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Up Close and Personal

Joe Chiudina

    On the corner of where I live, across the street from Saint Baptist church, there’s a place by the lake where people are encouraged to sit and pray and meditate.
    It’s dusk and the sunset is God’s beauty mark.
    I don’t think that it’s by accident that I share this bench with the copyrighter of this tiny miracle. Society has sworn that if I don’t change my homosexual-ways that I will spend eternity burning in a lake of old school fire.
    “Come closer.” Jesus invites, “I promise I won’t bite.”
    My jigsaw sexual life leaves me puzzled. Am I hurting anyone? Lifestyle? Closet-style? The Good Book isn’t the So-So Book. The bible runs the truth a lot louder than man runs his mouth.
    Yes. I’ve done my homework. Studied my bible.
    While those who follow the straight and narrow cut class and throw their hands to the sky and ask why???
    Is it worse than a woman who murders Benny Junior who lives inside her? What if little Gene or baby Jill grow up and defend gay-marriages? Will mama and dada have to set Jill and Gene ‘straight?’
    “You’re not going to strike me down?” I ask he who made me. I think that it’s a fair question. My penis didn’t exactly raise its hand and declare to be gay.
    “Strike you down?” Jesus replies. “Who would I speak through? You’re my child. I love you. But I hate the pain that you go through. Your closet was a cocoon. Now you’re a butterfly.”
    “They tell me that I’m smog for the soul and grind me under their heels and warn me that I need to be healed or spend the afterlife in a lake of clichés.
    Jesus says, “It’s okay. Spit it out.”
    “I didn’t just wake-up one day and decide to be gay. I didn’t choose to fantasize about men. Just as I didn’t choose to have blond hair or dark hair or a big nose or a small mouth.”
    “It’s okay.”
    I wipe away a trail of wet sorrow. “Days when I try for hours to jerk off to a playboy or a penthouse centerfold I hear normal kids scream ‘Hey Stevie, why don’t you go play mark-o homo’ or ‘Hey Stevie. Why don’t you straighten yourself out!’
    Jesus puts an arm around me. Pull’s me closer. “I created dogs. Did I command them to purr? I created cats. Did I command them to bark? I created children. Did I command them to behave.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Freewill. You have it too. Freewill is a gift without a receipt. You can’t take it back.” Jesus reaches into his robe and pulls out a floppy stack of stickers.
    My voice is stuffy from my crying. I feel like a cat who has overdosed on a string of yarn.
    “Every time I try to detach myself from myself in order to make myself feel normal it feels like my heart is injected with Novocain. It feels like that fist-sized muscle is pumping death instead of life.”
    Jesus wipes away my pain. “Tell me about it. Who told you that you would burn in a lake of cliches?”
    “Father Michael. Are you going to strike him down?” I reply with a hopeful smile but with a heart that already knows the answer.
    “I created priests. Did I command them not to speak their hearts? Take these. Stick them on the rear bumper of cars. Start with Father Michael’s. Do you know what he drives?”
    I nod my head and flip through them.
    ‘I support The Gay Right Movement’
    I turn back towards my savior but there’s a butterfly perched next to me. There’s not a closet in sight.

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