by K. Z. Snow
“I’m not sure I know what godliness is,” said Ashton, endearingly befuddled.
Ed Imhof, another hater of me, leaned into the conversation from the outskirts of the loosely streaming pack. “Try to start dating a good-looking, good-hearted woman too.” He was serious.
“I’ve never been attracted to a female,” Ashton confessed miserably. “Not for a second. I wouldn’t know how to make love to a woman. I’m not even sure I could stomach it.”
His last sentence made me cough out laughter before I could squelch my amusement. Four or five guys looked at me. “Maybe your mentor will clue you in,” I said, trying on a more sober face. “In fact, isn’t there a Joys of Hetero Sex seminar scheduled?”
“Not until next week. I won’t be here next week.” Staring at his feet, Ashton shuffled along for maybe ten more yards before addressing me again. “You’re straight. You’re not an ex-gay who’s in recovery or whatever. Could you help us get a handle on, you know, what to do and how to do it?”
I nearly tripped. Incredulous, I poked five fingertips at my chest. “Me?”
“Yeah,” said Ashton, as if it were the most sensible thing in the world.
“I, uh… no, I don’t think so. Besides, it’s not my place. I’m not here as a participant. I’m certainly not here as any kind of mentor.”
Jude, about two bodies to my right, had been sliding surreptitious glances at Ashton and me every time we spoke. Our interaction seemed to make him uneasy. Or something seemed to.
I didn’t know what he’d been thinking lately, since I’d gone straight to my room after lunch and left him alone. I still had a ton of notes to jot down, information to organize. But I’d sure make a point of dropping in on him later
.
Chapter Eight
THE tour. Well, well. I could feel my muscles expanding as I traipsed with the male herd through the southwest wing of South Lodge, where we got to view a bowling alley and a variety of courts. Basketball, squash, racquetball, handball, volleyball—dicked if I knew. Administrative offices and the Grand Hall, where our mixer dance would be, were in the southeast wing.
Then off we went into the wild green-and-blue yonder, where we viewed the outdoor attractions. The Grand Hall’s exits opened onto a couple of paths that converged about midway down a gently sloping hill. The single promenade led to a gazebo. Not far to the east of the structure was Freedom Lake. As I stood on the manmade beach of the manmade body of water, I thought how apt they were for a camp that turned out manmade men.
Three small shuttle buses then ferried us past a driving range, tennis courts, horseshoe pits, softball diamond, rock wall for climbing, and two multipurpose playing fields.
Hot dang. After all that, I was ready to don a nut cup and grab my own crotch.
What I didn’t see on the facilities tour was just as telling as what I did see. There was no spa or sauna or massage parlor, no exercise room, locker room, or communal shower. Of course not. Such places could invite gawking, unclean thoughts, and quite possibly the dreaded spontaneous boner.
At one point, as we all surveyed the baseball diamond, Ashton murmured at my back, “Crap, I can’t do any of this stuff.”
No bulletin there. The whole setup was obviously designed to stimulate a clean flow of testosterone and encourage the blossoming of masculinity. Ashton Perry had his pageant-walk down, but I couldn’t see him hoisting a bowling ball or swinging a bat.
I felt bad for him and tried to cheer him up. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I don’t think anybody expects you to master these sports. They’re basically just games. So play. The fun is in the trying.”
Ash gave me a grateful smile.
“I can help you with some of them,” said a voice I knew and loved.
Jude had walked up behind us. He darted a glance at me.
For the rest of the tour, he studiously refrained from turning his eyes in my direction. His behavior had begun to scare me a little. I found myself praying, actually praying, however ineptly, that this morning’s counseling session and Hammer-headed class hadn’t started pulling him out of my reach.
We returned to North Lodge for a break before supper. After showering, I again scrambled to pull the raw material for my article into some workable shape. But I couldn’t concentrate. My thoughts were with Jude.
When I finally got around to checking the time, it was too late to pay him a visit.
Within minutes, we were all flowing toward the dining room. I’d made a vow to keep my trap shut and merely listen. The thought of getting ejected from Stronger Wings and leaving Jude behind was enough to make me behave.
Once my group was seated, David Reiker asked Swain if there’d be any discussions of celibacy as an option. David and Franklin Faylon, the champion of “godliness,” seemed to know each other. Maybe they belonged to the same congregation.
The Knuckleheaded Confessor pooh-poohed this path. “Mr. Hammer believes that’s avoiding the issue, not addressing it,” he said. “Besides, it’s unnatural, just like homosexuality is. Swearing off sex deprives a guy of intimacy and fatherhood, which are both part of your ultimate goal.”
Oh fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. I wanted to grab the basket of rolls off the table and smash the whole thing into Swain’s stupid face. Embracing chastity was an alternative for devoutly religious gays. It meant they wouldn’t have to be straitjacketed into a lifelong lie, wouldn’t have to pretend they were something other than what they were. They could accept being gay, and having been created gay, yet refuse to be sexually active. Furthermore, there were gay-friendly churches all over the country.
Alternatives also existed for men who wanted to remain sexually active. Intimacy was entirely possible without violating religious injunctions against sodomy and fellatio. So there sure as shit were solutions other than pretending to be Ward bloody Cleaver.
Gaze fixed on my dinner plate, I kept stabbing at my food and thinking, Damn you, Jude. Damn you.
I’d never before kept my lips sealed for any guy—except, of course, the really ugly or smelly ones.
WEARING the most humble version of my interviewer’s hat, I called on David Reiker that evening, despite the possibility he thought I was evil incarnate. He was wary at first but didn’t shoo me away, and our conversation turned out to be enlightening for both of us.
I realized something about religion and sexuality, and the Stronger Wings ministry, as I talked with David. It was the so-called Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—that were condemnatory of non-heterosexuals. Eastern religions didn’t specifically target us for censure, and pagans surely didn’t give a shit. So the Stronger Wings organization was solidly anchored in monotheism, despite its nonsectarian claims.
Rather than tell David about alternatives to the Stronger Wings way, which could’ve been construed as blatant propagandizing, I slipped in delicate, respectful questions that contained the information: “Had you ever considered…?” “Are you aware of…?” I hoped Reiker would in turn mention these options to Franklin and other like-minded registrants.
I also hoped he wouldn’t yammer about this stuff in front of the wrong people. If Hammer caught wind of my “interference,” he’d catapult my ass right out of here.
I felt wrung out when I got back to my room. Just as I grabbed up the schedule to see what further joys were in store for us, a quiet knock sounded at my door. My nerves went taut. I thought of Jude; I thought of Ev.
It was Ashton who stood there, looking good enough to eat—or at least rim. Curious, I invited him in.
“I thought you might want to interview me,” he said with charming candor.
As it turned out, he just needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t trying to manipulate him.
This beautiful boy didn’t belong at Stronger Wings. It was parental pressure that had driven him into the program, but he was more discombobulated by it than committed to it. I thought he should get the hell out while the getting was good, and I told him so. The t
ension drained out of him as soon as I voiced my opinion.
“I might stay to the end,” he said, “just to keep my folks off my back. It’ll be a lot easier for me now. I guess I just needed someone to tell me I shouldn’t pay attention to this crap.”
“Don’t pay attention to it,” I reiterated, certain he wouldn’t finger me as an instigator.
Beaming, Ash sighed. “I feel better. Now I can spend more time with Samuel and pretend the talking heads”—he waved an arm in front of his face and snapped his fingers—“don’t exist.”
“Samuel Patterson?” I asked, just as Ash put his hand on the doorknob.
“The one and only,” he said brightly.
Samuel Patterson was the only black guy in this bleached place. Maybe ten or twelve years older than Ash, he was a taciturn man with a kind of smoldering yet dignified presence. They were in the same group under the same mentor.
“Are the two of you getting to know each other?” I asked.
Ashton’s grin melted into a coy smile. “Oh yeah.”
I smiled back. Son of a bitch, some attendees did get their gay on in this place. I wanted to applaud.
As the young man swung out the door, someone else sidled past him to enter.
“Hi,” said Jude. “Mind if I came in for a minute?”
“You know I don’t mind.” My voice had gone silky as kitten hair. I rarely sounded like that, but the tone came on naturally as soon as Jude stepped over the threshold.
He hesitated before quietly easing the door closed at his back. “You, um… you’ve been making yourself scarce lately.”
I simply let my eyes take him in. At that moment, I would’ve sworn he was getting more handsome by the day. “Well, you know, they don’t give us a lot of free time. And I do have an article to write.”
I hadn’t popped in at Jude’s room for a while, and I felt insanely flattered, maybe even encouraged, that my absence seemed to bother him.
Jude quickly looked over his shoulder, although there was nothing to see but the plane of the door. “Why was Ash in here?”
“He wondered if I’d be interviewing him. So I interviewed him.” I lifted my recorder. It wasn’t until then I realized I was sitting on the bed, my back against the headboard, the button of my jeans undone. Guess that did look a little fishy. “Actually,” I added, “I think he just wanted to vent. He seems to feel out of place here.”
Jude nodded. Or twitched. I couldn’t tell which. His gaze jumped from my waistline to my outstretched legs and fell to the floor.
“I didn’t take advantage of him,” I said, “if that’s what you’re wondering.”
A blush flared over Jude’s cheekbones. “Did he want you to?”
“I don’t know. But he did compliment me.”
I swung my legs off the bed and stood. Lowering my zipper just enough to show a bit of trail, I tucked in my shirt and resecured the closures. I caught Jude watching me.
He cleared his throat and tried hard to be nonchalant. “Oh yeah? What’d he say?”
“He thinks I’m the yummiest man here and if I were gay I’d get plenty of action.”
Jude uttered a clipped “hm,” scoffing at the observation, and crossed his arms over his chest. “He actually said ‘yummiest’?”
“That’s what he said.” Once I was all buttoned up, I sat on the edge of the bed, my legs spread wide. “What do you think?” I asked with a taunting smirk. “Do you think I’m yummy?”
“What I think is that I’ve never used that word in my life.”
“Nice sidestep.”
Jude held in a smile. “Did you give him advice on how to make love to a woman?”
Cheeky bugger. “What could I possibly tell a diehard bottom?”
“To find a brick house with a strap-on.”
After a second of not believing what I’d just heard, I exploded into laughter. Falling sideways onto the bed, I grabbed a pillow and held it over my face to muffle my tittering, which was spiraling into the upper register. My eyes were watering when I finally sat up again, but I could see Jude grinning.
What a lovely sight.
“Good one,” I choked out.
“You laugh like a frat boy, Misha.”
“Is that another strike against me?”
Jude looked down. His grin shrank.
“Why don’t you have a seat?”
He walked over to the desk, pulled out the wooden chair, and turned it to face the bed.
“How was your first counseling session?” I asked.
The question further sobered him. He shrugged and shook his head. I couldn’t tell what that meant. I also couldn’t tell if Jude looked glum or pissed off or just pensive. His expression had a kind of generic cloudiness that could’ve sprung from any number of sources.
Maybe, I thought, I should cast a wider net and see if that hauled in an answer. “Something on your mind?”
Jude’s features pinched together. “Misha, for God’s sake, don’t get yourself kicked out of here.”
I hadn’t expected to hear that come out of his mouth, and I didn’t know what to make of it. “For God’s sake?” I asked, because I wanted to hear him say, No, for my sake. But like so many of the scenes that played out in my fantasies, it didn’t translate into reality.
“Just don’t,” he said. “Okay?” He flipped me a furtive glance. “FYI, if you don’t start keeping your eyes to yourself, you’ll blow your own cover. No matter how careful you are about what you say.”
My forehead crimped. Now what was he talking about? “I beg your pardon?”
He mumbled something.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“Ashton’s ass.” The words came out as sharply as if Jude had just crunched through a bone. “If you keep staring at it—” He frowned at me. “What are you grinning about?”
“Are you jealous?”
Sighing, Jude rolled his head back. “Oh, come on, Misha. Can’t you put your ego aside for even a minute?”
My amusement faded. I kept watching him, thinking without words how purely unpretentious he was and how much I liked him. Yeah, I could be a very satisfied switcher with Jude. “I put my ego aside,” I said quietly, “the first time I saw you smile.”
Immediately, as if my words hung visibly in the air, Jude closed his eyes. The skin around them puckered slightly.
“Why don’t you want me to get kicked out of here?” I angled toward him. “Tell me, Jude.”
“I wish I knew,” he murmured, then abruptly rose and left the room.
Chapter Nine
ONE day slid into the next, each day informed by a pre-established routine. Breakfast, counseling session, class; lunch, some sports activity, break; supper, group sessions, free time, and sleep.
Of course, I couldn’t attend the counseling sessions, which bugged me no end, and I bypassed some of the sports and classes. That gave me time to do my work, enjoy an occasional swim, and go to my car to make phone calls and check and send e-mails. I’d gotten a number of messages from different guys I’d dated, but none of them particularly interested me. I’d kept my responses short and breezy.
I wedged in interviews when I could, with whom I could. Although each man had his own story, a common thread ran through them all: disaffection with the very core of their beings, which had led to chronic self-reproach.
I quickly realized I couldn’t change the thinking of these guys, certainly not in this environment, and it would’ve been presumptuous and foolhardy of me to try. They were adults, after all. I also realized I had no right to invalidate what some ex-gays felt was their successful adoption of heterosexuality. Kelly, one of the mentors, fully believed in both the wisdom and efficacy of his change. He claimed, quite convincingly, to find his new life supremely satisfying. Who was I to dispute his feelings?
The whole thorny business got me thinking about the nature of human sexuality, how it was sometimes fixed and sometimes fluid. People who managed to switch off their ho
mosexual desires were probably bi—or pan or omni, or whatever the most accurate prefix—from the get go. The more I interacted with the “students” at Stronger Wings, the easier I found it to distinguish strict homos from their more flexible brothers.
I could also tell which attendees were in the greatest danger of being harmed by this experience. They were the guys whose self-esteem had already been seriously eroded by outside forces. If those men failed at purging themselves of same-sex attraction, they’d suffer. They’d suffer so severely, I could barely stand the thought of it.
This whole reeking movement was so senseless. That was my ultimate conclusion. Like water seeking its own level, all the people who’d been sucked into these programs and specious therapies would likely have found their own way, or much more affirming kinds of help, if programs like Stronger Wings didn’t exist. Being hounded by religious dogma or personal prejudice was the last thing they needed.
Why the fuck did so many people despise other people who weren’t exactly like themselves? I’d never understood it. After my stint at Stronger Wings, I understood it even less.
Jude and I continued to spend at least half our free time together. I got the impression he carefully refrained from asking himself why. Grateful for his company, I tried not to proselytize and pressure him. So we just talked about ordinary things—our jobs, our likes and dislikes—and shared anecdotes from our lives.
I found it hard to tell him how accepting my family had always been. My parents and three sisters were easygoing, broadminded people who were willing to give almost anybody the benefit of the doubt. When I mentioned how painless my coming-out had been, I felt as if I were sponging Jude’s psychic lash marks with salt and vinegar. I got off the subject as quickly as possible.
Often, during these talks, we played cards or checkers. Occasionally, we accused each other of cheating. During one match, Jude pitched a checker at me and almost got it in my mouth. Seeing and hearing him laugh again was well worth my narrow escape from a choking incident.
