42. Things Unsaid

But the fact was, it was easier for Americans to believe in the fantasy of Superman, a comic book hero, than the alleged reality of Jesus Christ. Superman had the marketing advantage of being make-believe, start to finish, so that the willful suspension of disbelief was just that, willful; while Jesus was marketed as demanding belief from the very beginning.

Mis-marketed, Jamie thought, but then he was an Episcopalian, which most people recognize is nothing but a niche product anymore, about as popular as Smith Bros. Cough Drops and far more expensive to produce. The Harvard Business School, once teeming with Episcopalians, probably had a famous case study now in the historic mismanagement of the Episcopal brand. The only thing the company was known for anymore was queers—Blacks and queers, women and queers, queer women, queer Bishops and queer women Bishops. Having Jamie Foster among the customers was hardly a mark of distinction. It wasn't like the old days when the only queers were organists; the good old boys of Harvard didn't mind the occasional organist, and besides, it was tradition. Who else but a queer would bother learning to play the organ? There isn't any money in playing the organ; no one ever closed a deal during intermission at an organ concert, what with all the queers running around.

So there was one aspect of Jamie's personal life that he did not share with Kent, and that was what happened as Jamie posted the services of Daily Morning and Evening Prayer online. For one thing, Kent never saw him working on this website, except that one time on vacation, so it was easy to forget about it. For another, Jamie didn't choose to talk about it. He remained concerned that Kent would think he was too religious.

True, they went to church every Sunday, twice now, first to the chapel and then to St. John's, Crawfordsville, so Jamie could go to mass; plus they said grace out of habit at dinnertime. To an outsider maybe they both seemed religious. But Kent didn't think of himself that way, and Jamie didn't either. Yes, he had his website and his little prayer room, and a crucifix in a few judicious places, but he wasn't going through the motions according to someone else's dictates; he was trying to learn to take God seriously, especially after finding out he was alive "because I want you here."

"Religion" is something you do because someone else said to; "faith" is what you learn to have when God puts a whammy on you.

Since Jamie no longer had any doubt that God exists, he was in a different situation than Kent, who once said, "I want to believe that Jesus is Lord; but I ain't always sure, that's all." They were in two different places. And though there was nothing Jamie wouldn't tell him, he did have that one important area of his life that he didn't open up about—at least not all the time.

He wondered if holding something back was all right for their marriage; he rather thought it was, that whatever the "spoon and moon in June" songs might say, people in a relationship retain their own boundaries, their own selfhood, out of which they come together sometimes. And there's nothing wrong with that; maybe it even helps them stay sane. Kent would probably never ask him along on a hunting trip, knowing Jamie wouldn't want to go; it wasn't that Kent wanted to hide that hobby from him, it was more that Kent had a right to it and Jamie wasn't interested. They didn't have to merge their total personalities, and it wouldn't work to try. They were pretty compatible most of the time.

So Kent remained ignorant about what actually happened when Jamie did his Daily Office work. The mechanics of maintaining the website were not very difficult; a lot of typing at first, but then Jamie found more resources online to copy and paste, so the only hard thing was doing the formatting that allowed him to keep it up every day. At first he worked ahead, a week in advance, keeping the fixed elements of the service and plugging in files of Bible readings, psalms and prayers according to the schedule in the Book of Common Prayer. This involved a few hours of work once a week, and then he was done.

But he began to find that this didn't satisfy him, and was even a little dangerous for his soul. For one thing, he wasn't actually saying the prayers, he was doing computer work—so his own prayer life began to suffer, which was the opposite of why he started doing the work in the first place. The idea of the Office, based on ancient Jewish and Christian practice, is that a person needs to stop normal life twice a day, in the morning and evening, and spend a few minutes with God; Muslim men do it five times a day, and monks and nuns seven or eight times. But for the ordinary Anglican, twice a day works just fine. The written service provides a structure, with its cycle of readings, to get a person started. It's objective, so it doesn't depend on whether you feel like doing it or not; whether you like the priest or even have one present to lead; a layperson can do it just as well, and thousands of people do it by themselves if they can't get to church for it. And it's effective in surprising ways, because whatever your emotions when you start the service, you feel better by the end of it. That's why the Church recommends it for everyday use.

Jamie knew all that when he started, but he didn't know until he got into it how rich a spiritual resource it actually was, taking place on two levels: the mechanical one, with the canned lessons and prayers out of a book, and a spiritual one, where the simple act of turning to God drew Jamie closer whether he planned it or even felt like it. The "turning-to" became more important than the content (and the content was impeccable, time-tested, beautifully written, elegantly structured). By working in advance he was screwing up the turning-to, so he quit working weekly and did it every day instead, after Kent had left for work, and in odd snippets of alone-time on the weekends. The two of them were big on togetherness, always working or playing or sitting together, but let a Bruce Willis (or Susan Hayward) movie come on and one or the other would make for the exit.

So Jamie turned to God every day, and that turned out to be very rewarding.

Two other things surprised him; first, the computer work became his prayer. Once he had the Magnificat copied correctly, he stopped reading it every time, or even reading it at all; but putting it where it was supposed to go in the text became his way of saying it. He imagined that filling in his website correctly was like working on the Altar Guild—that group of ladies (almost always) who polish the pews and haul the heavy frontals back and forth on their long sticks, and arrange the flowers and set them out, and wash and starch and iron the fair white linens, and polish the silver and brass, and wash the dirty dishes like scullery maids, and take care of all the other details the priest needs done to conduct the next service decently and in order, without having to think about it or make some last-minute adjustment because the colors were wrong or somebody forgot the proper-sized napkins. At their best, and Altar Guilds are almost always superb, no one even realizes they did anything, though in fact it took a group of them hours of physical labor to make the whole thing come off perfectly. An Altar Guild that gets noticed is one that screwed up, while a Guild that's completely ignored prompts hosannas in heaven. The work became the prayer, whether Jamie's lips moved or not. So he loved that.

Second, he took to reading the non-recurring texts out loud, as he typed or copied and pasted. The main prayer, called a Collect, changed every week, sometimes every day, so he'd read and pray that one; but the Bible texts, three of them a day, were much longer and changed all the time. In a way he got to do "Bible study" without its being the typical jail sentence. Over a two-year cycle, he'd essentially read the entire Bible, or at least those parts that (unlike the "begats") are worth reading. Sometimes the passages were delightful, and he'd yabble to God and tell him all about it. Sometimes they were confusing, and he'd say, "What the hell is that?" Sometimes they were difficult—the Sacrifice of Isaac is the classic example, but the Scriptures are full of hard sayings, and he had no trouble telling God, "This doesn't make a bit of sense. Why would you say such a thing?" He knew enough to trust God with his honest reactions, while bearing in mind that what he understood at 26 would be different at 46, and welcoming the enlightenment those extra years would bring. When a passage was so garbled it was beyond comprehension, he'd look it up in his New Oxford Annotated and find that the great scholars couldn't make heads or tails of it either.

He didn't realize it at first, but he was having daily conversations with God—and that's what prayer is.

What made it even better was that God often reacted—not in words, but most commonly by sending a shiver down his spine, touching him physically somehow. Jamie learned to hear God talk without words. And what God said was, of course, ineffable. So they both had a great time.

It didn't make the drudgery involved any less, but it made it meaningful, so it wasn't drudgery at all. And Jamie was enough of a theologian, or maybe intact enough as a personality, to be himself with God, foul mouth and all; God has heard it all before. God even knew it would happen at the moment of creation; men and dogs are more or less the same when it comes to sniffing every tree and fire hydrant, and "fuck" sounds even more obscene in Hebrew than it does in Anglo-Saxon. The Bible is full of dirty jokes.

So Jamie had some grounding about his levitation, while Kent's thoughts went flying through the air. He didn't understand it, and just like Teresa's nuns, he didn't like it. He was glad, very extremely glad, for the little boy at the side of the road, who could have caused a 50-car pileup as drivers struggled not to hit him; Kent was glad for the bizarre miracle of it all. But he didn't like that his boyfriend was involved, because he didn't like being expected to live with some kind of angel. Kent never signed on for that; it wasn't fair. Before he met Jamie he went to Kessler Chapel every week and was Sunday School superintendent, which was better than 98% of the guys he knew, plus the Boys and Girls Club; wasn't that enough for God? Now he had to live with a prettyboy saint who tempted him with food and sex every day?

Jamie knew he was right to hide the Office from Kent because their sex life changed, a little of their connection started to get lost. It was almost as if Kent stopped loving him and became addicted to him instead. The better Jamie became at making love, the more Kent turned him into a mouth and an ass.

The only redeeming feature of it came when they slept together afterward; Kent loved him once he was satisfied and the walls came down again. Then the next morning nothing had changed, Kent halfway resented him again.

For richer for poorer, for better for worse… Jamie didn't know what to do but give the guy his space.

Kent knew they weren't quite as happy as before; he even asked for a chaplain once, but the State Police sent him a Catholic priest, who listened for two minutes, then dispensed Cliché #27 and slapped him on the back. "Hang in there" didn't tell him how; it didn't tell him anything except how stupid he was for thinking a chaplain could help. Half the troopers said the chaplains always blabbed everything to the higher-ups anyway, not to trust them.

Kent just wanted to be listened to for more than two minutes; how did that baby get in his unit?

***

Jamie asked his new priest, the rector at Crawfordsville, to refer him to a spiritual director. Eileen turned out to be, of course, a Presbyterian. He'd never really met one before.

He wondered if she was halfway flaky at first—her hair was kind of frizzy, which is seldom a good sign—and perhaps unorthodox. But she was clearly supportive and very bright, and he liked her anyway, so he kept going—and she turned out to be entirely orthodox, a humble believer, full of joy and grace and truth. Naturally he told her about Kent, because the Gay Issue is always a deal-breaker, and she celebrated the love in their lives, which made him very grateful. He told her about the Incident, the coma and afterward, how Kent was there every minute, and she praised Kent with glory to God.

So Jamie's worry about Presbyterians (especially those with frizzy hair) turned out to be nothing but prejudice, ignorance, stupidity. Eileen was one of the best things that ever happened to him, and here he was doubtful about her hair.

He told her about the episode at the oratory in Dublin; and though she was astounded like anyone would be, she took him seriously, without a need to prove or disprove that it happened the way he said. She dealt with the soul in front of her, and she didn't mind if he cried; indeed, her Kleenex box appeared like magic. But they spent much of their time laughing and being a bit enthralled with each other; he worried that maybe he was performing for her, but everything he said was true and honest and self-disclosive, and it didn't all make him look good. She knew just what he meant that Kent was getting addicted, and she didn't disrespect Jamie for putting up with it anyway so he could get some dick.

The best thing that happened was when she actually directed him spiritually, instead of just letting him spout off entertainingly. She asked, "What is the vocation God seems to be calling you to when these amazing experiences occur?" He had of course told her about hearing God's voice that time when he was playing solitaire, "You're here because I want you to be."

He said slowly, "I do think it's significant that these times occur in front of Kent. Whatever God means to say, this vocation is for both of us. It's not about my own private ecstasy; I experience that often enough just posting the Office."

She rejoiced over that but didn't lose focus. He went on, "What strikes me about these two times—and it's only two, so let's not get ahead of ourselves—is how they replicate the coma."

She was quiet, all eyes and ears and prayer.

"I have a big sleep. Then I finally wake up and I'm starving for food. I lost 40 pounds during the actual coma, so of course I was hungry when I woke up; and once I got past the Jell-o stage and could handle solid food, they let me have anything I wanted. Towards the end the hospital would send up two trays for every meal. And though it was only hospital food, I ate it like a madman. Then I got home and Kent saw that I ate every night, plus protein shakes whenever I wanted. The day we finally got together, our first date, was the day I'd finally gained all my weight back. I couldn't wait to tell him; he helped me do it, and I wanted to show him, this is me like I used to be."

"Then that night you got married."

"Yes. As for this so-called levitation, it's not just a reminder of the coma, but a reminder of death. They say sleep is like a little death, which I've never really understood before, but it seems to be true. Here I'm walking the face of the earth like everyone else right now; people look at me and they have no idea. Not only am I mortal, I've sort of experienced what death is like, and also had a bit of a resurrection from it. Now I'm here 'because God wants me to be.' And surely there is some vocation connected to that, some mission God wants me to accomplish. I can't go back to business as usual; I don't want to, this isn't usual. Kent and I both know it isn't. But what the work is, I don't know.

"Some, I think, involves the Office, putting it online, making it available to people. The site's had 3000 hits already, and sometimes I tell myself that's like 3000 prayers that I'm responsible for, that I enabled, at least. Potentially the website is the greatest thing I've ever done."

"If you keep it up, it could go to 10,000 someday, or even more."

"The numbers are amazing, considering it's nothing but prayers in this post-Christian era. People just find the site, it helps meet their needs when I've barely promoted it. It's nothing but the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, not Pat Robertson or Rick Warren or the Pope; it's some obscure guy in Indiana no one's ever heard of. But that's fine, they don't care who I am, it's the Prayer Book and the Bible they come for; it's the meeting with God. So I love my obscurity; this isn't a personality cult here, it's just Jesus."

"A blessing."

"But the odd thing about the vocation is, the website's just a prelim somehow. There's another chapter coming but I don't know what it says."

That was the opening she was looking for. "If you did know, what would that next chapter say?"

He sighed deeply. "It's something to do with Gay people, I think." He had to concentrate, while staring at a basket of seashells she'd collected, sitting on her coffee table. "God doesn't take Saul and make him Paul by eliminating his zeal, but reworking his zeal into something God can use."

"True."

"When you look at my career, at least these first 26 years, my sexual orientation is…" —he frowned, trying to puzzle this out and articulate it—"at the center of the work I've done up to now. The Ohio Gay Times, Ricky, Kent; the serial murder investigation. Even InFashion, maybe. I've got all the money in the world to do whatever this work is I need to do."

"Gay men were the serial murder victims, you said."

"Yes."

"And investigating those killings is how you met Kent." He nodded. "So, if the Saul-to-Paul example is the right one here… I mean, Jamie, you're married to a cop now."

"So the vocation would be…"

"Don't decide it; listen for it. Listen to God first, then complete your sentence."

"So the vocation would be…" He shut his eyes, centered himself; she did too. They were silent for several minutes.

He finally said simply, "Michael."

"Gay crime victims?"

"If that's my vocation, great, but what about the baby?"

They looked at each other, and suddenly he got up and began walking; pacing, really, moving about. He said, "We can't know about the baby."

She said, "What we know is God wants him alive—to an extraordinary extent."

"Is he supposed to cure cancer? Be the next Elton John?"

She had a crazy thought, and went with it. "Did you ever get saved as a child from some horrible danger?"

"There was one time on my bike, when I should have gotten run over by a car, but I didn't get a scratch. Right opposite my grandparents' drugstore when I was a kid." Jamie hadn't thought of that in years. "But it doesn't make sense that God would save me when millions of children suffer in this world, starve and die or are killed in wars that no one pays attention to. I'm not more valuable than they are. One of me and millions of them? Come on."

"At the grave risk," she said, "of sounding like a Presbyterian, we do have to consider the incredible undeserved grace of the elect."

"This is crazy. One of me, millions of others, no. That's as bad as Kent's asking if I feel special."

"This isn't theology, Jamie. It's a question of vocation. Finding it. Following it."

"One session doesn't make it my vocation."

"No. One session can only introduce you to it, possibly, with lots of ifs and doubts and denials. To find your vocation you have to test it, over time, as part of a community of faith. God doesn't call us one by one in the absence of others, but out of community."

"A clearness committee," he told her.

"Unless you're Paul," she smiled. "And I'm sorry, no matter how gifted you are, the road to Damascus does not run through my living room."

They laughed, then he said, "I need to go to Confession."

"Very smart idea."

"Let me start it with you."

"Should I put on my stole?"

"Yes. I'll still want…"

"That's fine, Jamie. You should have a priest give you absolution. I understand completely. You should use the liturgy you were born into, that God gave you. That's absolutely fine by me."

"I honor your ordination, though."

"I'm glad. Between that and your own tradition, God will forgive and take care of you."

He sat back down and recounted his sins as best he knew them; some were grave indeed, and others were pure stupidity. When he was done she pronounced God's blessing and forgiveness, and sent him on his way.

He left her house feeling fantastic.

***

As time went on all this would become incredibly important, though not directly, with the events to unfold that spring. Nothing Jamie would do stemmed from a religious cause; God wasn't responsible for any of the choices he made. But the consequences would be wide-reaching, with implications for how Jamie should live the rest of his life. God had to be the one he relied on to figure things out; God and Eileen. No one else could help him, because no one else had the perspective he needed to understand the course he embarked on. In that sense perhaps Jamie became truly religious and faithful for the first time.

For the rest of that year and on into the next, one event after another perplexed him, made him thoughtful, worried him, and propelled him into more decisions, none of which he had planned. He was 26 years old, and while he hoped he was reasonably mature for his age, it still was true that the number one thing on his mind most of the time was dick.

He loved Kent, he truly did, they got along spectacularly, and they weren't selfish people down deep. They had every advantage in life, once they got through the deaths and the comas, but they were young, barely adults, newly liberated, and no way ready for what was to come. They'd spend most of that spring, summer and fall naked; but when they weren't, Jamie had a lot on his mind.

It all started when New Century Financial went belly up. By the time it ended, their lives were completely changed. What was more, Jamie was entirely on his own except for Eileen; he could explain things to Kent, and indeed when the main event happened they talked a great deal. But the only advisor Jamie had besides his spiritual director was the One who made him. Everyone else was either a specialist or a friend.

Fucking, making love, became communion that summer; Jamie praised God without ceasing, and over time Kent started to loosen up again, angel or no. He really liked it when Jamie talked dirty; Kent would spank him for it but the boy was completely incorrigible.

Kent decided that if he had to get stuck with an angel, at least God was considerate enough to give him a blond one with a hot little ass.++


© 2011 Josh Thomas, All Rights Reserved.