Angry Conversations with God (15 page)

If God could bring me back to life, surely he was doing the same work in the lives of the men at my church. He’d made me to
dance. Where were the Christian men to dance with?

“It’s so beautiful!” Mark cried when I told him what had happened. “But why can’t my true masculinity jump inside of
me
? Why am I still gay, still stuck between dead and damned?”

“I know, Mark. It’s not fair. Maybe you should go to the monastery.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Me and a bunch of priests?”

“Or a convent?” We laughed. And Mark cried again.

I met several guys over the next few months. There was Hans, who on our first date told me all about his sex addiction and
how he wanted to kiss me but it freaked him out. George: a Catholic painter who dated only Catholics. Ben: a novelist who
was so shy, after eight dates we hadn’t gotten past “What’s your favorite movie?” Then there was Wayne, whom I dated for three
months, while he freaked out about commitment and finally broke up with me because of how I stacked dishes. (Wayne’s mammy
told him to watch how a girl clears a table. “Is she class, or do she stack?” Years later he apologized. One thing about Southern
men, they have manners.)

I also spent time with loads of Christian men who were funny, emotionally present, and not threatened by my intelligence.
Men like Mark who were gay or trying not to be. The rest of the single men at my church were perpetually on the healing conference
tour. And who has time to date when you’re at healing conferences, getting healed? (Or taking notes about getting healed?)

Well, life wasn’t just about men! I went out and got a job at a production studio. As the receptionist, I saw a lot of men
come through that door. They were different from the men at church. They hadn’t had their huevos excised.

One thing about getting your hormones back: you get your hormones back. Yikes! I felt attracted to guys I’d never found remotely
attractive: a heavyset bodybuilder, a computer tech, the guy who delivered sandwiches. Out of control. And then Pedro Donnelly
walked in: a Cuban/Irish New York writer with blue eyes and red hair. True, I was attracted to writers. But red hair? Never.

Pedro spoke with old-school etiquette. He asked lots of questions: what book was I reading, how did I spend my Thanksgiving,
what films had I seen? He acted fascinated that I too was a writer, of comedy sketches no less. And then he sashayed off to
the producer’s office, all six feet three of him, leaving me with my resurrected hormones. The glory of God
was
man, fully alive. Rrrrrrawr.

But I knew the drill with men. I knew it from every conversation I’d ever had in a church foyer: they talk and smile; they
discover all the things you have in common. “You drink PG Tips too?” “I love Elvis Costello.”
“Brothers Karamazov
is my favorite!” And then they walk off, no clue that they’ve tampered with your ovulation kit.

Pedro hadn’t been on my radar more than two weeks when he called the office one morning. He asked me the usual questions about
books and life and movies. As the conversation started to feel embarrassingly long, I went to transfer his call to the producer.

“I’m not calling for him,” Pedro interrupted. “I called to ask you out socially.”

He called to ask me out
socially?
How quaint.

OMG—HE JUST ASKED ME OUT! Did I answer yet?

“Why, yes, Pedro. I’d be delighted to see you. Socially.”

I did not sleep the night before. We went for a three-hour hike and never ran out of things to talk about. Except for the
moment we leaned over a rock to look at the moss. I felt his lips brush the back of my neck. I startled. He apologized profusely,
and I apologized for being profusely startled. It’s just…It had been so long.

He asked to see me again and I said yes. I don’t remember where we went; I only remember that when he leaned in to kiss me,
I didn’t startle. We kissed for a long time. When he drove away my skin hurt, the way a frostbitten limb burns as it thaws
and sensation returns. My whole body had been frostbitten. Now it ached from his touch.

Pedro bought me books; he took me to poetry readings and indie films and museums. We went to restaurants in decaying areas
of town: areas I was afraid of in college because that’s where the Goth lesbian pagan-idol-worshipping filmmakers lived. But
Pedro wasn’t afraid; it was just life. He made it an adventure.

The first time I stepped into his apartment, it was like breaking into a bunker: the secret world of men and their things.
Shoes stacked up at the door, a basketball, a bike. Bookshelves with dog-eared paperbacks and CDs of bands I’d never heard:
the smells of beer and gym socks and incense. Pedro may have been sophisticated, but he was still a guy. A guy with guy things.
One night we were at a bookstore, huddled over a novel he was reading, and I felt overcome by, well, you can call it hormones,
but I’ll call it the joy of being fully alive. It scared the crap out of me.

Occasionally Pedro would stop our conversation to say, “You know what I like about you?” And he would make some observation
about me. It unnerved me. I couldn’t remember the last time a man wasn’t reciting a monologue about what God was doing in
his life. But Pedro saw
me.
And I saw him, and I fell in love with what I saw. And he said it first. “I am helplessly in love with you.”

I let him know there wasn’t going to be sex. Not for a long, long time. “Like how long?” he wondered.

“Like, not until we decide we’re right for each other and want to get married. Or not until we get married.”

He exhaled. “That’s a long time.”

“It’s not just a faith issue. Sex can get so selfish and confusing.”

“But it’s not a taking thing, Susan. It’s a giving thing.” I saw in his eyes that he meant it. The church painted married
sex as a holy transcendent institution, and anything outside that was dark, destructive, and demonic. Men were selfish bullies,
out to take sex and leave. But Pedro wanted to give; he wanted to stay.

“Is kissing okay?” he asked. We kissed a lot.

Pedro had everything I could have asked for in a guy: creativity, intelligence, drive, discipline, humor, and integrity. Everything
but Jesus.

“It’s not that I
don’t
believe,” he explained. “I just don’t know that I
do.
” When I tried to share my spiritual experiences, it felt like I was describing life on another planet. I started to feel
like an alien. After a while the longing turned into loneliness.

Cheryl was worried. “You can’t date him, Susan! You can’t be unequally yoked.”

“But we’re not yoked,” I protested. “We haven’t taken our clothes off. Well, only a few. But he’s the most honorable, thoughtful
person I’ve met.”

“At least he’s the right gender,” Mark piped in.

“Why don’t you invite him to church?” Cheryl suggested.

Pedro thought it would be a good idea. Church was the possible deal-breaker. We needed to find out one way or another.

Of course all the weirdos came to church that day, and they all sat next to us. Like Herman, the sixty-seven-year-old in tight
cutoffs who wanted to make end-times movies with stock footage from old sci-fi movies. The place was full of vagrants and
granolas and unemployed singer-actor-waiters. They stood and wept to the power ballads: “Jesus, hoollld meee!” flailing their
arms right in Pedro’s face. I kept my eyes down, but I could see Pedro’s body stiffen in my peripheral vision. After the service
Herman tried to cast me in his end-times sci-fi movie. Pedro waited until we got around the corner before commenting. He was
gracious, given the terror on his face.

“That didn’t feel like church. That felt like a rock concert.”

“They’re Slackers.” I cringed. “Rock ’n’ Roll Slackers 4 Jesus.”

“But you’re not a slacker, Susan. What are you doing here?”

Yeah. What
was
I doing there?

Was I a snob? Did I want them to be sophisticated and cool and live in Silver Lake, just so Pedro would like me? But why couldn’t
Christians be sophisticated and smart
and
love Jesus? Why did they have to be weirdos making end-times movies in outer space? Pedro ruined church for me.

And God ruined Pedro for me. The closer I got to him, the lonelier I felt not sharing my spiritual life. I could not bridge
the gap, nor could I kill off the love of God for the love of a man, or vice versa. “Now you know how I feel,” Mark said.

The pressure grew from without. “Do not be unequally yoked,” Cheryl scolded me. And from within. I heard that still, small
voice. And it was speaking, very still, very small, and very stern: “Choose today whom you will serve” (see Josh. 24:15).
I heard it more each day. “Choose today whom you will serve.”

Choose. Today.

Choose.

Choose.

All right. All right.
ALL RIGHT!

When Pedro and I broke up, it was amicable, heartbreaking, and we knew it was right. Yet the only thing I could say to God
was, “Happy now, God? Happy now?”

I cried on Mark’s shoulder for a month. “You found a great guy.” Mark sighed. “Does he have to be a Christian too?”

“We would have broken up eventually. I
do
want someone I can share my spiritual life with. I just feel bullied into the decision. Don’t be unequally yoked.…What business
does darkness have with light? Choose, choose, choose!”

“Don’t listen to Cheryl,” Mark consoled me. “Just because she’s a therapist doesn’t mean she’s right.”

But my sister said the same thing: “You don’t want a marriage where you can’t share Jesus. Look at how lonely Mom is.” Of
course, Nancy met her husband when they were eighteen; they got married at twenty-three. They’d been having happily married
sex since they were registered to vote. What did she know about being lonely?

I felt forced to nip that romance in the bud and was robbed of enjoying the flower. And I began to resent it. Plus, I missed
Pedro. I would miss him for a long, long time.

Why was my ache for God so wired into me? Why did my partner have to be at the same place spiritually? Was it simply part
of my personality, or was it part of my pathology? Was I so terrified of life that everyone around me had to replicate the
same longings and desires?

Why had God resurrected my feminine self only to rob me of the chance to enjoy it? Why had God made me to dance and not given
me anyone to dance with?

Rudy and I sat quietly for a moment. A window stood open, letting in the sound of children skirmishing in the alley. Pedro
had lived not four blocks from here. My mind left and traveled down the street to the café where Pedro and I first got coffee,
to a kiss that persuaded me all the answers to life could be Yes. Then Rudy’s cough brought me back to the counseling room;
back to the truth that so many of those answers had been No.

Rudy: Before you lament the lack of dance partners, let’s celebrate the fact that you could dance at all.

Susan: True. You can’t appreciate the power of hormones unless you’ve lost them and gotten them back.

Jesus: You could have danced with me.

Susan: I went to that Catholic church on my lunch hour just to sit with you. I went to the monastery. But was I wrong for
wanting a human to dance with?

God: There were some diamonds in the rough.

Susan: Like who? Wayne? He dumped me because I stacked dishes.

God: Not everyone was on your timetable, Susan. And just because you wanted to dance doesn’t mean you were ready.

Susan: But I could have been ready. You learn to dance on the dance floor. You said you’d have been with me; that no place
was too dark for you. What if I’d married Pedro? Would that have been too dark for you?

God: You have a dim memory of your parents’ marriage.

Susan: Pedro was nothing like my father!

Rudy: Susan, is it possible you were a difficult match? Or were your standards too high?

Susan: My standards were “loves Jesus” and “has a sex drive.” But those seem to be mutually exclusive.

Jesus: We know, Susan. The church has confused being good with being nice. Look what they did to me: “Gentle Jesus, meek and
mild.” Men in the church have gotten the same treatment.