Andrew, the First Called
by Mike Phillips
He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah.”
—John 1:41
He breathed hard out his nose, somehow sighed while inhaling, and expelled his inevitable refrain: “Yeah, well, their earlier stuff is way better.”
I didn’t even know who they were talking about. I was preoccupied with wondering how the hell I was going to get rid of 
him. I looked over at her and noticed the way her ears protruded from her hair, which now seemed too straight, even heavy.
This was our second date, or it was supposed to be until we ran into him on the street. He was handing out the same fliers that were scattered on the ground for blocks in all directions. I hadn’t seen him since college. I pictured him snorting some crushed-up pill in my dorm room, pulling a stack of records out of his backpack, and then demanding that we not talk while he made us listen to them. She didn’t know him, so she didn’t know to lie when he asked what we were up to. So there he sat, between us at the bar, wetly chewing a straw, obscenely scratching his beard.
“Yeah, I saw them, like, four years ago at some loft party. The electricity went out in the middle of their set but the dude just kept singing, and everybody was clapping along in the dark. It was awesome.” All this in a tone not of joyful recollection, but of grinning accomplishment.
Though I hadn’t asked him, I assumed he lived in some dank drywall box, where the cheap rent made up for the rumors of bedbugs that were really more than rumors, but that no one believed until it was too late. I wanted to feel sorry for him, as he leaned over to grab a half-empty beer that someone had just left on the bar on their way out. Though I suppose to him it was half full.
