Uncross My Heart (16 page)

“What happened?” he asked.

“How did you get Vivienne’s phone number?”

“I found it on your caller ID. I knew she’d want to know you were in the ER.”

“Sorry, I forgot I’m not speaking to you.” I stormed off.

“She has it for you. She said leave it to her to be interested in a closeted cleric. Why aren’t you speaking to me?” he said, addressing two topics at once.

“‘Interested.’ What does that mean?”

“Nope, you first. Why aren’t you speaking to me?”

“God, you’re maddening.” I stopped to glower into his face. “I’m not speaking to you because you’re a—a—traditionalist.” I spat the word at him as if it were evil, attributing my own shortcomings to him.

“You can’t even baptize a baby, for God’s sake, without checking to see if the pope approves.”

“The baby is doing pretty well, by the way. I followed up with Angela.”

“Big of you, following up and all. But for God’s sake, don’t try to help the baby get into heaven. Listen to me, get into heaven. Ha. Like it’s a rock concert and we all need tickets.”

“She’s really got you wound up.”

“A lot of things have me wound up. Including being stabbed by a fricking student.”

“Yes, that was bad,” Dennis muttered in an understated way.

“Bad? Here’s what’s bad. The board thinks I’m the problem.”

“I can see how the board would think that. I mean, put yourself in their place.”

“No, you put yourself in their place, which should be easy because you’re just like them.”

“What did Vivienne Wilde say to you?”

“She wants to have a relationship with me. She wants to sleep with me. She wants to have sex with me. How does that grab your ecclesiastical shorts?” I shouted in a stage whisper.

“That’s pretty much what she told me. I think you should do it.”

His voice was quiet.

I stopped short and let that response register, then shook my head like a dog in the sprinkler. “Has everyone gone mad?”

“Stop being a priest for a minute and be a person.” I heard him plaintively in the background.

“That was my advice to you when you wouldn’t baptize the baby. It didn’t work for you either.”

The stress of the board meeting left me exhausted. Stress created a time warp for me, where thousands of bad things seemed to have taken place in ten seconds.

In a daze, I trudged across campus on this Friday morning to continue my series on sexuality and the church. My class was SRO, being the closest thing to a theological sex-education course available.

I stood at the front of the room eyeing the clergy-to-be and wondered how many would be happy at the business of religion and how many would merely be good at it.

“If we track sexuality throughout the ages, we find that in the pre-Christian era, the control of sex, or creating rules for sex, generally followed a pattern of land ownership. In pagan times a matrilineal society existed, women ruled,” I said, and the class shifted in their seats.

“Matrilineal inheritance of land was simple. You knew who should inherit the land by watching which children came out of the woman’s body. The men’s ‘work-around’ to this inheritance problem was to take ownership of the women, and their children, in order to take ownership of the land. And when women contested that tactic, one could say men recrafted religious law to keep women in line. The Bible was continually redacted to make sure men were in control.”

“Is that what dykes believe or what Christians believe?” The voice rang out from the back of the room, and I was stunned to see Roger Thurgood III standing in my classroom as if no one had ever bothered to mention to him that stabbing me was a bad idea. He looked less psychotic and simply more arrogant, self-assured, and I had to assume that his grandfather’s “mop-up” simply meant putting everything back in place and upping his medication.

“It’s what many scholars, male or female, know to be true. It isn’t a political statement but an historical one.” I pressed on, not waiting for his commentary, but it was difficult to keep track of my lesson plan.

I felt unsafe, threatened. My hand, though less bandaged, was still wrapped, a reminder of what had occurred.

“In 313 Emperor Constantine granted the Christians freedom to worship, and over time Roman law found its way into the church. Soon the Council of Nicaea said if you attacked Christianity, you were attacking the Roman Empire. The Latin translation of the Bible, known as the Vulgate, was specifically translated from the Hebrew and Greek for the Roman upper class. The Bible was the basis of Roman law during the European Middle Ages as much as it was spiritual law.” I kept my eye on Roger, who seemed to settle down a bit on hearing the words “Bible” and “law” in the same comforting sentence.

“With each redacted translation of the Biblical text, new phrases and concepts were attributed to Christ. A second-century document translated in the fifth century by Rufinus of Aquileja was rewritten to assure that Christ handed St. Peter the keys to the kingdom and forever made Rome’s popes Peter’s legal successors.” Roger was sitting forward in his seat glaring at me, but since he wasn’t Catholic, I assumed he’d decided to let the pope and St. Peter fend for themselves.

“Later in history, homosexuality as ‘sin against nature’ became popular, and the reference cited was often the Pauline Epistle to the Romans, in which God purportedly gave up on pagans who dishonored their bodies with unnatural acts.” Roger made a little hand-pump gesture and got a laugh from the students around him who, I suspected, loved having a human Molotov cocktail in their midst and the excitement of never knowing when it might explode. “But ‘unnatural’ has been found by translators to mean not just homosexual, but everything from anal intercourse in marriage to coitus interruptus.” I was aware that the last statement would evoke unavoidable snickering in a room with so many raging hormones.

A serious older woman raised her hand. “But the Bible is filled with passages about homosexuality being an abomination.”

“
The New Testament & Homosexuality
establishes context for homosexuality in ancient times, citing evidence that many Biblical passages were directed at older men who took advantage of young boys under their tutelage and a societal belief that semen should not be wasted.”

Another female student raised a respectful hand. “But what about Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Biblical purists often mention Sodom and Gomorrah as proof God hates homosexuals. To refresh your memory, Lot’s home was stormed by men who demanded sex with the males inside. Lot offered the invaders his two virgin daughters instead, but the men refused, wanting sex exclusively with the males. Their homosexual lust purportedly sealed the doom of Sodom and called down God’s punishment. Believers who refer to this passage neglect to reflect on the possibility that offering up one’s virgin daughters for gang rape might have hacked off a Universal God as well, perhaps making Him rethink downtown Sodom as one of His premier real-estate holdings.”

I checked the clock. “Any questions?” When no one spoke, I added,

“You might note there are virtually no passages about lesbianism in the Bible, women being of such little consequence they weren’t worth the ink.”

“I have a question. How did you hurt your hand?” Roger’s voice made a stab at sincerity, but he was clearly taunting me in front of the class to let me know he was still in control.

“A student who didn’t share my beliefs felt the only way to shut me down was to kill me. But nothing shuts me down.” A boy on the front row laughed raucously, obviously thinking it a morbid joke. “Roger, please stay after class.”

The bells chimed, signaling a class change, and I moved toward Roger with deliberate efficiency. With my good hand I grabbed his arm and propelled him to the front of the room, away from the door as the last student trailed out. The surprise of my attack threw him off balance and enabled me to steer him up against the whiteboard with a force I didn’t know I possessed. I whipped a letter opener out of my waistband where I had stashed it in a moment of doubt about my safety, knowing no one on this campus was prepared to defend me. I poked the rather blunt instrument at the zipper of his pants, which psychologically paralyzed him, causing him to freeze.

“I welcome you in my class. You may ask as many questions as you wish. But don’t come here to taunt me. I am completely out of patience with you. Your tactics and your arrogance are bringing out a very unreligious side in me, and I fear I could…snap!” I jabbed him with the letter opener and he yelped. “Do you understand what you’re dealing with here?”

He nodded, looking at me wide-eyed as if he thought I was dangerous.
I am dangerous
, I thought. I let go of him slowly, and he waited until he was completely free of me, then turned and ran.

I was aware that perhaps I’d merely fanned his fanatical flame and that he might come back and try to shoot me, but at this point, I didn’t care. I was so disillusioned about the school and its leadership and my relationship or lack thereof with Vivienne, nothing seemed to matter.

Dear God, am I losing my mind?
Help me, please.

But even as I was saying that prayer, my internal steam powered me across campus as I nearly ran to the parking lot and jumped into my car and headed for Vivienne’s house. I hadn’t felt this kind of angry energy surge through me since my college days.
Why bother with her?

She obviously has someone and doesn’t need you.
But I simply couldn’t leave things where they were with us.
You just want to see her, own it
, my inner voice demanded.
Fine, I want to see her.

The friendly front porch beckoned, and I bounded up the steps and banged on the door. It seemed like several minutes before the latch turned and Vivienne stood there in a long, tailored sleep shirt that hit her just above the knees and no pants, barefoot and her hair awry, no makeup, and she looked exquisite.

“I didn’t know you’d be asleep at this hour.”

“Not getting much sleep at night.”

“I rang earlier and someone answered—”

“That was me. You hung up.”

“That was you?” I felt myself brightening. “You sound like that in the morning?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s a nice sound.” I realized my voice was unintentionally low.

“Why are you here?” she asked in a more businesslike fashion.

“May I come in?”

“I don’t think so.” Her words stung and surprised me. I began backing down the steps slowly. “To be candid, I’ve got a problem. I’m caught up in you and you’re…unable to reciprocate. Seeing you just makes it more difficult, so I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“Exactly. That’s why I’m here.”

“To sleep with me?” She laughed gently. “Because that’s where we left off.”

“No—”

“Then why are you here? What’s your point?”

“Can’t we
talk
?”

“Phone me sometime.” She started to close the door, and I bounded back up the steps and used my foot to prevent her from closing it, then yelled at the pain of being a doorstop.

“Please wait, listen to me.” I pulled my foot out and hopped around on the porch.

“Your cleric collar’s so tight it’s a choke chain. You can’t tell your father who you are and who you love—or your employer, or your church, or your God. Consequently, you live in hiding, Alex. Hiding even from yourself because you don’t know how it feels to walk freely through this world uninhibited and unconstrained. I
do
know. I’ve spent my entire life making sure I stay free. We’re polar opposites, and I can’t let you drag me down with you.”

“Drag you down? What do you want from me? My body, is that what this is about? You just want me to take off my clothes?”

“I want you to take off your cloak. I want you to quit hiding. If anyone knows what’s real and what’s not, you do. Why would you let archaic principles, established by men two thousand years ago to control their own lives, ruin yours? Think about it, Alex. If God hates homosexuals, why in hell did he make so fucking many of them?”

She slammed the door in my face and I knew it was over.

* * *

I drove away from her house and phoned Dennis because I had no one else. “Would you go get drunk with me?” I asked.

“It would be my pleasure,” he said as pleasantly as if I’d asked him to escort me to the opera.

An hour later we met in a small Irish pub not far from campus, and two hours later I was smashed.

Dennis waited until I was knee-walking drunk to ask about Vivienne.

“She wants to sleep with me,” I said.

“Yes, I think we covered that. Actually, she probably wants to make love with you.”

“Yes, I imagine.”

“And do you desire the same?”

“Can I have another drink?”

“Only if you answer the question.”

“Yes, like St. Augustine and his concubine, I’m obsessed with Vivienne Wilde. I would climb mountains for her, slay dragons, wage religious wars.”

“As I recall, one of the bishops in your mother church in England recently said it would have to close its doors if forced to manage without its gay clergy.”

“Yes, well, the U.S. church said they’d close their doors if they had to manage
with
them.”

“But a few openly gay clergy function in the U.S.—Newark and Albuquerque, as I recall.”

“Do you think I could ever come out as a gay priest while my father is alive?”

“Ahhh, so you are living your life in the name of
your
father, not
the
Father.”

“Do I get another drink or not?” I asked, and Dennis waved to the waiter, who brought me another.

“Let’s get back to the part about lust and love. I adore that part.”

“You’re a very weird priest.” I grinned at him.

“I didn’t become a priest until I was in my forties, so I know a bit about true love. And here’s what I know. If it appears, grab it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I had true love for twenty years and then…he died of AIDS.”

His revelation literally sobered me.

“Dennis, I’m so sorry.” It hadn’t occurred to me that Dennis had ever had a true love or even that he was gay. I merely saw him as a Catholic priest. “So you joined the priesthood after that.”