Gaysia (25 page)

Heartbroken after his bust-up with Benjamin, Edmund decided he'd had enough. It seemed logical that his gayness was holding him back from happiness. He found Choices in Singapore, which promised to help rid him of homosexual desires once and for all. Edmund travelled to Singapore with Amanda, his best friend from the age of twenty-one, when he was still living as a gay man. For Amanda, it had been love at first sight.

‘And for you?' I asked.

‘No, I was gay!' he said, laughing.

After Choices, Edmund felt a change. He still looked at men – ‘Of
course
I did' – but said that they ceased being important to him. Instead of pursuing men, he started pursuing Jesus. And that's when he and Amanda decided to get married.

Edmund conceded he wouldn't encourage other people to do what they did, but said it made sense at the time. Amanda, Edmund told me, was ‘sexually broken' too. She wasn't a lesbian, no-no-no, but had experienced sexual abuse from a young age and as a result wasn't comfortable having sex. Edmund didn't want to have sex with Amanda either, so the whole arrangement seemed perfect.

Right
, I thought. I tried to phrase what I wanted to say delicately.

‘I've got female friends I'm very close to,' I said, ‘but I don't want to have
sex
with them. I see them as friends. And that seems like a reason why I
wouldn't
marry them.'

Edmund stared. ‘The theme for our marriage was, “Today I Married My Best Friend.” Does that tell you anything?'

I looked at him blankly.

‘We didn't marry for sex, obviously. We married because we realised we were each other's soul mates. We wanted to grow old together. We got married as best friends, not as husband and wife. At that time it was such a win-win situation for both of us. Today she's my wife, in every respect' – Edmund gave me a look that clearly implied marital sex – ‘but back then, it was a mistake –'

Edmund stopped and backtracked, putting up his hands.

‘– no,
not
a mistake. But I would not encourage people to do that.'

This was disingenous: Edmund's entire life
was
encouraging people to do that. Week after week, Edmund used his marriage to Amanda as an example of what you could achieve if you committed to the journey, and now he was telling me he regretted the decision? It was kind of creepy. But not as creepy as something he'd said at the sermon.

‘I was sort of shocked when you said that you were friends with someone who was a paedophile …'

‘Why are you shocked?' Edmund said evenly. He sucked his drink through a straw silently, not breaking eye contact.

‘If you're saying all these things – homosexuality, having sex outside of marriage, masturbation – are perversions, then surely paedophilia is worse.'

‘Why?' he said.

‘Because,' I said slowly, ‘you're talking about the abuse of a child.'

‘Hold on,' he said, smiling. ‘When
you
talk about paedophiles, you're talking about a sexually
different
paedophile. A sexually
broken
paedophile? That's a different story altogether.'

‘Okay.'

‘A sexually
broken
paedophile is someone who wants to change; someone who seriously wants out. So yeah, they still
can
be dangerous, but they are crying out for help! And if we don't help them, who's going to help them?'

One man, Edmund explained, had come to RLM with uncontrollable sexual desires for young boys. He had already molested some, Edmund said, but it hadn't gone ‘too far'. (When I asked him to define ‘too far', Edmund said, ‘No penetration.') The man had become part of the RLM community, but didn't finish the RLM ‘journey' to heal himself.

‘He started the journey, but didn't go far,' Edmund said.
‘Because of his sexual brokenness, he was emotionally very unstable. He was struggling with depression. It affected his career; it affected his journey of recovery, which we call JOR.'

‘JOR,' Jerry echoed, nodding and taking another photo.

Edmund didn't know what had happened to this man. He had disappeared from RLM.

‘You never thought to report him to the police?' I said.

Edmund gave me a look. It said:
And why would I do something like that?

On Tuesday evening, RLM held its monthly V-Meet for sexually broken members. The ‘V' stood for victory. It wasn't just the sexually broken who turned up, though. Others were there for moral support or because they'd signed up to be a ‘befriender' to the ‘befriendees' (similar to the Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor system).

Edmund addressed us from the podium, reading from notes on his Toshiba laptop. I was sitting next to Sri Lankan Lionel again. Edmund told all the befriendees – the sexually broken among us – to stand up. Five men stood up, including Lionel. At well over six feet, he loomed over everybody else.

‘Let me speak to the befriendees,' Edmund said, peering over his laptop. ‘If what I say applies to you, say, “That's me.” The more “that's me” you're saying, the better it is. It shows how serious you are as a struggler.'

Edmund recited the checklist, call-and-response style.

‘The befriendee admits to be struggling and desires help,' he said.

(‘That's me.')

‘The befriendee is an individual who chooses recovery and freedom by going through the journey of recovery.'

(‘That's me.')

‘The befriendee partners with a befriender, who walks side by side in the journey of recovery.'

(‘That's me.')

‘The befriendee is completely honest and accountable to the befriender.'

(‘That's me.')

It was a long checklist. It felt as though they were new employees at a particularly uninspiring call centre, pledging their allegiance to a communications company whose slogan was, ‘That's me.'

When Edmund finished, he told the rest of us to give them a clap. We offered encouraging applause, like parents cheering on a potty-training toddler.

‘We
love
you!' Edmund said, smacking his hands together enthusiastically. ‘Everyone, look to a person who is a befriendee and say “I love you.” Come on!'

I turned to Lionel. ‘I love you,' I said.

Lionel smiled sheepishly.

‘Mean it!' Edmund said.

‘I love you,' I said again.

The befriendee–befriender partners split off into corners to update each other on their progress. Lionel talked animatedly with his befriender while an Indian-Malaysian guy confided in his.

‘The befriender,' Edmund explained, ‘is a counsellor
and
a friend, and commits to walking with the befriendee for one year.'

Despite the year-long commitment, three befrienders hadn't
shown up. One of the stranded befriendees was a spectacled Chinese guy who was one of the saddest-looking people I'd ever encountered. He looked completely, well, ‘broken'. He dressed like an IT guy: shirt checked like a spreadsheet; plain slacks the colour of old paperwork. His teeth were concertina crooked and he had a faint adolescent moustache. He looked despondent that his befriender hadn't showed up, but not particularly surprised. His eyes gave off a medicated sheen.

When we re-gathered, we sat in a big circle as Edmund led us through conversational ice-breakers to foster trust among us.

‘Are you ready to SHARE?' he said.

Edmund's first sharing exercise involved each of us telling the group something no one knew about us.

‘For instance,' he said, hands fluttering, ‘my favourite author is Enid Blyton! I still read her books to this day. Also, I wear earplugs to sleep every night!'

The Indian-Malaysian man to Edmund's left, who had a bit of a belly protruding, tried to think of something.

‘I like food?' he said.

‘You like food, I know that,' Edmund said. Everyone laughed. The man chuckled, a little embarrassed.

Jerry offered that he had just joined a sixty-day program he had found on the internet to help him with his sexual brokenness. It was different to RLM, but also reinforced the work he was doing here.

When we got to the sad-looking Chinese guy, he just shrugged. He looked at the floor, unable to think of anything to share.

‘Hmm,' Edmund said, trying to think of something for him. ‘Well, do you use deodorant?'

Everyone suppressed laughter. The Chinese guy shook his head.

‘You
don't
?' Edmund said, feigning surprise and catching everyone's eye. It was clearly a private, long-standing joke. I wanted to pick up my chair and smash it into Edmund's face.

Edmund then asked those of us who were sexually redeemed – who were no longer broken, or never had been – to share a joy of ‘living a sexually regular lifestyle'.

‘It could be heterosexuality or celibacy,' he said. ‘Anyone?'

Silence. It seemed to genuinely surprise Edmund that no one was willing to discuss the intimate detail of their sex lives.

‘Okay, for me, I'll start!' Edmund said. ‘I'm sexually redeemed. And a joy of being sexually redeemed is I'm able to have my own children; my own flesh and blood. And not in a surrogate style, but by naturally having sex. The first time I saw my Angel in the womb, I cried. The scan! The joy of holding my baby in my arms! When Amanda called me and said “I'm pregnant”' – here Edmund put his hands to his chest and gasped – ‘I ran to the jetty and I just praised God. And having a child without any guilt or any condemnation whatsoever, through a proper marriage, through a proper relationship, that's one of the biggest joys of being a sexually regular person today!'

People forced smiles, unable to identify.

‘Anyone else? Are you all sexually broken? Are you
all
sexually different?'

The silence was unbearable.

‘Well, I'm sexually private!' I offered.

Everyone laughed. Edmund shot me a sharp look but smiled.

‘Okay, that is
his
term! Anyone else? All the sexually
non-private
people?'

It was clear this wasn't working. Edmund changed tack and asked us to share one major reason why we had moved from
being ‘sexually different' to becoming ‘sexually broken'. This was something I wanted to know too:
Why did these people want to change?

Edmund threw the question to the Chinese guy. He moved his lips but could barely speak.

‘Excuse me?' Edmund said.

‘Because it's wrong,' the guy said bleatingly, like a lamb. For a fleeting moment, I swore he was going to cry. Or maybe it was me who wanted to weep.

By the end of the two-hour V-Meet, everyone looked drained. Edmund must have noticed this too, because right before we left, he said something grand and dramatic to leave us on a high note, to give us hope. In case some of us didn't know, he said, his former life didn't stop at being gay. His sexual corruption had become so extreme that he'd even entertained the thought that he was a woman trapped in a man's body.

‘Yes, I was a
transgender
!' he said. ‘I thought of having a
sex change.
I would have gone for a sex change if a
man
would have wanted to marry me. And yet today, I just
love
my penis so much!'