Thinking Straight by Robin Reardon Read Free Book Online Page A

hurt, and then stroked the back of my head once.
    â€œCome, Taylor. Come and shed your sin.”
    Christ.
    He made me kneel beside where he’d been earlier, and then he knelt as well. I didn’t look at him, and I don’t think he looked at me. Nothing happened for maybe five minutes. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I figured I was supposed to pray.
    I prayed, all right. Jesus, I begged, get me through this. Don’t let them turn me into a Charles. Don’t let me forget Will. Don’t let me forget who I am.
    Please.
    Finally Reverend Bartle spoke. “Tell me about it, Taylor. Tell me why you’re here.”
    I looked at him, but he was facing forward, eyes closed. What the hell did he want me to say? I’m here because it was either this for the summer or military school in the fall. I’m here because my parents can’t handle that I’m gay. I’m here because they think God can make me “normal” again. Like I’d ever been anyone other than who I am. Like God would create abomination in the first place.
    All I said was, “I don’t know.”
    Maybe thirty seconds of silence passed, in which I assumed I was supposed to be growing more and more anxious. I wanted to make him wrong about that, but I failed.
    Then he said, “I think you do know. I think you’re very well aware of how ungodly your feelings and actions have become, how you’ve allowed your baser needs to overrule your true spirit.” He paused again, but I didn’t say anything. So he said, “Tell me about them.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œTell me about how you’ve given in to your ungodly feelings to satisfy your baser needs. Tell me what you’ve done.” His voice was calm, no impatience in it.
    Okay, I could have gone one of two ways here. I could have just told him about some of the things Will and I have done, the ways we’ve come to know each other, the way he makes me feel when he’s holding me, teasing my hair, kissing my neck. I could have described those “baser” needs, how the energy would move through me like lightning bolts seeking the ground of Will’s body, and how it felt afterward like heaven and hell had met and clashed and canceled each other out so that we floated in a sea of total calm. I could have said that I love Will so much that it seems like a window into the love God offers, as though I could follow this path to the source of all Love.
    I could have. But I didn’t. I took the other road. I took rebellion. It may have been a mistake. Guess I’ll never know. But at least I didn’t give Will to him.
    â€œI haven’t done anything ungodly.”
    â€œYou and I both know that’s not true, Taylor. We’re in God’s house. Don’t dishonor it by lying. Do you love God, Taylor?”
    â€œYes.” That was true; I do love God. I even love Jesus. He wasn’t the one who called my love for Will a sin.
    â€œThen tell the truth.”
    â€œI did. It is the truth.”
    His voice grew so loud so suddenly, I jumped. “For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.”
    Then, quietly, “Do you recognize that text, Taylor?”
    â€œIt’s from Romans.”
    â€œThat’s right. Do you know what it’s saying?”
    â€œIt’s talking about lust. Not love. And it’s not Jesus speaking.”
    I should have known better. I should never have tried to fight back, to counter his approach. Should never have revealed my own thinking. He went into this rant, quoting chapter and verse from all over the Bible, stopping in between to paint these horrid pictures of all kinds of sex as evil. Especially sex