God Says No

by James Hannaham

  “Isn’t your name Eugene?”

  “Nah.”

  “McCaffrey? From Charleston? Gizzy’s your mama? Had lymphoma? Maybe she passed?”

  He let out a breath that was a laugh and whispered like somebody else might hear. “Who I am don’t matter in particular, do it? If you need Eugene McCartney to get off, that’s cool, I’m Eugene McCartney. Just hurry up and polish my knob, dude. Percy’s got issues. Too much longer and he’ll start howling to beat the band. Now get sucking.”

  While my knees got waterlogged, I remembered the early tutoring sessions when I had been paralyzed in this same position. Scooting forward, I started doing the exact thing I had been so scared of back then. Up and down, like a piston, until my jaw ached and almost got locked in the open position. Of course, I watched myself for signs of excitement, and I was proud to find very little. Soon, I was sure, normal, healthy desires would fill the cavity that homosexuality had hollowed out in me. From there, I patted myself on the back for evening the score with Miquel. Only then did I figure out that I’d left the house with that mission already.

  The meeting came to an end, and I stood up. Lance didn’t pay me any mind as he raised and zipped up his jeans, yanking on his belt loops to adjust himself. But he had stepped into an area of brighter light, and I got to look at him for a good long while.

  “I swear, if you ain’t Euge ...” I breathed, almost frightening myself. “It’s me. It’s ... Gary.” I’d gone almost a year without admitting who I was to anybody. Saying that name frightened me just about as much as it would have to admit my same-sex desires in public. To get his attention, I grabbed his arms and shook him. He curled his hands around and took hold of my wrists. My sadness from before came right back. “Gimme your wallet, Gary,” he said, making it sound like a friendly request.

  I laughed, in part because in my mind, robbing me confirmed that it had to be Euge. But he didn’t move any part of his face.

  “I was your math tutor,” I reminded him.

  Down the hill, Percy took to yowling. He sounded almost like a human child. The sadness in me mixed with disconnection. Though I had shed my secret past, I always felt that it still belonged to me. The blank expression of this man in the dark, pretending to be a stranger, proved that my past could forget me back. Of course, I didn’t think of that then, because at the time I was terrified. Lance shook my hands impatiently. “Fucking gimme your fucking wallet, dude!”

  He let go of my hands so I could pull my billfold out of my pocket. I put it down in his palm. He stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans and tore off down the hill. Something made me want to stop him, to tell him that everything in my wallet was phony except the seventeen dollars inside. If he looked at my ID, he wouldn’t even think that I was his old not-friend-anymore Gary Gray. But before I could catch up with him, he’d untied Percy, wedged the dog under his arm, and run off.

  “Euge!” I called after him. The name, echoing in the empty park, seemed to rattle the night. I tried to chase him, but quickly became short of breath. Could it mean something that I’d lost my fake ID?

  Exhausted but still in a hurry, I exited the park. I thought I should try to cancel my August Valentine credit card before Lance/Euge had the opportunity to use it. Also, I didn’t want anything else to happen that night. Nothing had turned out well all day. Sometimes only a fresh morning can stop a lousy day from stinking.

  On the porch at the apartment, already stunned and ashamed, I realized I didn’t know ifI’d stayed away long enough for the growling Satan to leave. Miquel never took a long time to finish making love. But every pair of partners has a different way of doing their business. Maybe the growler could do a sex marathon, or a tri-sexalon-in the bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen.

  I inched the key into the lock and turned it real carefully. I made sure to open the door so slowly that nobody inside would feel a draft or notice the outside sounds coming in. On tippy-toes, I went back into the apartment and shut the door. I found the cordless phone and took it onto the porch to deal with my bank. I began to think that the theft of my ID by somebody from my past meant God was about to change me back into my old self. But I didn’t feel ready, especially after the incident with the guy in the park.

  When I went back into the apartment, a white light glowed from the kitchen. Mumbling came from the area where we had a card table and some chairs by the window. I heard a calm version of the growling man’s voice describing an episode of The Simpsons. Miquel said “Yeah” and “Uhhuh,” and spoons tinkled against the sides of tumblers.

  As I crossed the living room, I avoided the spot with the loose board that creaked. The linens still covered the sofa. Jealous and disgusted that Miquel would let this guy use our breakfast nook for their after-sex chat, I crouched down and slid onto the sofa in a way that kept them from seeing me. I pulled the thin sheet over my head, but it didn’t block out any sound. I tried the pillow but it made my face hot.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” I heard the gruff voice ask.

  “Um—”

  “‘Cause I saw a bunch of pictures on the dresser of you and some black guy.”

  “Oh, August. He’s ... well...“

  “Bet he’s got a big one. You like that, huh?”

  “No, he doesn’t live up to the myth. I stay with him because he’s fat.”

  “Oh? But I’m not fat. Am I fat?”

  “No, you’re not fat. It just means he won’t leave me.” I couldn’t tell if Miquel meant that or if he said it to make fun of the growling man. By now I should have been able to tell when he was serious. It bothered me a whole bunch that I couldn’t. The growling man laughed, and I hated him as much as I could hate anybody I didn’t know.

  “But you don’t sleep with him, do you? I can tell.”

  “Are you some kind of psychic?”

  “It’s like a pattern with me. You’re the fourth guy I’ve gone home with like that this month,” he said, laughing. “I’m in an open relationship, too. That means you can fuck anyone you want, as long as it ain’t your boyfriend. “

  “Actually I think they call that a hot, open-faced relationship,” Miquel replied.

  “So where is he?”

  “I think he came in, put sheets on the couch, and went out again. More tea?”

  “What? Is he coming back? Is this caffeinated?”

  “Lemon Zinger generally isn’t. He fears confrontation, so probably not for a while. Sugar? And I mean, so do I, but I fear it a lot less than celibacy.”

  “No, thanks. On the sugar and the celibacy.” He guffawed at his own joke.

  Something about the sound of the iced tea gurgling out of our Tupperware jug and splashing over the ice in one of our glasses for him brought me to a state of primal rage. The liguidy sound was like an insult on top of on their horrible chitchat.

  “Miquel!” I shouted. “I’m here!”

  He muttered something obscene, and I heard the sound of him clearing the card table.

  “Hi, Augie,” he said, his voice suddenly sweet. He must have been putting the dishes in the sink. The tap gushed.

  “I’d better go,” the growling man announced. He hurried through the living room to get his clothes from the bedroom. I lifted my head for a second just to see. He was naked, his white back and buttocks glowing in the streetlight even though they were covered with hair. Just like the Devil, he reminded me of a goat. It was hard to imagine Miquel’s taste including men as different as him and me.

  Miquel came and sat on the edge of the sofa, wiping his hands with a dishtowel. His body blocked my view as the growler rushed out of the bedroom and fled through the front door with his shirt still over his head. Miquel said good-bye without looking at the man, finished drying his hands, and folded them in his lap. He talked to me like your mama trying to make everything all right. “It was just this once,” he said, grasping my calves like they were oars and he meant to row them away. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

&
nbsp; “Frosty, you promised.”

  “No, I never promised.”

  “Promise now.”

  He frowned and switched to massaging my calves, pinching each hair and pulling upward gently. “I can’t do that.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” I sighed.

  “What do you mean?”

  I took a breath, thinking I should tell him about the year of free checking. But I knew that because he didn’t believe hardly anything I told him, there wasn’t much of my story that he wouldn’t criticize. There weren’t too many facts in my life then, so I had to hold everything together with a heap of faith. I had always considered faith more important than what’s what, anyhow.

  “I mean, I guess this is okay. We can have an open relationship.”

  “You’re really okay with that?”

  I said yes, knowing that I had pledged never to have sex with Miquel again, and thinking that the point wouldn’t matter in couple of weeks. He kissed me and made a speech to thank me, about the importance of making sacrifices in relationships. First he called them important, then he called them beautiful. As an example, he described the plot of some German play where an army general lets himself get killed in order to save his lover. I nodded, half-listening, dreaming about the day in the near future when I would return to my wife and child as a real man-a heterosexual man-and see their faces light up, delighted to have me back. It would be a real miracle, a resurrection.

  ELEVEN

  June 12, 1993 arrived—the day I thought God would start making me straight. Miquel considered this date our anniversary, because he counted from the night we met. The anniversary I thought of as real had taken place the day before. The slow breakup of our relationship and all the lingering memories of Annie and Cheryl made it hard for me to completely honor the date Miquel thought of as ours to celebrate. I bought him an anniversary gift of a stuffed Hobbes tiger. The night before, he’d told me he’d planned a complicated surprise for me.

  Miquel woke me up that morning from my new place on the couch. He had insisted on taking back his own bedroom. I agreed because I thought it would make my transformation to a straight man easier on him. As soon as I woke, he had me sit up. He blindfolded me so that not even the tiniest sliver of light could get behind the black cloth. I listened to him prepare things in the kitchen. He turned on talk radio so I would have something to listen to.

  I wanted very badly to see if I had any attraction to women, and I was frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to tell yet. For men, attraction has a lot to do with looking. Women’s voices on the radio didn’t arouse me. I imagined sexy women’s bodies attached to the voices, but that didn’t do anything either. Taking off the imaginary women’s clothes in my head wouldn’t have been the Christian thing to do.

  Miquel escorted me outside and into the passenger seat of the car. Since I couldn’t use my eyes, I became more aware of my other senses. I heard far-off traffic, birdcalls, and the wheels of a tricycle creaking down the sidewalk. In the air I sniffed the oniony scent of freshly mowed grass, with pollen and dog poop under it.

  Miquel drove around the neighborhood in a maze-like pattern, trying to confuse me, and then we got on the highway. I had no idea which highway or what direction we were going in. Mostly I thought about how to break all the news that I had for him. First I would say that I liked women, once I made sure that the Lord had taken care of that. Then I would reveal my real name to him. Then I would let him know that I wanted to return to my old life and my real family. It seemed like a lot to confess at one time. I wondered how he would react. He liked old thriller movies where lovers turned out to have secrets, so maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  Miquel talked about celebrity gossip for most of the trip. Liza Minnelli was one of his favorite topics. She had recently had back surgery again. About an hour and a half later, the traffic became stop-and-go, and I could tell we had almost arrived somewhere. The car stopped, and the engine sputtered and shut off. Miquel walked to the other side of the car and guided me through what I reckoned was a parking lot from the strong smell of gas and warm rubber. I wanted to open my eyes to discover I was in Disney World. But I knew we hadn’t driven long enough to get there.

  I had a depressing hunch that Miquel was taking me to Six Flags. He knew I loved amusement parks, but he must have thought that I loved all of them equally, I hated Six Flags. Six Flags didn’t have any cartoon characters of its own, or a history, or a community to go with it. It only had flags—six of them. Its roller coasters didn’t have personalities or fairy tales. Sometimes they were just big, boring corkscrews. You waited for an hour and a half to ride once, forward and backward. Sometimes the ride only lasted a minute. How could Miquel know me and forget how I felt about Six Flags?

  As we arrived at the gate, Miquel told me to stick my fingers in my ears. I didn’t do it all the way. Then he paid my admission. I heard the gatekeepers welcoming people to Six Flags Over Georgia. When we had passed through the gate, he went behind me and slowly undid the knot in the blindfold. The black ribbon fell from my eyes and onto my chest. I masked my unhappiness and non-surprise with a shout of pleasure and wonder. “I had no idea!” I said. Pressing my palms together and raising my eyebrows, I gasped right in his face. I wondered if he could see through my overdone act. But he didn’t even notice how fake it was. From his expression, I could tell he was proud of himself for getting me there without my knowing. With so much news for him at the tip of my tongue, I thought I should keep from spoiling things.

  “What do you want to ride first?” he asked, clasping my shoulder. The excitement in his question made me think that he might want to rekindle everything from the beginning of our relationship. A cloud of dread floated across my day. I loved Miquel. I didn’t want to let him go. It didn’t have anything to do with him being a man or a woman. Sometimes I’d caught myself wishing he were a woman, so I could stay with him and be August Valentine and forget Gary Gray ever existed. These feelings started to pass through me as often and as strongly as the sense that I needed to go back to Annie and Cheryl. Most everybody leads at least two lives, I bet. Generally, folks keep the second one locked up in their head, but without that dream life, you can’t have a future. Me, I mixed them together so much that I couldn’t tell which version of me was truer than the other. But being with a woman came with maturity and acceptance, things I needed pretty badly back then.

  I decided to ride Rolling Thunder first. Rolling Thunder dropped you down, did a loop-the-loop, and came back backward. It had an hour wait. Standing in line, I spent a long time thinking about something that had happened to me in the Magic Kingdom, where Annie and I used to greet all the Disney mascots in the judges’ tent after the parade. We always wanted to be last in line, because we loved the place, and we wanted the little kids and old folks to go ahead of us. Our goal was to get a little extra time with Mickey. The person inside the costume usually doesn’t use his normal voice, but I think they’d hired somebody new to play him, or a substitute. Annie and I got on either side of Mickey to pose for the picture, and before the flash went off, the big cartoon head turned a little toward me, and the fellow inside muttered something. I was caught offguard, so I don’t remember his exact words, but it sounded like “So, we meet again.” I knew I must have fooled around with the man, but who the Sam Hill was in there? I still wonder. In the photo, my face has a shaken, confused look.

  While we waited, Miquel told me a long, gossipy story about Darby, the manager of Over the Rainbow. Miquel told stories about Darby just to make me squirm. Darby was an older gay man who enjoyed the leather community and was always seeking out newer thrills and younger men, or “chicken.” He was tough and hairy. Once a hustler pulled a .22 on him and said it was a stickup, but Darby grabbed his gun hand and squeezed it so hard he almost broke it. Then he took a shotgun from under his bed and said, “Think again, Chickenbutt. I believe I’m robbing you.” He took the hustler’s clothes and gun and wallet, tied him up, and raped him in t
he behind with the handle of a spatula, and made the boy go home naked during a tropical depression. I couldn’t stand hearing Darby stories.

  The whole time, I paid special attention to the ladies nearby. It was a warm day, and people were wearing revealing clothing. The line snaked around a metal guardrail so that you were next to people on either side. A twentyish girl in front of us had on a pink cut-off T-shirt with FORT LAUDERDALE ironed onto the front. The shirt barely contained her breasts—you could almost see the bowls of them peeking out from the bottom of it. The girl wore black tights and high heels. Her hair had been dyed blond and her eyes had dark outlines of mascara around them. She chewed gum without thinking and stood next to her boyfriend with her weight on one hip. She was good looking in a way any normal man would have agreed on.

  I stared hard at her, but that didn’t get me excited. Then I changed my approach. If getting saved and liking women were like sneezing, I thought, maybe the less effort I put into it, the easier it would be. I supposed that after going for a long time without any response to a woman, the process would happen slowly. Maybe she just wasn’t my type. Beyond Annie, I didn’t really know what my taste in women would be, if I had any.

  I looked at a wide variety of women, from teenage girls to grandmothers. But it wasn’t until I spotted a beefy, longhaired man with a handlebar mustache several places behind us that anything stirred my sex drive. The floor dropped out from under me. I lost patience with the Lord’s mysterious ways. He’d promised to straighten me, and now, again, nothing was happening! What was I supposed to do? I wanted to cry with my whole body. The fellow wasn’t even that good looking.

  A few dull coasters and fattening snacks later, Miquel and I walked in on the last half of the dolphin show. The graceful dolphins wiggled their powerful tails, skidding upright across the surface of the water. When that ended, we played Skee-Ball for a while. We pooled our tickets and got a medium-size panda bear. Miquel invented a criminal past for him and gave him the name Sing-Sing. By then we were too exhausted to wait for most of the rides, so we sat and had supper. I had a look at the map as I finished my burger and noticed that the park had a theater in it, so after lunch we strolled across the park and found it, a wooden building nestled in a grove of pine and oak trees.