And in the darkened underpass
“So that’s why homosexuals are sinners, class.” My theology teacher, Mrs. Cochran, closed her illustrated children’s Bible and set it on her lap.
I sat on the floor in front of her with the rest of my third grade class and felt confused. Mrs. Cochran had just told us the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and how all the men who had had relations with each other were destroyed. I knew relations meant sex and not your cousins or something because my mom was always honest and had explained this to me when I was younger. She also said something about Lot’s wife being turned into a salt shaker when she turned around; I may have misunderstood this.
“Mrs. Cochran?” I raised my hand as I spoke. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“What do you mean, Anaïs?” Her face looked tight and annoyed. I always asked a lot of questions in theology class.
“I just mean that not all homosexuals are bad, Mrs. Cochran.” I smoothed my plaid jumper over my knees as I sat indian style.
“Well, they may be nice now and then but they are still sinners in the eyes of God, and doomed to the fires of hell if they don’t repent,” she said.
“My uncle’s gay and he’s not a sinner so obviously the story is wrong.” I stared at her sharply.
“If he repents then he will be forgiven and be filled with God’s love again.” She gripped the Bible in her white fingers.
“He doesn’t need to repent, he can’t help who he is.” My eyes started to water as I got angry.
“There’s no need to get upset, Anaïs, as long as he turns away from his lifestyle of sin.”
“He can’t do that if he wanted to, and he wouldn’t need to even if he could.” I was crying now, that sniffly, choking kind of crying that every child is an expert at.
“Well, there’s no need to cry, of course he can.” She looked annoyed at my tears.
“He died last year so he can’t.”
I cried harder thinking of the last time I saw my uncle in a hospital bed, his 6’2” frame withered down to about 100 pounds, Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions on his neck and hands. He used to pick me up and swing me over his head and now, just a few years after that he was dead. His was the first funeral I ever went to. I remember they played In My Life by the Beatles at the service and my mom cried as she sang softly along to it while holding my hand. I knew he had died of AIDS but I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant then. I just knew that I had lost the man who would read me books when he babysat and who would let me spin in his big leather chair when I’d visit him at his office.
He had had a partner that I knew when I was little and for some reason, my mind never thought this was weird or odd at all. I had always made my girl dolls marry each other and my boy dolls marry each other and it wasn’t that weird. It was who he was so how could it be wrong? I sat on that classroom floor and really tried to imagine how someone just being who he or she was could be a sin. It made no sense to me and it still doesn’t. The rest of the class was quiet and Mrs. Cochran cleared her throat.
“Well, I’m very sorry about that, Anaïs. Hopefully he asked God for His forgiveness before he passed on,” she said in a nervous voice.
“He didn’t have to ask for anything because he didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just who he was and he was a better person than you’ll ever be.”
My blood boiled and I felt my face get red. I could hear my heart in my ears over the gasps of my classmates. Mrs. Cochran’s face became very tight and she looked like she wanted to slap me. There are few times in my life that I have been as angry as I was at that moment. Usually when I had to go to timeout during theology class, she would point to the corner but this time she stood and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me over to the corner where there was a table and chair. She sat me down in the chair and looked me straight in the eye.
“You will sit here until you understand what respect means, young lady. Hopefully you will lose that attitude before it’s too late for you to repent as well,” she said before turning on her heel and walking back to the rest of my chattering class.
That’s the moment I knew. People laugh when I say I lost all my faith in religion when I was 8 but that was it. I could not buy into something that said that who my uncle was at his core was a sin. No, it was not a sin. It’s just who he was, the end. I sat at that table and cried with my head resting on my arms while the rest of my class blindly listened to more Bible stories. I told my mom what had happened when she picked me up from school and she had some words with my teacher and tried to convinced me to not start trouble but it was no use. I had opened my mouth to ask a question and would continue to question not just religion, but everything; my brain was and is permanently powered on.
I am a baptized and confirmed Catholic and I’m part Jewish on my dad’s side. I was raised in the Catholic Church and went to Catholic school from kindergarten to my senior year of high school. Today, I have no religion. That does not mean I don’t have spirituality but I do not believe in organized religion as a whole. I respect the beliefs of others and do not push my views into anyone’s face thus I appreciate not having others’ beliefs pushed into my face.
There’s no rule book. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 22.5 years on Earth so far, it’s that having rules is pointless. Something or someone will always come out of nowhere and make you realize that a situation isn’t black and white, it’s gray. There’s not a right answer for everything and even if there is, everything is relative. Your right answer might not be my right answer.
I can understand the appeal of religion. Rules are comforting, restrictions and limits tell us how far we can go and what we can and can’t do. They’re comforting because we don’t come with instructions. We are born and that’s it, we’re flying blind. I wake up every morning and have a brief moment of terror where I realize that I have no idea if I’m living my life how I should be living it. I wonder if I’m making wrong choices when I realize that even all my wrong choices have led me to be the person I am today and I like that person a whole lot. I like who I am today and that’s all that matters.
I can’t think about tomorrow. Obviously, I do and we all worry now and then about the future but I can’t let myself dwell on what will and won’t happen on this earth or in any heavenly beyond. I don’t know what happens after we die but I can’t live my life for what’s coming instead of what’s going on right now. I can’t and I won’t live in fear of something I’ve never seen and don’t know exists for a fact when there are things in front of me that I know exist. The tangible things and people that fill my time and make the lonely experience of living that much better, that much easier.
I miss my uncle a lot sometimes. I only knew him as a little girl and I wish I had known him as an adult so he could see how I had grown up. He was in my life for only almost 7 years and in that time, he made a huge impact on who I was to become. He made me reach out to AIDS activists in doing fundraising work with them. He made me aware that love doesn’t just exist between a man and a woman in the confines of marriage but in many ways with different kinds of people. His very existence made me question the things presented to me by adults. He made me realize that someone’s character is not made up of the labels that people categorize you by but of the people you affect and the fears you overcome to live whatever fucking life you want. He made me brave when someone called my ex-girlfriend and I dykes as we walked down the street holding hands. He made me strong when I’ve sat holding friends who after coming out to their parents found out they would no longer have a place to live. His presence and then his absence shaped the essence of who I am now.
I don’t believe in religion because I don’t need to believe in anything that tells me a good man is in hell right now because of who he wants to love. If there is a God, I don’t think he would judge anyone for who they are. The truth is, I don’t care if there’s a God or not because I am full of so much from every person I have encountered and loved and fucked and hated and laughed with and gotten high with and lived my life with that I’m okay here on earth without him. He can keep heaven and I’ll keep the ground beneath my feet and the people in my arms and heart and all those questions right here on my lips. I’m having a great time on Earth and when it ends, it will have been a good life, just like my uncle’s.
