I sat down across from him. He reached out to take my hands like he usually did, but I kept mine folded in my lap. He folded his hands in front of him and looked down at the table.
He blew out a long breath. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Kevin. You could start with, ‘Hey honey, did I ever mention that I like to have sex with men?’”
He winced and the tears flowed again like he had sprung a leak.
I softened a bit. “Tell me something that makes this make sense.”
He leaned back and wiped his face with his hands. I gave him a napkin and took a deep breath. “Tell me about when you were ten.”
He shifted from side to side. I could smell his fear as strong as I could smell the oregano, tomato sauce and cheese that still hung in the air.
“You know Momma was the church secretary when I was growing up. During the summer, I begged to go to work with her every day so I could play the piano.” He folded the napkin in small squares. “That’s what I wanted to do all day—play the piano and the organ.”
He stopped and stared at the wall again, his eyes blinking rapidly. I knew him well enough to know to sit there and wait until he was ready to go on.
He finally turned back to face me. “There was this deacon who did things around the church—mowed the grass, cleaned—that kind of stuff. He would listen to me play and tell me how good I was, and how I was going to be rich and famous, and how my music would bless so many people. He said he knew my father wasn’t around and if I ever needed somebody to talk to, I could come to him.” Kevin twisted a sprig of his thick Afro. He had washed out his comb twists when he showered.
“Momma was glad to have a male figure taking an interest in me. I think she felt guilty that my dad wasn’t around. I spent more and more time with Deacon—well, this deacon. He wasn’t that old, so it was like hanging around with a big brother. He took me everywhere—out for pizza, to the movies, the arcade. My mom trusted him.”
Kevin bit his lip. “One weekend, she went on a trip with the missionary board and I went to stay with him. And . . . that’s when it happened for the first time.”
“The first time? It happened more than once?”
Kevin nodded. “He made me promise not to tell. Said if I told, Bishop Walker would be mad at me and wouldn’t let me play the organ or piano anymore. Said my mom would think I was a faggot and put me out, and since homosexuality was a sin, I’d get kicked out of the church. In my ten-year-old mind, that would be losing everything, so I didn’t tell. Momma thought it was strange that I didn’t want to go anywhere with him anymore, but she never asked why.”
Kevin stared at his hands. “I was all messed up after that. I thought I was dirty and bad. I thought God hated me. I had nightmares all the time and started peeing the bed. Momma couldn’t understand what was wrong with me.”
“You never told?”
He shook his head and looked down at the table.
“Kevin, look at me. You never told anybody, not even Bishop Walker?”
He stared straight at me. “No, Monnie, I never told anyone. You’re the first person that’s ever heard this.” Big tears plopped onto the kitchen table.
“Oh, Jesus, Kevin.” Instinctively, I wiped his face. When I realized what I was doing, I drew my hand back.
We sat there, quiet for a few minutes, before he continued. “After that, I lived in a constant state of confusion. A door had been opened that should have never been opened, and I didn’t know how to close it. Can you imagine what it was like to feel feelings I knew it was a sin to feel? I prayed all the time for God to take it away, but it was still there, inside of me. The boys’ locker room after gym class? A nightmare. Boy Scouts sleepover summer camp? A nightmare. And let’s not talk about all-night youth lock-ins at the church.” He rubbed his face and twisted another sprig of hair.
“I met Trey in the tenth grade. His family had just moved to D.C. from Philadelphia. We became friends and then . . . more than friends. He was the only person I could talk to about it because he knew exactly how I felt. Only he didn’t struggle with it. He didn’t have the same issues about it because he didn’t grow up in church. I mean, you know he still had the stigma, but he didn’t have the whole ‘you’re going to hell if you don’t get delivered’ thing on top of it. He even started going to church with me, but it didn’t bother him a bit.”
“What’s Trey’s story? How’d he end up that way?”
“That way?” Kevin flinched. “Not every gay or bisexual man has a ‘story.’ I know that’s what a lot of Christians think. They think we all had this event where something traumatic happened to us and opened the door for the spirit of homosexuality to jump up in us. We were all molested by somebody or grew up without a father or some drama, but that’s not the case. Trey grew up in a normal home with a mother and father. Nobody ever molested him, and he’s gay.”
I shook my head. “But how? Why?”
“Monnie, I don’t know. You think I don’t ask God that every day? Was he born gay? Was I born gay? Is it a demonic spirit? Something in the environment? Family upbringing? Or is it genetic like they’re saying now? I don’t know. All I know is I hate it.”
Kevin’s eyes blazed. “Do you know how it feels to think I’m going to hell for something I have no control over? Think about it. I love God with all my heart. I’ve been saved since the age of five. Find me ten Christians, though, who wouldn’t argue that I’m going straight to the bottom of hell when I die. Find me ten others who wouldn’t have me sat down as the minister of music or kicked out of the church if they knew about my past.”
I nodded because I knew he was right.
“At the end of my senior year, Bishop Walker called me into his office and said he noticed some things he was sure God wasn’t pleased with. He said he knew I’d been struggling for some time, and that it looked like the enemy was winning the fight. He couldn’t even look me in the eye while he talked to me. He said I needed to take some time off from playing and directing the choir and settle the issues. That almost killed me.”
I could imagine. There was nothing Kevin loved more than his music.
“He told the church I was taking a break from the music ministry so I could focus on college. He also announced the church was giving Trey a full scholarship to go to Temple. Trey had planned to go to Howard with me, but his parents wouldn’t let him pass up the money.”
My stomach churned. The thoughts I had forced out of my head after my talk with Bishop Walker resurfaced.
“After my junior year of college, Bishop said he was satisfied the music ministry wouldn’t distract from my studies and put me back over the choir again. He never mentioned me and Trey again, but I knew he was watching to make sure I ‘got it out of my system’.”
“How were you supposed to do that?”
Kevin gave me a wry smile. “Since I wasn’t over the choir, I visited a lot of other churches and went to every conference I could find. If I had a dollar for every prayer line I ever stood in, for everybody who prayed over me and told me God had taken it away—for every time I laid at the altar, crying out to God to make me straight.” He shook his head. “I’d be a very rich man.
“When I was at Howard, I stayed to myself. I didn’t hang around the other musicians because . . . I guess I didn’t hang around many guys at all. I was afraid that even though I had been told I was delivered, it was still there. I didn’t want to give it a chance to rise up again.”
Kevin looked at me with those dramatic, deep-set eyes. “Then I met you. And we became friends, and fell in love, then . . . you know the rest of the story.”
I grabbed his arm to still his fidgeting. He was driving me crazy, folding that snotty napkin over and over. He looked up at me and smiled weakly, his eyes begging me to understand. To love him in spite of.
No way was I letting him off that easy. I got up and put the foil back over the lasagna and put it back in the refrigerator. “What I don’t unde
rstand is why I had to find out the way I did. You know everything there is to know about me. Every secret, every embarrassing moment, my fears, my dreams. I thought I knew the same about you. I thought we trusted each other. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Kevin paused. “If you had known this before, would you still have married me?”
“Well, no. I mean, why would I marry a gay man?”
“Let me ask this, then. Could you marry a man who was ‘delivered’ from the spirit of homosexuality? Everybody tells us, ‘get delivered, trust in the Lord—He can deliver anybody from anything. ’ But really, how many women would marry a man with my past lifestyle?”
“Not many, because they’d be afraid of exactly what happened to me on Saturday happening to them. It would be like marrying an ex-crack addict or a recovering alcoholic. You never know when they might fall off the wagon.”
“So you’re telling me I can’t love a man, but I’ll never find a woman who will marry me?”
“No, well . . . yes, well—”
“So a man who’s homosexual for whatever reason—whether he was born like that or got turned out, or whatever the theory of the day is—if God ‘delivers’ him from homosexuality, he has to spend the rest of his life alone because no woman will have him?”
I didn’t bother to answer.
“Right or wrong, I guess that’s why I didn’t tell you.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I thought I had it beat. It was over. In my past. I would never have married you if I ever thought this would happen. It had been since high school.”
I took Kevin’s dirty plate to the sink, rinsed it off, and then turned to look at him. Thought about things that now made sense. “I thought you never wanted to make love to me because of my weight. You were so affectionate before we got married, but the first time you saw my thunder thighs and dimply butt, you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Monnie, it wasn’t that. I’ve always told you your weight never bothered me.”
“Yeah, but that was until you saw me naked.”
Kevin came over and put his arms around me. “No, Monnie, you’re the most beautiful woman, the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.” He held me like he always did, but it didn’t feel the same. “I’m sorry I ever made you think you weren’t desirable or sexy to me. It wasn’t you . . . I’m sorry I did this to you.”
“Yeah.” I pulled away from him. “Me, too.”
I could tell that hurt him. I always told him I wanted to spend the rest of my life in his arms.
“See, now that you know, you don’t want me to touch you. See—”
“See nothing, Kevin. You know what the real deal is here? You cheated on me. Whether it was with a man or a woman, it was still cheating. The whole gay thing is a separate issue—a huge issue, mind you—but the fact is, you slept with another person while we were married. It would be one thing for me to find out you had been with a man in the past, but you had sex with Trey the day after you had sex with me. In our bed. As sorry as I am for everything that’s happened to you, I can’t get past that.”
“It was only that one time.”
“Only that one time?” I laughed sarcastically. “Oh, in that case I forgive you. Let’s go back to our life like nothing happened and live happily ever after.” I rolled my eyes. “Do you think I can get that picture out of my head? I keep seeing it over and over.”
“I’m sorry, Monica. I never meant for you to walk in and see that.”
“I would hate to think you planned it.”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t know how it happened. One minute we were playing music and horsing around and the next thing I know . . . he started rubbing my back and—”
I screamed and covered my ears. “Do you think I want to hear this? Seeing it was bad enough. Now you want me to relive it?”
He held up his hands, terror in his eyes, no doubt remembering yesterday’s violence. “Sorry. You don’t have to worry. Nothing like that will ever happen again. I promise. Trey will never come over here again.”
“He sure won’t. He won’t have any reason to ’cause you’re about to pack your sh—stuff and get out.” I turned and walked into the family room. Didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when I said that.
“Monica.”
“Get out, Kevin. I don’t want to hear another word.” I sat on the family room couch, pretending to watch a movie while he went upstairs and packed. When he came down with his bag, he walked up and stood over me.
“Monica, I . . .” He looked around the room. “What happened in here?”
“Nothing. Just me letting off a little steam the other day after the . . . incident.”
He tried to sit down beside me, but I stretched out my legs. “Just go, Kevin. Please. And do me a favor. Don’t come back unless I ask you to.”
He started toward the door then turned around to say something. “Monnie—”
I held up my hand. He turned and finished his slow trek to the door. I held my tears until I heard it close behind him.
5
I hardly slept that night. Images of Kevin as a little boy, Kevin and Trey, and Bishop Walker kept floating through my mind. I finally gave up at six in the morning and slipped out of the bed and onto my knees. I tried to pray like I did every morning, but my prayer didn’t come out too good.
God, wasn’t there some point in the two years of me and Kevin being best friends, two years of dating, and two years of marriage when You could have tapped me on my shoulder and mentioned something about my friend, boyfriend, husband being gay? I mean really, God, I talk to You every day. You couldn’t say anything? I prayed before we took our relationship to the next level and before we got married. Was I so head over heels that I couldn’t hear your voice? And if I was, You couldn’t speak to my pastor and tell him we were making a mistake?
I knelt there for a while trying to find the right words to pray, but nothing else came out. I finally decided to get up and get dressed. Thank God I didn’t have to put much effort into finding something nice to wear to work. I took a hot shower, pulled on some scrubs and stepped into my clogs. I wiped the steam off the mirror and stared at my eyes. They needed some work.
I wandered down to the kitchen and tried to use cucumber slices to get rid of the puffy bags. Hopefully, my coworkers wouldn’t notice. If they said so much as a “What’s wrong, Monica?” it would send me into a fit of tears.
I pulled up at the office at eight o’clock. I liked to get to work before everyone else to get the rooms stocked with medical supplies and make sure the charts were ready. I was the only RN on staff and supervised two medical assistants. We also had an office manager, and Anthony was the receptionist. Dr Stewart and a nurse practitioner shared the practice.
The other staff members trickled in slowly.
“Hey, baby, how you doin’? Everything all right?” Odessa, one of the medical assistants, was like everybody’s grandmother. Everybody was “baby” to her. “What’s wrong wit’ yo’ eyes?”
“Allergies acting up, Miss Odessa.” I sniffed.
Tammy, the other medical assistant, stared at me. “Allergies? In the middle of January?”
“Tammy, could you pull the labs off the printer and pull the charts? Dr. Stewart likes to go over test results before she starts seeing patients.” I didn’t have to tell her that because she was always on top of things. I just wanted her to get out of my face.
“Sure, Monica.” She smiled but kept staring at my eyes. I walked over to my desk, determined to ignore her.
Tammy sat at the nurses’ station, flipping through lab results. She sucked her teeth. “Oooooh, girl, look. These kids around here sleeping with everybody and wonder why they always catching something. Here. Put this with the abnormals.” She held out a piece of paper. I scanned the name and looked at the results.
Tammy kept fussing. “Gonorrhea and chlamydia. Girl, I’d kill a man if he gave me a disease. These young girls act like they don’t know nothing ’bou
t condoms. If they . . .”
I stopped hearing her chirpy voice as the thought hit me like a sledgehammer. What if Kevin gave me something? He said he only cheated on me one time, but why should I believe him? Oh my God, I had to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Me, Monica Harris-Day, virgin ’til she got married at the age of twenty-six, pure as the driven snow, champion of abstinence and keeping oneself pure for Jesus.
This was one of those times when being a nurse was not a good thing. All I could think of was the women I had told that their boyfriend, husband, or one-night-stand had given them a disease. I thought about all those times of trying to keep the disgust off my face while assisting Dr. Stewart when she froze genital warts, or swabbed multiple genital ulcers to diagnose herpes.
The worst was the woman a few years back whose unexplained chronic yeast infections were finally explained by an HIV test. She had been married for eleven years and had no idea her husband was bisexual and very promiscuous. She’d probably been infected for years and now was sicker than dirt. Skin and bones, hair thin and falling out, sores and rashes everywhere . . . sick. She stayed with him, too. Took care of her husband until he died of AIDS about a year and a half ago. I wish I would take care of a man who gave me AIDS. If I found so much as a bump on me, Kevin was a dead man.
I looked at my watch. It was almost nine o’clock. We’d be seeing patients soon. Obviously, I couldn’t get Dr. S. to do my STD tests. I was close with my office staff, but I didn’t want them up in my business. I could picture Tammy logging my test results. “Oooooh, girl, look.”
I’d have to go to Planned Parenthood or a free clinic. I would just have to tell Dr. Stewart I needed a couple of hours during lunch to finalize some business. I knew I had missed work Saturday, but my top priority right now was making sure I was disease free.
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