by K. Z. Snow
“God, Jude, I’m really sorry.”
I wanted to give him a soothing touch, hold his hand, hold him. But the camp’s damned injunction against physical contact was something Jude took seriously. Besides, he was wary of my motives, and I didn’t want to spook him and lose his trust.
“I’d never step out of line with my kids,” he said fervently, his color rising.
An ache went from my heart to my stomach. “I believe you.”
Jude tried to give me an appreciative smile but couldn’t quite manage it. “What makes that whole incident such a bitter pill is that Chad turned out to be….” He looked away again, his embarrassment almost palpable.
“What?”
“This is really personal stuff, Misha.”
“I have plenty of personal stuff myself,” I said. “So don’t think you’re alone.”
Jude’s fingers locked together more tightly. “He was abusive.”
Outrage and sorrow simultaneously filled me. “What did he do to you?”
“Shoved me around. Slapped me a few times. Threatened to break my hands, my jaw.” He looked out the window. From where he sat, there was nothing to see but a rectangle of dimming sky.
“I really want to hold you,” I said. My voice was shaky and barely audible, but I had to tell him.
My seemingly boundless stash of cynicism must’ve finally run out.
He swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Why? What’s wrong with wanting to hold someone?”
“You know it’s….” Jude stopped himself. He probably assumed I’d blow up at any reference to the camp’s rules. “Here and now,” he went on more gingerly, “under these circumstances, it would be… counterproductive.”
“Counterproductive of what, for God’s sake?” I almost got on the bed with him. Control prevailed, and I merely turned toward it. “Jude, those things you want—you can have them, all of them. Exactly the way you are. I fucking promise you that. None of this shit that’s made you miserable has any bearing whatsoever on your quality as a human being or your potential for happiness. You need to live your own life—for you, according to your perfectly sound standards; not for other people according to their capricious, hateful standards.”
“I haven’t done a very good job of that, Misha.”
“You haven’t even tried. Not really.” I muted the stridency in my voice. “You’ve felt defeated from the start because of your parents. That’s probably why your choice of partners has been crap. You’ve been living a self-fulfilling prophecy: ‘I’m shit; therefore, I deserve shit’.”
My mouth just kept running. Although I knew the message I wanted to get across, I wasn’t sure I was putting it together well enough to make sense. That, however, didn’t stop me. “Don’t, please don’t let this so-called ministry twist you out of shape and then bind you into that shape. Don’t try to deny your true nature and become something and somebody you aren’t meant to be. That’s going to eat you up from the inside out for the rest of your life.”
I wished I could’ve said to him, Come away with me. I’ll help you rediscover joy. But I sure as hell couldn’t do that for someone so utterly convinced joy was beyond his reach. I wasn’t sure I could do it at all, for anybody. Besides, Jude thought I represented gayness at its worst.
Maybe I did.
Maybe I needed him a lot more than he needed me.
The thought jangled my nerves. I’d never expected to start believing I should change.
“Damn it,” I whispered. I grabbed my recorder and got up from the chair.
“Where’re you going?” Jude didn’t exactly sound frantic, but he sounded anxious enough to get my attention.
I didn’t turn to face the bed. I stood with my hands on my hips and looked at the floor. “I should just leave you alone. I hadn’t intended….” Finally, I was at a loss for words.
The bed creaked behind me and made my heartbeat accelerate. I didn’t think for a second Jude would grab me, pull me back there, and engage me in a passionate tangle. And he didn’t.
His hands slid up my back, raising goosebumps on my arms, and then closed over my shoulders. “Thank you, Misha,” he said quietly. His chin moved against the top of my spine; his breath caressed my nape. “You’re welcome to come back.”
As I pivoted toward him, my arms were already rising, preparing for an embrace I’d craved for three years… even if I hadn’t realized I’d craved it. Jude gave me a wistful smile, the kind I imagined a spirit giving a loved one as he departed for the final time. My arms sank back down to my sides.
I left the room. I didn’t know what to expect anymore, from myself or anybody else. I just knew I couldn’t let Jude go.
Maybe he was my source of salvation.
Chapter Seven
HAMMER was keeping an eye on me. Even as I sat in the first class of the week, “From Despair to Hope,” I felt the burn of his scrutiny, although his eyes weren’t even turned in my direction. He might’ve been more than willing to “use” my magazine to spread his word, but I was nevertheless a loose cannon in his very regimented camp.
I sat in the back of the room, paper notebook and recorder at hand, and tried to be inconspicuous. But I wasn’t. Everybody’s awareness of my presence made me stand out like a monster woody in a porn video.
The registrants all knew by now why I was there. Each mentor had clued in his students yesterday evening. Some of the men had an obvious aversion to me; others seemed intrigued.
I realized I’d have to seek out other interview subjects and not concentrate solely on Jude. That would arouse suspicion. He might even be blamed for monopolizing my attention. It was certainly conceivable, since the camp leaders all believed I was straight and knew Jude wasn’t.
Oh, the irony. Jude was the one who quailed from queerness; I was the one who celebrated it.
Beneath my sheep’s clothing, I was the true wolf among the lambs.
Before the class officially got started, I idly scanned the room. What, I wondered, had these men said in their earlier counseling sessions? I didn’t doubt some of them had broken down, and the thought of their pain made me ache with anger-studded sympathy. How had the mentors responded? With some preprogrammed nonsense, probably, but not a single hug, not a single glimmer of genuine understanding or compassion.
It really nettled me to think of Jude baring his soul to Thom fucking Swain. It nettled even more to think of Swain eyeing him up. The mentor had a way of doing that: looking at us as if he were being attentive to what we were saying, yet slyly giving each speaker the once-over.
Jude sat several seats ahead of me in the row to my right. What parts of him I could see—his choppy, directionless hair, his nicely tapered back, one suntanned forearm, and especially the pink dish of his ear—made me want to smile. I couldn’t figure out why his ear affected me that way, until I remembered our encounter in the swimming pool. He’d nuzzled against my face as I’d kissed and lightly tongued the whorls and drawn the lobe between my teeth.
Goddamn, I wanted to do that again. And so much more. Jude had been eager and responsive, and his kisses alone had made me realize I wasn’t making out with some insensitive douche bag who just wanted to lighten his load. Kisses are extremely revealing.
Hammer checked his watch and then moved to the lectern. He’d been having a hushed confab with the mentors. The arm ornament, Catherine, sat in a chair to her husband’s right. The mentors took seats at the back of the room, although none, thank goodness, sat near me. I turned on my recorder and lifted my pen.
The teacher graced his students with a smile. It was a welcoming smile, apparently meant to convey a sunny disposition and charitable spirit, but it lacked the warmth and delightful spontaneity of Jude’s smiles. Hammer beamed like artificial light. Turn it on; switch it off.
“So, guys, how do you like it here so far? The ladies sure know how to clean up after us and put good food in front of us, wouldn’t you say?
”
The men chuckled and murmured in agreement. Score two propaganda points for the ladies. I had a feeling that as the week progressed, more flattering references would be made to the fair sex. A lot more.
Hammer blabbed about women for a couple more minutes, extolling the myriad virtues of sharing our planet and our lives with them. I couldn’t argue. I liked or loved plenty of women. I just didn’t want to get cozy with them, even though Hammer claimed males and females were meant to pair up for all sorts of glorious reasons.
“So you must be wondering,” he said, easing into a segue, “why your own preferences have been skewed away from this beautiful, natural bond, this coupling for which we were tailor made, body and mind, heart and soul.”
I smothered a yawn. To me, the answer was self-evident: some people were born gay or bi. Period, end of class.
Whoops, not so. Many of the men nodded, confirming Ev’s assumption about the confused seas that were their minds. Egged on, he puffed himself up and assumed a polished air of authority.
“My friends, turning to men for sex is a misguided substitute for the father-son closeness you never had. It’s an act of desperation. Perhaps you were raised in a single-parent home. Perhaps your dad was emotionally cold and distant, or away much of the time. Perhaps he was psychologically or physically abusive. He might’ve even been a drunk or a philanderer or a pedophile. It’s also possible that another relative or family friend molested you. Regardless of the scenario, the result was the same: a boy who never enjoyed his father’s loving guidance, moral support, and protection from harm.”
Many of the attendees nodded at one point or another in the course of Ev’s pronouncements. These troubled men were going to be convinced they’d come from shitty homes or suffered sexual abuse even if they hadn’t. I knew I sure as hell hadn’t, and I knew plenty of straight men who had. But the Stronger Wings program seemed designed to reinforce every self-doubt or feeling of dysfunction a gay man had ever had, then assign a specious reason to it, then—poof!—set all to rights.
“What we’ll help you do,” Ev continued, “is rechannel your need for male bonding. It’s a perfectly natural need, but it sometimes manifests in unnatural ways. Once you can start thinking of men as friends, and spending time with them doing things that enrich your masculinity rather than pervert and diminish it, you’ll find a whole new source of satisfaction in that connection. And once your psyche is freed from the slavery that is homosexuality”—at this point, Ev extended an arm toward his wife, who stepped into his loose embrace—“you may just find a whole new appreciation for true femininity.” The couple exchanged fond smiles and a brief, passionless kiss.
A student raised his hand.
Ev nodded and pointed at him. “What’s your question, Carlton?”
Carlton Druger stood and cleared his throat. “How do we… maintain once we’re away from here?”
“Your mentors will help you develop those skills,” Ev assured him. “In a nutshell, you’ll find you can strengthen your new perspective through regular prayer and meditation. You’ll find you can reinforce your new patterns of behavior by living them on a daily basis. In addition, Stronger Wings has a twenty-four-hour support line and, if you’d like, we can pair you up with a ‘brother’ you can turn to in times of weakness.”
Ev began a slow, contemplative stroll back and forth at the head of the class. “I’m not promising this renewal will be easy. You can’t be repaired overnight. Dependence on destructive thoughts and actions can be as hard to overcome as dependence on any drug. Like a recovering addict, you may always be a work in progress. But with relentless cultivation of physical and mental discipline—and someday, God be willing, the unflagging support of a loving wife—you’ll find the personal fulfillment that’s eluded you. And that’s a promise from me, a living example of what you seek to achieve.”
There were a few more questions, a few more facile replies.
By this time, I was seething. Some of these guys, especially the ones whose religious beliefs clashed with their sexuality, were in a fragile state… and a wrenching quandary. They obviously needed some compassionate, practical solutions that ran far deeper than Stronger Wings’ polluted river of judgmentalism.
My arm shot up like the mechanical arm of Inspector Kemp in the movie Young Frankenstein. Looking displeased, Hammer hesitated but finally acknowledged me.
I stood as I addressed him. My voice carried a neutrality I didn’t feel. “Mr. Hammer, how do you counter the American Psychological Association’s repudiation of reparative therapy? And its assertion that same-sex attraction can’t simply be ‘forced’ or ‘trained’ to go away? That, in fact, efforts made toward this end can be very psychologically damaging?”
Ev immediately reddened but kept his superficial cool. “If your research had been thorough,” he said snottily, “you would’ve found that many prominent figures in the field don’t endorse that so-called repudiation. You would’ve found that change is entirely possible. A significant percentage of men and women have successfully transitioned out of homosexuality.”
“What’s your definition of ‘successfully’?” I asked, and knew damned well I was seriously pushing my luck.
I got a haughty smile. “I would say that finding inner peace by shedding an onerous identity constitutes success. I would say that finding a life partner of the opposite sex constitutes success.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you?”
An electronic bell dinged somewhere in the room, startling me. And, possibly, saving my ass. I hoped I didn’t seem jumpy to Hammer. He’d surely take that as a sign of weakness. The guy had a huge capacity for bullying people, which he managed very cleverly to hide. Most of the time.
“Ah, lunch!” he exclaimed, gleefully clapping and rubbing his hands together. He swept an arm through the air, as if scooping up every man in the room. “Come on, fellas, let’s go see what culinary delights the ladies have cooked up for us today!”
The mentors, all wearing matching smiles, waited for their small flocks to gather around them.
Hammer, however, extended a hand in my direction. “Mick, my inquiring friend,” he said with expansive good humor, “come join me for a moment.”
I picked up my things and walked between the rows of adult-size desks. Ev waited until the room had emptied and then closed the door. When he turned to me, he wasn’t the same affable Goodtime Charlie he’d been just moments before.
Impassively, I met his frigid gaze.
“What was that all about?” he asked in a low monotone.
“You mean my questions? That’s part of my job,” I said cavalierly. I was maybe a half-inch taller than he. It gave me an absurd sense of power.
“You need to consider your questions more carefully, Mick.”
“I’m not sure I get your point. Those questions were relevant to—”
His face moved closer to mine. I smelled the mint on his breath, saw the large pores and roseate blotches on the skin of his nose. “You told me to let you know when you’d overstepped your bounds. So I’m letting you know. Don’t try to taint my program with your liberal horseshit, Mr. Tzerko.”
“It wasn’t liberal horseshit, Mr. Hammer. I was simply asking about your reactions to the APA’s findings.”
His nostrils flared. Simultaneously, his eyes narrowed. “Let me put this more bluntly. Don’t fuck with me by asking questions or making comments that undermine this program’s goals. If you do, you’ll lose. Big time. Unless you watch your step, starting now, you won’t just be off this property and out of a story, you’ll be out of a job. Or worse.” He wheeled away, took two steps, wheeled back, and pointed at me. “And don’t even think of trying to influence any of my guests.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked ingenuously.
Hammer had no reply.
ANOTHER weird mealtime. Two of the men were loquacious. Three were withdrawn. Jude fell into the latter group. I answered, with pleasant civility, whatever questions I was a
sked. Nobody brought up the issue I’d raised in class. Nobody would’ve dared.
Funny, but I was developing the ability to read the men’s faces—their eyes, especially. I could tell which guys seemed to resent my presence, and I could tell that dislike extended beyond my immediate group.
I couldn’t fault them for it. These thirty-five men had come here because they desperately wanted to believe in the bizarre miracle promised by Stronger Wings. I’d implied the miracle was a sham, even a dangerous sham. Their attitude toward me may have been a case of blaming the messenger, but I understood.
As we headed back to South Lodge following our post-lunch break, a guy named Ashton Perry posed a question. I’d never had occasion to talk with him; he was in a different mentor group. An adorable, blond young man no older than twenty-one or -two, Ashton was slender, about five-ten, and a teensy bit effeminate. But the pure perfection of his ass couldn’t be concealed by even the cheapest, Chinese-made cargo pants.
Whereas Jude had a great man-ass, Ashton had the quintessential twink-ass. I greatly enjoyed looking at both.
“What are we supposed to do if we can’t stop wanting men?” he asked no one in particular.
“I guess you’re supposed to ignore the desire,” I answered a little too wryly.
Of course I couldn’t say what I wanted to say: You’ll never be able to stop wanting men. You were born gay. The Stronger Wings philosophy is moronic in the extreme, so just fucking ignore it and put that pretty rear of yours to good use.
“Don’t ever act on it,” threw in a middle-aged, tattooed guy named Bret or Bart. I couldn’t remember which it was and didn’t want to peer at his nametag. “Then maybe the wanting will go away.”
“Focus on godliness, cultivating your godliness,” offered Franklin Faylon. He was one of the guys who didn’t seem to like me, maybe because I was part of the secular media. “That’s what I’ve been doing. I hope it will give me the willpower I need to resist temptation.”
