brilliant question, throw off a sound bite or two, and then launch into another speech that was at best tangentially related to the question.

We both listened for probably an hour before really challenging him at all. He seemed to like Carissa’s softer, more open-minded athiesm than my more militant, logic-based atheism. I heard nothing even remotely convincing, but I’m sure he’d say the same about my arguments. He was constantly using anecdotes to show how much he could relate to us. (Joe Biden grew up in Scranton, PA? Joe Biden must understand me!) At one point, as we were getting ready to leave, he seemed to take a wild stab in the dark and told me that I probably have issues with my father, just like him. I was kinda offended and told him my parents were great and I had no issues with either of them. He countered that his parents were great too, but he still resented them. Or something. It was confusing and seemed to be the one stumbling point in his otherwise perfect delivery. I suppose he was grasping for anything to attack my atheism with, since I had stopped even pretending to understand where he was coming from.

He was charismatic and his stories were interesting, so listening to them was still fun. And to be sure, he was a very nice guy with good intentions. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little cornered. I just wanted a drink and instead I got a sermon.