by Greg Herren
A portly bald man in a black suit stepped out onto the pulpit, holding a microphone. “I’d like to encourage everyone to take their seats, please, so the service can get started.”
The murmuring stopped and within a matter of moments everyone in the place was seated in a pew. I was amazed at how quickly and orderly it was accomplished.
I was about to say so to Colin when I caught sight of a familiar-looking head of thick blond hair in one of the front pews.
Father Dan? What the hell was he doing here?
I strained my eyes, trying to make sure it was him—but I couldn’t be certain. The hair color was right, even the shape of the head, but he was almost fifty yards in front of me and I couldn’t be sure unless I saw his face.
Colin pinched me so hard I almost yelped.
“Why did you do that?” I hissed, and he elbowed me in the side, I looked at him, and he was gesturing with his head. I turned and looked in the direction he was staring, to the front of the sanctuary but the opposite side.
My eyes got wide. “Enid?”
“What the hell is she doing here?” he hissed to me without moving his lips. “That is your aunt, isn’t it?”
I nodded. She was standing at the side of the very front pew on the right side, dressed completely in black—a black turtleneck sweater over a knee-length black skirt and black hose. She was wiping at her nose with a handkerchief. As I watched, she sat down.
Enid was a member of the Dove Ministry?
I couldn’t believe it—even though it explained her defense of Tara to Frank the other night.
How—and when—had this happened?
All the Bradleys were Episcopalians—except for our branch of the family. Storm and Rain had converted to Catholicism as teenagers, but Mom and Dad were Wiccans. Papa Bradley was as fervent an Episcopalian as he was conservative politically—he certainly would not approve of his daughter attending services at a megachurch.
But it also might explain just how Jared and Tara had met in the first place.
A group of men and women in purple and white choir robes with gigantic crosses slowly filed in from behind the pulpit and took their places on the risers. An organ began playing solemnly from somewhere—there wasn’t one in sight.
The entire congregation rose in unison. Colin and I scrambled to our feet as another man walked out onto the pulpit and two enormous television screens lowered from the ceiling on either side. Suddenly the man’s face appeared in extreme close-up on both screens.
The Reverend Dick Werner himself.
Werner was a short man and didn’t miss many meals, from the looks of him. He had reddish-brown hair that was balding, and long frizzy reddish sideburns. He wore wire-framed glasses, and on the JumboTrons his dark eyes burned with a frightening intensity.
The headache, which had been subsiding, came back with a roar as he began speaking. “Brothers and sisters! Thank you for coming out for such a solemn, sad occasion as we pay tribute to two of our own, two who have fallen in the battle to save the world for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”
“Amen,” the entire congregation said in unison.
“This is spooky,” Colin whispered to me.
He wasn’t kidding. It was spooky. It was like the entire crowd was trained to say “amen” in unison every time Werner paused for breath.
And he began to speak, talking about how his daughter and Tara were soldiers for Christ, trying to shine a bright light in the darkness created by the Homosexual Agenda. On and on, he ranted, with his audience chanting “amen” in unison as though on cue.
I felt sick, and sicker with every sentence he spoke.
Then he yielded the pulpit to Peggy MacGillicudy herself.
“This is a tragic day in the fight for God’s truth, and preserving the United States of America,” she said into the microphone.
I pushed my way past Colin, out of the pew.
My head felt like it was going to explode.
I managed to make it out into the foyer and into a stall in the men’s room before I threw up.
I washed my face in the sink and rinsed out my mouth with cold water before heading back inside.
But they were singing “Amazing Grace,” and the whole thing was over.
I made my way back to Colin as everyone was standing up. “Come on,” I whispered. “I want to talk to Father Dan.”
He looked at me in shock. “Father Dan’s here?”
I nodded and started pushing my way through the crowd. I spotted his blond head moving to the front of the church—where Enid was standing with another woman I didn’t recognize.
Father Dan grasped the arm of the woman.
She turned and looked at him, her face contorting.
She slapped him across the face and ran up the stairs of the pulpit with Enid at her heels.
Father Dan just stood there, looking after her, not moving as the place emptied of people.
“We need to talk,” I said as I caught up to him.
There was a red handprint on his right cheek. He gave me a sad look. “Okay,” he replied. “But not here.”
Chapter Twelve
The Lovers
The choice between vice and virtue
“Thank you.” Father Dan smiled at the waitress as she put a cup of coffee in front of him. He took a sip. “I’m originally from Kenner, you know. I still have a lot of family out there,” he said after she walked away. “I went to high school with Tara’s mother.”
“You mentioned that the other night,” I replied.
We were seated in a booth at the Chili’s Restaurant on Veterans’ Boulevard in Metairie. Father Dan had told us to follow him when we left the church parking lot, and this was where he’d brought us. It wasn’t very crowded—some of the booths were taken and several people were seated at the bar. We were in a corner by big glass windows that faced the parking lot. It was still raining, but the restaurant was overheated. Our jackets were piled in a corner of the booth, and I’d removed my tie. A waitress walked past us carrying a sizzling plate of fajitas. My stomach growled.
My nausea and headache had magically gone away as soon as I walked out of the Dove Ministry building, and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything besides a piece of crumb cake at Lurleen Rutledge’s, and that felt like it was a million years ago. I took a sip out of my iced tea. I looked down at my menu. I didn’t care how many grams of fat were in it—I was ordering a bacon cheeseburger and fries.
Maybe even chili cheese fries.
He took another sip of his coffee and gave me a sad look. “Well, there was more to it than that, I’m afraid. I didn’t just go to high school with Marilou—I knew her much better than that.”
“You were friends?” I asked.
He shrugged and smiled. “I married her.”
“You performed her marriage ceremony?” Colin said after a moment. I was too stunned to speak. I couldn’t have heard that right.
Dan took another drink of his wine. He looked down at the table. “No, I mean I married her. Stood up in front of God and said the vows with her. Man and wife married.” He swallowed. “Obviously, it was a huge mistake.”
“But I thought—” I spluttered out, but stopped myself from adding you’re gay. I didn’t know that. Sure, Father Dan ministered to the queer community. Sure, I had seen him in gay bars, not wearing his collar. I’d seen him walking around during Southern Decadence without a shirt, in skimpy costumes on Fat Tuesday. But as far as I knew he’d never broken his vow of celibacy. I’d never seen him with his arm around another man, or kissing one. I’d never seen him leave a bar with a guy.
No—even if he was celibate, he still had to be gay.
Father Dan wouldn’t bring his eyes up from the table.
“Do you guys need another minute?” our waitress said, and I almost jumped out of my skin.
“That would be great,” Colin flashed his million-dollar smile at her. “Thank you.”
Father Dan’s face was a deep sha
de of red. “It’s a long story—and you boys probably can’t understand, but things were different back then.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Scotty, you grew up in a very loving and supportive environment. Orleans Parish has always been a lot more accepting of gay men than Jefferson Parish, and you couldn’t have asked for better parents. Colin, I don’t know what your family was like, but I can tell you—I grew up in a family where being gay—where being different—just wasn’t possible.”
So he IS gay, I thought with an inward sigh of relief. I didn’t want to think my Gaydar was that far off.
“I kept praying for God to cure me, ever since I knew I was attracted to boys instead of girls,” he went on. “But he never did—he never took it away from me, no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how many times I begged, no matter how good I was. Our priest—” His voice broke. “Our priest, Father Romano, kept hammering into me that it was a sin, and to read Job—that sometimes God tested us, our faith, and that this was a huge test, and that it was up to me to prove my faith to God.”
“That’s disgusting,” Colin replied. “You can’t pray away the gay.”
Father Dan smiled weakly. “We know that now, Colin—but back then…” His voice trailed off.
“The Dove Ministry preaches that—they even have ex-gay workshops,” I pointed out. “A lot of Christian denominations believe God and prayer can make you straight.”
“Throughout history the word of God has been perverted by men,” Father Dan replied with a sardonic laugh, “to fit their own agendas. I may be a priest, but even I have to admit the Catholic Church has been one of the worst offenders.” He took a deep breath. “But the world was different then—things have changed so much…” He shook his head. “So, I did everything I possibly could to change. I dated girls, tried to not look at other boys with desire. Marilou…I convinced myself I was in love with her.” His voice broke. “What I did to her was unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable…I have never expected her to forgive me, how could she? All I can do is ask God to forgive me, and to give her the peace and understanding to do the same.”
“How could you have married her?” Colin’s voice was low. “That was so selfish.”
“Do you think I’m not aware of that, Colin?” Father Dan’s face flushed. “I am so ashamed of what I did to her. I don’t expect you two to understand…how much I hated myself. How many times I thought about killing myself. When Marilou came into my life…I thought she was a sign from God. I thought God had answered my prayers. She was so beautiful, so sweet and loving…and a good Catholic.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “She’d even considered becoming a nun…I did love her, that wasn’t a lie, you know. But I didn’t love her the way a man should love a woman. I was just a teenager, and I thought…I didn’t know the difference.” He swallowed. “And when I see her now—like tonight, the bitter woman she is now—I did that to her, do you understand me? I’ve lived with that all these years.” He took a deep breath. “I ask God’s forgiveness every day.”
“I’m not trying to be insensitive,” Colin replied, “but I’m trying to understand. How can you have faith when one of the tenets of your religion condemns all gays and lesbians to hell?”
“My faith—I personally don’t believe that, Colin.” A faint smile crossed Father Dan’s face. “The hierarchy of my church does. I just don’t happen to believe that any human is incapable of error. The humans who run my church are capable of error, and are very capable of sin. History shows this, over and over again. Religion is often perverted to justify unspeakable acts and crimes—like war. How can a God who is about love and peace sanction war and wholesale slaughter of His children? He cannot. And I don’t believe that some ambitious old man who plays politics and gets elected to sit on a throne in Rome somehow becomes infallible, that every word from his mouth on doctrine and matters of faith is indisputably correct, that he speaks for God. No one speaks for God.”
“Careful—you’re starting to sound like an Episcopalian,” I said before I could stop myself.
Instead of being offended, Father Dan laughed and the flush faded from his face. “Scotty, you’re incorrigible. But I pray every day for guidance. I question my faith daily. But it’s not for me to understand God’s plan for me. I refuse to believe God would turn His back on His children simply because of their sexual attraction to people of the same sex. A merciful, loving God would not do that. Man, yes. God, no.” He spread his hands. “We are all God’s creations, and my faith requires me to reject the fallibility of God. I do not believe same-sex attraction is Satan tempting us to turn away from God. I know, from my own experience, that I was born this way; so God created me as a gay man. He has a purpose. Rejecting that purpose would be turning my back on Him.”
Our waitress materialized again. She was a pretty girl in her early twenties with brown hair and a round face. Her nametag said Sheila. “You gentlemen ready to order?” she asked, a pad in her hand.
“Nothing for me, but I would like more coffee.” Father Dan smiled at her.
“I want the bacon cheeseburger, medium, and can I get chili cheese fries with it?” My stomach growled again. I hadn’t even looked at my menu, but I ordered a bacon cheeseburger—every place like Chili’s serves a bacon cheeseburger. Colin ordered the same—Father Dan asked for another glass of wine.
“So, yes, I dated Marilou when we were in high school. She was a wonderful girl, really, quite pretty. I could see a lot of Marilou in Tara, actually. Marilou was quite pretty, and she loved life—she just wanted to grab life with both hands and squeeze it dry. And when we—when we”—he swallowed—“when we were together, I got aroused.” He whispered the word, his face flushing again. “So I thought the feelings I had—when I looked at boys—that maybe it was an aberration, just a phase I was going through.”
I bit my lower lip. I remembered thinking the exact same thing when I was a teenager. I remembered wondering if all boys had the same feelings, just didn’t ever talk about them or act on them. I remembered the first time I realized they didn’t—it was horrible to know I wasn’t like the other boys, that my sexual wiring was different. And he was right—I’d been incredibly lucky. My parents had been loving and accepting. They’d been excited about my being gay, rather than being horrified. They’d embraced my sexuality with a vengeance, joining P-FLAG, marching in Pride parades, and openly advocating and working for gay equality.
“After we graduated from high school, we both started going to UNO.” He went on, his voice shaking. “It was at UNO I met a guy who was openly gay, wasn’t ashamed to shout it to the world.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “But you have to remember—AIDS was ravaging the community in those days. There was no treatment. It was a death sentence, every diagnosis meant a horrible death…so little was known! My parents—my church—believed it was God’s judgment on the gays, his terrible wrath on their sin. I was so afraid—I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I got AIDS, but I wanted him, oh, how I wanted him!” His eyes got a faraway look in them. “He was so out and proud—I’d never known such a thing was even possible, you know? He used to wear a pink shirt that said ‘I’m gay, get over it.’ I couldn’t believe anyone could have the courage to wear a shirt like that to school, to risk the abuse that must have come with it, you know what I mean? And I—I slept with him.” He closed his eyes. “We used condoms, of course—but I was still terrified, absolutely terrified, that I’d have to explain to my parents, or to my priest, that I had AIDS. I hated myself so much for doing it, for enjoying it so much. It just felt right, I can’t explain it better than that. It just felt right. Afterward I hated myself for giving into the sin.” He swallowed. “I thought about killing myself, I didn’t think I deserved to live, but I couldn’t go through with it. But the guilt was so horrible. I decided to ask Marilou to marry me…I thought if I married her, you know, that would be the end of it. I thought—but it doesn’t matter what I thought. It was such an incredibly selfish thing to do.”
>
“It really was,” Colin replied in a rather nasty tone. I kicked him under the table. He glared at me.
“I know it was,” Father Dan said. He licked his lips. “I didn’t think of her as a person, someone who had feelings, who deserved to be loved. I just thought of her as a solution to my problem.” He sighed. “I hope someday God can forgive me. Marilou never has, and she never will. I can’t blame her.”
“That was the woman who slapped you at Dove Ministry, I take it?” Colin asked.
He nodded. “Yes, it was. We got married. She was so happy. And all I felt was trapped.”
Oh, no. It came to me in a flash. “You were Tara’s father, weren’t you?” I asked slowly.
He nodded. “God help me, it didn’t take long. After we got married I knew I had made a terrible mistake. But she was so happy—and I didn’t know what to do. I prayed. I prayed a lot for guidance from God—but I sinned.” He hung his head. “I thought”—his face contorted—“I thought it wasn’t cheating, you see. The lies we convince ourselves are truths, so we can justify our own sins! I convinced myself that if I were with another man, it wasn’t really adultery.” He laughed bitterly. “The truth was, it was worse. At least to Marilou, it was. And if I hadn’t been so selfish, so concerned with myself, I would have known that. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Obviously.”
“Here you go, gentlemen!” Our waitress reappeared, placing our burgers down in front of us. I almost moaned with pleasure and my stomach growled so loudly I was afraid everyone in the place could hear it. “Can I get you anything else? More coffee?”
Father Dan nodded at her, and she swept away.
“She found out.” He shook his head. “They always do, you know. I think it’s possible I wanted to be caught—because I was taking some ridiculous risks. I’ll never forget that day as long as I live.” He stared off into space. “Marilou was at work—and so I had him meet me at our apartment. We were in the bed I shared with her. She left work because she didn’t feel well. She found us—in our bed.” He closed his eyes again. “As long as I live I’ll never forget the look on her face. She became hysterical—as she had every right to. Tom pulled on his clothes and got out of there as she screamed at me, hitting me.” He traced a finger along his front teeth. “She broke both of these teeth—she threw an ashtray at me and hit me right in the mouth. And then she left, went home to her parents. She wouldn’t talk to me. She filed for a divorce and refused to ever speak to me again. And she was pregnant.”