Zoe’s eyes flash.“Youare preaching tomeabout making the right choices? That’s pretty funny, Max.”
“I’ve made mistakes,” I admit. “I make them every day. I’m not perfect by any means. But none of us are. And that’s exactly why you should listen to me when I say that the way you feel—it’s not your fault. It’s something that’s happened to you. But it’s not who youare.”
She blinks at me for a moment, trying to puzzle out my words. The moment she understands, I can see it. “You’re talking about Vanessa. Oh, my God. You’ve taken your little anti-gay crusade right into my living room.” Panicking, I look at Pauline as Zoe throws open her arms. “Come on in, Max,” she says sarcastically. “I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about my degenerate lifestyle. After all, I spent the day with dying children at the hospital. I could use a little comic relief.”
“Maybe we should go,” I murmur to Pauline, but she moves past me and takes a seat on the living room couch.
“I used to be exactly like you,” she tells Zoe. “I lived with a woman and loved her and considered myself to be a homosexual. We were on vacation, eating dinner at a restaurant, and the waitress took my girlfriend’s order and then turned to me. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘what can I get you?’ I have to tell you, I didn’t look the way I do now. I dressed like a boy, I walked like a boy. I wanted to be mistaken for a boy, so that girls would fall for me. I completely believed that I had been born this way, because feeling different from everyone else was all I could ever remember. That night I did something I had not done since I was a child—I took the Bible out of the hotel nightstand and started to read it. By pure accident, I had landed on Leviticus:Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.I wasn’t a man, but I knew that God was talking about me.”
Zoe rolls her eyes. “I’m a little rusty on my Scripture, but I’m pretty sure that divorce isn’t allowed. And yet I didn’t show up at your doorstep after we got the final decree from the court, Max.”
Pauline continues as if Zoe hasn’t spoken. “I started realizing I could separate thewhofrom thedo.I wasn’t gay—I was gay-identified. I reread the studies that allegedly proved I was born this way, and I found flaws and gaps big enough to drive a truck through. I had fallen for a lie. And once I realized that, I also realized that things could change.”
“You mean . . . ,” Zoe says breathlessly, “it’s that easy? I name it and I claim it? I say I believe in God, and I’m magically saved. I say I’m not gay, and hallelujah! I must be cured. I’m sure if Vanessa walked through that door right now, I wouldn’t find her attractive at all.”
As if Zoe has conjured her, Vanessa walks into the living room, still unbuttoning her jacket. “Did I just hear my name?” she asks. Zoe walks up to her and gives her a fast peck on the lips, a hello.
As if it’s something they do all the time.
As if it doesn’t make my stomach turn.
As if it’s perfectly natural.
Zoe looks at Pauline. “Drat. Guess I’m not cured after all.”
By now, Vanessa has noticed us. “I didn’t know we were having company.”
“This is Pauline, and of course you know Max,” Zoe says. “They’re here to keep us from going to Hell.”
“Zoe,” Vanessa says, pulling her aside, “can we talk for a minute?” She leads Zoe into the adjacent kitchen. I have to strain to listen, but I manage to catch most of what she’s saying. “I’m not going to tell you you can’t invite someone into our house, but what the hell are you thinking?”
“That they’re insane,” Zoe says. “Seriously, Vanessa, if no one ever tells them they’re delusional, then how are they going to find out?”
There is a little more conversation, but it’s muffled. I look at Pauline nervously. “Don’t worry,” she says, patting my arm. “Denial is normal. Christ calls on us to spread His word, even when it seems like it’s falling on deaf ears. But I always think of a talk like this as if I’m spreading mahogany stain on a natural wood floor. Even if you wipe away the color, it’s seeped in a little bit, and you can’t get rid of it. Long after we leave, Zoe will still be thinking about what we’ve said.”
Then again, putting mahogany stain on a piece of pine only changes the way it looks on the outside. It doesn’t turn it into real mahogany. I wonder if Pauline’s ever thought about that.
Zoe comes through the door, trailed by Vanessa. “Don’t do this,” Vanessa pleads. “If you started dating someone black, would you invite the KKK over to discuss it?”
“Honestly, Vanessa,” Zoe says dismissively, and she turns to Pauline. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”
Pauline folds her hands in her lap. “Well, I think we were talking about my own moment of discovery,” she says, and Vanessa snorts. “I realized I was vulnerable to same-sex attraction for several reasons. My mother was an Iowa farm girl—the kind of woman who got up at fourA.M.and had already changed the world before breakfast. She believed hands were made for working and that, if you fell down and cried, you were weak. My dad traveled a lot and just wasn’t around. I was always a tomboy, and wanted to play football with my brothers more than I wanted to sit inside and play with my dolls. And of course, there was a cousin who sexually abused me.”
“Of course,” Vanessa murmurs.
“Well,” Pauline says, looking at her, “everyone I’ve ever met who’s gay-identified has experienced some kind of abuse.”
I look at Zoe, uncomfortable. She hasn’t been abused. She would have told me.
Of course, she didn’t tell me she liked women, either.
“Let me guess,” Vanessa says. “Your parents didn’t exactly welcome you with open arms when you told them you were gay.”
Pauline smiles. “My parents and I have the best relationship now—we’ve been through so much, my gracious . . . It wasn’ttheirfault I was gay-identified. It was a host of factors—from that abuse to not being secure in my own gender to feeling like women were second-class citizens. For all these reasons, I began to behave a certain way. A way that took me away from Christ. I wonder,” she asks Zoe, “why do you think you were open to pursuing a same-sex relationship? Clearly you weren’t born that way, since you were happily married—”
“So happily married,” Vanessa points out, “that she got divorced.”
“It’s true,” I agree. “I wasn’t there for you, Zoe, when you needed me. And I can’t ever make that up to you. But I can keep the same mistake from happening twice. I can help you meet people who understand you, who won’t judge you, and who will love you for who you are, not for what you do.”
