Lies With Man

by Michael Nava

  “The last polls show us down five points from twelve,” I observed. “Things seem to be moving in our direction.”

  “It’s only July. Four more months. That’s forever in politics,” she said. “They have a lot of money, and losing this fight will only make them double down. We got their lies stricken from the pamphlet, but we can’t do anything about their ads claiming you can get HIV from toilet seats.”

  “Not to mention keeping them in line,” Wen said, indicating the QUEER activists who were waving their signs for the cameras while Laura Acosta was interviewed by a poufy-haired reporter. “The last thing we need is for them to do something stupid.”

  “QUEER isn’t a violent organization,” I said.

  “It’s not an organization at all,” he replied. “It’s a collection of angry people who don’t answer to anything but their own rage.”

  “You can hardly blame them for being angry.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said with exasperation. “I’m angry, too. We all are, but we can’t afford to alienate straight voters. You’re their lawyer. Can’t you keep them in line?”

  “Like I said, Wen, they aren’t violent and like you said, they’re not a conventional organization. They’re not centralized; they don’t have a single leader. Everything gets talked to death.”

  Kate laughed. “Reminds me of the dyke commune I lived on back in the day. Even the smallest, tiniest issue got processed until the cows came in. Literally. We had cows.”

  I saw Dan slipping out of the room and asked them, “Do you know who that guy is? The one at the door?”

  They both looked.

  “Daniel Herron,” Kate said. “He’s the pastor at Ekklesia, a big evangelical church on La Brea. They just gave twenty-five grand to the Yes on 54 campaign.”

  “And he signed that open letter from right-wing religious leaders endorsing it,” Wen added. “The pro-54 people bought space for it in every major paper in the state.”

  “Longtime bigot?” I asked.

  Kate said, “Before now, he hadn’t been on our radar, but it looks like he’s going all in on 54.”

  ••••

  Daniel scuttled out of the courtroom as quickly as he could. The lawyer— what was his name? Henry— had recognized him. He was sure of it. He hurried to the elevator, jabbed at the button impatiently and panicked when he felt a hand clutch his shoulder.

  “Pastor? Are you leaving?”

  He turned and saw it was only one of Shultz’s aides, a pale, moon-faced young man in a blue blazer and red tie with an American flag pinned to his lapel.

  “The Congressman thought you might want to make a statement to the press,” the young man said.

  “I can’t imagine I could say anything better than he already has, and I do have some pressing personal business to attend to.”

  “Oh,” the boy said, momentarily flummoxed. He was apparently unused to people turning down a summons from his boss. “I’ll tell the Congressman you had an emergency.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Behind him the elevator door slid open. “Well,” he said, awkwardly, “good-bye then.”

  He stepped into the elevator. The door framed the boy’s puzzled face as it closed. Dan wondered what he was thinking, what he would tell Schultz. Clearly, he’d felt it was necessary to upgrade Dan’s “personal business” to “emergency” to excuse his abrupt departure from the scene of battle. What had Schultz been telling his aides about Dan? He thought Schultz had been treating him differently since he had asked the Congressman for his help in getting Wyatt into the AZT study in San Francisco.

  He’d thought long and hard before calling Schultz. The Congressman was an avowed enemy of what he called “the homosexual agenda” and he expected his allies to embrace his crusade against it. Dan feared that raising the subject of AIDS in the context of helping someone infected with the virus would earn him Schultz’s suspicion as not being sufficiently on-board against the homosexuals. He’d considered other options— any number of politicians turned up at the church around election time. None except Schultz, however, was a federal official who could intervene with the FDA so, in the end, Dan had taken the plunge.

  Schultz hadn’t had the faintest idea there was a drug study, much less the disease for which the drug was being tested. Dan had sensed the disapproval in Schultz’s silence on the other end of the line as he explained the nature and purpose of the study. When he finished, Schultz had asked, “Is your nephew a homosexual?”

  “I didn’t ask how he had contracted the virus,” Dan had replied, “but I believe it was a blood transfusion.”

  “You believe,” Schultz had repeated skeptically.

  “Congressman, what does it matter? He’s my nephew.”

  “If he is a homosexual,” Schultz said, “then he chose that diseased lifestyle over his family and he must accept the consequences.”

  “No one is beyond redemption.”

  “Are you saying if he gets on this drug and it cures him, he’ll repent of his sin?”

  “He won’t have the chance if he dies.”

  “His best hope is to repent now, accept Christ into his heart, and face death as a Christian.” There was a long pause. “I don’t understand why I have to explain this to you, Dan. You, of all people.”

  Dan, his chance to save his son slipping away, had said, desperately, “He’s nineteen, John. A boy.”

  “My thoughts and prayers go out to his parents. And to you. I’m sorry, I can’t help. Even if I wanted to, once the press got wind of it, they’d be calling me all kinds of hypocrite. We don’t need that kind of press when we’re in the fight of our lives against the homosexuals and their friends. This battle, Dan, it’s more important than a single life. Don’t you agree?”

  That last was less a question than a threat.

  “I understand,” Dan said.

  “Good,” Schultz said, ignoring the ambiguity of Dan’s response. “I’m glad you see it my way. May I also suggest, Pastor, that you keep your family situation to yourself until the election is over. You’re also vulnerable to attack. Let’s not give the homosexuals any ammunition.”

  “Of course,” Dan replied.

  He had put the phone in its cradle and thought about Schultz’s children. The daughter was a drug addict with whom Schultz had no contact; the older son had been disowned when he moved in with his girlfriend without marrying her. The younger son, a lawyer following in his father’s political footsteps, was pictured on Schultz’s Christmas cards with his wife and their three children.

  By the strictures of their faith, Schultz could not be faulted for the way he had treated his three children. The two older children, having fallen into sin, had to earn their way back into the family by forsaking their sinfulness and repenting. Their father could point the way by the example of his life, but the children had to find their own path to Christ. Until then, not only was Schultz justified in keeping them at arm’s length, but that distance was necessary for his own salvation lest he become their enabler and an accessory to their sin. That was the economy of faith, and if to outsiders it seemed cruel, that was because they did not understand the stakes.

  Outsiders called them fundamentalists as an insult without making any effort to understand what was fundamental to their beliefs— that Satan exists, that he is ceaselessly at work in the world, and that hell is a place, an actual, physical location where those who have rejected Christ will suffer the consequences of their rebelliousness. The soul hung by a thread above that fire, and only Christ could pull it up and only if it had not been frayed or weighted down by sin. The Christian must be constant in his vigilance, militant in his condemnation of evil, and forceful in his evangelism.

  Dan had believed he believed all this until the moment Wyatt had asked him, “Dad, do you think I’m going to hell because I’m gay?”

  They’d been walking along Ocean Beach in San Francisco at the tail end of a glittering autumn afternoon. Wyatt had come out to Dan in a letter
. In response, Dan had flown to the city to talk to him. And he did talk to him. Talked and talked and talked. Explained the unnaturalness and moral danger of homosexuality, offered to pay for therapy to change him, and urged him to consider the spiritual costs of fleeting sensual satisfaction.

  “We’re not just our bodies, son,” he told him. “They aren’t even the most important part of us. The body is only the vessel for the soul, like a glass of water. The water is sacred. It comes down from heaven in the form of the rain and ends up in the glass, but the glass is just a container that will one day break and be discarded. We have to keep the glass clean, so the water stays clean because one day the water will evaporate and return to the sky. On that day, you want it to be as pure as the day it fell to the earth.”

  Dan was proud of that analogy, had used it effectively in his preaching.

  Wyatt considered it, looked puzzled, and said hesitantly, “But, Dad, if the stuff that’s making the water dirty is heavier than the water, it won’t evaporate when the water does. It says behind, like a ring around the glass. The water will always be pure.”

  “Well,” Dan said, thinking quickly, “but you’re responsible for the glass, too. You don’t want to leave a ring around it.”

  “But our bodies don’t go to heaven, Dad. What difference does it make if they’re a little dirty when we leave them behind?”

  “It will make a difference on Judgment Day, when you are bodily resurrected from the grave and God calls you to account for how you lived your life, including how you used His gift of your body.”

  It was then his son had stopped and asked the question about whether Dan thought he would go to hell.

  The fading light illuminated Wyatt’s hair and glimmered in eyes that were the same blue as Dan’s. His round, young face was guileless. Behind them, the ocean thudded on the bright shore and children ran laughing along the tide while gulls dove and shrieked in the blue air.

  Dan knew the answer to Wyatt’s question was, yes, if he persisted in his homosexuality, eternal torments awaited him that he could not begin to imagine. Suffering beyond any suffering experienced on Earth. Gruesome, endless, and with no hope for reprieve or even momentary relief. That was the theologically correct response but as he studied the little vein beating anxiously in his son’s throat, the anxiety in Wyatt’s eyes, he simply could not bring himself to say it. He could not bring himself to hurt his son.

  “Dad?” came Wyatt’s worried voice. “Are you all right?”

  “You will have to account to God,” Dan said, finally. “I don’t know for certain what his judgment will be; no one can know that. But I love you and I will always love you.”

  ••••

  Josh was waiting near the entrance of Griffith Park with a blanket slung over his shoulder and a basket made of woven wood in his hand. He wore a loose blue tank top, a faded pair of red shorts, Converse sneakers without socks, and a Dodgers baseball cap. He grinned when he saw me, and I broke into a smile. Larry had once told me, if you’re lucky enough to feel joy, don’t question it, just be grateful. He knew my skeptical and overactive brain could tug at the thread of happiness until I had completely unraveled it and turned it into a problem. At this moment all I felt was simple joy that Josh was in the world. The questions and complications could wait.

  “Hi,” Josh said. “Did you bring the drinks?”

  “The ice chest is in my car. Are we staying here?”

  He shook his head. “Too crowded. There are quieter spots around Crystal Springs Drive. Let’s take your car.”

  “Sure.”

  As I drove us east on Los Feliz, he slipped his hand into mine. I glanced at him. Our bodies pulled together like two magnets, but often I sensed his resistance and thought I knew its reason— that wanting to be sure— so I held back. I was surprised when he pressed our hands together, stroking my palm with his fingertip as if he was sending a message. We talked about his week and mine, and I mentioned that Laura and the other QUEER folk had turned up in court for Judge Byrne’s ruling.

  “They’re doing an action at Grauman’s this afternoon,” he said.

  The famous movie palace had been purchased and renamed Mann’s Chinese Theater, but no one called it by its new name.

  “What kind of action?”

  “You know how in the courtyard there are those cements slabs where movie stars have left their hand and footprints? QUEER is going to cover them up with pink triangles and the names of people who’ve died of AIDS.”

  “Your roommate didn’t conscript you this time?”

  He frowned. “I haven’t seen much of Theo lately, and when I do he’s kind of scary.”

  “Scary how?”

  “He’s really hitting the speed. This meth stuff. He left his pipe out on the coffee table.”

  “Didn’t you say you told him he couldn’t use while he was staying with you?”

  “Yeah, but . . .” He looked at me helplessly. “I can’t kick him out. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “If he’s using drugs in your apartment, it’s time for you to tell him to clear out. You have your own sobriety to think of.”

  Josh sighed. “I know. I will. But I worry about him ending up on the streets.”

  “There are drug programs,” I pointed out. “I could help get him into one.”

  “Park there,” Josh said, directing me to a lot beside a patch of park. “Thanks. I’ll talk to Freddy, and maybe between the two of us we can convince Theo to get some help.”

  I pulled into a parking space. We unloaded our picnic supplies and headed into the park. This side was less crowded. We found a stretch of lawn between two massive oak trees, laid out the blanket, food, and drink, and settled in. We stripped off our shirts and lay on our bellies facing each other, the sun warming our skin.

  “You’re almost as dark as I am,” I said.

  “That’s the nice thing about working nights,” he said. “I can go to the beach during the day and work on my tan. Plus, my family’s Sephardic so we start out a little darker. Our ancestors probably both came from Spain before your Queen Isabella ran us off.”

  “Not my queen,” I said. “She’s the one who started the Spanish invasions that ended up wiping out most of my other ancestors in Mexico.”

  “History is just one long bloodbath, isn’t it, Henry?”

  I breathed in the warm air, the scent of skin. “Well, there’s the official history, the one that gets written down, which is mostly a history of cruelty and destruction and then there’s the unwritten history, the secret history of kindness.”

  He smiled. “If it’s not written down, how do you know about it?”

  “By inference. If humans were only cruel and destructive, we would have gone out of business a long time ago. Therefore, the reason we’ve survived is because the cruelty has been tempered with kindness. It’s not as dramatic and the people involved aren’t usually the ones in charge, so no one bothers to record it. Human history is basically a contest between our better instincts and our worst ones.”

  “Which one will win?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “All I know is you’ve got to choose a side.”

  “You chose kindness.”

  I touched his face with my fingertips. “So did you.”

  He scoffed. “What am I doing that makes the world a better place?”

  “It’s not what you do; it’s who you are. You’re a good person, Josh,” I said, my hand dropping to his chest, the beat of his heart beneath my fingers. “A kind person.”

  He said quietly, “That’s not true. I’m not even an honest person.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He rolled over on his belly, buried his face in his arms, and murmured in a voice so low I almost couldn’t hear him. “I lied when I told you I didn’t get tested.” He raised his head, looked at me, and said, “I did. I’m HIV positive. I couldn’t tell you. I was afraid you’d . . .” His voice trailed off.


  The words should have surprised me, but I’d always suspected the truth about his status. If he really hadn’t been tested, it was because he was pretty sure the test would come back positive— and if he had, and wasn’t telling me because he was positive, I believed he was too honest to conceal it indefinitely.

  I threaded my fingers through his sun-warmed hair and said, “I already told you it doesn’t make any difference in how I feel about you.”

  Abruptly he pulled himself up into a seated position. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I told you I would never lie to you, and I’m not lying now.”

  He shook his head. “You just feel sorry for me.”

  “Oh my God, Josh,” I said impatiently. “Pity is the last thing in the world I feel for you.” I reached out, pressed my hand over his heart and said, “I love you.”

  In a small voice, he asked, “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He took an audible breath, exhaled, and said, “I love you, too.”

  I got to my feet and pulled him up. “Come on then,” I said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to my place.”

  We kissed. His skin felt like summer; his mouth tasted like life.

  ••••

  The late afternoon light filtered into the bedroom through the soft weave of the curtains illuminating the peaks and valleys of the tangled sheets we’d kicked to the bottom of the bed. A most curious thing had occurred when we got into bed; we didn’t have sex. We undressed, we kissed, and naked skin touched naked skin. We looked into each other’s eyes. Some ancients believed eyes emit beams of light and this is how we see, each eye a little sun illuminating the world. Others postulated that eyes are windows into the soul— the lamp of the body— illuminating not what is outside us but what is inside. At that moment, it seemed our eyes were illuminating both. I saw Josh and I felt seen— seen, accepted, accepting as our bodies, cast from the same mold, engaged from foot to forehead so that, for a moment, I could not tell where mine left off and his began.

  “Is it all right if we just hold each other like this for a while?” he asked.