Church Boy

by Kirk Franklin

  Thanks to my interest in music, I got to know Jack Franklin’s relatives who lived nearby a little better. These were the folks who had always been so hard on me ever since I was adopted. But it turned out that they were interested in music and break-dancing. One of them, a brother named Archel, said he thought we needed to get into that.

  In the early- to mid-eighties, break-dancing was really hot, and if you were pretty good at it, you could get invited to a lot of parties. So we were doing a lot of dancing, going to clubs, hanging out, and becoming a little better known.

  The high school I was planning on going to the following year was just down the street from the junior high school I was attending. It was a mostly white school, and it wasn’t considered to be all that cool by the kids I was hanging with. But one day Archel told me that his family was going to move several miles away to an apartment across the street from another school, O. D. Wyatt High School. It was a school with an outstanding music program, and everybody I knew said it was very cool. Besides that, it was an all-black school. So I really wanted to go there.

  By that time I was into clothes, big time. I was very fashion conscious, and this school was known for that. It was a popular school with most of the guys I knew, and it was where all the cool dressers were going. So I decided that’s where I needed to be. But first I had to work things out with both families so I could live with Archel during the week and then go home to Gertrude’s house on weekends.

  Archel and I were cool with one another. We got along fine, but his folks still treated me about the same as they had when I was a kid. They were very distant, cold, and generally suspicious of me, and they just didn’t seem to like me very much. I wasn’t really family. I was Gertrude’s adopted boy, and they thought I was weird.

  I guess it was really Archel’s grandmother who didn’t care much for me; but I managed to hang on, and somehow I made it through the year without going crazy or getting myself killed. So the ninth grade was about the same for me as the eighth grade had been, only on a slightly bigger scale. Everything I’d been doing in junior high was still going on—only it was more available than before.

  One good thing was that Wyatt High School had the best choir in the city. Under the direction of Jewell Kelly, the choir had won all kinds of music awards. Wyatt was known for its excellent music and fine arts departments. It had an a cappella choir, a show choir, and an outstanding music program in all areas, so I was anxious to get involved. I signed up for music classes as a freshman, and I stayed involved with music activities all through high school. I was in the choir, the band, the jazz band, drama classes, and anything else I could find that had anything to do with music.

  DEEPER IN DEBT

  At the same time, I was keeping my eye out for a little action, and there were a lot of fine young ladies at this school. It wasn’t long before I got interested in a girl who was already a junior, two years older than I was. There I was, a fifteen-year-old freshman hanging out with this “older woman,” and my friends thought that was the bomb!

  My cousin lived right across the street from the high school, so we would go over there after school when everybody’s parents were at work; those apartments got to be more like a motel. Now, I know that was bad news, but it seemed sweet back then. None of those people were God-fearing people. They weren’t atheists, of course, but God just wasn’t important to them. That fact began to play on my mind.

  All through this time, I did have some kind of understanding of spiritual things, but it was mostly just head knowledge. I knew the words, I knew what I was supposed to believe, and I knew that faith in God was important. But I wasn’t living the life, and the faith I claimed to believe on the inside hadn’t yet changed me on the outside.

  It was the same situation I’d been fighting all my life. I was trying to beat that little punk image, always trying to get some respect and self-esteem. I was into clothes, I was into girls, and I didn’t have anybody making sure I was okay.

  I felt like I was just out there by myself. I didn’t have anybody to ask me about my homework or to check on how I was spending my time. I didn’t have anybody telling me that, as a freshman, I shouldn’t be taking three electives. I was taking drama, jazz band, and choir and no solid subjects.

  Somebody should have told me I couldn’t do that, but nobody was paying attention. They didn’t warn me about any of that. In fact, when the director of the jazz band found out one semester that I wasn’t signed up for his class, he went down to the counselor’s office and got me transferred back into music when I should have been focusing more on academics.

  I should have been hitting the books, but there I was, a freshman in high school taking three electives. The result was that I flunked the ninth grade and had to go to summer school. But, remember, this was a school that was famous for kickin’ it, drinking beer, smoking weed, partying, and messing around. So, rather than doing my schoolwork, I fell in with the same easy crowd and ended up flunking summer school as well.

  That only made me feel worse, and everybody really rubbed it in, telling me I was stupid or lazy or both. By the time I got to the tenth grade, I knew something had to give, and it was at that point that I started trying—in a small way at least—to get a grip on my life. It was then that things started to change inside me, and from that small beginning I started a journey, coming around to being the person I am today.

  Back then I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never thought about it very much. I knew what I did, I knew what I liked, and I knew how to stay busy, but I honestly don’t think I ever thought about a career at any time during those years.

  The reality of my situation hit me during the summer between the ninth and tenth grades when Eric Pounds, a friend of mine, got killed. Eric used to hang around with this preacher friend of ours.

  One day he was there; the next day he was dead, and his death had a life-changing impact on me. He was the first person I knew around my own age who got killed, and it was a very emotional experience.

  I always had an understanding of who God is. I knew all about salvation; I knew all the words. I’d been raised in the church, so I wasn’t insensitive to the things of God. But obviously something needed to change. I needed a new beginning and a genuine transformation of my heart and mind, which I had somehow avoided up to that time.

  I had been drifting away from my adopted mother, little by little, ever since the sixth grade. But Gertrude didn’t cut me off entirely. She was the kind of woman who, if I was sick, would take care of me. If I was hurt or in trouble, she would be there for me. But she wouldn’t put up with my nonsense any other time, and she was disappointed and perhaps even threatened by my attempts to grow up too soon.

  It was a stressful relationship for both of us, but I never really doubted her love. I knew she cared for me, deep down. When Eric died, Gertrude could see that I was hurting, and she was there for me. She comforted me as much as she could, and we talked about the meaning of life and death and all that. She prayed with me, talked to me, and tried to encourage me, and that was a very important step on my pathway to God.

  Later that summer I started hanging out with two guys named Darrell Blair and David Mann, who were also in the choir at O. D. Wyatt. I realize now that transferring over to that school really was in the will of God because that was the first time I started meeting people more like I was—that is, people who were artistic and a little different.

  This was also the first time I started meeting other people my age who were into the gospel scene, as Darrell and David were. Through their friendship and influence I started becoming more sensitive to the things of the Lord.

  Then one day a few weeks after Eric got killed, I got down on my knees in Gertrude’s den, and I got transparent with the Lord. I asked Him to forgive me for my sins, and I asked Him to come into my life and change me. From that moment on I became aware that I had started my journey back to God. I wasn’t back yet, but I had a sense of peace and forgiveness aft
er that.

  I was so excited about it that I told Darrell, David, and some of the guys about the change in my life, and they were really happy for me. That was very important because if I had said the same thing to any previous group of friends, they would have just tripped, laughing at me and calling me “Church Boy.” But these brothers encouraged me and said they were happy I’d finally taken the first step.

  By this time I wasn’t seeing much of Marcus or Stacy anymore. We were going to different high schools, so we naturally started drifting apart, seeing each other occasionally at the mall or other places like that. I would see them at Jolly Time once in a while, but that whole scene was becoming less and less important to me as time went by.

  When I got saved, the very first thing I gave up was smoking weed. Then I found out sex was wrong. You may find this hard to believe, but until I was fourteen years old I had never heard anybody come right out and say that sex outside of marriage was wrong. In fact, the first time I remember anybody talking about it was on the basketball court one afternoon.

  I heard some guys talking about sex, and somebody said that having sex outside of marriage was wrong and that it was a sin. That happened when I was fourteen years old, and it surprised me. Later, after I was saved, those words started working on my conscience.

  GROWING PAINS

  I felt guilty for all the stuff I had been into, but now I knew it was actually a sin. I needed to talk to somebody about what I had done, so I went in to see the pastor at the church I was attending.

  I said, “Pastor, I just found out that sex is wrong, and I’m feeling bad about the stuff I’ve been doing. I’m having a hard time with it, and I don’t know what to do.”

  His response hit me like a ton of bricks. He took a long drag on his big cigar, then as he blew out a cloud of smoke, he said, “You’re young, boy. You’ll grow out of it.”

  That was it. That was his entire sermon on the subject. No big deal; I’d get over it. Suddenly I realized it was this attitude of casual acceptance that allowed the sin to continue in some of the church community. It was this attitude that sex outside marriage was no big deal, that it was something you could adapt to in time; that was the real problem. Unfortunately, I never did grow out of it. Seeing his attitude only made it easier for me to grow into it.

  I truly wanted to grow deeper in the faith, but those who should have been my spiritual leaders were acting as if sexual sin were no big deal. The words of that pastor were some of the most destructive words any Christian leader could have spoken to a boy my age.

  To say to a young man who had already lost his virginity that sex outside of marriage was no big deal or to say that any thought he might be having about cleaning up his life and getting right with Jesus was nothing but a whim or a fantasy, that was shocking. And he was the pastor of my church!

  The result was that, after I found out how to rationalize my sin, I just kept doing what I had been doing all along. And even though I was feeling guilty in ways I never had before, I became more and more promiscuous, and I did things I will always regret. After that, I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I didn’t change my behavior right away; I just felt guilty about it. My dialogue changed. My attitudes changed. But my behavior stayed the same.

  By this time, in 1984 and 1985, there was a lot of interest in local gospel groups, so as Darrell, David, and I continued our interest in gospel music, I started getting involved in some of the groups in our area. Most of them weren’t very sophisticated musically, but we had a good sound and our performance style worked well for churches and youth programs and things like that. We weren’t trying to make a living out of it.

  When I’d get involved, usually I would play keyboards and sing. And during this time I was getting a lot of experience doing arrangements and sometimes rearrangements. We would sing Christian songs, traditional church songs, and gospel music, and little by little I started doing more of my own compositions for special programs and concerts. But all this time I was still walking on both sides of the street.

  Gertrude and I were barely talking to each other, but she had put me in the Lord’s hands. “Boy,” she’d say, “I don’t know what to do with you anymore, so I’m putting you in the Lord’s hands.” It sounded like a resignation, but it was probably the best thing she could have done.

  It was during this time, with all these conflicting emotions knocking around inside my head, that I met the girl who would have my son. I was in the tenth grade at the time. Now that I look back on it, I think that a part of the attraction was that she reminded me of my biological mother. They were both the kind of women I wanted to love, but they didn’t love me back—neither of them. I’m not saying every flaw in our relationship was her fault. It takes two to make a relationship work. I had faults also.

  Satan is always looking for a place to plant his evil seeds, but he found a place in our relationship where he could harvest a garden. So I tolerated the head games and the disappointments simply because I found somebody who wanted to be as intimate as I did.

  We were just two kids searching, trying to get from each other what we wanted to get from our parents. We wanted love, acceptance, and understanding, but we settled for sex. That’s what got us into trouble. I didn’t even have a clue then about being responsible, and I paid the price for it by getting that young woman pregnant.

  I was eighteen years old when my son, Kerrion, was born. He and I are very close today, and I love my son very much; but I wish it could have happened a different way. But yet, I am very grateful; very grateful!!

  I didn’t have a car. Most of the time I had to take the bus to go anyplace. I didn’t have an apartment of my own or anything else that belonged to me, but here was a girl who was popular and available. She would go out with me, and we would do stuff together. But it turned out to be a very painful journey. We were both good people but bad for each other. We simply brought out the worse in each other because of the luggage from our childhood.

  By the time I got to the eleventh grade, I was feeling that I didn’t have anyplace to belong anymore. I wasn’t doing very well in school, and I was making lousy grades. I had flunked the ninth grade, and on top of everything else, some of the kids started teasing me about being weird; somebody even started a rumor that I was gay. So all of a sudden I had a whole new battle to fight.

  STICKS AND STONES

  Jack Franklin’s death from cancer was hard on Gertrude, but she took it in stride. When I was in the seventh grade she got remarried. I was thirteen, and Gertrude and her new husband were in their mid-seventies. Gertrude and I had been drifting apart little by little ever since I was twelve years old, but her new husband, Josh Clayborn, helped her to see that a lot of what I was going through was simply because I was a boy.

  Josh had sons and grandsons from his first marriage, so he became the happy medium between Gertrude and me. I admit that at first it was very hard for me to accept him as a new influence in my life. For most of those years it had just been Gertrude and me. But now her first loyalty was to her new husband, and I felt I was just the boy she was raising.

  That really hit home one day when I happened to see them kissing. I couldn’t handle it! I mean, for me to go around kissing any girl I could get my hands on was one thing. But for Gertrude, who was seventy-two years old by that time, and Josh, an old man who was probably three years older than she was, I thought that was horrible! I mean, have you ever seen a seventy-two-year-old woman kiss a seventy-five-year-old man? It ain’t a pretty sight, especially when you’re fifteen.

  This was also during the time that Deborah’s husband, Charles, was whipping me. All my relationships were already strained on all sides. But after the wedding, I went home with Deborah and Charles instead of going back to Gertrude’s house. They needed some time for their honeymoon.

  That night Deborah and Charles got into a fight, and it was so bad that he drove me home early the next morning. So I came back home early, and the next morning—smart al
eck that I was—I asked Gertrude if they did it. She said, “You better believe we did it!” And that just grossed me out. I could not get over it! I couldn’t accept the idea of those two making love!

  But despite the adjustments and the jarring experiences of new relationships, Josh became a friend to me. Gertrude still ran the house where I was involved, but Josh helped take the edge off of her defensiveness toward me, and that was good.

  In every other way, though, it was still a very hard time. I was in emotional chaos. My life was a constant trial, and I hated every minute of it. I’d lie in bed at night crying my heart out because I didn’t want to go to school. Now and then Gertrude would come in and sit down beside me, pat me on the head, and tell me that everything was going to be all right. She could see what was happening inside me, but she wasn’t always able to stop the pain.

  I think the main reason people started saying that I was gay was that I had the reputation of being “Church Boy.” A lot of other kids had grown up in the church like I had, but they still acted as if church kids were weird. Christian kids didn’t fight back; they would turn the other cheek or run away from a fight. At least, that’s what the other kids said. On top of that, I’d been raised by an old woman, and I wasn’t tough and hard like most of the other guys in my school.

  I had always been more sensitive than a lot of those people. I was into music. I was writing songs and composing lyrics, and for kids in my neighborhood that meant that I was probably gay. Where I come from, young men were supposed to be hard. They were supposed to be tough, macho, and cool. But I wasn’t like that.

  I didn’t know how to be like that. And by that time, I had already stopped growing. I’m just under five-feet-five now, and I’ve been this height ever since I was fourteen years old. So that was another emotional adjustment I had to make. Everybody I knew kept on growing, and they were going off and leaving me!