God Says No

by James Hannaham

  My nightly conversations with Annie changed. She agreed with me that if I went to Atlanta, we could transition more smoothly into being together again. She would visit and I would go to Orlando some weekends. By that time I had almost spent more time trying to rebuild our relationship than I had living with my wife and child. To outsiders it probably sounded like betting our life savings on a dead greyhound. Annie confided in me that many of her friends couldn’t believe she’d stayed strong for such a long time, or that I would return to her and Cheryl as a heterosexual family man.

  “I have changed,” I told her. “A whole lot. I know the rules of football now.”

  “Cheryl will be so happy. Gary, are you sure this is working?”

  “I thought you believed that Jesus could make it happen,” I countered.

  “Of course I do ... but ... “

  “But nothing. You’re not going to be able to keep me off you when I get back.”

  Annie chuckled. ‘‘I’ve waited so long for that to happen.”

  “I promise I won’t disappoint you,” I said. “End zone. Completion. Touchdown. “

  FOURTEEN

  When I envisioned our struggle then, I thought of it as a battle between twelve men-like the disciples-and a hoard of evil impulses, numerous as Philistines. As a leader in the Men’s Group and in Masculinity Repair, I helped reinforce the idea that the war against homosexual desire was never-ending among my peers every day. We told each other that there would be times when we slipped, and we had to learn to forgive ourselves, repent, and move on in the knowledge that God loved us and was rooting for us to triumph over our problem. In shame we confessed our lustful feelings, then joined hands and embraced each other to combat them.

  But when I think about Resurrection now, I remember that at the same time I was having a weird experience with the dandruff shampoo Head & Shoulders. During my first two months at the center, I started to grow my hair out because of the house rules against too-short hair. My scalp got itchier than a rattlesnake in a dryer. I used that shampoo because its famous advertisements say that it is the best at stopping dandruff. As I used the product, I didn’t see a decrease in the amount of dandruff. I saw an increase. Tiny white specks appeared all over my clothes. People brushed them off for me, and that made me more ashamed. I poked into my hair while looking in the mirror and saw the flaky skin all over my scalp.

  Thinking that I hadn’t used enough shampoo, I lathered extra amounts of the creamy blue goop into my hair during showers, but nothing changed. By the end of the month, I was filling my entire palm with Head & Shoulders and working it around furiously during each shampooing. I lathered, rinsed, and repeated several times during every shower. But still my head itched all day and I couldn’t concentrate when I spoke to anybody, because I thought they were just gawking at the snowstorm on my head.

  I finished two bottles of the product and was about to request a third, but as I filled out the slip and gave it to Gay, I mentioned that it didn’t seem like the shampoo was doing its job right.

  “It creates a seal over the scalp,” Gay said matter-of-factly.

  “And the seal is what flakes off as dandruff?”

  “Dh-huh.”

  In Gay’s view, the makers of the product understood that the people who used it would be the same folks who worried most about dandruff. The advertisements targeted those people. The product made the problem seem worse, so that the worried people would worry more and buy more.

  “Really? That’s awful sneaky of the Head & Shoulders people,” I remarked.

  “We’ve all got to eat,” she said, leaning over the request form with her pen held up.

  Even though I didn’t like it when the shampoo company did it, I wonder now if everybody at Resurrection Ministries lived under the philosophy of We’ve All Got to Eat. Many of the men I counseled became involved in a cycle of sin and forgiveness after sin and forgiveness that kept them emotionally dependent on the center. But as long as they confessed their thoughts and deeds, pledged their commitment to getting better, and didn’t fall too hard, nobody could doubt the goodness of the program.

  But it seems like we were only fooling ourselves when I look back. I truly enjoyed my job as assistant counselor to the men and women at Resurrection. I believed Bill when he said that the journey to heterosexuality was “a twisted path that never ends and never becomes totally straight.” But even as I became more involved in the administration of the program, and a role model to my peers, my resistance to my own homosexual desires started to ebb. Nicky’s attitude kept affecting me as I tried to counsel my brothers-the enormity of our burden weakened my will, though I loved everyone of my fellow strugglers, and it hurt to think that even one wouldn’t make it. But back in November, Tom, the smaller version of me with the double chin, had slipped badly.

  Gay was on her way home at night during quiet time and saw him coming out of a local park where everybody knew men had sex at night. Tom denied it at first, saying he’d just gone in to relieve himself, but then he broke down. The moment Gay realized he was out of phase, she burst into tears. She cried the next day, too, when she told us that she had to separate him from the program. We all did. We tried to bargain with Gay because everybody wanted Tom to make it, but he’d gone too far. We got to see him one last time, and gave him presents of Bibles and books and neckties. I still get choked up when I think of that night. Tom wept through the whole thing and we did, too, because we couldn’t help him anymore. Even though I grieved, I saw his banishment as a warning.

  The one thing that could tumble my whole house of cards was if I had any trouble with Nicky. Nicky stayed committed to the idea of healing his sexuality, sex addiction, and chemical dependency. But he was very willful, as we said in Group. He listened to the lessons of the program and could recite the rules by heart, but he could never put them to work in his life, no matter how hard he tried. He violated the rules without meaning to. Bernard warned Bill that Nicky had sort of propositioned him, and Bill threatened to kick my roomie out. The threats became routine. Then, right after Tom got kicked out, Dwayne caught Nicky masturbating into a toilet and Bill put him on probation. And even after that, I discovered a ragged copy of Exercise for Men Only under his bed and he pretended that he hadn’t touched himself while looking at the images.

  “It’s a workout magazine,” he whined.

  “You don’t work out.”

  “Sure I do, when I’m on the outside. At least once a month. That’s more than you.”

  I was hurt, so I ended the conversation.

  Ever since the day when I helped him improve his batting stance, Nicky had started seeking me out. Because I had violated his personal space that day and he had kept it secret, I felt an extra duty to help him in his struggle. But I couldn’t be anywhere near him, because I wanted him so bad and I knew he couldn’t control himself. Nicky was like a cream pie set on a plate in front of me during a strict diet.

  Keith and I often held informal group prayer or Bible study sessions in my room after the evening meeting. That was one strategy for staying accountable with Nicky in the room. Nicky usually hung around, but he didn’t always join in, and even when he did, he seemed distracted. Keeping Dr. Soffione’s ideas in mind, I let myself experience my attraction to him-up to a point. But every night when I was alone with Nicky, I took deeper breaths, thought of unappealing things, and tried to keep a comfortable distance. My desire for him didn’t decrease one bit. I might as well have tried to catch a hurricane in a toy bucket.

  One night, Nicky, Keith, George, and I sat on my bed discussing Sodom and Gomorrah. We nibbled on sugar cookies and sipped lemonade. I deliberately sat across the circle from Nicky and didn’t address him unless it was necessary. His presence always threw me off, no matter how much I thought of Christ. I swear, sometimes I could feel that boy’s body heat clear across the room.

  We all had to wear clothing that didn’t invite temptation or promote false images, but Nicky would leave the top bu
tton of his polo shirt undone. That would expose the top of his chest, a little hair, and his beautifully shaped collarbone. Khaki pants didn’t look sexy on most people, but Nicky’s fit against the backs of his thighs and curved out around the pockets to suggest the firm backside I had followed into temptation before.

  That night he had on a royal blue shirt that accented his chest muscles just a little; he could get away with wearing it. Though it was the right length, it kept creeping up his torso. “Darned thing shrunk in the wash,” he explained, tugging it down to calm our disapproval. Between tugs, he exposed the patch of hair that led from his stomach into his pants. When he bent down to tie his shoes, his boxer shorts puffed out of his pants and he showed off the bony knobs running down his back.

  Nicky seemed to enjoy knowing that others lusted after him, especially me. Could be he thought of me as a safe person to flirt with because my size and color made me seem not sexual, like a big Aunt Jemima. Since he knew that I liked him, it probably confused him that I refused to pay attention to him anymore, and that made him want to provoke me more. Or perhaps he really wanted fellowship, and he only knew how to befriend other men by seducing them. Many of us who had spent time in the gay lifestyle had that problem. Nicky had admitted as much in Group Share. Worst of all, I didn’t know if any of these theories worked or if I was just perverting his intentions in my own mind.

  We had just read Genesis 19:5, where the Sodomites keep asking about Lot’s houseguests, and the translation of the verb to know had come up. Keith twisted his pink mouth to one side of his milk-chocolate face. “It means ‘have relations with,’ right? So this is a passage about the abominations of Sodom, isn’t it? They want the men to come out so they can you-know-what them in the you-know-where.” He chuckled nervously at having to describe the act. “So this is against homosexuality.”

  “That’s right, Keith,” said George. Keith spoke up more and often tried to be funny when George was around. I still didn’t know what to make of our extended hug, so I tried to ignore it or excuse it as the healthy kind of male affection. We had to avoid all types of emotional dependency.

  Nicky raised his hand. “But are they gay?”

  “What do you mean, are they gay? They’re blasting each other in the seat!” Keith fired back. He and George belly-laughed.

  “Pipe down, pipe down,” I said.

  “Urn, when I was a hustler in Chicago-” he began. Keith shot me a look to say, “Oh brother.” He often teased Nicky behind his back because many of his shared comments began with those words. Also, Keith had race issues that were much stronger than any I’d ever had. “A lot of them guys didn’t think it made you gay to be on top, giving it, y’know,” The three of us turned to him in shock. George pulled in his chubby cheeks and it made him look like a squirrel who’d just sucked a lemon. “I’m just saying! Can’t I say that? Maybe this part ain’t about gays being bad people. I mean, there are plenty of other things that do say that, but maybe this ain’t one of ‘em.”

  George closed his Bible with his finger to keep his place and cocked his head. A good education and coming from money had taught him ways of cutting people down using only the accuracy of the facts. His dislike for Nicky came from thinking the kid was ignorant and poor, and that maybe one had caused the other.

  “Well ..” he said. Keith and I knew a zinger was coming. “God doesn’t make a distinction between homosexual acts and so-called homosexual identity. For Him, homosexuals don’t exist, just homosexual acts. Engaging in sodomy makes you a sodomite. That’s all there is to it. The Bible doesn’t say anything about lesbianism per se, but it doesn’t have to-we can extrapolate the moral wrongness of lesbianism from what God thinks about male homosexuali ty.”

  Nicky wasn’t satisfied. “But what if a guy falls in love with a guy, but nothing sinful happens between them, and he never says nothing ‘bout it? Is that a homosexual act? Do falling in love make you a sodomite?”

  Keith jumped in. “Impure thoughts are the root of the problem,” he explained, in a rote voice that suggested he knew Nicky had heard this concept many times before. “You’re both males, and even when you do succumb to those desires, it isn’t real, functional love. Remember, homosexuality is something you do, not someone you are. Lusting in your heart is almost as bad as committing the sin, because it’s a gateway. Satan is tempting you.” We always repeated these founding principles of Resurrection during any group discussion. “That’s what George basically said.”

  “I guess I’m still struggling. I mean, what about things that ain’t homosexual? What if God didn’t want ballplayers and I had the urge to play ball real bad? Like, I thought about it all the time and snuck out to learn the rules and play ball, and got so good at it that the major leagues picked me up and I went to the World Series. That’s Satan telling me to be a ballplayer, and it ain’t part of who I am? Even though I wanted to do it, like I agreed with Satan about doing it?

  “Because Satan wants folks to do worse stuff than play ball, right? He wants us to kill each other and steal and lie and party all the time. But he don’t go after people who can’t play ball and try to tempt them into doing it, do he? He goes after people who already want to kill other people and says ‘Kill! Kill!’ Like, if Satan came to me and whispered, ‘Hey, Nicky, take this here baseball bat, go out to the pitcher’s mound, and knock it out of the park,’ I’d be like, ‘You’re crazy!’ I wouldn’t do it in a million years! So Satan goes with your weakness, but where do that weakness come from? Who put it there?”

  “You mean go out to home plate,” George said, tired of Nicky’s rambling speech.

  “Yeah, whatever, which proves my point!” Nicky giggled at himself again, and Satan tapped me on the shoulder, telling me to notice his vulnerable smile. He really wanted to know these things because they confused him, not because he wanted to undermine Resurrection’s mission.

  Keith stopped short of rolling his eyes. He shifted in his chair slightly. I saw him adjust his attitude to a nicer one, almost like I could see inside his head. “First of all, Nicky, you can’t put baseball and same-sex desires on the same level. Baseball isn’t destructive to the soul. God wants people to play baseball. Well, men, anyway. Second, Satan plants the bad weaknesses in you and then he tries to reap what he has sown.”

  “Right, Keith,” I chimed in. I would have said the same thing if I’d been on my toes as a group leader, but I’d relaxed a little, and Nicky talking so much meant I had to look at him, and that unglued me.

  “How can he do that if God made me?”

  Keith threw his hands out and made a gesture like somebody shaking a toddler by the shoulders. “That’s exactly the point! You aren’t what you desire. You could drink coffee every morning and then one day just decide you’d rather drink tea. You’re a tea drinker. So when you stop doing homosexual things, you aren’t gay anymore.”

  “Even if it’s like, you just took a break?”

  “Nicky, you’re not being serious.”

  “But see, what’s a homosexual thing? It ain’t just sex, is it? ‘Cause everybody says I talk like one, and I definitely walk like one, and I like all the things that everybody says are gay to like. I mean, if it’s coffee and tea, why are we here? Why’s it so hard to change? Even if I started acting like Arnold Schwarzenegger tomorrow, there’s still so much stuff I done in the past and memories I have that it’s like, who would I be trying to fool? The whole time I been here, I’ve tried walking with less swing in my hips, I’ve tried to deepen my voice, and I feel like a B-movie actress or a street mime. If I ain’t who God intended me to be, how do acting like a freak bring me any closer to that? Did God make a big mistake? Maybe I ain’t what I desire, but I am what I done, or what I think, ain’t I?”

  “My my, the hillbilly Descartes lectures us again,” George muttered. He stroked Nicky’s biceps to keep him from overheating, but Nicky drew back.

  “Nicky,” I said, “we all have to do that stuff. It’s silly sometimes, but you
’ve got to have faith that it’s going to pull you through in the long run. Don’t give up. You can’t give up. Me, and Keith, and George, we all want you to succeed in the program, and you can’t let Satan plant all these doubts in your head, or you’ll be lost. You know what it’s like to be lost.”

  “You’ve already made the choice not to be lost,” Keith warned. “So stick to it, man. Hang in there. You’re almost home free. Now is not the time for questioning and doubt.”

  George lowered his eyes and looked at Nicky over his reading glasses. “Surrender to Christ,” he said solemnly. “That’s all there is to it.”

  Underneath, we all feared that Nicky might have another meltdown, as he had done during a Group meeting a month before, when he described a real rough time he’d had with a trick. Bill had escorted him out of the room because he’d become hysterical, shaking and crying.

  George gently flicked the golden edges of his Bible. “It says in 1 Corinthians 5: 1 7 that those who become Christians become new persons. From talking about our histories in Group we all know that our brokenness and confusion come from our inability to bond properly with our same-sex parents. Keith, your father abandoned you. Gary, you suffered physical and mental abuse from your father. I had a violent past with my mother. And Nicky, we need hardly mention how your father’s sexual abuse affected you. I think we’re seeing the results of that right now. So to say that you’re the person God intended you to be right now is frankly ludicrous.”

  Nicky lowered his chin, crossed his legs, and rubbed his knee uncomfortably. I could tell he wanted to continue asking questions, but he knew they weren’t going to listen any further. George had put him in his place by bringing up Nicky’s dad. He probably expected me to beat him up and keep him quiet with my words as well. But I couldn’t think of anything to add, and I had sympathy for him, even though I thought he was out of line to cast doubt on our reading. I also knew what it meant to try to become a new person.