Sinner's Prayer

by Seth King

  “What do you see when you think of him?”

  “Bright eyes. Total clarity. Happiness.”

  His smile is bigger than ever, lighting its way into his blue eyes. “Go get him, then. But even if he’s gone – which I doubt – look for the gifts he left, and hold on to them. They will hold on to you, too, if you really try. Do you really love him?”

  “He is my life,” I say simply. “Fabian is my life.”

  “Run to him, then. Don’t ever look back. Ever.”

  I lean back against the somewhat uncomfortable wooden pew. Then I let out what is probably the longest breath of my life. I feel like I just ran a marathon while chanting the national anthem. Twice.

  “Am I not helping?” he asks, somewhere between amused and confused.

  “No, ugh, it’s just…I think I already fucked it up. Oh, heavens, listen to me – I’m sorry. We’re in a chapel and I’m sitting here cursing like a Navy man. But I…I did everything wrong. Love was like a disease. I came on too strong and pushed him away at the same time. I was terrified of him and drawn to him and confused by him and in awe of him all at once – I just broke. I don’t even know where the pieces are. I loved loving him, every minute of it, but I hated being at his mercy, too. One wrong look at me, and he could shatter my whole day. Nobody had ever controlled me in that way, and it threw my life into a mess – not to mention that he made me question, for the first real time, the grace of God. And-”

  “Young man?” he asks.

  “Yes?” I respond, and I see by the look on his face that I’m getting ahead of myself.

  “You seem like a wonderful young fellow. I am absolutely sure he will be amenable to a conversation. Don’t waste another second. I know I will see my Richard again, but not in this life. You do have that option, though. Chase him down. You think you have time, but you don’t.”

  I sit back. “You know what? I’ll think about it all. But this thing – I’ll never find it again. Even if I already lost it.”

  “You’ll be fine. Just make sure you take care of yourself. This is so much to process for someone. Tread lightly. And if you ever need to talk,” he says, reaching into his pocket, “feel free to email me. I’m available night and day.”

  “Thanks,” I say, handing him my card I was using on my pastor tour, a card which is useless now.

  “Godspeed,” he smiles.

  “And to you, Father. And to you. Happy New Year.”

  I walk back to the hotel in a daze. Overwhelmed isn’t even the word for what I feel. Near the art university I see a gay female couple, and it unexpectedly brings a tear to my eye. Suddenly I am struck by a somber, and stunning, thought: what if I never love anyone again? What if what I felt with him was a one-time thing? What if, in that car, I destroyed something that can never be replicated? Sometimes I already think the details of his face and voice are fading in my memory – but never the pain. That never fades.

  I turn my phone over and over in my hands, watching the busy streets. New Year’s Eve is about new beginnings. New hope. A new dawn.

  What if I called him? What if I tried to speak to him again? What would I say? How would I apologize? How would I show him I’m trying to change? Would he even respond? Is it too late? Is there still a chance at all? Or is it useless now, and would this hello just be another goodbye?

  Don’t waste another second, I hear inside my head, in the pastor’s head. Run to him. Love always finds a way back in.

  I take out my phone and gather the deepest breath of my life.

  Fabian Blanco

  Okay, I’ll admit it: today I miss Adam.

  The anger fades in and out. Sometimes my mind will take me back to that moment in the car when he denied me to Kinnan, and I’ll be sure I hate him. Sometimes I’ll smell him or think I’ve seen a glimpse of him in a crowd, and my whole body will contract in a pained, panicked attack of grief. Everything in me will long for his touch, his warmth. My bed is so empty. Everything is empty.

  One night, after a few too many beers, I picked up my phone and unblocked his number. I downloaded a free texting app so I’d be able to call him from a random, untraceable number, then I dialed his number in the app, my fingers shaking all the while.

  Before I could hang up, he answered.

  “Hello? …Hello?”

  The sound of his voice hit me like January wind. I wanted to smile and cry at the same time.

  What are you doing? I wanted to ask. What is your December looking like without me? Are you the same? Are you changing? Do you miss me like I miss you? Or was it all just a game?

  But I hung up instead, my fingers shivering and my chest heaving. Then I took a sleeping pill to prevent myself from calling him again, knowing full well that my drunk ass would call just as soon as the nerves faded.

  ~

  I’m having another rough day on New Year’s Eve when my phone vibrates. I unblocked him days ago but he never said anything, so I forgot about it. But tonight, it’s him.

  Just seeing his name makes my heart jump and the rest of the room fade into soft focus. I try to pretend the reaction isn’t from him, but it is. Nothing has changed, regardless of how I try to tell myself to feel.

  Hello, the text says. I’m going to be back in St. Marys for a little tonight. If I asked you to a casual dinner, would you come?

  Adam Venus

  I rush back to St. Marys with new hope breaking on the horizon. His response said only this: Yeah sure, let’s talk. Meet me where we had our second date. 9 pm. And as I get closer, I know exactly what I am approaching: my destiny. Do or die, make or break, this is about to happen. And there will be no going back.

  I don’t know why, but my smile grows with every mile closer I get to home. I think of my mother, and something she’d “left behind,” as that pastor had put it. Her favorite song ever was Something To Talk About, and she’d start singing it whenever I started worrying someone didn’t like me or had said something cruel. “Fuck it,” she’d said once, with typical color. “They’re gonna hate you anyway. Give em’ something to hate.” People like Kinnan, and all the boring, beige people in my old life – I don’t care about them, anyway. Why do I care about their disapproval? At least I had fun giving them something to hate this fall…

  Obviously I don’t have it all figured out yet. In fact, I know less now than I did when I met him those months ago. But that pastor was so right. I do know a few things to be unassailably true in my life now. I love Fabian, but I have to remember that I don’t have to give up my beliefs in order to choose to open myself to him. I will always have my faith, straight down to my marrow, but I can send that faith into whatever God I prefer. Love, heaven, the sky, fate, destiny, grace. Just like Fabian himself always said – God doesn’t just have to mean one thing to me, with one set of rules. The rule I keep ending up at now?

  Rule number one: love. Love with everything you have to give, in every way you know how. The rest will fall into place. I always knew that, but my mom’s death really sent the message home. And Fabian is all of my love. He is everything and all of it, all at once. He is my prayer. Or he was, at least. And nothing could ever be more beautiful, more valuable, than love. In a world that guarantees nothing, he was my perpetual yes. This autumn, I found my God. I found my heaven. I found my Fabian. At the end of it all we were just two humans, of blood and bone and water, who felt what humans were born to feel. Love. There is so much to figure out, so much to unravel, but we can figure it out. With two things inside me – God, and love – I can do anything. I really do think we can get there together, if only he meets me halfway…

  And I know a lot of people will look at me and think I can’t exist, like I can’t have God and gay love in me at the same time. That I can’t be a Christian and happily in love with another man. That a rainbow and a cross belong nowhere near each other. But they are wrong. They are feeding into the wrong parts of God’s word. I know God is real, because of the blessing He gave me of Fabian. Everything else is just no
ise. There is no juxtaposition in accepting love from above, and offering it to a human right next to you – regardless of what gender that human comes packaged in. I am love, I am God, I am anything I want to be. But above all, I am free. The moment you let anyone else decide who you are, you’re already dead. And today, this year, I am deciding.

  Tears run down my face as I turn off at my exit. With Fabian, if only for a fleeting moment, life was elevated to something else. Something greater. Something brighter. And also the fruition of my worst nightmare, too – that somebody really loved me, really wanted me around, really accepted me for what I am. I won’t be able to run and hide anymore. I will have to look at him, eye to eye. Will I be able to do all that, though, without turning away from him like I have three times before?

  I guess all I can do is find out.

  On the deserted feeder road into town, I pass a billboard showing a grotesque photo of an aborted fetus. Above the photo it says, in big black letters, ABORTION IS A SIN. REPENT NOW OR FACE CONSEQUENCES. I smile a bit – oh, Georgia. Never change.

  But it also gets me thinking. Maybe I should pray, too – but this won’t sound like any prayer I’ve ever sent. I’ve got a new prayer now. Everything I was ever taught made me believe that loving another man would be wrong. But loving Fabian didn’t feel like a sin. He felt like sunrise. His beautiful silence when I watched him sleep, the aching tenderness of his touch, the warmth of his body in bed next to mine – I may be a man of the cloth, but his flesh is all I yearn for. And I can’t run from his kaleidoscope love anymore, no matter what it may mean for my future.

  I bow my head a little, still keeping my eyes on the road:

  Father, this is my sinner’s prayer. I must repent, and make a confession, too. I love Fabian Blanco, but I am no longer sorry about it. He is my new salvation, my perpetual sunrise, but that’s not why I’m praying right now. I’m not repenting for falling in love with him. I’m confessing that I don’t care anymore, and repenting for ever letting the world trick me into feeling guilty about it in the first place. Every moment between us confirms that love – the comfort of his silence, the passion of his embrace. And I don’t care about what the Bible says about me anymore. I still love You, but I am going to love You on my own terms now. I was born this way, and I’m not sorry anymore. I’m still Your child, I’m just making a few new rules of my own now.

  Love always, Adam

  ~

  He’s waiting on the outdoor patio at this tiny little country-style restaurant, one of the first places we ever went out together. My chest contracts as I see him, so beautiful in the night. Oh, Fabian. Everything else slows down as he comes into view. It’s felt like a million years and also ten seconds. What I wouldn’t give to do this all over, to go back to that first night and start again…

  “Hi,” I say. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “Of course. Um…sorry about your mom.”

  I feel my legs go weak, and soon I am on my knees. I pretend I am tying my shoes but really I am praying at his feet, where I belong. Seeing him again is making my heart swell and grow – I want to tell him everything, right here and now. You can’t be silent when you were born to be loud. His presence overwhelms me out of nowhere. I want to be everything to this man – I want to be the family he never had, the God he never believed in. I want to become everything he ever needed, and didn’t even know he needed, too. I want to be his only.

  First he looks impassive. Then he smiles, but it doesn’t touch the rest of his face. “Hi. Get up, Adam.”

  I push myself up and finally sit across from him. “So. Hi. How have you been?”

  “Good,” he says, pained. “Okay.”

  He doesn’t ask how I’ve been. I guess I deserved that.

  I try to make some small talk about the weather and the news, anything but the gigantic rainbow elephant in the room. He offers nothing, though, and soon I give up and decide to get down to business.

  “I’m moving,” I say after the server brings us two beers. “To Savannah. Long story, but I came into some money, and…yeah. There’s nothing keeping me here, anyway. Well, besides you.”

  He just stares. “Okay.”

  That’s when my heart breaks. Right there at that table, I feel it break. “Oh. Just thought you might want to know.”

  He gets this guilty look. Soon a smile flickers again, offering me momentary hope. “Well of course I like knowing. That’s great. I figured as much. What will you do there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any of that. But, I came into a little money, and I’ll be fine for a while. For the first time in my life, I want to do nothing. I want to get to know myself.”

  His eyes burn.

  “I’ve been looking at apartments, by the way,” I say soon, hopefully. “I found a two-bedroom one, with a pretty small kitchen, but oh well. Anyway, it’s on the main street of Savannah and you can see everything worth seeing. I think I’ll put a deposit down next month.”

  “Cool,” he nods, still coming off so angry for some reason. Why did he meet me in the first place? Is this my punishment? Did he come here just to watch me beg and squirm? And if so, don’t I deserve it?

  I swallow deeply. “Well, I’m telling you because…well, I was thinking, maybe you’d like to come with me? You don’t work here anymore, both of us are sort of in-between things right now, and…”

  He stares at me for a long time. Soon he sits taller. “No thank you,” he says, his voice cracking a little. “I’ve figured things out. I’ll stay here. Thank you, though.”

  “No?” I ask, my heart breaking again, and he shakes his head. I’m not getting through to him. So I lean closer, unable to hold this in anymore.

  “I love you,” I say. “And you deserved so much more. I love you, Fabian.”

  He looks away. The server comes, sticking around way too long as she describes the special. Both of us turn down any food. When we’re alone again, I clear my throat, unsure if I will even be able to speak. This is happening in a way I never expected, and I am broken.

  “So…that’s it?”

  He swallows so hard, his neck flexes. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter anymore. We probably just can’t go down this road,” he says. “Again, I mean. Look what you did the first time around.”

  “But I’m…I’m different now...”

  He pauses. Then laughs a little. “I mean, I can see that – in some ways, at least. You’re…you’re like a different person.”

  “Yes, yes, I really am! I’ve been reading these books, and talking to this gay man, and…I’m different, Fab. I am.”

  “That’s so great for you.”

  He looks away, and I know this doesn’t matter. He’s too angry. I don’t even know what to say.

  After all this, I just put it all on the line and got rejected by the person I love the most. I can’t believe it. I made a fool of myself because of that pastor. Damn him.

  “So…um, are we about done?” he asks. “I’ve gotta get going.”

  “Yeah. I’ll get the check. You can just go, I guess?”

  And that’s what he does – he gets up and leaves me there, alone.

  ~

  I walk to my car in an absolute daze. He rejected me…he turned me down…he did what I did to him a month ago. But this time it was final. I can feel it everywhere. He’s done.

  I collapse into my car and stare straight forward. My phone rings with a Savannah area code, and I laugh to myself in a sick little way. Because I have nothing else in me to give, no fight to put up, I answer. Life has been so weird lately – I know God is real, but why is he working overtime? Maybe it’s Ed McMahon telling me I won even more money. More money that won’t mean anything to me, because I won’t have anyone to enjoy it with. Because I’m alone, and I’m going to be alone forever because I’m messed up in the head. I’m sure of it.

  “Hi. Adam here.”

  “Hello there,” a smiling voice says, a voice that I instantly recognize. “It was
so nice chatting with you. Forgive me for calling so late, but did I mention to you that All of the Colors is looking to hire a junior priest?”

  Fabian Blanco

  I arrive home and turn on the light, but everything is still so dark. For a moment I just stare ahead at nothing, unable to focus.

  Seeing Adam just now was…ugh. Weird. And hard. And wonderful. And…well, I don’t know. I’m still processing it.

  One second I was angry, the next I wanted to reach out and kiss him. In the beginning all I could see in my head was that last scene in the parking lot, all I could hear was him denying me, betraying me. I wanted him to feel my shame, my humiliation when he looked at me and denied loving me. And so I shut down and rebuffed him, even though just a few months ago, that scene would’ve been all I wanted in the world. How quickly things change…

  I head for my closet, stopping at my shrine to him that he will never know about. I open up my door and stare at his shirt hanging from a peg on my wall, a shirt he left here once and forgot about. I never touched it or washed it because I wanted to smell him on it forever. Then I look at the note he once gave me in a hotel room, all stuffed into a little box under the shirt, along with receipts from our dates to movies and fairs and such. And a matchbook from that one country bar where we danced – he’ll never know I slipped the matches into my pocket so I could remember the night forever. We all hold onto different things from our loves, and I guess I held onto a lot.

  A blonde singer is on TV, shouting and laughing as the giant ball starts lighting up and preparing for the dropping ceremony. I sit back and smile to myself. Seeing him made me so happy. Of course I love him. That was never the problem. Still isn’t. And seeing the disappointment on his face just now – that kind of my broke my heart. I’ll be honest. Maybe that’s why I feel like I got hit by a truck right now – hurting him hurt me. But forgiveness shouldn’t be hard to give. There is no reason to it, no conditions attached. It’s just forgiveness.