The Cross in the Closet (12 page)

“You’ll get used to it,” Amy says to me.

“Get used to what?” Dane asks, but before Amy can answer, Dane is walking off to the bedroom with a box of kung pao and a pair of chopsticks. “Tonight, we’re going to party with the new guy!” His voice trails off and the door closes.

Three hours pass and the four of us have emptied more than a case of beer. I know this because the room is spinning slightly to the left, and because I find myself strapping on black four-inch high heels. A few feet away Nick is doing the same.

“I’m going to kick your ass!” Nick says. “I walk faster in heels than any woman I’ve ever met!”

“Are you sure
you’re
not actually gay?” Amy says to Nick, slurring slightly. She has had more to drink than Nick, and is handling it better too.

That there are heels that actually fit my feet amazes me only slightly less than the fact that I am able to stand up in them. My feet still throb from all of the walking, and I feel as though I am constantly falling forward. I do not stand a chance racing anyone, but the four of us walk into the hallway and Amy stands in front of us,
Greece
style, holding a scarf above her head. “Three! Two! One!
Run!”
She waves the impromptu flag, signaling the beginning of our sprint, and Nick proves his boastful claims to be accurate, surging ahead of me with little to no effort. In less than a minute I am the loser, and Nick is already challenging Amy.

“You look good in heels.” Dane winks at me, and I know the look. It is time to start drinking water.

After lapping me and outdistancing Amy by several yards, Nick sits on the couch, pleased with himself, still wearing the high heels victoriously. In the next room, Amy and Dane are rolling out and inflating the blow-up mattress, and I realize that I will be rooming with Dane. I refill my cup with water three or four times before setting my pack in the room. Dane is stumbling, alcohol impairing more than just his balance. He comes over and gives me a big hug and kisses me on the cheek. I look at Amy, but she does not seem to notice.

“Behave yourself, buddy,” I say calmly in Dane’s ear.

“
You
behave yourself, buddy!” he says laughing.

And in a matter of minutes, we are all settling in for bed. Amy gives me a hug and closes the door to the bedroom, leaving only me and Dane in the room. She is staying over, sharing Nick’s bunk-bed in the living room. I put on my basketball shorts and my now-dry hoody, and crawl into bed. I stretch and position myself in the most comfortable way the airbed allows. My body finally seems to be happy with me.

A few minutes later I feel a hand brushing along the length of my arm, down to my hand. Startled and half awake, I roll over to find Dane kneeling over me, wearing only his underwear. I feel panic but take a deep breath. I have been through this before and know I can handle myself.

“Dane. What are you doing?” I calmly ask.

“Looking at you, I guess,” he says. I can smell the beer on his breath and a hint of something else that smells like bourbon. “You look uncomfortable.”

“I’m perfectly fine. Thank you.”

“I think you should come sleep in the bed with me,” he says, smiling.

“Dane, I have a boyfriend.” I hope he will get the hint.

“Is he here?”

“No, but you are making me feel uncomfortable.”

Dane walks over to the bed and sits down, and then I hear him crying. I know he is drunk and probably just overtired and horny, but for some reason I feel guilty. I get up and sit next to him on the bed, and he leans his head on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I’m just lonely. You have no idea how hard it is to find a relationship in this city. Finding sex is easy, but love…Finding love is impossible!” His tears turn into sobs, and I put my arm around him. Maybe I have been too hard on Dane... That thought disappears as I feel Dane trying to kiss my neck and put his hand in my crotch.

“Damn it, Dane! Stop it!” I push him over and get back down on the blow-up mattress, determined not to fall asleep until he does first.

A few minutes pass and I sit up, peeking in Dane’s direction. I had thought the gentle cadence of his breathing meant he had finally dozed off, but instead I see the blanket moving up and down, up and down. Is he masturbating? Thoroughly uncomfortable I get up, grab my cigarettes, and walk into the living room…only to discover that I am trapped. I see Nick and Amy, and they are not
asleep,
either. My sudden presence does not disturb them, and they do not even pause to say hello. I hope Nick took off the heels.

Back in the bedroom I find my only avenue of retreat. The fire escape outside the window is somewhere, at least, where I can smoke. I crawl through the window and sit, leaning my back against the railing. I feel apathetic. I feel frustrated. It seems like too many of the stereotypes I was taught are either true or not easily enough disproven. Why am I even in New York?

The Pharisee is sitting a few feet away on a step, silently nodding his head.

I notice an interesting light. Over the tops of the buildings, a steeple tower protrudes from the middle of a roof, and it looks beautifully out of place. The lights of the city form a backdrop that illuminates the forgotten marker to a house of God, and the sight of it makes me miss church.
Lord, help me see what you would have me to see.
I repeat the prayer to myself a dozen times, fixating on the forgotten symbol in front of me.
I want to see them the way You see them…I need to see them as You see them.
I take a drag from my clove and
the smoke trails out of my nose and into the cold, almost dancing with the air as it ascends. I feel peaceful and content.

Twenty minutes and two clove cigarettes later, I crawl back through the bedroom window and shut it quietly behind me. Dane is asleep, and I walk over to the bed. The blankets are falling off him, and as gently as possible I cover him up and look down at his face. He is less obnoxious when he is asleep, less abrasive. But much more than that, he looks vulnerable and real, without façade or pretense. Twenty minutes ago he wanted sex, but now he looks innocent.

I feel myself love him.

A story in the Old Testament has always fascinated me. King Saul, ruler of Israel and the first king in the small country’s history, is told that the shepherd David will succeed his throne instead of Saul’s own son, Jonathon. Infuriated, the angry Saul dispatches an army of three thousand of his best soldiers to hunt down and kill the young shepherd. One night, fed up with being chased, David sneaks into Saul’s tent to kill him and finds Saul asleep. God had given David the freedom to do as he wished with the jealous king, but as he watched Saul sleep, he decided against slaying his enemy. Instead, David cut off a piece of Saul’s robe, mercifully sparing the king’s life.

I have always wondered why David spared the life of a man trying to kill him and why he showed mercy. And as I cover Dane with the blanket and watch him sleep I think I understand. I think David spared Saul’s life because in that brief and simple moment, King Saul had been stripped of his title and all that was left was the man. No longer was there the label of
king
, or even
enemy
, there was only vulnerability, peace, and humanity. David saw himself in Saul, a brother in the image of God, so David obeyed the voices of his better angels. David finally found his love for Saul.

I see the same as I look at Dane. I do not see gay, or horny, or abomination. I see myself, a brother, the image of God. I settle back into my bed and the countless aches and pains of the day course through me. Tomorrow I will learn the principles of non-violent protests, but for now I am content bunking with Dane and looking through the window at a forgotten steeple surrounded by city lights, directing my heart to the heavens.

I wake up. My eyes open and see the bedroom bathed in the dull blue light of an overcast morning. It is 5:15 a.m. and I have only slept three, maybe four hours. The blowup mattress is sagging. I feel the wood laminate flooring beneath me. It is hard and cold. Seconds pass and my brain re-activates slowly. Too slowly. Today is going to be a long day, busy and instrumental. How am I going to make it? I already want to go back to sleep.
Coffee
. The thought is enough to keep my eyes open and give me the strength to sit up. I look over at Dane. He is sleeping but apparently still horny. Thank God I covered him up.

I creep into the bathroom and take a quick shower and I hear Amy and Nick. They are up making breakfast; I smell the bacon as surely as I hear it pop and sizzle in the pan. It feels good to be with friends. Too bad my schedule is so packed. I would have enjoyed spending more than the first and last night of this trip in their company.

This evening I will be taking a class on non-violent protesting. It is a requirement for anyone participating in the action with Soulforce. Matthew 5:9: Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God
. It seems like common sense, but I have never felt like a peacemaker before.

After a quick bite to eat, Amy walks me to the subway and shows me how to navigate the city. I have decided to sightsee as much as possible before making my way to the church where Soulforce will meet, and my first stop is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have designated blocks of time for each section of the museum, but the majority of my five hours here will not be spent meandering the many hallways filled with suits of armor and weaponry or ancient artifacts of antiquity. I am drawn to the art galleries, the same galleries where my father once brought me at the age of thirteen. I walk through the maze with full-fledged nostalgia. A decade may have passed since then, but the hours I spent here with my dad are still some of the favorites of my life.

A lot has changed during that decade. My father and I relate differently than we used to, especially since the divorce. He has renounced the fundamentalist Christianity of my youth, readopting the religion of
his
youth, Catholicism. Every week or so, I find brochures on the kitchen table about same-sex attraction and the idea of “freedom through celibacy.” I know there’s a broad spectrum of belief within the Catholic Church and not everyone believes homosexuality to be a sin. I just wish my dad would choose a more progressive parish, seeing as how his own son says he is gay. A lot of my dad’s closest friends and colleagues are gay or lesbian, so I expected a little more support. But the worst part of it, for me, is that the pope he looks up to so much, the person the Catholic Church identifies as the mouthpiece for God, says I am an abomination and a danger to the human race.

I leave the museum in search of another boyhood memory with my father and find a street vendor selling
perogies
. I sit on the steps outside the museum, quietly eating my lunch and watching a young woman playing an accordion. She is European and beautiful. She looks like a gipsy, and for a moment I fall under her spell. Her song ends and the trance is broken. I throw a dollar in her basket and walk south to my next destination, the Central Park Zoo.

Much of the zoo is typical. The monkeys have their own house and the birds do too. Come to think of it, every animal I visit has their own house, except for the seals, which enjoy a large round swimming pool at the center of the park. But the real attraction of this zoo is the penguin exhibit. I have seen it a dozen times in movies but never in the flesh. I walk into the manmade cavern and am confronted by a colony of little chubby butlers. They are perfection. I sit down against the wall, staring at them as they waddle around the enclosure, only to launch into the icy water like bullets shot from a gun. Whatever awkwardness they exhibit on land disappears as soon as they are in the water. My eyes can barely follow them as they dart back and forth.

I wonder if God looks at us the way I look at those penguins, seeing the same basic creature with only the uniqueness of our markings to give us away. I wonder if he laughs at our awkwardness but takes joy in our ability to fly through the icy waters of our individual calling as we navigate life and love. I hope that is the case. I hope He sees all of us as the same, no matter what labels we bear. We are the same species after all, even if we do not want to admit it.

Three hours later and I am ready to plant myself somewhere and rest. I find my way to the church, sit on the steps, and light up a clove. I am nervous. My parents and pastors have always told me that activists were lunatics. I am walking into this protest completely blind, having never attended one before, and it is unsettling. Oddly enough, every time I have read the gospels I have thought Jesus personified the role of activist. His methods were unorthodox and his message was rejected by the pious wherever he went. But his truths resonated with ordinary people, and I think that is what separates the religiously pious from the activists. I wonder if being an ordinary radical is what this whole protest thing is all about—speaking loudly for those ordinary people whom the mainstream would rather silence.

After few minutes of sitting on the stairs to the main entrance of the old church building where we are meeting, I see Mel walking down the street. His assistant Samantha is next to him, and as he sees me, a broad grin spreads across his face. As he reaches the steps he holds out his arms and we hug. The man I once considered my enemy is now embracing me as a friend, and I am humbled by his graciousness. I feel wholly accepted by Mel, and I wonder what he sees when he looks at me.

“I’m so glad you could make it.”

“I’m so happy you invited me!” I say.

After a few minutes of small talk, Mel and Samantha go inside the church to set up. For some reason, I am not as ready. I wait around for a few minutes and another familiar face approaches. It is not familiar because I have met the guy personally, but we have spoken on the phone several times. The young man’s tattoos are immediately noticeable. He does not look like a punk, the way he has been marketed many times in his life, but he definitely would not fit in in the churches I have always attended.

“Jay Bakker!”

“You must be Tim.” Like Mel, he hugs me and I feel an instant connection.

“It’s great to finally meet you.”

“You too! This is your first action, isn’t it?” he asks, adjusting the small messenger bag at his side.

“Yes.” My meek response is met by Jay’s warmth.

“Well, you are in for a learning experience. Soulforce does great work.”

Jay is the only son of Jim Bakker and the late Tammy Faye, and he went through as much hell as a child can face after a devastating scandal hit the
Praise the Lord
PTL ministry of his parents. Growing up surrounded by scandal, Jay developed a drug and alcohol addiction, overcame those addictions, and found God in a way he never had before. God’s grace, he says, set him free from the vices he adopted after his life was flipped upside down. After leading a church in Atlanta, Jay came out in support of LGBTQ equality; the mainstream church rejected him as harshly as if he had come out as a gay man himself. He lost everything. Jay is now the pastor of a small church called Revolution NYC, in Brooklyn. Revolution meets in a bar called Pete’s Candy Store.

Jay walks through the church doors and stops when he realizes I am not behind him. I look up at the door skittishly and he waves me inside. I take each step cautiously, knowing that by entering this training, I am coming full circle in my journey. While Soulforce was once my enemy, now I will stand among them. I am unsettled. Am I traveling this road too quickly? Have I too casually dismissed the teachings of my youth? Or is this the first real moment where I am taking steps towards living out a more Christ-like grace? This experience might solidify some of the more negative stereotypes, or completely disprove them—and I do not know if I am ready for either to be revealed. Change has always been a difficult for me, and this change is the most difficult because it is possibly the most important change I will ever experience. The moment feels pinnacle. I toss my clove into the gutter and follow Jay inside. What in the hell am I getting myself into?

I find myself in a large room with maroon carpets and a unique assortment of people unlike any I have ever met. They are not the straight-laced conservative types—though most of them were raised to be. They are free spirits, in New York with the intent to stop a grave injustice that I have just discovered. This injustice takes place in countries all over the world, and as I listen intently, the revelation shocks me out of my ignorance.

In countries all over the world, gays and lesbians are not just subjected to religious persecution and second-class citizenship. They are regularly beaten, imprisoned, and even executed for practicing
the
abomination of homosexuality
. I hear this from one of the organizers—a handsome thirty-something who helped organize this action—and I cannot believe my ears.

Matthew shuffles the paper in his folder and addresses the group. “Thanks, everyone. It’s awesome to have all of you here. I think the first thing we need to do is explain
why
we are here. The following is a written statement that will be posted on Soulforce.org. Bryan, could you please read the report for us?”

Bryan begins to read: “In December, 2008, France introduced a Declaration to Decriminalize Homosexuality at the United Nations Assembly in New York City. The statement condemned violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatization, and prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also condemned killings, executions, torture, arbitrary arrest, and deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights; noting that in seventy-seven member countries, homosexuality is illegal, and seven other countries declare it punishable by death.

“Almost immediately following the Declaration’s introduction, the Holy See issued a statement opposing it, suggesting that it could lead to same-gender marriage acceptance.

“In response, Soulforce pulled together a team to confront the Holy See. We sent a letter to the ambassador’s office, asking it to withdraw its opposition to the Declaration and to meet with us to begin a dialogue on the destructive nature of heterosexism. By late March, Soulforce had negotiated a meeting with two of our representatives with Father Bene, assistant to Ambassador Archbishop Migliori. Fr. Bene, while friendly, appeared surprised to hear that American gays and lesbians experienced any kind of discrimination. During the meeting, we pressed for a meeting directly with the ambassador and were told the office would get back to us. They have not.”

I listen in shock. I feel like I am living in the book of Leviticus. I feel the veil being lifted, and scales falling from my eyes one by one by one. It is almost more than I can handle. I feel angry.

“That is why we are here,” Matthew says with a deep breath.

I wonder what my devout Catholic father would say if he read the report.

“The Catholic church has gone too far, and we now feel a need to respond. We are here for a reason. People are dying, and it’s within our power to hold the church accountable. If you will each please take out the pledge card from the front of your folder, we are going to talk about the tenets of non-violent protesting. Please read along as we go into them. After we are done, sign and date your card.”

One: As I prepare for this direct action, I will meditate regularly on the life and teachings of Gandhi and King, and other truth-seekers.

I grab my pen and make a slight note in the tenet. Before Gandhi I write the name
Jesus
, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Jay doing the same thing. “This is an updated version of Dr. King’s tenets of non-violence from 1963,” Jay whispers. “In the original, it only says
Jesus
.” I nod my head.

The history of non-violent protesting is long but became an organized alternative to physical bloodshed in 1906 with Mohandas Gandhi and the South African campaign for Indian rights. Perhaps the most notable example of non-violence was the year-long Salt Campaign, where over 100,000 Indians were jailed for intentionally breaking the Salt Laws created by the British Empire in India.

The non-violent protest tradition in America is very rich as well. In the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay the Massachusetts poll tax levied for the war. After being bailed out of jail and someone else paying the tax on his behalf and ending his protest, Thoreau wrote his political beliefs in a book called
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
. He is famous for saying “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.“

Thoreau was not the only one. By the mid twentieth century, non-violent protests were the primary tool used by religious institutions, labor unions, student groups, and anti-war activists. The South, my home, was changed forever by these non-violent protests, where race relations were the most notable issue of the day. Next to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. is perhaps the most important figure in the non-violence movement, a hero to anyone who has ever carried a picket sign.

“You are part of something much bigger than yourself,” Matthew says solemnly. “Please understand, and be grateful for, the privilege we have to question the powers that be.”

Two: I will remember that the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory.

“As human beings, we have a tendency to seek victory over compromise,” Matthew continues, “but that isn’t our aim over the next two days. We are here to show the archbishop who we are, so that we can work towards reconciliation and justice. Victory creates enemies; reconciliation creates unity.” Matthew’s words speak to me, not just in light of my politics but also in light of my faith.