Adam Venus
Bump-bump.
I speed down a hallway with my head ducked, desperate to shed this terror I haven’t felt in years. Because “terror,” this is. Of the existential form. I look ahead and realize I’ve gone down the end of a hall with no exits, the hall that leads to the employee lounge. He will walk by me again in two minutes, but I still can’t move an inch. So I lean against the wall and catch my breath, my mind spinning, turning, whirling…
And in my mind’s eye, this stranger stops as he passes. He takes me by the chin, tenderly but passionately. And he turns that turgid energy from before into the best kiss of my life…
I pick up my shoulders. Okay, Adam, get it together. Three…two…one…
Okay. I need to pull myself together. Obviously there are reasons I’m freaking out a little. Until I was five, I was raised in the Catholic church, which hammered the idea into your head that you were a born sinner, and that only the absolution provided by God would ever truly come close to saving you. The sin never leaves you, and that was damaging enough for me. But my issues got worse when my mom yanked me out of Catholicism and started bringing me to her family’s Southern Baptist church. Because there was one sin they hated especially violently.
The first time I remember being told gay people deserved hell, I can still see the sunlight in my head – it was streaming into my massive wooden chapel as a guest pastor listed things that could get you sent to purgatory – drink, drugs, adultery, lying. But homosexuality was thundered about especially scathingly. The stakes were made very clear to me that day: be gay, burn forever. I remember the air of derision as the pastor talked about gays, the smirk on his face that these people were beneath even a serious conversation – they were jokes, and their very existence was something so shameful it deserved nervous, red-faced laughter. And I got the message loud and clear.
At the time I’d already been mocked a little here or there for walking a certain way or hanging out with girls on the playground, and I remember hiding my face and praying nobody stared at me during the brimstone speech. Everyone knew what I was – I was just sure of it. A big, gay X had been painted over my head – I just knew it. A homosexual scarlet letter. That’s around when I stopped acknowledging that it could be a possibility in the first place. I knew what I felt, and although I didn’t question it, I did stifle it. I didn’t fight what I was, I just didn’t really think about it. And I never really did again.
Until now, at least. Until…that. Until him. Until I was faced with sweaty palms and a racing pulse and undeniable proof that my body reacts to guys in a way it has never reacted to girl…
But that’s also involved in why I find myself in the seminary in the first place. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder when I was only six. When my brothers were boarding a carnival ride, I froze, stared up at the ride, and started slowly backing away. My brain was full of horrors nobody would ever know about, blooming with awful worst-case scenarios about snapping cables and falling girders and tumbling machinery. And my occasional attraction to boys was the constant, terrifying undercurrent. I didn’t know how to turn any of it into words, though, so I walked away and hid behind a bathroom for two hours. Security found me, and the next week a therapist told my parents I would likely battle lifelong issues with worrying. But I didn’t.
Jesus helped me. Changed me. Saved me, really. Only a few years later I came into the light, and it changed my life. In the Bible I found an endless stream of peace, a solemn vow that no matter how much the storm swirled inside my head, something bigger would always be out there, a safety net for me in my worst moments. Basically, God became the sun. God became peace of mind. God became everything I’d been looking for. When I knew for sure that I was headed to everlasting peace in the clouds, the rest of my worries just sort of stopped mattering. It was that simple. He made me clean again.
After some stuff went down in my family, I doubled down and got serious in my church’s youth group and bible study classes, I put one foot in front of the other every day with one goal: to please Him and get into heaven. My dad was thrilled, as were most of my teachers, and why wouldn’t they be? I’m in my twenties and I’ve never been in a bar, I’ve never been arrested, I can count on one hand the times I can remember using curse words. None of that has ever occurred to me, but suddenly I feel wild and daring and sinful. That back there – that was the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life. I felt like all of the living I’ve never done, all the living I didn’t even know I wasn’t doing until now, condensing and then exploding in that one moment.
I would be fine living out my life at some rural, small-town church – that’s what I’m looking for, actually. These dying areas need more help and outreach than anyone right now, and I’d like to provide that help. I don’t care if there’s one stoplight in the whole town and not even a bookstore to speak of – that’s just what I want. All of this led me to here, but that moment just now made my whole life flash in front of me in a horrid rush of “what the heck was I thinking…”
And seriously, though, what was that? It felt almost like…like…
I can’t say the love word, so I won’t. Obviously. That’s ridiculous. I’ve never really believed in the whole “love at first sight” thing anyway, because love was never on my mind at all – I didn’t want to have sex until marriage, so I learned to shut down things like that. If I felt a buzz, I walked away. If someone attracted my eye, I stared at something else. But nothing has ever compared to this, on any level. I was taught that “love” between two men wasn’t real, and was a sick confusion in the minds of gay men – but that was real. I don’t even know if it was love or attraction or lust or what, but it was something. I felt like I just stepped into a force field, his force field, and I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life. And I know I just left, but on some deep and senseless level I want to go back. My mind goes wild with possibilities: what if I never see him again? What if he’s a temp worker? What if that was somehow a one-time gift from above, as crazy as that sounds? What if I spend the rest of my life wondering about this? What if I’m already going to hell?
Up ahead, I hear a clatter. My heart clangs around in my chest. Oh, heavens, he’s already coming, but I can’t move. I have been frozen as if by God himself. Whatever this is, I just can’t fight this. The spirit – or something – is sinking into me, striking me, and I don’t even know what I’m doing.
He appears around the corner, and it’s like a cool breeze has appeared from nowhere. The way he walks is so smooth, so debonair. His hips sway a bit, and the way he wears his uniform, tighter than anyone else, hints that he might not be like the rest of them. But he pulls it off – he pulls it all off, and more. He lags behind the rest of the staff, the distance growing, and soon he is standing in front of me. Staring. My entire body goes numb, and my chest feels like it is soaring miles above the rest of me. And suddenly I am coursing with the lust I feel for another man, here under the roof of a school that teaches the word of the Lord.
Send me to hell already, I know…get Lucifer ready to open up the gates…
He stops right next to me. I’ve never been good with awkward silences. Because I don’t know what else to do, I suddenly introduce myself like he’s a new friend at a social mixer or something. Yes, that’s the way to handle this volcano – just be casual.
“Um. Hi. I’m Adam.”
“Fabian,” he says in this weirdly smooth and confident way, smirking like there’s a joke I just missed. His voice is low and knowing, and his eyes sparkle.
“You might have to write that one down for me.”
“Fa-bi-an,” he repeats. “You know, like, a key fob? It’s pronounced like fob – ee – on.”
Fabian, I think to myself. It already sounds like music in my brain. No – a symphony, even. At full blast. And what would those lips do to me, if I let them? “Well, I like it.”
We shake hands for some reason, and his touch makes my skin feel cold and hot at the same time. Dizzy, too. As soon as he pulls away I am struck by the urge to touch him again – I just want him in proximity to me, and I don’t know why. This is overpowering.
“So, um…you new here?” I ask, my mouth dry.
He smiles again, but I don’t understand the reason behind the smile. “Kind of. Started a few weeks ago.”
“Aren’t you a bit…young for this?”
He looks away. “Long story, actually.”
“Oh. So you just moved here?”
“Yes, and it’s just as boring as I was afraid it would be. Maybe we could, uh, hangout sometime? I really don’t know anyone, and…”
I pause. I know I’m being weird, and I know this is weird, but I could always use a friend. So could he. Why not explore this explosive…thing, whatever it is, in the context of a friendship? There’s no harm in that, right? Even if it could raise some eyebrows around here…
“Hey, actually, I’m off in ten minutes. Let’s continue the conversation. Do you want to?”
My body stops functioning. “Uh. Where?”
He points out the door. “There’s a little, um, dive bar up the street that I absolutely love. Just as long as we don’t get murdered, though. It’s rough. Which is why I like it…”
I gulp. “A bar?”
“Yeah. What’s the look for?”
I just stare.
“Oh. Don’t you ever go out occasionally? You’re a Baptist, not a Quaker. And isn’t Christianity about fellowship and brotherhood?”
My heart lurches. “But…”
“Yes?”
“Something tells me you don’t view me as a brother views me…”
“You don’t know the porn I watch, then,” he says so quietly I almost don’t hear. I lean back, shocked.
“What?” I ask him, thinking I’d misheard.
“I said I had to pour some concrete tomorrow for the new tennis courts. That’s all. Anyway, wanna come?”
I set my shoulders and take a breath. “I mean…I am in seminary…”
“Oh, whatever. Just come. It’s a good place to sit and talk, if nothing else.”
His eyes bore into mine, but not in aggressive way, but in a way that tells me he wants to get inside whatever is inside me. And it reminds me of something: although I found peace in God, I never found peace in the church. Being around people in general was never easy for me. It’s like there’s a circle drawn on the ground, and everyone is standing inside it but me. I don’t even know how to toe the line, actually. I am me, I am an island, and everyone else – they are something else. And I don’t know how to be like them. Lately I have wondered if I even want to be like them. I am paralyzed by the fear that I am both not enough for people, and too much for them at the same time.
But this stranger, this Fabian – he looks at me like whatever I am, whatever is in here, is just fine with me.
“Okay,” I smile. “Let’s go.”
And just like that, I agree to essentially go on a date with a man.