Sinner's Prayer

by Seth King

  “No, it was honest. And that’s all I deserve. And don’t ever feel sorry for loving anyone again,” he whispers as he plants a kiss on my shoulder. “The words love and sorry should never exist in the same sentence, ever.”

  “God, you are perfect,” I say. “But…another thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Losing my virginity was great. But it didn’t stop my urge.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re gonna do it again.”

  He laughs, then reaches for between my legs. And so we head back to the bedroom, and we do it again.

  And it is better this time, but slower, so it lasts longer. He gets me on all fours, and hits me in a spot I never knew anybody could be hit. Then he arranges me on top of him, facing forward, and the feeling is an ecstatic joy I can’t even describe – it just makes my body smile.

  And then, deep in the night, when both of us are finally drifting off to somewhere close to sleep, my phone pings with the notification that I missed a voicemail earlier in the day.

  Adam Venus

  We’re in the car on the way back to St. Marys. It is dawn. Neither of us can speak, but then again, there’s nothing to say. Nothing at all.

  I’d avoided my phone all day yesterday, because my dad has been trying to call lately and I don’t want to face him. He’s the most closed-minded person in the world, and in light of recent events, I just wasn’t in the mood. So I didn’t notice the voicemail from Covenant for about six hours. The voicemail that meant my life is going to change.

  I can’t believe it’s over. The tour, my time with Fabian, everything. Because my school knows. My school knows I’ve been traveling with one of their employees. They have proof, they have “files,” as they said, and they canceled my last interviews and called me back to “have a talk about my future.” They even got a call from one of the churches where I interviewed – somehow they found out I was engaging in “behavior unbecoming of a man of God.”

  I should’ve known it was too beautiful to last. I’m pissed and mortified and embarrassed, sure, but I’m also angry at myself for being so stupid. I don’t know what I’m heading for, but there’s a good chance my life as I know it is probably over. And the worst thing? Fabian knew, too. He admitted it after the voicemail. And he never said a word. He let all of this happen. He never told me they were on our tail.

  “You could’ve told me,” I say after an eternity as I drive. He blows out some air.

  “Look, there wasn’t a good time-”

  “For you to tell me that my faculty knew I was gay, and was basically following me?”

  “Look,” he says again. “All I knew was that they saw us touching the first day. I had no idea they were building this – this case against you.”

  “Well they were. Yippee!”

  What Kinnan meant by his “proof,” I have no idea. I didn’t even know if they knew we were dating, just that we were getting way too close for a student and a faculty member.

  “Seriously though, Fab,” I say soon. “You knew how sensitive I was about all this in the beginning. Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  He stutters. “I didn’t know what to say. I…was terrified of losing you, and I thought you’d step away right then and there if you knew they were onto you. So I just let it keep happening…”

  “You don’t get it. I could’ve changed, I could’ve hid my tracks better. Kinnan has hated me, despised me, since day one, because I was the only kid to ever challenge him.”

  “None of this matters for me, anyway,” he sighs soon. “I quit.”

  “What?”

  “I quit a few days ago. I never should’ve taken the job in the first place – I was desperate, and I jumped for the first thing I found. But I’ve been researching, and…yikes. These people are zealots, Adam. There are tons of churches and religions that don’t openly discriminate against millions of people. I quit, and I’m washing my hands of the whole thing.”

  “What…what will you do?”

  “I don’t know. Not associate with bigots?”

  “So what do I do?” I ask soon. “I can’t just leave. I won’t graduate. Can I sue them for discrimination, if the worst happens?”

  “They’re probably going to try to go around the gay issue by making it about you associating with an employee, even though we know the real problem.”

  “Great. No options. I’ll have nothing.”

  “I mean, you’ll have me – or you had me.”

  I look over as all the air leaves my lungs. “Had?”

  He takes a long, pained breath. “This is a mess, Adam. A biblical disaster – literally. I don’t know what to do any more than you do. But…”

  “Yes?”

  “If you don’t come to me with all of you, I don’t know if I’ll be able to move forward at all. I’m not strong enough for the halfway anymore.”

  My ears ringing, I park outside Covenant, not really thinking. Before I can say anything else I hear a knock on the car door. I turn as all the feeling leaves my body. It’s Kinnan, with an unknown man in a maintenance outfit beside him. Both of us gasp as he knocks on the window.

  Bump-bump…

  Finally I roll it down a little, and Kinnan looks over at the other guy with him.

  “Is this him?”

  The man just stares.

  “Well, is it?”

  “I don’t know,” he finally tells Kinnan. Kinnan looks back at me, exasperated.

  “Okay, you, then. Is this who you’ve been traveling with? Who is he? Show me ID, please.”

  “Don’t have any on me,” Fabian says hatefully. “I’m not an employee here.”

  “I know you’re not. Not anymore, at least. Who is this, then, Venus?”

  My face goes totally white. I’ve never been so ashamed of myself, but suddenly my tongue is tied.

  “Well?” he asks.

  “Um, he’s…he’s a friend from my baseball league, who was…just leaving, actually.”

  Everything slows down. I can’t believe I said that, but I did. In my periphery I see Fabian’s face go white, and his mouth drop. But I just can’t claim him right now. I don’t know what else to do. In my head I am back in that pew as a child, back listening to how I am going to hell for being what I am. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I can’t do anything else, either. I’m just too afraid. Still. Even after all this…

  Silently, Fabian slides off the seatbelt, gets out of the car, and walks away. This is my third betrayal – and also, probably, my last. I know that already. But I can’t fix it right now. Maybe I can reach him and explain later, after I deal with Covenant first…

  “Fine, then,” Kinnan says, rolling his eyes. “But Venus – you’re coming with me.”

  ~

  I’m led to Kinnan’s office in a blur of activity. I can’t make eye contact with anyone, so I don’t. Finally I hear his voice. “We assume you know why you’ve been called here today?”

  At last I look up, but I just settle my eyes over his shoulder. “I mean…kind of. Yes. Not really. No.”

  “Don’t be flippant with me, young man. We got a call from a woman who had an interesting…encounter while you were on the road, and one thing led to another, and now we’re here.”

  “Okay?”

  He leans in, then exhales. “You know students here at Covenant observe the word of God? And are expected to abide by that word?”

  I swallow. Suddenly I remember the first conversation where Kinnan wanted me to give that speech at winter graduation, and now I know exactly what he was doing – he knew about Fabian, and he was testing me. Goading me. I just didn’t know why. He never wanted me to give a stupid speech in the first place. He just wanted to see me squirm.

  “Okay?” I ask, playing dumb.

  “That includes abiding by the rules of your elders.”

  “And?”

  “And you’ve been fraternizing with the employees, it seems.”

  “He has a name,” I say before he
can stop myself, and his eyes grow.

  “There are explicit rules against this.” He pauses, and it feels loaded with something sinister. “I assume you were his…friend?”

  I inhale. He’s testing me again. He’s pushing buttons, trying to get me to admit more. But how much info does he have? He knows I could raise all kinds of issues if he explicitly says what he wants to say.

  Finally I decide to try to fight back. Right now he’s just dancing around the edges. He hasn’t exactly accused me of anything yet. “So?” I ask. “You can’t kick someone out for making friends with someone of a lowly position. Isn’t that what Jesus did every day?”

  His nostrils flare. “No, we can’t do that. But…we can expel someone for…more.”

  My heart stops. “Okay. What kind of ‘more’ is this?”

  “Maybe you can tell us.”

  I run my tongue over my teeth. “No, I won’t tell you. There’s nothing to tell.”

  I glare at him, and suddenly I am angry. Very angry. Everything I’ve come to dislike lately – narrow-mindedness, piousness, sanctimony – is represented in the man in front of me. How did I ever sit in his class and not just walk out? He hates anyone who isn’t exactly like him. How is that a way to live?

  And obviously I still believe in God. That never changed, and will never change. Kinnan and I just have a different version of Him now. The scary thing about these people isn’t that they believe in God – it’s that they think God believes in them.

  The office manager appears in the side door, trying to catch Kinnan’s attention, but Kinnan shoos her away just as quickly. I swallow and consider my response.

  “Okay, back up,” I say. “We are talking about someone’s private life, and things done on their own time. What does any of that have to do with you?”

  “Well, there’s the thing – if certain things were happening as you were traveling as a representative of Covenant, they weren’t on your own time at all, now were they?”

  “Did I walk into any interviews wearing an I HATE JESUS sign?” I ask, my voice rising. “No? Didn’t think so. Nothing happened when I was around any pastors or anything.”

  “Such attitude,” he breathes soon. “Such anger, and from a Covenant student. Tell me, what would God think?”

  “Hmmm. If there is a God, in the way that we think He exists, at least, I would say He would want us to be happy. All of us. That’s literally all He would want. Anyone who thinks there are any attachments or conditions to that happiness is crazy.”

  He smiles. “Crazy, huh?”

  I meet his eyes, even though he makes me shiver. “Crazy. I mean…what do you gain by spitting all this rabid intolerance? I know what you’re getting at, here, and I’m not going to play this game with you. Say a nice woman out there in Missouri or somewhere decides to marry her partner. What in the world does that have to do with you? What do you have to gain by preaching hate at something that has no effect on your life whatsoever?”

  He just stares. I’ve been holding in these things for so long, they’re just spilling out – I can’t control it anymore.

  “Furthermore, the underlying theme of the Bible is one of brotherhood and love and acceptance. Besides a few quotes here or there, how is this even something worth focusing on, when most of His message centers on loving humans like you’d want yourself loved?”

  “But-”

  I sit taller and cut him off, the fire of Fabian alive within me, baptizing me. “No, I want to know, like, I legitimately want to know. Tell me one reason right now why their lives have anything to do with you.”

  He waits. Finally he smiles again, but it feels like a slap in the face. “Son, we’ll all have to stand before Him one day and tell Him that we did everything we could to save sinners while we could. This is my duty.”

  “So you’re saving them by telling them that everything about them is wrong, and driving them away from any chance of salvation? ‘Oh, sorry, your ship sunk – instead of a lifeboat, here’s a kite. Good luck!’ Come on. That will do nothing for them.”

  “Like I said, we’ll all have to atone one day. Sounds like you’ll have quite a lot to atone for, actually. Where did you go out and get this new attitude, anyway? Seems like you’ve swallowed the lie that all of us Christians are bigots.”

  “I didn’t say that. Many of the best people I know are Christians. I just said you were a bigot.”

  His assistant in the corner gasps. Kinnan dismisses her. “Don’t mind him, he’s just been brainwashed. Disillusioned.”

  “Oh, I’m disillusioned, you got that right,” I say snidely. “But not by the world. By people like you. If your eyesight was any narrower you’d trip over your own feet.”

  A long silence follows. Then he gets this almost whimsical look. “I knew a young man like you once. Reckless. Impulsive. You can guess where it made him end up.”

  “You know what I think?” I ask soon. “I think you were a man like me once.”

  He’s taken aback, but he tries to regain control. I can see I’ve hit a deep nerve. “Excuse me?”

  “You were free once. But you got locked into the matrix, you let the world turn you into a zombie, and you let yourself die inside. You’ve resented me from day one because you see in me the thing you could never find in yourself. I’m brave enough to think for myself, to make my own rules, to live in my own way, and you’re jealous and you hate it. You have since day one. And-”

  “Show him the pictures, Mr. Morales,” he barks at the maintenance manager, whom I’d totally forgotten about. I glance over at him, and he’s just looking at me with the weirdest look on his face. He almost looks – torn.

  “Mr. Morales?” Kinnan asks. “The files? You said you had proof of their – activities.”

  We exchange a moment of eye contact, and I see the most unexpected of things – compassion. He feels bad for me. I can just feel it.

  Morales glances away, but in the split-second before that, I can almost swear, swear that I see him wink at me.

  “Oh, don’t you remember?” he asks Kinnan. “My laptop got wiped in that power surge from the storm last week.”

  “Huh?” Kinnan asks, unmoved. “The files. Show them on your phone. Now.”

  Did Morales just wink again?

  “I told you, there are no files, sir! Everything I had was lost. You think the wife is going to be happy when I come home with no monthly budget to show her? Just an empty spreadsheet?”

  Kinnan grips the tabletop so hard, his knuckles go white. “Get out of my office,” he tells me calmly but acidly. If eyes were as incendiary as they looked, I would be burning.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Sit outside until we can determine your fate. Someone will come talk to you after we deliberate. Thank you.”

  “But-”

  “I said, thank you.”

  ~

  I sit for ten, then twenty minutes. My life is over. The pastor thing is out the door, but beyond that, I’m not going to get my degree. They’re kicking me out. This was all a waste of time. Well, besides Fabian.

  Just thinking of him now makes my heart twitch. But will we even be able to make it through what I just did?

  Finally Kinnan comes back out, grim-faced and a little ashen. I’ve grown desperate, I don’t want the past few years of my life to have meant nothing, so I start bargaining.

  “Look, I need to apologize. I meant everything I said, but…maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so heated. Everyone’s different, and-”

  “That’s not it,” he says, a bizarre look on his face. “All of that is on hold.”

  “What?”

  “Um. Look, Adam, uh, the faculty got a call while we were in that meeting, and they took a message. That’s why Carol kept trying to interrupt us. But…after reading it, we’ve put everything on hold. We think you might want to read this. Your family has been trying to reach you, but after they couldn’t, the hospital contacted us directly. I’m…sorry. I – yeah. Here.”

&nb
sp; He hands me a correspondence sheet and then walks away. And when I read the message, I stop breathing, stop moving, stop functioning at all.

  The first thing I do, as if by instinct, is to call Fabian.

  “Look,” he answers just before it goes to voicemail, “don’t just think-”

  “My mom’s on life support, and they’re calling me to the hospital,” I tell him with a hollow voice. “That’s why my dad has been trying to reach me this week. I’m sorry I called. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Adam Venus

  So, confession time: my mother is not dead, like I let Fabian believe all this time. She never died. She just left me, then cut me off. And that’s probably why I went so deeply into religion in the first place.

  As I speed past the Georgia countryside toward Georgia Regional Hospital, the guilt nags at me. I know I’ve let this lie run my whole life, but the truth was worse. My mom was just an alcoholic who didn’t want me.

  Her marriage with my dad went off the rails, and then she did, too. She said she wanted “freedom,” but freedom meant something else to her. She moved in with a man named Butch and aged ten years in what seemed like a few months. Soon I could barely stand to look at her, because of what she was becoming. Or what she wasn’t becoming, actually. She ran her own life into the ground. Cigarettes, booze, drugs, whatever. Because of her outbursts, I was not even allowed to see her. She made no effort, anyway. Not even after I grew up. She does not care about me. I’m almost glad I got the call before she got too bad, though. I’ll get to have some closure, some moment where I can finally ask her why she did what she did. Why she didn’t want me.

  Looking back, that’s probably why I evaporated so fully into the acceptance promised by God – if Mommy didn’t want me around, surely He did. He offered me acceptance I’d never felt from her, and certainly not from my well-meaning but distant father. So the church became my family – until it just rejected me, just like everyone else in the world…

  As soon I called Fabian, he agreed to come to my house one last time as I packed. But he was still so removed, so aloof – so angry. Was he there just out of obligation? How had his attitude changed so suddenly? I know I rejected him, but come on.