Logs:Comparative Faith

Comparative Faith
Dramatis Personae Avi, Naomi
In Absentia	2023-09-19 "Boy I can't just boss around Jesus."
Location <XAV> Auditorium - Xs Grounds
This building, its elegant stone exterior coordinating with the nearby athletic center and the manion itself, contains the largest single indoor space on campus: the theatre. It can seat just over 300 in a mult-section wide fan arrangement, is accessible to mobility devices and a range of physical mutations, and has state of the art lighting and sound systems. The tech booth is fully computerized and the backstage is shockingly capacious, connecting directly to a series of dressing rooms. Beyond these, wrapping around the outside of the building, are a number of other spaces for the use of performing arts students and staff: a scene shop with access to the back of the building via a loading dock, a rehearsal room, a break room, and a number of office and storage spaces. There's no rehearsal in this space right now -- will there be soon? Avi sure as hell doesn't know, but he's been practicing in here a while all the same. Not practicing the trumpet he's just picked up this term -- thank goodness for anyone's ears nearby. Instead one of the side aisles of the auditorium has been turned into a long slip-n-slide, stretching up up up to the balcony above, a long sloping ice-ramp gliding down between the stories. Somewhere over in the front, Chonk has plopped himself down by where the ramp peters out -- the bulldog seems determined to make the ramp peter out even sooner, given that he's currently lying on the tail end of it and repeatedly licking the ice in front of him. Slorp slorp slorp. Avi himself, in Knicks jersey and a pair of jeans hanging low on his hips, is up in the balcony, perched on the railing and looking down at the slide below with more thought than it probably warrants. "Boy!" Emerging from the wings now is Naomi, in blue-gold Xavier's hoodie, black jeans, and converse that were definitely not designed for walking on the ice at the foot of the stage. Why's she here? Super unclear -- she's dropping her backpack at the edge of downstage so she can holler up to the balcony, hands on hips. "What the hell you doing?" Her volume does seem mostly for being heard across the house, not sounding particularly aggrieved. But, also, her nose is a little scrunched as she hops down into the aisle -- less scrunched as she drops down to the dog's side to scritch his head. "Uh --" Avi's looking down at the large ice slide like maybe this is a trick question? "... slide?" Though his nose is scrunching up and as he drops himself off the balcony onto the slide, it's a very uninspiring kind of sliding -- jeans catching a little rough on the uneven surface of the kind of dry and craggy ice, friction impeding what should be a glorious FWOOSH. "Tryna slide," he amends, with a heavy sigh. "Getting the texture right straight off is hard." He looks from the ice to Naomi and back. "... what'chu doing? You ain't got --" He mimes drumming, very enthusiastically. "Do you?" Naomi is still petting Chonk earnestly, even as she looks up at Avi's less-than-perfect slide. "Big oof," she offers sympathetically. "Looks real good, at least." She stands up, places one foot in the frosty edge between slide and floor. "Nah -- was gonna check out the sheet music library, see if there's anything interesting for Players' this year." Naomi sounds only a little doubtful on this matter. A little more doubtful but also, kinda hopeful -- "You ain't been wanting to join pit this year, right?" "Sheeeet, you been heard me?" Avi is laughing bright at this suggestion, waving away the idea with one hand. "It'd be a whole damn tragedy my squawking over those fire beats you lay down." He's squinting earnestly at the slide, and its surface is reshaping slow and careful enough it's hard to notice at first. Maybe easier to notice where it's growing just a little slicker underfoot. Maybe not; Chonk has just tumped over onto his side to lay his head down entirely atop Naomi's foot, now, so the Slickness Relevance may be a moment longer in coming. "What makes the music interesting?" "Boy," comes in over the top exasperation, directed squarely at Chonk. Naomi wiggles her toes experimentally, but her shoe barely moves under the dog's weight. She's smiling when she looks back at Avi, only a touch relieved his trumpet isn't leaving class yet. "I think it's when it ain't boring to play for three hours," Naomi admits freely, "and when they got at least one marimba involved. But --" she sucks in some air through her teeth, "-- half the shows with good music really ain't a good idea, you wanna see some these kids tryna do West Side Story?" Only after this impassioned assessment are Naomi's eyes narrowing, does Avi even know what WSS is. "Oh naw you his whole prisoner now." Avi is shaking his head like this is an entire tragedy. He ambles over fairly sure-footed on the newly slick ice strip to drop into a crouch by Chonk, head bobbing to an unheard melody as he drums his hands in a thumping rhythm against the dog's broad side. "Three hours a solid workout," he's considering as he drums, "makes sense to want a fun one." He tips his head up towards Naomi, one eye squinched up uncertainly but his voice confident. "Nah I seen Fiddler, I'on need to see a musical about them bougie-ass yids." "Ugh, don't he know where we just been?" Wiggle wiggle! Naomi's foot does not yet come free. Does Naomi know what yids means? She's got a slightly better chance at putting together the context clues than Avi did, but her correction is hesitant -- "Nah, this one 'bout some Puerto Ricans and some other kinda whites, no Jewish people in it." A beat, then -- "I think," she adds, unsure and cautious as she poses this next question to Avi, "can Puerto Ricans be Jewish, maybe they been the whole time and I ain't been paying attention?" "Girl this lump don't have a single fact getting through his concrete skull. He knows drool and sleep and dassit. " Avi says this very proudly, Chonk is doing such a good job of drool right now. Avi scrunches his fingers into the wrinkly folds of skin at what passes for Chonk's neck. He tips his head back and then rocks backward, hand planting on the ice behind him to brace himself. "How you gon make a whole show 'bout the Upper West Side and leave out the Jews all that neighborhood got is rich-ass Jews. -- how much attention you pay to Jews? Usually I be way more comfortable when it's zero but from you I think s'aiight." He's giving the question a serious consideration, though. Brows scrunching. "... I never met no Puerto Rican Jews but I'on see why not, Puerto Ricans I know stay fighty as hell so they'd fit in I think." "It's a period piece," Naomi is saying, ever so slightly more confident, "set, ionno, a hundred years ago? In the nineteen-hundreds, anyway." The skin under her cheek-scales is flushing just a touch darker. "I ain't paying attention, 'xactly, I just know Spence." Though even as she's saying that she's frowning -- down at Chonk again though not at Chonk, exactly. "...you an' him do Jewish kinda different, though, is that cuz --" She bites her lip for a moment, decides where to lay the blame for the difference, and finishes, "-- he white?" "Ohhh. Miss Pryde and Mister Joshua, they Jewish too," Avi informs Naomi very seriously. "And naaah Mister Joshua's Jewish like Spence is Jewish and he some kinda Mexican. They just, like, real Orthodox." But then he's considering, (kind of) clarifying: "Not like real Orthodox-Orthodox but pretty Orthodox. My cuz she more like them. I think," now it's Avi who is extremely uncertain, "it's like how you could be Christian like you or Christian like Sera? But you both still like, down with Jesus." Naomi's eyes are widening -- how much has she ever considered these ambient X-Men as people with religion, seems like none percent! "Oooooh I guess Mister Joshua wears the -- kippah?" Ambient Spence exposure doesn't make the Hebrew less clumsy in her mouth. "See I really ain't been paying attention." Her scales are shifting into higher hard ridges on her forehead much more slowly than it would take to furrow brows. "Whaddya mean Orthodox, they're Russian too?" This ethnic-theological question gets pushed quickly aside with, "But Sera's Catholic, though," as if this is not, in fact, a kind of Christian. Maybe to Naomi it doesn't count. "Huh Spence might be Russion, I'onno." Avi is pondering this, now, having perhaps never thought of Spencer as anything but Jewish, until now. "But nah Orthodox is just like, we got hella rules and they follow all'em. Super traditional." He's nodding along at Naomi's comment about Sera. "Right, like I said? They like the old-school style of Christian, yeah?" "...I guess so," Naomi says, with a reluctance that only suggests the internal war between Years of Sunday School and One Incomplete AP World History course has yet to conclude. "...Like all them kosher rules." On this she seems like she's on firmer footing. "--how many more rules are there?" The look she gives Avi next is kind of appraising -- "-- how many you follow, I ain't ever seen you with the kippah thing." "Oh there's hundreds," Avi says confidently, and just as confidently wrong: "There's probably like a hundred just about shabbat. I --" He scrunches up his face uncertainly as he gets back to his feet. "... I don't eat pork or shrimp or nothing. The kippah ain't a rule," isn't quite defensive but it definitely is thoughtful, before he admits: "but I think I break most of the rules though anyway. But like, that don't mean -- I mean, Lael seem to love Jesus but he don't go to no church, maybe that's..." Avi is rapidly losing confidence here, whether about what this means about Lael's Christianity or his own Judaism, unclear. "...do you do any kinda God?" "Ch, you seen any monster churches down in Salem Center," Naomi is dismissing immediately, "Jesus don't matter none to some these folks if --" Here she pauses, mouth scrunching inwards. "...Ionno 'bout doing," she hedges. "Went to church with my folks when we was home. It don't agree with me." Her shoulders curl inward just a touch. "I love Jesus too, but ionno if He loves me." Her eyes flick back up to Avi, curious -- "Does yours? Even will breaking all them rules?" "What, your Jesus he only stay at church? Tell him get on Google Maps, find his way to where you at. 'sides," Avi's mouth twists slightly to the side as he looks Naomi over, "Feel like your god ain't all that omniscient if he don't know how cool you are." He's sliding idly in place, one foot back as the other moves forward and then switching directions. "I think my God's used to it, we fight him on a lot of things, s'what he likes 'bout us." "Boy I can't just boss around Jesus," Naomi shoots back, with some bluster that is dropping off quick at the ends of her sentence, eyes going wide for a brief moment. She tugs just a little harder at her foot -- maybe this time Chonk will move? The soles of her shoes are slipping just a touch easier out on the ice. "Y'all fight Him?" Her tone is harder to decipher, here, whether this is shock or longing or curiosity or somewhere in the middle of all three. "...Do y'all win?" Avi is looking a bit skeptical at the idea that you can't boss around Jesus, but he doesn't argue with it. The small motions of his feet are getting a little wider, arms splaying a touch farther each time like one of these times he might entirely accidentally fall into the splits. Is Chonk moving? Not a whole lot, but his cheek does slide, slow, from Naomi's toe to plant fully on the ice. "Welllll..." Avi's head wobbles inconclusively from side to side. "We don't always lose."