Jesus Boy

by Preston L. Allen

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  “Sins of the flesh, he said. Whack, whack, whack.”

  Thunk, thunk, thunk.

  “He called me a sodomite.”

  Elwyn watched as Gypsy got out of bed and paced back and forth in the dark.

  “The worst part was that I loved him. I believed in him. I thought there was something wrong with me because he had chased this boy away from me. Now I realize he was the love of my life.”

  “A boy? I thought—”

  “If you could think, Preacher, you’d curse God and die.”

  Gypsy lit a cigarette and opened the blinds. He sat in his bikini underwear with his feet propped up on his cello case. Smoking.

  “Pray for me, Preacher, like you did for Quiet Fat Girl.”

  Elwyn put the pillow over his head. His roommate was a sodomite. Smoking was not permitted in the dorms. Elwyn particularly disliked smoking. The Faithful do not smoke, which is a sin.

  “My prayer won’t do any good,” Elwyn said.

  “Reverse hypocrisy. You’re a sinner accused of Christianity.” Somehow the whole situation had put her in a cheerful mood. “I find it all very amusing, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think you’d laugh if you could see how messed up he is.”

  He glanced at Gypsy, asleep in his bikini underwear on the chair by his desk.

  “He’ll get over it. Children have a way of outgrowing bad fathers.”

  “I have a good father.”

  “Yes. Roscoe the Good. Elwyn the Lucky,” she joked. “The only difference between my father and Gypsy’s is that mine never set foot in church. Daddy was no Christian, but like Jesus, he sure did love the little children.”

  Amazingly her voice still had its cheer.

  “My checkered past began so long ago I can’t even remember it. I’d always been Daddy’s girl, in a manner of speaking. I had his first baby at fourteen. The day they buried my mother, Daddy slipped a hand in my pants and told me from now on I would sleep in his bed. I was her replacement. So I cooked, cleaned, raised my little brother. I didn’t sleep alone in a bed again until I was eighteen. A hospital bed. That baby didn’t survive.”

  “Maybe it was a good thing … I mean, to have a baby with your own father.”

  “Two babies with my father. Harrison.”

  “Harrison?”

  “But he doesn’t know.”

  She cried for a half hour, then hung up, she said, to save on the long distance.

  When she called back, Elwyn tried to comfort her, but she told him, “Things are the way they are and it will never change. Kids are defenseless from their parents. You expect your parents to not hurt you, but sometimes they do. The good thing is you get to grow up. You can outgrow a bad daddy. I love life now, thanks to Buford and you, my love. Your friend Gypsy will be all right. He’s got to learn to start seeing himself for who he is, not for what his father says he is. You can’t let people define you. You’ve got to define yourself. Otherwise you’ll be a child all your life.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “Don’t worry too much. He’ll be all right. He’s talented and smart. He’ll find the right path. Just keep him at a safe distance.”

  “I sleep in my pajamas.”

  “Wise. And get out of Sodom first chance you get.”

  “He wouldn’t try anything with me. I’m bigger than him.”

  “I’m sure you are bigger. Hmmm,” she said. “It’s amazing how in such a short time he’s rubbed off so much on you—gambling, drinking, and now sodomy too, big boy.”

  “Ha. The way I put it on you, you of all people should know I am not gay.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What!”

  “These gays, they prey on innocent minds like yours. You’ll have an erection one night and he’ll offer to help you out. It will feel good, but you’ll feel guilty afterward, and he’ll tell you that it’s not you, it’s him. He’ll tell you that coming in his mouth is no different than masturbating.”

  “You make me so sick with your dirty talk. One minute you’re playing with yourself over the phone, the next you’re calling me a sissy. What kind of girlfriend are you? You should be nice to me.”

  “You sound like a sissy right now. You should hear yourself. What an impact this kid is having on you. Move out of there right away. Save yourself.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny. I’m straight. No one can make me into what I’m not.”

  “It happened to me.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s true.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I can’t talk about it. I’m too ashamed. It is pure Sodom and Gomorrah, but believe me it did happen. Just like you, I thought I was strong enough to fight her off.”

  “Some woman raped you?”

  “Seduced.”

  “Is that why you like oral sex so much?”

  “Please stop being an idiot. It does not become you.”

  “Two women. It’s so gross.”

  “Regrettable maybe, but gross, I don’t know.”

  “You liked it …?”

  “I refuse to talk about it. Just drop it. Shut up. Stop harassing me about it. You won’t listen to me anyhow. You think you know everything. I’m forty-four years old but you won’t listen to me, so I’ll let you learn the hard way,” she said. “Seduction sneaks up on you, gay or straight. Having your body held feels good, Elwyn, gay or straight. We all want to be held. None of us wants to be alone. Loneliness is the worst … Elwyn?”

  He did not answer.

  “I’ve often thought how interesting it is to hear Christians, men, say they long to be touched by Jesus. It is strangely sexual, don’t you think? They say they want to be held by Him, to be kissed by Him, to be touched by Him. I guess it makes sense. You were never held by your father when you were a child and feeling afraid or hurt? His touch comforted you just like your mother’s did. It didn’t matter that he was a man and she was a woman. It’s called human contact and our bodies respond to it. It kind of works like that with sex too. You are between sleep and wake, and I touch you, and you become aroused. I bring you to orgasm and you turn around and discover that it was not mine, but a man’s hand that had touched you. Your penis is just a piece of flesh that responds in a certain way to touch, just like your heart. Elwyn?”

  He did not answer.

  She said, “I have known of men, real men, tough guys, athletes and such, who will let a homosexual blow them or who will take the homosexual from behind. As long as they do not blow him or let him take them from behind, they feel that they themselves are not homosexual. It happens all the time in prison. These men consider themselves to be straight. Elwyn. What do you think of a woman, a terribly weak and terribly lonely woman, who allows another woman to caress her and kiss her and to live with her for a while as a man and wife? Would you call a woman like that gay because she thought, for a time, that she was in love with a woman?”

  He did not answer.

  “Elwyn?”

  He did not answer because he had hung up the phone.

  “Never, ever, ever hang up on me, do you hear me? It is beyond rude. We need to have this out.”

  “You don’t want me to have any friends at all. You don’t want me to have any friends but you. You’re choking me. You’re strangling me. You make up these stories to control me. A Christian is not gay because he loves Jesus. And women should not lie together as man and wife. You’re just rationalizing everything to justify satanic acts. You are of the devil. You are demon filled. You need prayer.”

  “You do have a sissy for a roommate.”

  “Goodnight, Elaine!”

  “Have none of your other friends said anything about it? Two handsome, musically talented boys bunking in the same room. You like that word bunking, huh? Bunking. Bunking. Are you on the top bunk or the bottom bunk?”

  “Goodnight, Jezebel. Sleep tight and a
lone. You need prayer.”

  “Bunking, bunking, bunking, bunking. Bunk me. Bunk me.”

  “I’m hanging up this phone.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me, little boy!”

  “Bye, Elaine.”

  “Aha, are you saying bye or bi?”

  Elwyn hung up the phone again.

  Elaine laughed herself to sleep.

  She awoke the next morning drenched in tears.

  He told them.

  It was a horrible treachery, but Elwyn told. Sister Morrisohn had gotten to him. He had kept worrying that they would find out anyway and then think that maybe he was gay too. So he told them that Gypsy was gay.

  But it backfired.

  No one else would have Gypsy as a roommate now that they knew what he was, but neither would they accept Elwyn, the blabbermouth.

  So they were stuck with each other.

  Thus ostracized, Elwyn slipped back into old habits. He prayed publicly three times a day. He carried his Bible wherever he went. He handed out tracts feverishly. Here he was, a total backslider, striking up a friendship with the Reverend Jedediah Witherspoon, who was glad to have him join the Holy Roller team.

  “I see the spirit of the Most High God emanating from you. Together, we shall do great things for the Lord, young man. I won’t hold your faith against you.”

  Elwyn didn’t hold Brother Witherspoon’s faith against him either.

  He was not a Holy Roller as were Reverend Jed and his daughter Donna, who was a first-year student at the nearby Santa Fe Community College, and he would never be. He was numbered among the Faithful for life, Praise God. But when the dark and evil world is closing in, Christians of whatever faith must band together. Plus, the nearest branch of the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters was a two-hour drive away in Jacksonville.

  So now, while Reverend Jed preached at the Plaza of the Americas, Donna and Elwyn distributed tracts and Bibles and collected whatever money the students journeying to and from class were willing to give.

  At the insistence of Donna, he started an interfaith Bible study group on Thursday nights in the bowling alley of the J. Wayne Reitz Student Union. Thursday was league night, which meant more souls to save.

  On Wednesdays, Donna and Elwyn put on orange T-shirts that said Gators for Christ! and rode their bikes and handed out Bibles in Porter’s Quarters, the two-and-a-half square miles of clapboard houses where the city’s poorest lived in the shadow of crime and vice. They even entered the park where young men in enormous gold chains and expensive sneakers exchanged Ziploc bags of drugs for money, jewelry, and sex. They sang hymns and ministered to the young men, though not one of them that Elwyn knew of ever showed up at the Bible study he invited them to.

  One morning there was a message etched on the last stall in the men’s room: GYPSY’S AIDS CLINIC.

  Missives of hate were slipped under their door nightly.

  Faggot Go Home!!!

  Wanted, tutor for Sodomy 101

  UFagsSUCK!

  Gypsy was excluded from the poker games in Squeak’s suite. Only Punching-bag Brown remained loyal to him. They played duets from time to time in the piano room.

  “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Gay or not, I still like him,” Punching-bag said.

  So did Elwyn. He had only been doing his Father’s will when he exposed Gypsy as a homosexual.

  Whenever Elwyn offered him a tract, Gypsy sucked his teeth and said derisively, “F—-ing church mouse!”—as though it were entirely Elwyn’s fault that everyone in Rawlings now called him Sweet Gypsy Rose.

  Now they called Elwyn Reverend Gator.

  One night, Gypsy came back to their room with his laundry, a black eye, and no attempt at explanation.

  He got on the phone and Elwyn overheard him filing a police report for assault and battery.

  He heard the names Michael Kraft and Joseph Manzetti—who were Squeak and A-T-O Joe.

  The first week in November, Elwyn moved off campus and into the small bedroom at the back of the Witherspoon home. The rent was low ($75 a month) because he had agreed to give Donna piano lessons on Saturday afternoons.

  He was not a Holy Roller, but since Reverend Jed and Donna had proven kind to him, Elwyn ignored Pastor’s warning and attended Sunday services at the Holy Roller Tabernacle of Faith Gainesville Chapter with them. The real difference, he soon discovered, between the Holy Rollers and the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters was not so much the speaking in tongues, but the noise. The Rollers used tambourines and drums along with their piano and organ.

  Then there was Donna, hands raised, eyes rolled up into her head, waiting for the spirit to descend. When it arrived, she tried to pull him along with her.

  “Come on, Elwyn, let Him into your heart. He wants to use you.”

  Elwyn wouldn’t budge from his seat. He wasn’t into all of that showboating.

  So off she would go, shouting, “Atallabula, Atallabula,” dancing light-footed down the aisle.

  They couldn’t make him carry on like that. He was not a Holy Roller.

  Donna grabbed his hand as they prayed at the start of a piano lesson one afternoon. She leaned against him, smelling of Ivory soap and strawberry jam on toast, which she ate constantly. God’s food—bread and berries—is how she explained her sweet diet. She and her father were vegetarians. Elwyn thought she was going to kiss him when she pressed her cheek against his and said: “I want you to teach me my favorite song.”

  The hymnal was opened to page 39, “I Find No Fault in Him.”

  He shook his head. “You haven’t progressed that far. It’s only your fourth lesson.”

  “I have faith in you. You can teach me anything.” She raised holy hands. “Atallabula, Atallabula, Sa Sa Sa, Atallabula,” she chanted in that unknown tongue, which this time came from somewhere deep in her breast.

  Donna was not exactly pretty, not exactly ugly. Her teeth, though uneven, were white and clean. Underneath her baggy dresses, from what he could see, was a lean, hard body. Her face was long and serious looking—she was no beauty—but when she smiled it was so genuine his heart melted. She was on fire for the Lord, and you couldn’t want a better, more compassionate friend.

  Elwyn found himself wondering what it would be like to lie with Donna on their wedding night.

  It would be interesting. It would be blessed.

  * * *

  “Donna held my hand today.”

  “Two whole weeks. I’m surprised she waited so long to make her move, Reverend Gator. The question now is how you feel about her.”

  “I have to admit that there are some things about her that I like. She’s a good Christian and one of the kindest people I know.”

  “Kiss my a**.”

  “In fact, I am happy and content to do mission work with her. With her, I do the Lord’s work and I am happy. With you, I never do the Lord’s work. It always ends up in bed because our relationship is vile and carnal. I have never had a sexual thought about Donna. She would make a good Christian wife—if I were interested in her, I mean.”

  Her voice came back without its usual cheer: “I should have guessed it would happen eventually. You’re living in her house. If you were living in my house, they couldn’t keep me off you. Reverend Witherspoon, that sly fox, is setting you up to be his son-in-law. Good Christian wife my a**.”

  “You’re too cynical. The Witherspoons are the kindest people in the world and wholly devoted to the Lord’s work.”

  “I am no stranger to the good Reverend Witherspoon, my dear uninformed Elwyn. He was famous, more like infamous, in the ’60s. He had a big hippie church up somewhere in Colorado. Jesus freaks. They were for peace, love, and marijuana. He had a TV show that came on for a half hour each week, and a catch phrase: God has a new weapon for HOPE—it’s called DOPE. He lived in a mansion. He got busted for fleecing his flock of a million dollars. He went to prison for tax evasion. Lost his mansion, his ministry, h
is money. Everything. Now he’s a Holy Roller street-corner evangelist. Give me a break.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It was in the newspapers. Go look it up, college boy.”

  “I don’t even care if you’re right. I’m talking about what they are now. They are good people.”

  “They are looking for a husband.”

  “I told you, we’re platonic!”

  “She’s eighteen and ugly, and she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Then along comes you. Devout, talented, naïve. God has a new weapon for HOPE—it’s called a BIG DOPE. Wake up, you big dope. If you want to leave me, then go ahead. But don’t let some homely preacher’s daughter set you up for a shotgun wedding. That would just be too clichéd.”

  “You are so paranoid. That was all in the past. They’re in the church now.”

  “Just because they’re in the church doesn’t mean they’re not human. Look at us. We are in the church.”

  She always brought up their affair when she couldn’t get him to see the world as she saw it of late: that secretly everyone was selfish, evil, and crafty.

  “You just can’t face the facts. I’m growing up. I’m outgrowing you. I need to be with people my own age.”

  “Why do I waste my time trying to protect you? I should just let you marry that pit bull—looking, frigid, ugly, stupid, ignorant, bad-breath heifer.”

  “What would be so wrong with marrying Donna Witherspoon?”

  “Monkey children.”

  “Goodnight to you.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me!”

  “You don’t own me! I’ll hang up when I feel like!”

  “Elwyn, I am with child.”

  “Hehehe. Don’t try that one on me. Talk about cliché. You’re too old, Gran’ma. Hehehe.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He laughed again. Squeak’s laugh, hehehe.

  She waited until he’d had his fun, and then she said, “Didn’t I seem a little heavier to you when you visited last week? My mood swings? Don’t you see how we’ve been fighting lately? That’s not normal for us.”

  She paused to let it sink in. It sank in.

  “You called me Gran’ma. What if I told you that in seven months you are going to be the father of Gran’ma’s child?”