59. midwinter

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay

58. truth

Where does our story begin today?

It begins with me waking up at 6am with my best friend at the Hotel Minneapolis, where I stayed the night because I was in no state to drive. She’s been staying in Rochester with her dad for the next few weeks and came up to Minneapolis with another friend of her’s from Iowa. She just left her husband and decided to get some room to breathe, decompress and put some distance between her and her husband. So the three of us had dinner last night and then crashed in their room.

The sad thing is that they’ve been married eleven years, and have tried to do everything to make things work. Even sadder is the fact that up until last week, when she left, he thought things were at least starting to get better, though the truth was that she was the one doing all the work and the changing, and was emotionally drained from trying to keep him happy. She hadn’t realized how unhappy she was or how bad things had gotten until another friend of her’s asked point blank why she was still with her husband. So, last Wednesday, we spent most of the day while he was at work packing up her things and moving her out.

The hardest thing about ending a relationship is often the fear of letting go of the idea of what it was, of losing everything that was good about it, and of that part of your identity dying, especially if the relationship lasted several years. Like, eleven years.

Or twenty.

In my last entry, I described the awfulness that ensued on my birthday that led to the loss of a good friend and my faith in God. Frankly, the whole business with Seth was only the final blow that knocked me off the fence and into facing the truth of my situation, which is that I’d basically been holding into a faith for the sake of being with him. He and some other friends are in the process of starting a church geared towards those who have been hurt or rejected by the Church, including GLBT Christians and those who are interested in the Christian faith but haven’t been afforded a place in the community. But the result of that conversation on my birthday made me realize that I haven’t been a Christian for a long time—possibly ever.

Driving back to my house this morning, I realized that this whole thing has felt like the death of a twenty-year-long relationship. At the age of eight I began to identify as a Christian, and since then the church has been my community. My whole identity has been wrapped up in the reality of God, of theology, and of a Judeo-Christian morality and ethic. My decisions have been made based on whether what I’m doing is the will of God, or whether a given activity or project would glorify God. It took me nearly ten years to finally come out because of what the Bible taught about homosexuality. So to turn around after nearly twenty years of living with this feels like the end of a marriage that hasn’t been working for a long time, and the children are all out of the house now and we’re trying to find a reason to stay together.

This honestly wasn’t a huge surprise. As early as 2006 I was beginning to question the validity of the Bible, whether it was true and if it mattered whether it’s true (and if it wasn’t true, what that meant), and really wasn’t finding satisfactory answers to these questions in my Christian community. In fact, quite the opposite. “Down that dangerous road lies emptiness and misery,” was the general response. So I shut up because it was easier than enduring the looks and the remonstrations about “enduring to the end” and “praying for faith.” When I came out, I started with the Bible and seeing what it really had to say about gays, because what God had to say about this was important and I wasn’t satisfied with the idea that I was broken or that God had given me these desires only to bury them. That’s a whole other post, but what I found wasn’t assuring, though not in the way I feared. I realized what a malleable and flimsy thing translation was, and how every Biblical translator has an agenda that works its way into the text. So how could I really believe anything that it had to say?

A few months ago while temping I listened to the This American Life episode “Godless America,” in which Julia Sweeney tells the story of her journey from being a committed Catholic to atheism, which is an excerpt from her show “Letting Go of God.” I’d heard the This American Life story a while ago, and at the time felt rather superior to her story. I went to a Christian liberal arts college; had a degree in Biblical and theological studies; studied and discussed theology; and had been going to church all my life and had even studied other worldviews in depth and was convinced in the rightness of Christianity. It offered all the answers to life’s persistent questions. Atheism was the ultimate cop-out, a failure to deal with layers of complexity, rejecting God rather than face the questions.

But if I had to be honest, in that smugness was also fear—fear that maybe there was something to her experience and what she was saying. I’d grown up my whole life with God, with Him being there, listening to and watching over me, and the idea of Not-God was, well, unsettling. It meant turning my back on everything I’d ever believed and been taught by my family, in my many years of Christian education, and by the Church. It meant that everything in life is just coincidence; that we’re here by chance and there’s no one minding the store. It meant that everyone at my church was essentially believing a myth; that there was no one looking out for or listening to people unjustly thrown in prison, or being tortured, or suffering. Worse, it also meant that this is all there is—that there is no afterlife, no Eternal Life, no salvation.

So on my birthday, Seth rebuffing me for the final time was the last straw. Since there wasn’t a future with him, there was no reason to call myself a Christian anymore since I was staying in it for him, which is a terrible reason to do anything. I felt like Anna Kendrick’s character in Up In The Air, having relocated her entire life to Omaha for a guy who ultimately dumps her by text message, and feeling completely adrift; or like George Clooney’s character in the same film, thinking he’d finally found the woman of his dreams and that this new vision of his life was actually going to work, and showing up at her door to surprise her—only to discover that she was married, with children.

One of the big things I’ve lost since leaving the church is the community. For as long as I can remember, the church has provided a central locus that gave shape and direction to my life, from the AWANA program as a kid, to youth group as a teenager, to adult choir and orchestra in church, to weddings, funerals and everything in between. It was a way to commemorate and ritualize the important moments in life, like chapter breaks in a novel that organize an otherwise an uninterrupted and nebulous blur of days and years and shifting memories. There really isn’t another community that offers that kind of stability—but that isn’t a good reason to accept an entire belief system, is it?

A few days ago I did some searching on agnostic groups that might exist in my area, and came across another site that I’d heard about, again, on This American Life—Meetup.com, a site that exists to bring together different groups of people interested in the same things. There was a group called “Former Fundamentalists” that met for coffee on Sunday mornings, so I decided to check it out this morning. That ended up not happening as I got completely lost due to some poor directions and ended up giving up and going to Caribou instead to write about this whole misadventure.

While driving over to find the little coffee shop, I started thinking about this new direction in my life. I’m always suspicious about my own motives, and have been questioning whether I’m choosing agnosticism for the right reasons—and mainly whether it’s because of Seth, the guy I’ve been foolishly in love with for the last year. After all, it’s equally absurd to reject a belief system because a man done you wrong as it is to stay in it for him. There, in my living room, getting ready to go out and meet up with these fellow agnostics and former fundamentalists, I had to admit to myself that, yes, I had decided to reject Christianity because of him; that I was angry at him, and am still angry at the institution of the church itself; and that I hadn’t found a church that was both accepting of gays and lesbians and also rigorous and uncompromising in its approach to faith and theology.

There’s also the fact that I really liked the church that Seth and my friends were putting together, and was really excited that it might be a place I could finally belong to. However, he was to be the senior pastor, and seeing as I still have and probably always will have feelings for him, I could never go there while he’s a mainstay. Seeing him hurts too much. But that’s life. An added bonus is that my dating pool is that much bigger for dating other agnostics and “nones” (as they’re called).

Sometimes it’s the right move to leave a relationship if it’s abusive or unhealthy, or if it was disingenuous to begin with. But what if you realize that you were the problem to begin with, or even that maybe you’ve been letting other voices alter and shade your perceptions of that relationship, making it appear worse than it ever was?

Le sigh. The pursuit of truth is neither an easy nor a comfortable road.

57. invidiousness part i

… and why I hate Valentine’s Day so much.

Truth be told, it’s because I’ve never been able to take part in it. Or rather, had a positive experience that would refute the notion that it’s anything more than a tawdry, vulgar pseudo-holiday dreamed up by the Marquis de Sade to torment those who are miserably single [he said with a permanent scowl etched into his craggy, careworn face].

It’s a day when happy, coupled people blissfully buy into the spurious notion that there’s one day in the year when we should all be extra attracted to each other, and men go out and make grand, sweeping gestures to their girlfriends (or boyfriends) to make up for the fact of how neglectful they are towards their significant other the rest of the year.

Or maybe that’s just me and that damned speck of mirror-glass in my eye.

Yes, I’m one of those peevish, vituperative, curmudgeonly people who begrudge the fact that others are happy and having a wonderful time today, and wish they would all just collectively go fuck themselves and remember that there are those who aren’t blissfully happy; who (full disclosure) desperately wish that there were someone to brainlessly buy into this farce of a “holiday” with, and maybe for a few, fleeting hours forget how cheap, bloody and cruel life is the other three-hundred and sixty-four days of the year—or, on a more positive note, spend an evening with that “special someone,” maybe have a nice dinner and feel part of the universal experience of romantic love.

And, naturally, fuck each other silly at the end of the night.

Another reason that I begrudge Valentine’s Day so deeply and with such contempt is that a year ago today I woke up with the guy I spent the majority of this past year pining, crying and agonizing over. Let’s call him Seth. (No, really, that’s his name.) He was the first man I have ever been in love with, exacerbated by the fact that I knew he didn’t feel the same way about me. Shortly after our first sexual encounter, he basically told me that flat out, breaking my heart the first time. Before that, I found the idea of unrequited love silly and self-abasing. “Get over it!” you’d hear me say, doling out advice to inconsolable, anguished friends whose predicament I now find myself in. “He/She is not worth the pain you’re putting yourself through!” The funny thing about it though is that you can’t stop caring, or wishing, or hoping. It’s wholly irrational, but you hold out for the slim chance that maybe, just maybe, the veil will be drawn from their eyes and they will suddenly see you for the loving, caring, perfectly compatible person that you are.

And so Seth and I became what is affectionately referred to as fuck buddies. He was more or less using me for sex, apparently under the misguided notion that we were just having fun. Or some shit like that. And every time I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I’d get through to him; that he’d see that we could be more than friends; that, even beyond the whole sexual compatibility element, we got each others jokes, wanted the same things, had a similar approach to life and faith and intellect.

As Bobby Fisher might say, “No dice.”

This Valentine’s story concludes a few weeks ago, on my 28th birthday, with me drunk and sobbing in a friend’s apartment. Everyone had left Seth’s apartment (where the birthday party was being held), and I was too drunk to drive. Two other friends of mine live in the same building, but have a cat, and I am extremely allergic to cats, so normally this would end with us in his bed, having sex and me spending the night. It was not to end thus this time.

Seth had been on a blind date a week previous with another guy, and wasn’t sure how it was going to go, or even if it would go anywhere. My heart sank when he talked about this, but again I held out for the hope that it wouldn’t work, that it would just be another dalliance and that if I hung around long enough that he’d fall for me as I had for him. On that February 2nd though, he said that he was starting to like the guy more, and things were getting more serious between them. I was trying desperately to put a brave face on it and not let it bother me.

Flash back to earlier in the summer. I had just ended a relationship with my second serious boyfriend (let’s call him Nick) and was starting to date a new guy (we’ll call him Jack), and the night that I’d told everyone about Jack, as we were leaving, Seth asked if he could kiss me before things got too serious. And so, still being madly in love with him, we made out in the stairwell of the apartment.

Back to the night of my 28th birthday, eventually it got late and everyone decided it was time to call it an evening. It was obvious I wasn’t going anywhere, and he said I could crash there, but that I would need to sleep on the couch since he was starting a relationship with a new guy. And that’s when it began.

For weeks prior to this, I’d been agonizing over whether to confess my feelings to Seth or not. Some good friends who knew about the whole fuck buddy situation said that there was no way he couldn’t feel the same way, at least on some level, because nobody could do those things and be totally detached. Right? And I was determined not to let him be the biggest regret of my life.

So there in his apartment, drunk and enraged, I spewed everything at him that had been building over the weeks and months—how stupid I’d been to have let him play with my heart that way, how he’s not worthy of me, how I deserve better than some guy who can fuck me whenever it’s convenient for him to get his goddamn rocks off but then toss me to the curb once something “real” comes along, as if I were that cheap and disposable. On top of it all, he’s slated to be the pastor of a fucking GLBT-friendly church. I told him he’d do this again to someone else, that he’d play with some vulnerable guy’s affections who’s desperate to find a good Christian gay man, take advantage of him, and break his heart too. I called him a monster, a user, and a whole host of other awful things. No sense in being a writer if you can’t use them as a scalpel.

That night I also told him I no longer believe in God; that the church is a sham, and that he’s living, walking proof that none of it rings true. He listened quietly, tried to explain himself (which I’d have none of), and then left the room. Upon which I called my friend who lives upstairs, asked if I could crash there, and then spent the next hour sobbing on her couch. I’d hated myself for what I’d done, and hated him at the same time that I loved him.

But I also knew that the friendship, the relationship, was over.

Since the 2nd, I made it my resolution to do away with my old sexual morality, because chances are I’m never going to find a soulmate, and impersonal hookups are about as close as I’m probably going to get to the intimacy that I desperately crave. In the last few weeks I’ve had more sex than I have in my entire life, but it hasn’t filled the void, and I knew going in it wouldn’t satisfy. Maybe I’m just trying to get Seth out of my system.

So you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump on the Valentine’s Day bandwagon and celebrate the triumph of romantic love with the rest of the callow world. Last night, a guy that I’d been seeing and talking to for a few weeks decided to call things off. It was a mutual decision; I’d been sensing that we weren’t any more than just friends, but it still came as a bit of a crushing disappointment, especially considering that, even if it wasn’t going anywhere, that perhaps for once I could temporarily shut my eyes, not be alone on Valentine’s Day and believe that maybe, just maybe, love and romance really are possible. But, as usual, he turned out like all the others. This man too “disappoint me.”

I’m still waiting for someone to prove me wrong.

56. invidiousness part ii

Because this sums up my mood today so perfectly, I shall let Fiona do the talking:

Those boon times went bust
My feet of clay, they dried to dust
The red isn’t the red we painted
It’s just rust
And the signature thing
That used to bring a following
I have trouble now
Even remembering
So why did I kiss him so hard
Late last Friday night
And keep on letting him change all my plans
I’m either so sick in the head
I need to be bled dry, to quit
Or i just really used to love him
I sure hope that’s it

I knew that to keep in touch
Would do me deep in dutch
‘Cause it isn’t the rush of remembering
It’s just mush
And the signature thing
Is only growing harrowing
I should have no trouble now
To keep from following
So why did I kiss him so hard
Late last Friday night
And keep on letting him change all my plans
I’m either so sick in the head
I need to be bled dry, to quit
Or i just really used to love him
I sure hope that’s it

– Fiona Apple. “Tymps (the sick in the head song).” Extraordinary Machine. Mike Elizondo, Brian Kehew, Jon Brion, 2005. CD.