TWO: 2:17
* * *
I went to my father once, when I was still just a girl, and I asked him what a "queer" was. I'd heard it in school, when a group of boys were taunting another boy and I had been too shy to intervene.
"Hey, queer! What'cha doin', faggot?"
He had cried, the boy had, big, angry tears of humiliation, and I had wondered what in all the world could hurt someone so. Father and God were one and the same in those days, and so it was to him that I had turned.
"What's a queer, Dad? What's a faggot?"
He looked at me strangely, asked me where I'd heard such language. When I told him he sighed and nodded sadly.
"Those aren't very nice words, Lucy. I don't want you to ever use them. Do you understand?"
I nodded.
"But what are they?" I asked again.
He reached over, laid his hand on his Bible, looked back at me.
"They are very sad people," he said. "They are sick; something is wrong with them. Do you remember the story of Adam and Eve? How God created a companion for Adam?"
"Yes."
"Then you know that Eve wasn't just another Adam. She was made to compliment him in a very special way, a way that is right in the eyes of God. What you heard that boy being called is a type of person who rejects that special connection that Adam had with Eve, and that men have with women when they get married. They reject God, and that makes a lot of people upset."
"So he's bad?"
My father shook his head. "The other boys may just be bullying him. Even if it is true, it isn't him who is bad, but the dirty things he does. Always remember, Lucy, that you have to love the sinner even when you hate the sin. With these people you have to do everything you can to make them be normal, so they can be saved by God."
These people. From then on, I always thought of the two groups: normal people, and these people.
Who were broken.
#
Broken.
Did God create me broken?
Because only a few years later I started to change, to become more than a girl, and I started feeling things that I didn't understand. Mom tried to talk to me about them, about what it meant to be a woman, but I don't really think she knew it herself. What I did learn from her was that normal girls felt things, attractions, toward boys, and that good girls never, ever, let the boys know this. But normal girls did feel these things. They did. It was normal.
I wanted to be normal, even if it meant being female and therefore dirty like Eve. I wanted to be saved by God.
So I had to want boys. The more I wanted them the more normal I would be.
I can't even remember all the names of all the boys I dated, all the boys I kissed. Anywhere I could, any time, I would date them and kiss them. Maybe if I kissed enough boys I would actually start to like it.
Maybe I would be normal.
But I wasn't. Every time I kissed a boy, I closed my eyes and the picture would come. She would be pretty, with long hair tumbling around her shoulders, and she would smile and she would be close to me and hold me and her lips would be so warm, so moist, so soft. And with this picture there would come other feelings too, feelings in my heart and below, warm, pleasant feelings, like a tingle down there. When my eyes were open and I saw the boy's face, these feelings were gone, like a wisp of smoke in the wind, replaced by nothing.
Or almost nothing.
#
My sister Mary, you know, likes men. I can tell. She likes to kiss them and touch them and make love to them. And there was that time when she and I both were so down, because we weren't married, because we had no men. It was easy, in those days, just to follow along with Mary, because she really did want a man so badly, and it occurred to me then that this was really the answer to all my problems. I needed a husband, because with a husband there would be adult relations, would be real sex, and I would be his compliment, just as Eve complimented Adam. God made me, and he made me female, and that meant I complimented the male.
I had to be normal. God was watching me. I was going to be a Minister, was going to spread the gospel of Christ. I knew by now that my thoughts were homosexual, and I knew that they were sin. I loved God then as I do now, and I just wanted to be what he had created, that good and right Lucy that Mom and Dad were so proud of.
I had to be normal, because in all the world the one thing that most frightened me was that God might leave me.
Go hates homosexuals. God hates fags and dykes. How many times did I hear that?
But don't we love the sinner and hate the sin?
Homosexuals are an affront to Christ and decency. Homosexuals spread AIDS. Homosexuals are unclean.
Homosexuals are all, every one of them, going to go straight to hell.
I had to be normal.
Marriage would make me normal.
#
I tried.
With Jeremy first, going all the way to New York, I tried. Marry me, Jeremy. Make me normal. Make me something that God can love.
When I came home, my family asked me why I had left him. I did not delay with my answer because I didn't want to tell them; I delayed because I had to make the truth fit another lie.
His family didn't like me. They smoked pot. It's not a Camden world out there.
But the truth was that I could no longer stand to feel Jeremy's male hands on me.
#
I met Kevin at the airport.
I could tell he wanted me right away. I was angry, at Mary, at the world, and something as simple as losing my makeup kit set me off. Everything in the world was wrong, most especially me. I kept thinking about women, about touching them, kissing them, doing more. Prurient thoughts about their bodies, so much like mine, rounded and soft. But Kevin listened patiently as I yelled, and then he asked me on a date. I'll never know quite why, but he did.
And I said he was cute, for Mary's sake.
My lies by then had become habitual.
It was complicated after that. Kevin became my boyfriend and he really seemed to like me. But just a boyfriend was not enough; there had to be more. He had to be more. I had to put Jeremy behind me and get a husband, because that was the only way I was ever going to find my salvation. I could feel God slipping away, all the time, more and more. At night I would dream of God, high on a throne above me, looking down.
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
I prayed a lot. Prayed to God for help. Since I was studying to become a Minister no one took much heed at this. I dared not think of anything else, of anything but my need for a husband, a man who would save me from death and hell. What friends I had drifted away, what other interests I had grew idle. There must be nothing else, except getting Kevin to ask me to be his wife.
I'll be a good wife, God. I'll be a good woman. Please don't abandon me.
Kevin. Kevin was my only hope.
And then one day, she came.
* * *
I went to my father once, when I was still just a girl, and I asked him what a "queer" was. I'd heard it in school, when a group of boys were taunting another boy and I had been too shy to intervene.
"Hey, queer! What'cha doin', faggot?"
He had cried, the boy had, big, angry tears of humiliation, and I had wondered what in all the world could hurt someone so. Father and God were one and the same in those days, and so it was to him that I had turned.
"What's a queer, Dad? What's a faggot?"
He looked at me strangely, asked me where I'd heard such language. When I told him he sighed and nodded sadly.
"Those aren't very nice words, Lucy. I don't want you to ever use them. Do you understand?"
I nodded.
"But what are they?" I asked again.
He reached over, laid his hand on his Bible, looked back at me.
"They are very sad people," he said. "They are sick; something is wrong with them. Do you remember the story of Adam and Eve? How God created a companion for Adam?"
"Yes."
"Then you know that Eve wasn't just another Adam. She was made to compliment him in a very special way, a way that is right in the eyes of God. What you heard that boy being called is a type of person who rejects that special connection that Adam had with Eve, and that men have with women when they get married. They reject God, and that makes a lot of people upset."
"So he's bad?"
My father shook his head. "The other boys may just be bullying him. Even if it is true, it isn't him who is bad, but the dirty things he does. Always remember, Lucy, that you have to love the sinner even when you hate the sin. With these people you have to do everything you can to make them be normal, so they can be saved by God."
These people. From then on, I always thought of the two groups: normal people, and these people.
Who were broken.
#
Broken.
Did God create me broken?
Because only a few years later I started to change, to become more than a girl, and I started feeling things that I didn't understand. Mom tried to talk to me about them, about what it meant to be a woman, but I don't really think she knew it herself. What I did learn from her was that normal girls felt things, attractions, toward boys, and that good girls never, ever, let the boys know this. But normal girls did feel these things. They did. It was normal.
I wanted to be normal, even if it meant being female and therefore dirty like Eve. I wanted to be saved by God.
So I had to want boys. The more I wanted them the more normal I would be.
I can't even remember all the names of all the boys I dated, all the boys I kissed. Anywhere I could, any time, I would date them and kiss them. Maybe if I kissed enough boys I would actually start to like it.
Maybe I would be normal.
But I wasn't. Every time I kissed a boy, I closed my eyes and the picture would come. She would be pretty, with long hair tumbling around her shoulders, and she would smile and she would be close to me and hold me and her lips would be so warm, so moist, so soft. And with this picture there would come other feelings too, feelings in my heart and below, warm, pleasant feelings, like a tingle down there. When my eyes were open and I saw the boy's face, these feelings were gone, like a wisp of smoke in the wind, replaced by nothing.
Or almost nothing.
#
My sister Mary, you know, likes men. I can tell. She likes to kiss them and touch them and make love to them. And there was that time when she and I both were so down, because we weren't married, because we had no men. It was easy, in those days, just to follow along with Mary, because she really did want a man so badly, and it occurred to me then that this was really the answer to all my problems. I needed a husband, because with a husband there would be adult relations, would be real sex, and I would be his compliment, just as Eve complimented Adam. God made me, and he made me female, and that meant I complimented the male.
I had to be normal. God was watching me. I was going to be a Minister, was going to spread the gospel of Christ. I knew by now that my thoughts were homosexual, and I knew that they were sin. I loved God then as I do now, and I just wanted to be what he had created, that good and right Lucy that Mom and Dad were so proud of.
I had to be normal, because in all the world the one thing that most frightened me was that God might leave me.
Go hates homosexuals. God hates fags and dykes. How many times did I hear that?
But don't we love the sinner and hate the sin?
Homosexuals are an affront to Christ and decency. Homosexuals spread AIDS. Homosexuals are unclean.
Homosexuals are all, every one of them, going to go straight to hell.
I had to be normal.
Marriage would make me normal.
#
I tried.
With Jeremy first, going all the way to New York, I tried. Marry me, Jeremy. Make me normal. Make me something that God can love.
When I came home, my family asked me why I had left him. I did not delay with my answer because I didn't want to tell them; I delayed because I had to make the truth fit another lie.
His family didn't like me. They smoked pot. It's not a Camden world out there.
But the truth was that I could no longer stand to feel Jeremy's male hands on me.
#
I met Kevin at the airport.
I could tell he wanted me right away. I was angry, at Mary, at the world, and something as simple as losing my makeup kit set me off. Everything in the world was wrong, most especially me. I kept thinking about women, about touching them, kissing them, doing more. Prurient thoughts about their bodies, so much like mine, rounded and soft. But Kevin listened patiently as I yelled, and then he asked me on a date. I'll never know quite why, but he did.
And I said he was cute, for Mary's sake.
My lies by then had become habitual.
It was complicated after that. Kevin became my boyfriend and he really seemed to like me. But just a boyfriend was not enough; there had to be more. He had to be more. I had to put Jeremy behind me and get a husband, because that was the only way I was ever going to find my salvation. I could feel God slipping away, all the time, more and more. At night I would dream of God, high on a throne above me, looking down.
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."
I prayed a lot. Prayed to God for help. Since I was studying to become a Minister no one took much heed at this. I dared not think of anything else, of anything but my need for a husband, a man who would save me from death and hell. What friends I had drifted away, what other interests I had grew idle. There must be nothing else, except getting Kevin to ask me to be his wife.
I'll be a good wife, God. I'll be a good woman. Please don't abandon me.
Kevin. Kevin was my only hope.
And then one day, she came.