Page 143 of My Cowboy Freedom
Chapter 34
Rock
Moonlight streamed through the window, giving everything in my childhood bedroom a faint blue glow.
“What is it this time, Dad?” I read my old alarm clock. “It’s after midnight.”
He stepped into the doorway, filling it. Blocking the light from the hall. I’d definitely gotten my size from his side of the family.
“I just wanted to talk with you for a while.” He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. The bed groaned under our combined weight when he sat on the edge beside me.
“It’s been good, having you home again.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
He glanced at my nightstand, where I’d left a jumble of old microwave-meal trays and dirty forks. “Your mother will have your hide for leaving dirty plates up here.”
Have your hide. Tan your hide. Why did people say that when the act it referred to was so gruesome?
“I’ll take them down in the morning.”
I glanced up and found my father’s eyes were closed. And no wonder. After each long day spent shepherding his flock, he made time at night to talk at me. He shared scripture.
He ranted until his voice left him.
Until we were both half-crazy from sleep deprivation.
He talked and I listened until he lost patience and told me to get on my knees. After that, as we prayed to a god I no longer believed in, his voice rolled over me in waves that crested and fell until he blew himself out.
Sometimes, I didn’t even understand how I’d gotten there.
Sometimes, I fell asleep kneeling at the side of my bed and I’d wake up there in the morning, unclear when my father left or if he’d even been there at all.
“Son?” he asked. “Did you hear me? Tonight we’re going to look at the Pauline Epistles again. Get your scriptures.”
“No.” I’d had enough. I was drained, tapped out, empty.
“Your arguments haven’t worked so far and they won’t tonight. I’ll read it for you, then. The Word of God is divine food, son. Much better for you than these TV dinners.”
“No,” I repeated.
“Yes.” He began reading. I knew the passage. I knew the arguments.
My father rarely faltered, even though I knew him to be exhausted at the end of every day. Every night he’d pray over me as if he was filibustering God, as if—if he could only come up with a good enough argument or have enough faith—I could be cured of the dreaded homosexuality forever.
And I loved him for it. I really did.
But it made me sad too, because whatever he wanted was based on faith, not fact.
“Dad, I’m gay.”
I wanted to put a stop to the charade. I was hungry and tired and lonely and I just didn’t give a crap anymore.
He shook his head. “This is a false belief. Like all of Satan’s lies, this belief you have that you were born homosexual? This is a lie. It’s one of the lies the Father of All Lies perpetuates. We must reboot—yes, that’s the very word—we mustrebootyour faith. And only through prayer and study—”
“Nothing will change.Iwon’t change.”
“You—”
