HIM: Do you see a bus down there?

ME: (looks) Nah. I think one just came a minute ago.

HIM: Did it?

ME: I think I saw it as I was walking up.

HIM: I just walked all the way down here from Market.

ME: And you didn't see it?

HIM: No. (pause) They come pretty frequent, though, don't they?

ME: Fifteen, twenny minutes.

HIM: I just got a bunch of tennis rackets. My buddy, his ex-girlfriend left him, he didn't wanna have any of her stuff around, he said, "Take it!" I said, some of this got's money in it, he said "I don't care, I don't want it!" He said he was gonna turn gay cause his girlfriend left him, I said, "Don't turn gay just cause your girlfriend left you, she ain't a wife or nothing." But he said, take all this stuff, I don't want it.

ME: Do you play tennis?

HIM: No.

ME: You just gonna sell 'em?

HIM: No, I don't know what I'm gonna do with 'em.

ME: (shrugs)

HIM: I'm Darnell.

ME: Ezra.

HIM: Israel? Spiritual man?

ME: Nah—maybe.

HIM: Yes you are. Spiritual's better than religious.

ME: (shrugs)

HIM: I'm a shaman myself.

ME: Ah.

HIM: I try to help people as much as I can, help human beings, cause that's what I am, a human being. I hate to see these people dyin', folks all around us dyin', I just hate to see that. And I was told, baptised when I was eight years old, and I was told I was gonna live forever, and I can't help but believe it. That's what they told me. And when I started preaching, ordained preacher, I started preachin' in all-black Baptist congregation, I went in there and I said, why would you have a church, preaching what you preachin, love and charity, and won't let a white man in to your church? I said, I can't do that. I will not be a hypocrite. That's what I told my mother, she cried, I said, I'll heal the nations, minister in my own town, but I will not be a hypocrite. I think the black people did something wrong at some point, that's why we got so many problems. You see how AIDS ain't the gay disease anymore, it's—well it's Africa, now, it's *my* people. Shaka Zulu did something wrong when he sold off his own people, he should have sold off the queen instead, but instead he sold off his people. You know he had eight million guards all around the country?

ME: That's a lot of people.