In the beginning, there was a man who preached on the streets of my Upper West Side, Manhattan neighborhood. He was a Black man—actually, coffee-bronze would be a better description of his color.

When I first became aware of him, he appeared to be in his early sixties, though he might have been a little older. It was hard to tell, since he was in such great shape—thin, erect, energetic. He always wore the same outfit: a gray-green suit, a clean white shirt, brown tie, black socks, and black shoes.

When it was cold, he wore an old-fashioned, knee-length, brown cloth coat.

It was obvious his clothes were treated with great care—regularly cleaned, ironed, and carefully hung in a closet.

He had short, cropped silver hair, and his skin had a polished look to it—burnished, no doubt, by the years he had spent on the street in all kinds of wind and weather. In his right hand he held an old, black, leather-covered Bible, sometimes brandishing it aloft as he shouted, with a trace of a West Indian accent, at the top of his lungs.

And what did he shout? “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” Over and over again. Occasionally, in a shift of internal inspiration, he shouted, “Glory! Glory! Glory!”

Sometimes, after a burst of perfectly spaced yells, he’d stop and laugh a little in secret pleasure, and when he was especially carried away by the spirit, he’d do a little dance step—a slight dip of the knee, bob of the head, a quick little shift of the feet.

“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! … Glory, Glory, Glory!”

Then, a step back, a slide of the leg, a dip of the shoulder, his Bible held aloft, and an exclamation: “Ha! Ha!”

Once, as he was marching up Broadway, waving his Bible and shouting “Jesus!” at top volume, some Black kids from the neighborhood were walking toward him.

They were wearing (now long out-of-fashion) hip-hop-type gear: long sports jerseys, baggy new jeans, and long chains around their necks. When they were within a yard of him, they began to dip and weave to his rhythmic shouts. He smiled and dipped a little in response to their moves. They laughed and called out, and he shouted back. A little circular dance ensued for a minute: dipping, weaving, shouting, calling, laughing. Then they swirled around him before moving on.

The Jesus Man stood for a moment, chuckling to himself. The kids had tickled his funny bone.

Most times, though, the Jesus Man was in no way amused. His shout was fierce and strident. “Jeeesuss!!!” A prophet crying in the wilderness—a particular Upper Broadway wilderness of fast-food stores, multinational nannies pushing carriages, young bankers, self-absorbed cell-phone blatherers, weaving drug addicts, and the sad parade of old, poor, and homeless people—all making their way up or down the avenue.

“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

The face of local commerce changed over time—from family restaurants to specialized coffee shops, independent video stores to chain drugstores, barber shops to phone stores—but the Jesus Man was always there. Steady, unchanging, and predictable. He was as integral a part of the ten or so blocks that were his turf as the flocks of screeching junior high school kids, booming car radios, roadwork drills, construction machinery, and ear-splitting sirens.

Once in a while, you’d see him on the bus handing out cheap little stapled tracts from a bag he carried over one shoulder. I’ve heard people say they’d seen him on the subway too.

It was interesting that the Jesus Man only shouted out his message on one side of Broadway—the east side. No matter how much he might inhabit some otherworldly realm, he was still constrained by neighborhood demographics.

It was on the east side of the avenue that he fulfilled his mission—that side of Broadway was closer to the Latino and Black population, which spread eastward to Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue. These were mostly working people, living in old, worn four-story buildings and housing projects built in the 1950s. This crowd would find the Jesus Man’s style of preaching—if not necessarily welcome—at least familiar.

The Jesus Man understood that the west side of Broadway, spreading toward West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, was predominantly the land of middle-class and upper-middle-class white people. This is where, in addition to teachers, social workers, and mid-level civil servants, you could find therapists, stockbrokers, lawyers, and doctors who could afford a couple of thousand dollars a month for a two-bedroom apartment—or a couple of million for a new condominium. These people would not have been a receptive audience for him.

The only concession the Jesus Man made to this political, economic, and cultural divide was to sometimes stand on the east side of Broadway, waving his Bible in the air while shouting directly at the west side.

“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus

————–

One way to look at the Jesus Man is to see him as just another poor, lost Broadway head case, carving out a niche among what may be the largest collection of outcasts, oddballs, and just plain crazy people gathered in any one place in this country.

Had the Jesus Man done time in mental hospitals? Maybe. I don’t know. But what if he had? I’d certainly be the last one to judge him for that. Between myself, my friends, and my neighbors, there have been many a stay in psych wards and, over the decades, fortunes spent on therapists, pills, and other treatments.

Sometimes you didn’t see or hear from the Jesus Man for days, even weeks. Then, suddenly, he’d appear. Usually, you heard him before you saw him.

“Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

You could hear his shout from blocks away—his voice as piercing as an ambulance siren or a train whistle. Like Superman, his yell was able to leap tall buildings at a single shout.

Where had he been during his time away, I would wonder? Where did he go when he wasn’t out on the street? Had he been traveling—maybe called back to some place for further instruction? Maybe his mission took him to the streets of some other nearby city—Bridgeport or Newark—or maybe he was doing a spell in a locked ward somewhere.

Well, whatever the reason for his absence, it never lasted that long. Almost before you could miss him, he was back on his beat.

————-

One summer morning, I got up early—just after dawn—and went outside to escape the suffocating feeling of being stuck in my little rear-of-the-building apartment. I wanted to see the sunlight, which, at that time of year, was just beginning to touch the highest floors of the surrounding buildings. I wanted to listen to the birds for a few minutes before the traffic noise began to drown them out.

And who did I see just a couple of blocks down Broadway? The Jesus Man—coming out of the subway at 103rd Street. He was nattily dressed, as always, but this time he was also sporting a snappy straw hat. Over his shoulder he carried a soft-leather black briefcase, no doubt filled with tracts and his ever-present Bible. He had the air of someone heading home after finishing the night shift.

I crossed Broadway and followed about twenty feet behind him.

He went into the Yemeni deli and newsstand on 104th Street. I walked to the open door and saw him in front of one of the refrigerated cases, making a decision about a purchase. Not wanting him to think I was spying, I kept walking past. Three buildings down, I leaned against a wall and waited. A minute later he came out of the store and passed by me, cradling in his free arm a bag of Doritos and a small bottle of Gatorade.

I followed slowly behind him as he walked up Broadway. The sun was starting to light up the sky now. After another block, he turned the corner, walked to the middle of the block, and went down the steps to the basement apartment of a run-down brownstone.

Gatorade, Doritos, basement apartment—all these common, earthly things… I wondered what his life—not his life on the streets, but his home life—was like. Did he live alone, or with a brother or sister, son or daughter? What did he do there in his room? Did he pray, read magazines, watch TV?

For some reason, I felt disappointed. I think I had wanted the Jesus Man to be more supernatural—above and beyond everyday things like food, drink, and shelter. The stuff we poor mortals need to survive. The yearning believer in me hoped he was something more than just another earthbound soul struggling with psychiatric problems.

—————

Time—then more time—moved on. Children were born, old people died, and the neighborhood changed, subject to the inexorable fluctuations of population, fashion, and commerce. Now the avenue was phone stores, nail salons, vest-pocket banks, and fancy restaurants. More condominium towers went up, and the streets were noisier and more crowded than ever.

I began to notice that the Jesus Man made fewer appearances. In the beginning, I used to see—or at least hear—him every few days. Now, it was no more than once a month. When I did see him, he was thinner, less energetic—and his clothes didn’t seem as carefully kept. Though he still cried out for Jesus and glory, his voice had become weaker.

I was sad that he was winding down. When he was in his prime, I often thought he was nothing but a plain nuisance—another one of the city’s ten-thousand-and-one irritations. In fact, there were times when I actually had a guilty wish: I hoped he’d come down with an illness that would keep him off the streets so I wouldn’t have to hear his manic shouting.

Of course, human nature being what it is, now that the Jesus Man was clearly on a downward slide, I missed his ear-piercing yell. Whatever else he might have been, he was a predictable part of my neighborhood, and I have always been averse to change.

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A couple of years ago—it was in the fall—it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen—or more specifically, heard—the Jesus Man for quite a while. Because I’ve had so many troubles of my own in the last few years, the Jesus Man had completely faded from my consciousness.

I wonder what has become of him. Maybe he has been permanently committed to a state mental hospital. Or maybe he just got old and died. Or, looking on the bright side, maybe he simply retired—received word from the local, or perhaps supreme, headquarters that he had done his part, and it was time for a well-deserved rest from his labors. Right now, he could be on some porch somewhere in the Caribbean, reading his Bible and sipping a cool drink.

Well, wherever he is—on earth or in heaven—I miss him. He was a pain in the ass, but he was a recognizable person in the midst of an increasingly anonymous, almost inhuman, landscape; a fractured world of dark scaffolding, perpetually torn-up streets, construction sites, and endless hordes rushing to and fro—chattering away on their cell phones like a great tribe of gibbering monkeys.

In the end, maybe the Jesus Man didn’t save anyone. Or maybe the only one he saved was himself. If he hadn’t shouted his message out on the street, he would have had to shout alone in his room, unconnected to other human beings. Worse, if he wasn’t shouting, he would have been silent—and nobody who burned the way he did could endure silence for long. That’s something I understand very well. When he was preaching, he was somebody—maybe a somebody who was universally regarded with irritation and amusement, but still, a man with a mission.

Whatever his motives or his level of success, he was calling out for salvation, and that always counts for something—especially during the times of our greatest suffering. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!

***

Mike Feder is a retired radio personality and talk-show host. He worked on WBAI and WEVD in New York City, then later on Sirius-XM Radio and PRN.FM. He has performed his autobiographical stories at colleges, nightclubs and theaters. His stories and cultural and political essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine. He is the author of “New York Son,” “The Talking Cure,” and “A Long Swim Upstream.” He has two grown children and lives with his wife on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.