Chapter 35 Deep, Dark Closet

My first Sabbath back in New York, I attended Crossroads Church. The reunion was sweet. The people were wonderfully warm and welcoming. And I was utterly captivated by the pastor. Jack Love was a biker who had spent years as a logger in the Northwest. He didn’t put his motorcycle or chainsaws on display in his sermons but you could see them in his body language. His preaching evinced an intense piety and passionate involvement with theology. He read books and it showed. His slouching posture and evident physical strength combined with scholarship contrasted sharply with my image of pastors as pudgy, blustery, intellectual lightweights.

The church still met in the same oppressive space–a windowless auditorium, the ceiling and upper walls painted black, cinema style. I couldn’t imagine voluntarily consigning myself to spending three hours every Sabbath morning in this environment. In addition, the congregation was by now almost one hundred percent West Indian. The outward form of their church life was a fossilized version of 1940s and 50s American Adventism brought to the West Indies by missionaries. I enjoyed a warm connection with several individuals in the congregation, but found the corporate culture of the church suffocating. It was very authoritarian.
Everything they did was “by the book.” They had no questions, only answers.

I visited the Greenwich Village Church where my brother had worked when I lived in NYC before. The entire time I worked with Colin Cook, I dreamed of being part of the Village Church. The sanctuary had been built by one of the Rockefellers for the Baptists and was bought later by the Adventists. It had immense stained-glass windows that filled with light on sunny mornings. The ceiling was high and airy. Nearly everything about the building was intriguing and attractive. The congregation had dwindled. There were just over a hundred in attendance. But the kaleidoscopic mix of people reflected the city.

After church I ran into Tim Miller, tall and emaciated-looking, impeccably dressed in a black suit. He didn’t have a British accent, but he looked like he should have. It was impossible to tell how old he was. He looked exactly the same as he had six years earlier when I met him as a friend of Colin Cook. Tim was very effeminate and very devout. I sat with him at potluck.

The food was meager, but it was enough. Tim was still working in the fashion industry, still single, and still praying, “that God will bring the right woman into my life.”
I doubted it.
“I don’t believe in dating.” He explained. “I believe God will bring just the right woman into my life. When he does, I’ll know. And she will know, too, because she will be that close to God. Why go through all the heartbreak of dating and breaking up? God can’t want us to go through all that. It can’t be his plan for men and women to chase each other and hurt each other. So, I’ll just wait until God brings the right person into my life. Then I’ll get married.”

“So you’re not going to do anything to find the right person? You’re not going to introduce yourself to attractive women. You’re not going to go to a concert or a museum with a woman unless you’re convinced she’s the one that God has picked out for you to marry?”

“Why should I? God doesn’t make mistakes; I do. So I’ll just wait until he brings the right person into my life. Besides, I’m not sure people should be getting married these days. We are so close to the end of time, I wonder if getting married isn’t just asking for trouble. Because when the time of trouble comes, you’ll be worried about your wife instead of focusing solely on doing God’s will. Your wife could become one more avenue through which Satan could attack you.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I was suspicious of people who tried to run their lives by the eschatological calendar. My dad didn’t think he would live to finish high school, then didn’t think time would last long enough for him to finish college and medical school. He got married in part because he wanted to make sure he got some time to enjoy conjugal pleasures before the return of Jesus and the end of marriage and sex. I used to wonder if hidden in this story was a thickly-veiled implication that if he hadn’t been in such a hurry he might have made a better match.

So Dad got married because time was short. Tim was remaining single “because time was short.” Though I was sure that the eschatological calendar actually had nothing to do with Tim's singleness. Tim wouldn’t recognize the “right woman” if she came and sat in his lap. That's what went through my mind. Then I scolded myself. Just because a man displayed effeminate mannerisms did not prove that he was gay. Who was I to question his self-professed interest in women and marriage?
As lunch was winding down. Tim invited me to go with him and Olivo to a park on the west side of the Hudson. I had no plans. I wasn’t looking forward to spending the afternoon alone, so I said, sure, I’d come along.

We piled into Tim’s car and drove toward the Holland Tunnel. I was getting out of the City! No matter how much I loved Manhattan, I always thrilled to get out. Manhattan is so intense. The energy and vitality are utterly absorbing when you’re there. But the sense of decompression, of release, of catching one’s breath when you leave the city is also intoxicating. I loved escaping, but already in the car, even before we reached the Tunnel, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
Tim and Olivo were getting acquainted. At church, I had thought they were old friends. Turned out they had never seen each other before. Olivo was enthralled with Tim’s description of his life in the fashion world. Tim was equally taken with Olivo’s descriptions of his work as an aide in a kindergarten up in Spanish Harlem. They laughed and giggled.

At the park, the chemistry between the Tim and Olivo got hotter. They pushed each other on the swings. They chased each other around and over the jungle gym. They talked with rapt intensity, giggling with unrestrained mirth and excitement.
Philosophically, I was committed to compassion and tolerance for homosexual people. But finding myself the third person on a date thick with coquettish flirting and sexual energy felt really weird.

After an hour at the park, I suddenly remembered an evening appointment. “Tim, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to run. I need to get back to the city for a social this evening at the Crossroads Church.”

“Oh, do you have to go so early? It’s such a beautiful day. I’m afraid we won’t get too many more of these before winter really sets in. I can drop you off later right at the church.”

“No, that’s all right. I’ll just take a bus down to Union station and get the PATH train into the city. I really appreciate you’re including me this afternoon. I didn’t even know this park existed. Thanks, so much.”

“You sure you have to go now? It’s still a couple of hours till sundown?”

“Yes, I think I better head on back. I want to do a little reading this afternoon before I go to the social.”

I stared out the bus window, unseeing. What kind of life would it be? To be so committed to the church and to God, but to never be able to admit your sexual identity, maybe even to yourself? I knew what it was like to have people ask why you were single. I remembered in college being invited to a weekend gathering at a faculty member’s cabin in the Sierras. The invitation meant a lot to me. I knew relatively few people on campus. I was definitely not part of any of the cool groups.

But there I was on Saturday night eating popcorn and talking with ten or twelve cool students and one of the most popular teachers on campus who was a sought-after speaker across the country. It was light-hearted fun until the teacher turned to me and asked, “So John, why are you still unattached?”

I was startled. I was by this time utterly enthralled with Carol and interested in Linda as well. Carol was Asian, sophisticated, and sensual. She radiated a mesmerizing beckoning. She was surrounded constantly by guys who appeared to be good friends and nothing more—which drove me crazy. I couldn’t understand how any male could hang around her for any length of time without being hopelessly enmeshed in her seductive spell. I was jealous of their ease. Every time I got close to her

I felt a head-spinning charge. She was dazzling, spell casting.
Linda was a sturdy redhead who drove a pickup, enjoyed backpacking and dreamed of living on a farm. She was profoundly practical. I was impressed with her easy sense of competence to deal with machinery. She didn’t set my heart on fire the way Carol did, but I admired her, was drawn to her. I loved her red hair.

But I wasn’t about to talk about either woman in a group of cool students with a cool professor–none of whom I knew well. So I offered my standard speech about my philosophy of dating and marriage: I wasn’t going to get married until I had finished school and had a job. And what was the point of dating if it wasn’t going to go anywhere. And given the amount of school I had ahead of me, I couldn't really see a dating relationship lasting that long. So why start?

The professor wasn’t buying it. How could I know what kind of woman I would want to live with the rest of my life if I didn’t develop some significant relationships here and now? Didn’t I think that dating was an important part of preparation for marriage? Besides, if I didn’t date now, how would I really be sure about the woman I did marry? Maybe the only reason I married her would be because she was the only person available to me in the narrower social setting that would likely be my situation after graduating from medical school. School was where you had the largest pool of women eligible for marriage. If I didn’t find someone here, what were my chances of finding someone out there?

At the time, it felt like he was wondering if I was gay. But, of course, he couldn’t ask me that. Not in front of others, maybe not even in his office behind closed doors. Because if I were gay, what would he be able to say? He could not offer any realistic hope of change nor could he bless me as I was. If I had been homosexual, as an Adventist professor he would have been bound by the doctrine of the church. Don’t ask; don’t tell was the most compassionate of all imaginable policies. But I was amused by what felt like an awkward dance around a question he was dying to ask.

Then there was the time in seminary when I was interviewed by the president of the Iowa Conference. I was looking for a job as a pastor which was more difficult than swimming up a waterfall since I wasn’t married and didn’t wear a suit and tie and had long curly hair. Still he and his vice-president were on campus interviewing prospective pastors, and I was a prospective pastor. So I signed up for an interview slot. I could tell right away he was not interested in my candidacy. Still we through the motions. When he asked about my wife and found out I wasn’t married and didn’t have any immediate prospects, he came right out and asked, “Are you attracted to women?”

In the church, marriage was expected. If you were a guy over twenty-one and single, everyone wanted to know about your plans to remedy the situation. So I imagined myself in Tim's place. What if I were gay? It would be one thing to survive four years of interrogatory ambushes in college. But what if I faced an entire life of careful pretending?

What kind of inner dissonance must Tim live with in the church? He had absolute confidence in Adventist doctrine. He believed the Adventist teachings about the Mark of the Beast, the Time of Trouble and the Close of Probation. He confidently told others about the classic Adventist beliefs regarding the nature of the human soul and hell. He lived by the rules restricting entertainment and diet. He had internalized all the hundreds of details of Bible interpretation and life style that are the heritage of the Adventist community. The church was home for his heart. But he can never admit publicly his sexual identity. And while I believe there is much more to persons' identity than their sexuality, surely sexuality is a crucial element of who a person is. Tim had to be ready with an explanation for his singleness any time someone asked him. But if he was going to remain welcome in the church he could never hint at the real reason. When it came to sexuality, he could never tell the truth.

But what did I imagine was the right stance for the church? If I, after my close acquaintance with homosexual friends and roommates, found homosexual flirtation so repulsive, how could I condemn the negative reactions of others in the church? Bible interpretation is one thing, but gut reactions are not readily altered by footnotes and scientific studies.

The bus dropped me at the train station. I took the PATH train into Manhattan, glad to be alone.


Anachronistic Note: I ran into Tim off and on over the twelve years I was in the New York City area. Twenty-five years after the the events described in this chapter, I met him on the West Coast. He looked the same. Was as pleasant and devout and effeminate as ever. Still in the fashion industry. Without my asking, he told me he was happily single, but only until God brought the right woman into his life. But he would never want to repeat Abraham's error of running ahead of God in domestic affairs. Still pretending.