by Seth King
“Move on? Nah. I’ll still be friends with you,” I say. “No matter what.”
“You look like a different person,” he says soon. “You’re bigger and, I don’t know…quieter. More serious. And richer. New clothes?”
“Savannah just opened the biggest H&M within a few hundred miles,” I say as I smile down at my maroon sweater.
“I don’t know what that means, but nice.” He sits back. “So. I had a reason for calling. I want you to know something. I heard through the grapevine about what went down with Kinnan.”
My face goes numb. “Oh, I was-”
“I don’t need to know,” he says, raising a hand. “I just want you to know that whatever was going on this semester, it’s your business, and nobody else’s. He was wrong to stick his nose into your life like that.”
“Really?”
“Of course. All of us sin, all of us live differently. It’s not up to him to decide which sin is worse than another. I will tell you right now, the next time I see him in person, I have a very well-practiced sneer waiting for him.”
I want to cry. This deer-hunting, Bible-carrying seminary student is showing me graciousness, and giving me something I didn’t even know I needed: unconditional acceptance.
“Thank you very much for that,” I say soon, my voice cracking. We can’t say it out loud, but I know he knows.
“Of course. You’re still just Adam to me. It’s not 1954 anymore. Your life is your life. Screw what anybody else says.”
My throat itches. I want to tell him so much more, to confide in him and ask him for advice, but I can’t. I can’t tell him that part of my life is gone forever. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not going back to Covenant. I can’t. I am different now.
So when I bid him goodbye, I fail to mention that it could very well be the last time I ever see him. I want a new life. I don’t want this one anymore, and I don’t know what to do about it.
That evening I sit in my windowsill, watching Savannah as always, except tonight everyone else has someone with them. It’s The Big Night, after all – the one night of the year that absolutely nobody can stand to be alone. The evening is just starting, and girls in their sparkly dresses and black tights are teetering down the cobblestone streets with their arms hooked through their suited boyfriends (and sometimes girlfriends).
All the couples make me so lonely, and make me long for Fabian more than ever. Even thinking of his name hurts me somewhere deep down. I think of where I’d be now if Kinnan had never done what he’d done, and if I’d never betrayed Fabian. We’d probably be together in my living room, maybe watching TV, doing my favorite thing with him – which was nothing at all. I would give anything to get that state of nothingness back. I want to text him so many things:
Are you thinking of me?
What are you doing now?
What happened with your job situation?
Do you miss me?
Was I enough to you?
Do you still love me?
Did you ever love me?
I always want to say these things, but I never know where to start. I never know how to begin. Or if I even can begin again in the beginning, when the first time was such a debacle…
Fabian Blanco
Adam has been gone for three weeks now. He messaged me that his mom died, that he was okay, and that he needed some time to himself. I didn’t object. We both needed time. A lot of it, perhaps.
I’m moving soon. My cousin found a job for me in Sacramento, and I’m supposed to ride the bus all the way there. So I’ve been packing, on and off. In my room, I find a photo of us in some little dead-end town and smile.
For a short little moment in time, we were perfect. After years of drifting, I found a home in him. I was a lot to deal with, my bright were on at all times, but he was the first person to never really care about that. I looked at him and I saw home.
Out of boredom I scroll through my camera roll, the digital detritus of our relationship. I’ve been looking way too much lately, but I can’t stop – I’m still picking at the wound. I find one I took of him when he wasn’t even looking; it’s just his beautiful lower jaw and his right shoulder. Even his mouth was sexy. The picture takes me back to a time when he’d parked alongside some random church and kissed me in the dark, as we were waiting to meet up with an administrator. I’d motioned up at the church and laughed.
“What’s funny?” he’d asked.
“I don’t know. Don’t you just feel like…a sinner right now?”
“Yeah, but sinners pray, too,” he’d said soon. “Every sinner needs a prayer. You’re mine, I guess.”
A more serious tone filtered into the car.
“You’re sure about all this?” I’d asked, and he’d touched me more tenderly than he usually would.
“There are no accidents,” he’s whispered. “If I believed that before, I’ve gotta believe it now, too.”
This, in turn, reminds me of another quote my sister hung in her kitchen after her divorce from my brother-in-law: no burden is heavier than a heart. Before Adam left I sent a picture of it to him, praying it would help him as his mother died. And I hope it does. I hope he becomes strong enough to believe it one day, regardless of what happens with us.
I don’t know much. Life is a sour symphony, and nothing is really promised. But I do know this: I still love him.
I just don’t know what to do with that love anymore. And the clock is ticking.
Adam Venus
After Tanner leaves I decide to take an evening walk through downtown Savannah, which has long been one of my favorite towns in the world. When I think of coming here that night to see Fabian in drag, I don’t know whether to smile or cry. I’ll always think of him that way, smiling laughing and living at full blast. What if I never see him again? What if this year was the only rush I will ever feel with him? How would I survive?
I head down the main drag, Broughton, and then turn down a residential side street dotted with mansions, churches and fancy lawyers’ offices in fancier townhouses. I cross a street in front of a statue of some Confederate general, and that’s when I see it. A small brick church, set off the road, flying a rainbow flag. The sign says ALL OF THE COLORS CATHOLIC CHURCH. Could this really…could this really be a gay church? No. It can’t be. Right?
Before I know it, my legs are walking me into the small chapel. It looks…like a church, except for the rainbow flag draped on the podium. I head to the front row and sit, then bow my head. I want to talk to God, there are so many things I need to say and ask, but I don’t know where to begin. I almost feel guilty for not praying deeply very much lately, but it’s not like I wasn’t busy, anyway. So I take a breath and start searching for the words:
Hey, God. It’s me. I think it’s time we have a talk. All my life I was brought up to love Him, but now I love him, lowercase – Fabian. I will admit it now – I love another guy. In fact, I love him so much I can’t breathe sometimes – if I am a sinner, he is my prayer. And I can’t run from it anymore – I am surrendering. But I missed it all up because of the guilt You gave me. I want to know why this is happening. You made me like this. So how could my feelings be sinful? Why would you have created me with factory defects? Why can’t I make sense of this in my head?
And what do I do now? Do you still love me? Like any human, all I want is to be loved. I found that in Fabian, but I’m so terrified it means I’ve lost yours. Please show me the way, because things aren’t adding up anymore, and he is all I want in the world. I would spend my life with him. Anyway, let me know. I’ll be waiting. Amen.
I wait. Nothing drops out of the sky, no booming voice fills my ears from the heavens. Maybe everybody was right. Maybe life is just a shot in the dark. Maybe God was never real, maybe my best friend was an illusion all along. Maybe I’m alone. That would free me to be with Fabian, my beloved Fabian, but it would also devastate the very foundation I’d built my life upon. I’d be nowhere. Wouldn’t I?
/> A door opens and closes. My eyes are still closed, and I sense the person sitting down in the pew instead of seeing him.
“Fancy a chat?”
I look over and see a man, maybe in his early sixties, with a shiny bald head and tattoos creeping up his neck. He looks more like a lifelong biker than any kind of clergyman – at least the clergyman I’ve ever known, so stiff and serious. But he’s holding a Bible, and there’s a cross on his necklace. Suddenly I feel totally awkward for just coming in here like this, during off hours on a holiday and everything. He probably wants to know why I’m here, and I don’t even know how to say that, myself.
Oh, hey, my mom just died and I might be kicked out of school and I’m in love with a man even though part of me is afraid I’ll go to hell for it. He hates me, too, by the way, because I couldn’t admit he was my boyfriend. Anyway, everything else is fine, besides that one smoldering dumpster disaster. How’s your day?
“Hi,” I stutter, “um, sorry, I didn’t know if you were open or not, I just…”
“No apologies needed,” he smiles, holding up a hand. “This house is always open.”
He looks at me like he knows something about me. I’m sure he does – I’m sure conflicted guys like me show up here all the time.
I turn and look up at the rainbow flag, and the cross looming beyond it.
“It’s a bit jarring at first, isn’t it?” the man says soon. “To see those symbols together, I mean? Many people don’t know what to do with it at first.”
“I guess…I guess it is, yeah. Even though…”
“Jesus himself was a street hippie?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“And that’s exactly it,” he smiles. “That’s the message I’ve spent my life trying to spread. God never stands for hatred. God is love. Love is god. You have the absolute human right to love whoever you want to love, whoever steals your heart from you. God means exactly what you want God to mean.”
I don’t know what to say to this man, whom I had never met five minutes ago.
“So I’m guessing your church is…different?” I finally ask.
“Very different,” he smirks. “I believe the Christian faith is facing a generational crisis, potential ruin, and I’d like to help. In a changing world, they are resisting instead of opening their arms and pitching a bigger tent and welcoming more souls, and they’re dead wrong. That’s why I founded this church four years ago.”
I gulp. “And I assume the progressiveness issue is…personal to you? If you know what I mean?”
He smiles in a sad way, then takes out his beat-up cell phone and shows me the background photo. A younger version of him is smiling next to a dark-haired guy with a very retro mustache. “He was something, wasn’t he? We met in 1977. Oh, he was…something, for sure. And I was married to a woman. And so was he.”
“Oh my…oh.”
“Yes. ‘Oh’ is right. His name was Richard. I called him Dick. We fell in love over a plate of lasagna and I never looked back. At the time, he was also married. And a pastor. And I was a junior Catholic priest.”
“Okay, you’re going to have to rewind that one for me.”
“I always knew what I was,” he laughs. “From day one. I also knew it went with nothing in my life. I was raised in the Rust Belt, severely Catholic, yadda yadda. So I went into the church, because priests never married, anyway. I thought it was the perfect cover – I’d never have to face it, I’d never have to ‘be gay,’ either. Little did I know that you cannot put a Band-Aid on something like the soul. It was bound to happen. And it did. I fell in love with him in a matter of weeks.”
“And?” I ask, enraptured.
“And the next few years were messy, to say the least. You simply can’t imagine how cruel the world used to be. Being gay out in public in this country – no. It wasn’t even an option. Your only choice was to move to San Francisco or New York City, or hide yourself in public forever. Gay men faced whispers that they were child molesters, they would disappear with zero police interest or investigation. Several times I decided I would rather be dead than a gay man, but for the grace of God I never followed through. Homosexuality was a mortal sin, or so I thought. It took years of meditation to realize what I’d known all along – that humans are made perfectly clean. It’s the law of man that branded homosexuals as dirty, not God. God would never hate a human.”
“What next?”
“I eventually moved into his garage apartment, as a ‘tenant,’ as his wife told him she’d rather have a gay husband than the title of a divorced woman.”
“Wait, what? So she…she shared you?”
“You have to understand, in the older days, divorce was a scar on a woman’s back. The highest honor a woman could ever achieve was marriage, and if she lost it, it was always her fault. So I lived alongside Richard as his ‘companion’ for almost twenty years, until he died of dementia. Now I see it as being my destiny to spread the word, to push on the lessons I learned. This is one of the largest LGBT-friendly churches in the South – not that that’s saying much,” he laughs.
I lean back and mull over his story. “Goodness. I never even thought about that, that men go into church as a cover…but then again, it makes so much sense…”
“Oh, it happened all the time. All the time. Think about it – it’s an instant and lifelong distraction from ever having to face your sexuality and step into the fire.”
I swallow. “Do you think I did that?”
“Well, of course I don’t know you, but there’s definitely a chance. I assume you knew?”
“Yes. Well, in the beginning I just knew I was different – different from the other boys, different from everyone. I was a little older when I figured out, for sure, what different meant. But I was so horrified of myself I swallowed it down forever. Until I met Fabian…”
His eyes twinkle. “There are options, you know. It isn’t an either/or thing. You can be a Christian and also an out, proud gay man. Don’t ever pray for change. Pray for acceptance. Many more Christians don’t give a rat’s behind about who you love on your own time. And I know what you’re thinking. How? Really? But all you’ve been shown is the worst version of God, the wrong kind of religion. Real religion never judges. And hopefully you’ll learn that one day.”
“Ugh. But…”
“Yes? Ask me anything.”
“Okay. You can’t ignore the fact that the very book the church relies upon is filled with anti-gay statements. How do you reconcile what you feel, with what the Bible says?”
He smiles. “Do you love your parents?”
I flinch. “I mean, sure, on some level, yeah, and I always will.”
“And have they ever done or said things you disagreed with? And did that sever your love for them?”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh. Wow. No. And…”
“Yes?”
“You’re Catholic? Aren’t they…well, among the strictest with their priests?”
He smiles again, light eyes sparkling. “Oh, you can call yourself a church without being sanctioned by a larger parenting body, you know. We only answer to one person, and He lives upstairs.”
“Okay. I can get that.”
He nods, then leans back again. “I know how you see your life right now. You’re at the end of the hallway, and every door is closed. You can’t imagine a way forward.”
“Actually I…I don’t even know how to be alive right now. This…this has cut into everything I ever thought I knew. Everything I thought I believed. If gay is sin, and I’m gay, then…what is up? What is down? Where am I in the first place? God is supposed to love me. That’s kind of the point!”
“God is love. Go towards the love. Always. So start there. Be open about this, with yourself and with others. There will be naysayers, but you’ll be shocked by how much love and acceptance you will find. Far more than the bad stuff. But what you reveal, you heal.”
I bite my lip.
“Why can’t you just go talk to him,
the one you love? Has he died?”
“Um…no.”
“What’s the reason, then?”
“Look, it’s…it’s so complicated. I can’t even begin to explain,” I say.
“If two people love each other, and are both alive, what is complicated about that?”
I think about this long and hard. Soon I sigh. “The problem is – look, I messed things up. Badly.”
He leans into his seat. “And now you’re afraid he’s gone, and you’re alone again, back at square one?”
“I mean, yeah.”
“There’s your first mistake. Nobody is ever alone. Look at it this way. Many people look at other people in their lives as statues. Immovable features that either do or don’t exist, either are or aren’t there. But they aren’t statues. They’re visitors.”
“Visitors?”
“Visitors. Your life is not a fixed, stationary plane. Your life is but a waiting room. One person’s story never really ends, just as it never began in the first place. There was someone before, and there will be someone after. When someone leaves, it’s not reason to mourn. It’s reason to celebrate and look fondly on your given time with them in the first place. No story ever truly ends happily. Not even two soulmates married for fifty years will see a happy ending – unless they close their eyes and pass at exactly the same time, one of them will be left behind. One of them will get their heart broken.”
“Goodness, that is depressing.”
“No, it’s liberating!” he says. “It is a revolution! It’s the same with someone who comes into your life and loves you for one year, two years, or even five days. They are visitors, coming and going and leaving and taking. Like anyone entering and leaving a space, they leave pieces behind. Love always finds a way back in.” He hilts his head. “What has he left you with already?”
I smile at the ceiling. Just thinking about him makes me want to cry. “Oh, wow. Well, peace of mind. Sanity. Acceptance. For myself, and for so many other types of people, too. He made me different. I am different now.”
