Fire Raiser

by Melanie Rawn

  Slowly, he felt himself begin to change. Hands moved over him, not exploring in the way of a new lover but shaping, polishing, and he responded helplessly as those hands made of his previously ordinary body a work of art. He forgot to remember why all this couldn’t happen. He didn’t feel as if anything were happening at all—nothing new, anyway, nothing that wasn’t true and inevitable and preordained, like middle C and light speed. Not even the most eloquent magic had such power as this man had over him.

  The panic was minor, compared to the grief. Neither interfered with what he did next. Very deliberately, he sought out the marker in his brain that very talented Witches had taught him to find and use. He directed that peculiarity to the amber nestled near his heart and bespelled every stitch Jamey wore with bitter, bone-chilling cold.

  The younger man lurched back. Cam followed him with his eyes, as if trying to memorize the path he would need to take to return to that mouth, those hands. But he needed to forget that there even was such a place as Jamey’s arms. Jamey snagged up the afghan crocheted by Gary’s grandmother and wrapped himself in it. Cam Worked on that, too, casually, instinctively—taking bleak satisfaction in his own expertise. Jamey would tremble and shiver until Cam unWorked the magic.

  This was the only sin his faith acknowledged: doing harm to another. Hurting Jamey was inevitable. Like gravity. Like magic.

  His magic, that could delicately mend a tattered heirloom quilt or subtly deflect raindrops when he’d forgotten to wear his coat—his magic could bind and his magic could repel. He could use it as the opposite of gravity, and he could fend off Jamey as if Jamey was nothing more than inconvenient rain.

  Cam looked him right in his innocent, troubled gray eyes. “Something wrong?”

  He huddled, shivering. “Don’t you feel how cold it is?”

  “Maybe you’re coming down with something. Maybe you ought to go home.” He felt cold, too. Ice water in his veins, wasn’t that the cliché? Holly would kick him into the middle of next week if she found out he’d even thought it. Holly would kick him into the middle of the next millennium if she found out what he’d just done. “Yeah, I think you should go home and we won’t talk about this again.”

  “Cam—” He was still clutching the thick wool to him, all previous experience stubbornly insisting that it could warm him, would warm him, if only he waited long enough. “Cam—please, I don’t know what’s going on—”

  If Cam had his way—and the magic pretty well ensured that he would—Jamey would never know. A glancing thought rescinded the unnatural chill. Jamey caught his breath and let the afghan drop to the floor; Cam saw the colors bunch around expensively scuffed loafers. Instinct made him grab Jamey’s discarded coat and toss it at him. So easy, it was so damned easy—he finished a new spell while the thing was still in the air. Just the lining, just the thin silk within thick wool, so that when Jamey put it on he would feel the revulsion Worked into it. That had been particularly easy: all it took was redirection of what Cam felt about himself. Just the lining, so no one touching Jamey would sense anything; just for an hour, until he got back to his own place fully convinced that all he felt for Cam was disgust. He had only to put the coat on, and feel what Cam wanted him to feel, and he would be gone within minutes.

  But Jamey stood there, fists clenched around his coat, staring at Cam with wide, startled eyes. “I’ve never known anybody as terrified as you are. It’s as if this was the Middle Ages, and the Inquisition would throw you in jail and you’d be burned at the stake like a witch or a heretic—”

  “YOU FREAKED RIGHT THEN and there, didn’t you?” Holly asked.

  “Well, being both a Witch and a heretic—twice over, seeing as how I’m a deviant from the One True Faith of Catholicism and the One True Faith of Heterosexuality—”

  “Stop it.”

  “Yeah,” he said wearily. “Okay. So I took the pilgrimage to Salem a little too seriously right after Mom died. Dad wanted to visit the cousins, and how was he to know a couple of ’em had gotten religion and renounced the ancestors?”

  Thereby scaring a ten-year-old boy half to death. Unlike Holly, Cam descended from several New England lines of Witches. A perceptive if not actually prescient forefather had fled Salem for Virginia a few years before the hysteria of the 1690s. Among those of the Craft, Pocahontas County had always been known as a safe haven.

  Their slow walk while Cam told the story had taken them around to the back of the Inn. A hundred yards or so from the kitchen entrance was a dormitory, windows on both floors blazing as the staff enjoyed a night off. The other buildings—conference rooms, offices, and so on—were dark but for some security floods.

  “Anyway,” Cam said, “that’s pretty much it. We didn’t see each other very often for the rest of the year, and then I got my J.D., and—”

  “What happened to Morgan?”

  “I shoulda known a novelist would want the whole story. If I tell you I ranted some more and that was the end of it, would you even pretend to believe me?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Thought so.”

  Eight

  April 4, 1994

  Dear Cam—

  You will have heard the news about me before you get this. I didn’t want to use anything other than snailmail because I didn’t want you phoning anybody to try and stop me. You can’t. Nobody can.

  It won’t be any surprise to you that I’m gay. I know about you, too. Months of sleeping across a room from each other, and we never said a word about what we really are. Thank you for respecting my privacy. I hope you feel that I respected yours.

  He’d read the letter only twice in the week since receiving it. He had expected Jamey to show up the afternoon that the news came about Morgan, but Gary figured that people were mostly staying away, giving them time to cope. Cam stifled a cynical smile; people stayed away because they didn’t know whether to console him and Gary and Keith as Morgan’s friends and roommates or as his fellow queers and possible lovers.

  I got sick of the game and the pretense, and I told my parents. I should have kept my stupid mouth shut. My father’s world is white, male, straight, patriarchal, Christian, conservative. His wife and children are supposed to do and believe what he tells them, just as he does and believes what the Church tells him (with a ten percent tithe for the privilege, of course). What the Church tells him is that his son is a pervert who is going to hell if he doesn’t get married and have kids and perpetuate the whole sorry tradition. Do you know what he said to me before he took me to this place? Direct quote: “I have beliefs as a Christian and I have rights as a father, and this is the way it’s going to be.”

  So here I am at Straight School—where I’ve been force-fed a gutful of fundamentalism that makes me vomit almost as bad as the chemicals they make me sniff if I get an erection while they’re showing me pictures of naked men. (I’m lucky, I guess, that they don’t use electroshock anymore. Or at least that they didn’t use it on me.) They say that if I have enough faith, if I pray and fast and sing hymns enough, then my homosexuality will go away. It didn’t. It hasn’t. It won’t. So I am a failure. I am a disgrace to my family, a scandal to my Church, a deviant from orthodoxy.

  The three of them played it perfectly. Keith indulged in conspicuous public displays of affection with his girlfriend (and accelerated his planned proposal by several months, leading to rumors of pregnancy that turned out to be untrue). Gary made it known that Rhoda Petrovich had spent the weekend with him through the simple expedient of returning her bra on Monday afternoon at the front desk of the library during her shift (she never spoke to him again, but that was okay—she’d served her purpose). Cam—the only one of them who was gay—was seen with Mariella Marquez at, respectively, a salsa bar, a lecture at the School of Drama, and Sunday mass. He and Mariella had a longstanding understanding: she was his beard when he needed to appear straight, and he did her the same favor when her parents visited from New Jersey (they were willing to gloss over that he
was Irish and Welsh in favor of his Catholicism), which neatly distracted their attention from her Hindu boyfriend.

  I don’t know how much you Catholics know about my Church, but it suffices that the Church is always right, and anyone who disagrees is wrong and therefore evil. Feminists, for example. There’s a really choice Pat Robertson quote: “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” He really wrote that in a 1992 fundraising letter. But I think even the Fundies are finally getting the idea that the ship has sailed on that particular piece of patriarchy. So now the focus is on us. Gays are almost too easy for them, you know? It doesn’t take any effort at all to demonize us. It only takes one word. AIDS.

  My Church says I should find a nice girl, get married, and have lots of babies, and this would cure me. What they mean is that I should lie to this nice girl and pretend that I never had a single thought about men. The only thing worse, as far as I can see, would be to tell her the truth, with the implication that the responsibility for what I am is now on her, to make sure I’m fucked often enough that I won’t want men. If I had a “relapse” it would be because she wasn’t woman enough to keep me from being gay.

  A few envelopes arrived with notes of condolence and checks for helping out with the flowers everyone assumed had been sent. Cam cashed the checks and made an anonymous donation to the campus gay and lesbian alliance.

  My Church says I am evil because of the way I feel love. I am sick because of the way I experience sexual attraction. I am destined for eternal damnation because of what’s inside me that isn’t the same as what’s inside straights. One of the “counselors” here told us poor sick queers that whereas physical death still gives the hope of spiritual resurrection, returning to The Gay Lifestyle (I could hear the capital letters) is spiritual death and there’s no recovery from that. I really wanted to ask him what he thought The Gay Lifestyle is. I really wanted to ask him what The Straight Lifestyle is. Do all straight people behave the same way, believe in the same things, listen to the same music, share the same politics (God, how I wanted to mention the Log Cabin Republicans!), and make love only in the missionary position? But of course I didn’t ask. Mainly because I’m a coward. They’re eager here to provide answers, but they also provide all the questions.

  Cam was in daily expectation of Jamey’s arrival at the apartment. When he finally did come over, Cam let him in, told him Gary and Keith were out for the afternoon, and handed him Morgan’s letter.

  Actually, this place did provide one blessed reassurance: that there are so many just like me. But within my Church—within all Fundamentalist Christian denominations—there are only two alternatives: grim determination to succeed at becoming straight, or grim acceptance that our faith isn’t strong enough to cure us and therefore we must live celibate and solitary lives. I can’t see myself doing either. Did I mention that some of these guys are fifteen or sixteen years old? Did I mention that some of the older guys have been in this “therapy” for years?

  He went about making coffee, unable to face their usual walk down to their usual hangout. Stray glances caught a sudden stiffening of Jamey’s shoulders, a brief tremor of his hand as he read Morgan’s letter.

  Eventually society will accept that we’re just people. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t have the strength to wait for “eventually.” I don’t have the courage to be open about what I am. I can’t face years of being told I’m not believing hard enough. I’ve lost my family and my Church. I’m afraid I’m about to lose my deepest faith in the God of forgiveness and understanding, the God I always knew loved me whatever my doubts and failings. I just want it all to stop.

  You can show this letter to whomever. It won’t matter to me. I have only one thing left to tell you—and it’s not profound or wise, it’s just a hope.

  Live your life, Cam.Morgan

  By the time Jamey placed the pages on the kitchen table—gently, carefully, as if they were some kind of relic—Cam had finished making coffee. He set out mugs and sugar and milk and spoons, slid into the chair opposite Jamey, and waited for the reaction. Jamey really had taught him patience.

  “How did it happen?” he asked at last, head bent over the letter.

  “Couple of silk ties and a ceiling fan.”

  “No, I meant how did it happen that parents could send their own child away to be tortured?” He looked up, his eyes the soft, grieving gray of rain clouds. “They’ll never see how wrong they are, will they?”

  “Probably not.” He leaned back and stared out the small, snow-wrapped window above the kitchen sink.

  “Cam? It doesn’t have to be like that. Not for us.”

  “Don’t you get it? Are you really that naïve? It’s the Age of AIDS. Or, as Pat Buchanan called it, ‘nature’s revenge on homosexuals.’ ”

  “Conservative Christians changed their minds about slavery,” Jamey protested. “And racial segregation, and miscegenation—some have even started acknowledging women’s rights. They can change their minds!”

  “In whose lifetime? Do you really want to be a poster boy for gay rights?”

  Now the eyes turned to steel. “You don’t even want to try.”

  Cam didn’t answer directly. “I have a couple of honorary uncles—and they are a couple. Have been for years and years. Alec is a lawyer with a big firm in New York, and Nicky owns a bookshop specializing in mysteries—you’d love it.” He smiled briefly. “Jamey, what they’ve got is the most they can hope for. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth, either. When I first talked about it with them, they told me that I was so many more things than just gay—”

  Alec’s exact words had been, “You’re a Witch with a talent for textiles, you play Rachmaninoff the way Rachmaninoff always wished he could, you have a good heart and a fine mind and the best dimples since Shirley Temple. You’re lousy at basketball and you can’t shoot pool worth a damn, but you’re a hell of a softball player. You’ll be brilliant at whatever you decide to do after college and law school—but you’ll never be a courtroom lawyer because you never shut up and that drives judges and juries insane. You’re honorable, honest, funny, your family and friends adore you—and oh, by the way, you’re homosexual. Now, what’s your life going to be about?”

  “—but ‘gay’ is all people will ever see,” Jamey finished for him. “I get it, Cam. We’ve had this talk before, remember? You don’t have to write it in words of one syllable or less and shove it in my face.”

  “Words,” he echoed bitterly. “You have no idea of the words—” He jumped up and headed for the bedroom he had shared with Morgan—each knowing exactly what the other was and neither saying a word about it. On the bed nearest the window were the last scatters of Morgan’s clothing, CDs, framed photographs, books. More relics. Cam grabbed a manila envelope stuffed with papers and returned to the kitchen.

  “These came with that letter,” he began, pulling out pamphlets and flyers and slick brochures. “Morgan’s parents made a real project of it, collecting this stuff from every ex-gay organization in the country, doing the research, making sure—”

  “Cam—”

  “Dammit, where’s—yeah, this one. ‘Homosexuality is an unintentionally acquired condition that may have biological, developmental, and psychological causes. It is not a predetermined or unchangeable condition, but one that can be altered.’ It’s caused by a defective bond with good ol’ emotionally distant Dad, which led to incomplete development of masculine identity. We don’t really want to have sex with men, we want the emotional closeness that Dad withheld from us, and by the time we figure this out we’ve hit puberty, which of course means we sexualize everything—hey, what do you want to bet Morgan’s father went into orbit when he found out that according to this theory, he’s the reason his son turned out gay?”

  “Cam. Stop it.�
��

  He ignored Jamey’s quiet command, searching for a particular flyer. “This one—I love this one. It advises work, exercise, and prayer—what, no vitamin supplements?—and says we probably wouldn’t have become gay if we’d had more rough-and-tumble on the playground, and fights with other kids. As we all know, beating the shit out of other people, especially while we’re children, is a well-known method of establishing a really first-rate male identity.”

  “This has nothing to do with us.”

  “Doesn’t it? Don’t you understand how society defines you? Did you know, for instance, that we can’t be faithful? There’s no real meaning in our relationships because we can’t be married, and therefore we can never experience a real commitment, and therefore we have emotional problems because we’re insecure about our lover’s fidelity, which can’t be real faithfulness because we can’t get married and have the relationship sanctioned and protected by law. I’d purely love to know why we get held up as examples of promiscuity when half of all straight marriages end in divorce. How many fathers are thrilled when their sons lose their virginity—and not, I hasten to add, on the wedding night? The more women a man fucks, the more of a man he is. He’s not promiscuous. Oh, no. Just studly.”

  “I’m not listening to any more of this.”

  “Yeah, you are—because I know where you want to take this and this is my only chance to explain to you why it’s never going to happen! Did you know that nobody is actually gay? Where’s the page—it must be here someplace—oh, fuck it, who cares? I can tell you everything it said. We have ‘inappropriate’ attractions which can be overcome with the help of Jesus. But why do the feelings happen in the first place? Well, it can’t be God’s fault, because God doesn’t make mistakes, and homosexuality is definitely a mistake—so queers aren’t queers because God made them that way, but if God makes everything and everybody, then being queer really doesn’t exist! It’s just ‘inappropriate feelings.’ Isn’t that comforting? You’re not really gay, Jamey, neither am I. Nobody is. We’re just confused.”