How I Lost My Faith . XX - I only have two years??

In 1988, I officially tested positive for HIV. There was still a great deal of confusion as to how the virus was transmitted, and among Jehovah’s Witnesses, no none spoke of it except in the context of victims’ paying the price for their immoral lifestyle, in keeping with the first chapter of the Bible book of Romans:

For God’s wrath is being revealed...against all ungodliness and unrighteousness... Therefore, God, in keeping with the desires of their hearts, gave them up to uncleanness...even the males left the natural use of the female and became violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males, working what is obscene and receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error...God gave them up to a disapproved mental state... [and it goes on in like manner] – Romans 1:18-28

This I believed: not that God had inflicted homosexuals with a deadly disease, but that we were paying the price for our own immorality, exposing ourselves to disease and death as a natural course of our unnatural lifestyle. It wasn’t God’s fault; it was our own, as result of our own choices.

But the Bible also offered forgiveness and mercy for those who forsook their sinful lifestyle and embraced “the Truth.” The story of the Prodigal Son gave me hope that maybe, even after many failed attempts, I could return to Jehovah God and become acceptable to Him.

After leaving Glenn, I moved in with a Witness couple I’d met four years before when I first showed up at the Kingdom Hall in the dead of winter. It was quite an interesting experience, with six boys all going through their “terrible teens”, but it worked for a few months...until the Great Pendulum swung back the other way and I found myself back in the darkness of gay clubs. I moved in with a gay friend in a basement apartment while working for 7-Eleven as an Assistant Manager, which provided health insurance, which I hadn’t had for quite a while. I remember being really depressed, though, and the doctor prescribed Nortriptyline, to which I was apparently allergic, so he switched me to Prozac; I’ve been on that one ever since.

I may have been a complete disaster spiritually, but physically I was doing fine; I rode my 10-speed bike everyday, walked a great deal, ate well and felt great; I was in good enough shape that I could have pretty much any guy I wanted. But you know, sometimes ignorance is bliss...

I’d told my doctor about all of the confusion with my HIV tests, so we decided to test it one more time, and, simply out of curiosity, run a new, expensive test called a “T-cell Count.” I’d never heard of it, so I said, “Sure, why not?” and gave it no more thought...until the tests arrived a couple of weeks later. Healthy people have T-cell counts in the high hundreds, even thousands, but the government had determined that a count below 200, coupled with being HIV-positive, meant you were automatically diagnosed with AIDS and considered disabled.

My first T-cell (CD-4) count was something like 85. That didn’t really register at first, until the doctor told me, “That means you have AIDS.” Then he said, “You have two, maybe three years to live.” That was the general prognosis for AIDS patients in those days.

Many people who’ve been diagnosed with AIDS can remember the place, day and time of their diagnosis; I cannot. Everything went gray. I remember it was in the summer of 1989, but other than that, time seemed to stop altogether.

TWO YEARS???

THAT’S ALL THE TIME I HAVE LEFT TO DO ALL THE THINGS I NEED TO DO??

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO MYSELF??!!

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW??

Basically, I would never see my 30th birthday.

Unlike most people at the time, the only question I did not ask was, “Why me?”  I knew exactly “why”: I'd been a total slut in the early days of my coming out, exposing myself to whatever was out there.  

 

Many so-called “Christian” churches were (and some atill are) preaching that AIDS was God’s judgment against homosexuals, payment for their unspeakable sins against God.  Even many of my gay friends at the time blamed God...but that's one thing I’ve never done. It was not God who made me practice unsafe, promiscuous sex; it was not God who gave me gonorrhea and crabs over the years, and it was not God punishing me when I found out I had AIDS.  All the responsibility for my actions fell squarely on my shoulders; God had nothing at all to do with it! 

 

I was suddenly forced to face my own mortality. I was going to die, there was no question about that, but in what manner would I do so—as an anonymous statistic in a hospital bed, or as someone with hope in a future of unending health in the Paradise Earth in which I still believed?  I chose the latter, and resolved once more to return to the Kingdom Hall; I only had two years to get baptized and Pioneer and and help as many others as I could to find the “Truth” and finish all the things I’d dreamt of over the years as one of Jehovah’s dedicated, baptized Witnesses.  That meant that I had to do everything “NOW!”

And so the Great Pendulum swung back to the right (the “Christian” side), and I was determined to keep it there for what little time I had left, so I could be assured of a resurrection in God's paradisaic New Earth to come.

How I Lost My Faith . XIX - What is The Truth?

After turning my back on Jed and the gay scene in D.C., I attended meetings at the Kingdom Hall fairly regularly, but after the confusion over my HIV status, the pendulum swung back the other way and I decided to move back to Denver to be with my gay friends there. In the fall of 1987, after a grueling three-day bus ride, I finally arrived back in Denver, feeling thoroughly disgusting; I don’t remember ever feeling that gross while living on the streets, and vowed to never again take a Greyhound bus cross-country.

Glenn, my cute-as-a-button Navy friend, invited me to stay in his new house for a while, and we again grew very close. I celebrated Christmas with him for the first time in years; there was a fireplace and a tree, and we exchanged gifts. It was the first time I’d felt like I had a real life with a partner who loved me. It was the kind of gay life I’d dreamed about since seeing the movie Making Love in the early ‘80s, and I didn’t want it to ever end. But there were obstacles, not the least being whether or not I was really HIV-positive. I got retested not long after settling in, but the test came back negative, so I relaxed for awhile. 

 

After a month or so I found a part-time job at a 7-Eleven, then decided to enroll in Barnes Business College to learn computer programming. I needed a real career, some way to make a name for myself and finally live the kind of life I’d dreamed about for years: financially independent with a large house on a huge walled-off property, where I could grow gardens and orchards...and this was my chance. The curriculum including programming in BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Cobol and Machine Language, as well as Accounting and general business practices. I took to BASIC like a fish to water! My teacher had the entire course written out, with easy-to-follow instructions on modifying the coded examples one step at a time to see what would happen as you went along. I finished her entire course in half the time it should have taken, and began helping fellow classmates who were still struggling with early lessons. To say I was bored out of my mind would be an understatement; she’d made her course way too easy, at least for me. 

 

Fortunately, there was another instructor who also taught BASIC, but with a completely different approach, one that was straight up my alley. Instead of telling his students how to write each line of code and what each variable stood for, he gave his class a goal—write a program to organize a library of books, records or whatever, with input and output functions—then he wrote a few hints on the blackboard, and set them loose to figure it out on their own. This required they do their own research to solve problems, and he would be there if we really got stuck. Since I’d finished my course so quickly, both teachers allowed me to sit in on his class. One girl allowed me to copy her project so I could get caught up, and I took it from there. It was the most exciting, interesting class I’d taken since Mechanical Drafting in high school, and I took ate it up.

That teacher also taught me a lesson that I still live by to this day: always, always save your work! I’d been working on enhancing my library application for nearly an hour and was making incredible progress, but I was too engrossed in my work to pause and save the file. Suddenly, someone walked into the room and turned all the lights and computers off! I was furious and jumped out of my chair yelling, “Do you know how long I’ve been working on this??!! What’s your problem?!” Turns out it was the teacher, and I never forgot his response: “I guess you’ll save your work more often, won’t you?” To this day, I save everything as often as I can.

During the whole time I lived with Glenn, I began delving into aspects of the occult like Earth Magic, crystals, runes and tarot cards. I also began reading a series of books by one Elizabeth...something; I can’t remember her last name, but her books enthralled me. She wrote of messages she’d received from supposed-angelic guides who warned of a coming global apocalypse during which the earth’s crust would become unstable and crack into pieces. Her “guides” suggested potential safe zones, including the upper mid-west of the United States. 

 

I knew from my previous Bible studies that something was coming, some catastrophe that would change the face of this planet and all humanity forever. But, no longer interested in the inevitable conflict between my sexual identity and the Bible, I began to believe the things I was reading in these books. I also began a project that I felt would greatly benefit the survivors of the coming apocalypse: a Book of Law. I was very familiar with the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament, and felt that its basic principles, without all the animal sacrifices and stoning of people to death, would be an excellent start, so I began cataloging and organizing that Law Code for the future of what would be left of mankind.

Then came the sudden realization that something was terribly wrong with the course on which I’d placed myself. After enthusiastically reading several of Elizabeth’s books, I read a particular sentence that completely stopped me in my tracks: her “angelic guide” mentioned Jesus Christ as being an advanced human (not God’s Son, mind you) who’d died on a cross.

I was confused. All my life up to that point, I’d believed that Jesus was put to death on a stake, not a cross, and I’d heretofore not run into anything in these occultish books to suggest otherwise, but now there was a major conflict. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been adamant about the real instrument of Jesus’ death for nearly a hundred years, ever since discovering that the Greek word usually translated as cross is stauros´ — σταυρός — meaning “an upright pale or stake” and translated “torture stake” in the New World Translation.

Now, this “angel-guided medium” was relaying that Jesus died on a cross; if it really were an angel from which she was getting her information, it would have been an eye-witness to Jesus’ execution and would have known the truth. If the Witnesses were right about the “torture stake” then the “angel” was lying to the author, which meant it wasn’t an angel at all. I had to find the truth...everything now hinged on this one thing: who was telling the real truth??

I scoured the shelves of the Denver Public Library until I found an actual Greek New Testament, all in Greek with no English, as well as a Greek Lexicon. I found one of the Scriptures where most Bible translations use the word “cross” —and there it was, plain as day: σταυροῦ, a grammatical form of σταυρός. And the lexicon confirmed the meaning: “an upright pole or stake...without a cross-beam forming the letter ‘T’.” The Witnesses were right! For me, that was all the proof I needed to realize that this woman had been receiving messages from someone or something, but it sure as hell was not an angel of God.

In the spring of 1988, after months of living a nice, quiet life with Glenn, I made the choice to return to “the Truth” as taught by the Witnesses. Once again, I had strayed from “the path of righteousness” and needed to try once again to “get it right” so I could finally get baptized and find real peace for the first time in my life, in the knowledge that I had Jehovah’s approval. I disposed of everything spiritistic—all books and tarot cards—as well as a very nice set of mystical Runes— broke the news to Glenn and began looking for a place to live. Fortunately, a Witness family that I’d met during my first visit to the Hall in 1985 invited me to stay with them and their boys.

I was still attending Barnes Business College, but my decision to serve Jehovah led to another: I could not continue pursuing a career that would have no real future, as Armageddon was just around the corner (still) and all my efforts needed to go to the furthering of the Good News. I had learned all I needed to know about programming and all that was left were a couple of boring classes on English and how to “dress for success.” I thought the latter was completely ridiculous; the class had to dress in business attire two or three times a week, as if we adults had no idea how to dress ourselves for a job. I was completely bored with school by then, and even though I only had that one semester to go before graduating, I took “the higher road” and dropped out. 

 

Later, it would prove to be one of the worst decisions of my working life; I stood to make a lot of money in those days as a systems analyst/programmer, but I chose a spiritual “career” over materialistic gain, thinking “This time I’m never leaving Jehovah’s organization!” I wasn’t even baptized at the time; I hadn’t proven myself “clean” long enough to qualify, but I was determined to do so this time.

But the spectre of HIV still haunted me, and I realized I needed to have the test done again. the first one back home said I was Positive, then they told me I was Negative. The first test back in Denver said Negative, as well, but that spring in 1988, I had them test me again. This time it was Positive. After running the test again to be sure, it came back again as Positive. Now I knew for sure that I had “IT.” But the test only proved that I’d been exposed to the virus and developed antibodies. It didn’t mean I had AIDS, so I simply accepted it, as I had other STD’s like gonorrhea, and got on with my life.

Although I was determined to be one of Jehovah’s Witnesses “come hell or high water”, I simply could not get away from the fact that I had sexual urges that I could not control. I was gay, but still determined to someday overcome it, but after a few months I found myself once again at a gay bar and surrendered to my flesh, renewing the soul-crushing guilt and shame with which I’d become all-too-familiar.

And so the Great Pendulum continued to swing, back and forth, from hedonism and demonic propaganda to Bible-based “Truth” and back again. I went through this process so many times I lost count, and so lost complete track of who and what I was—of ME and what I stood for.

What would it take for this nightmarish roller-coaster ride to stop??

This cycle would define the next twenty years of my life: six-to-twelve months as a would-be Witness followed by the same amount of time hanging out in gay bars, getting drunk and laid, until my conscience would again start assaulting me, leading me to return once again to Jehovah. I reached the point where I was certain that something was intrinsically wrong with me; why couldn’t I control myself for more than a few months? Was Satan’s hold on me that great that I was incapable of self-control, or had I sinned so badly that Jehovah simply would not give me his Holy Spirit to face and overcome these demonic urges?  I had no answers and finally all-but-gave up trying to find any.

The real test, however, was yet to come, as my whole world changed in 1989, the year I got "the news."

How I Lost My Faith . XVIII - “Do I have ‘IT’ or not??!”

The winter of 1986/87 was very hard on me. After two years in Denver, I’d acclimated to a much drier climate, but the winters back east were very humid, and the cold ate into my bones. Six months into my stay at home, at age 23, I began developing arthritis in my hands, and it became intolerable. I was prepared to move back to Denver in February, but decided to stay until the summer after my godmother wrote me a short letter in which she all-but-pleaded with me to stay a few more months to help care for my sickly godfather—and, for the first time in my life, she offered me an apology:

“I’m sorry for everything.”

It was only four words, but I knew to what she was referring and that she meant every word; that was enough at the time to allow me to forgive a great many things; not everything, mind you...that would come much later.

That spring I made Dandelion Wine for the first time, and it was the bomb! One day, I was drinking a couple of glasses of the finished product, when my godfather called to me upstairs to ask that I watch the store for a while so he and my godmother could go into town. When I stumbled out of my room, he started laughing—I was “drunk as a skunk,” as they say! That homemade wine kicked my ass, and, before he passed away a couple of years later, my godfather would chuckle whenever he thought about that day. I managed to get through the shift okay, though; fortunately, it wasn’t a busy store, and all the customers were local people I knew well, so I just told them I’d gotten drunk on homemade wine and they laughed.

After turning my back on Jed and the bar scene, I began thinking about the possibility that I may have finally picked up the HIV virus—not necessarily from Jed; it could have been any one of the possibly-hundreds of men I’d encountered over the years since coming out of the closet in 1981, but his situation began to worry me. I previously wrote that I hadn’t really thought about HIV or AIDS in a long time, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, since I remember getting tested at least twice in Denver before backing home, and each time it came back negative. This time, however, I wasn’t so sure, so I decided to have the test done at a clinic in nearby Fredericksburg in the spring of 1987.

After a couple of very long weeks of anxiously waiting, I finally got the call: I was positive. Great! At first, it didn’t really bother me too much. After all, I’d had gonorrhea and crabs a number of times over the past six years, so what was one more? I knew it would only be a matter of time, considering how many guys with whom I’d had unprotected sex over the years.

A day or two later, however, the clinic called me back and informed me that I’d been given someone else’s results and that mine had actually come back negative. Negative? How the hell could they have mixed up the results? What if that first call had completely devastated me, leading to attempted suicide or something? I knew a few guys back then that would have responded that way and ended their lives before receiving that second “I’m so sorry we made a mistake” phone call.

Fortunately, my response was not so severe; I basically just took it all in stride. After all, if I was actually HIV-negative, I had nothing to worry about, right? And if I really was HIV-positive, what could I do about it, anyway? It was a veritable death sentence back then, and I was not ready to die; I had way too many things that I needed to do—but I couldn’t do them in bum-fuck Virginia, so I began making preparations for my return to Denver.

I began making contact with Glenn and a couple of Witness friends back in Colorado. I’d been going to the Kingdom Hall here in Fredericksburg off and on, but there was no one I could trust with my new secret. Back then, every straight person I knew, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, was terrified of being in the same room with an HIV-infected person, so I told no one there. In any case, I needed to be sure before I told anyone.

How I Lost My Faith . XVII - 'As the Pendulum Swings...'

To say that my initial response to what I perceived to be outright rejection by Jehovah God and His people was a bit of overkill would be quite an understatement, but back then I had no idea what to do but over-react. The elders had no idea how much effort it took for me to abstain from masturbating even for just two weeks; from five or six times a day to zero was a monumental feat! After only a few months, I put everything I had, including my entire future as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, into this one achievement; failure was not an option.

But fail I did, and as a result I was wracked with rage, guilt and shame on a profoundly deep level. It was bad enough growing up believing I’d never really amount to anything, but to have first the elders, then Jehovah God, and finally my former second-best friend (Richard being the first-best) dismiss me as if it meant nothing to him—one rejection piled on top of another—was too much to bear. Instead of picking myself up, dusting myself off and trying again, I fled in pain and anger, and returned to the murky pit from which I’d emerged after four years of wallowing. I knew what the Bible said, and I took it very seriously:

The saying of the true proverb has happened to them: “The dog has returned to its own vomit, and the sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.” – 2 Peter 2:22

Certainly if, after having escaped from the defilements of the world...[I] get involved again and are overcome, the final conditions have become worse for [me] than the first. … it would have been better for [me] not have accurately known the path of righteousness... – 2 Peter 2:20, 21

If [I] practice sin willfully after having received...the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins left, but there is a certain fearful expectation of judgment. – Hebrews 10:26, 27

These Scriptures applied to me in spades, so what hope was there? The meaning was clear: there was no hope for me; perhaps God hadn’t really rejected me, but I’d rejected Him by willingly returning to a life of demonic hedonism, and that meant I would die during the battle of Armageddon: “fearful expectation of judgment” indeed. I took these things more personally, almost zealously, than most can even begin to understand, as I was convinced to my core that the Bible was God’s Word and Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only ones who had “The Truth”—which meant I was doomed. I might as well come back out of the closet and live my life the way I wanted to, so ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow I may die’ is the attitude I adopted.

After my first night with Glenn, I knew I couldn’t stay at Gary and Elizabeth’s place anymore, so, in late Spring of 1985, I moved in with my new boyfriend. As quickly and thoroughly as I’d switched off the homosexual half of myself in order to embrace “the Truth”, I switched off any interest in the Bible or Jehovah’s Witnesses and embraced my re-found sexual identity. I wanted nothing to do with religion whatsoever; discussions about religion became taboo around me. 

 

When I’d returned to the Kingdom Hall earlier that winter, I had thrown out all of my porn and all books on astrology and the occult, but I’d kept Immanuel Velikovsky’s works; these were the only copies I’d been able to find and I wasn’t about to dispose of them, not yet. I planned on reading them all in an effort to feed my thirst for knowledge; the Bible was out of the question. I never got around to them, however, delving instead into other aspects of the occult like crystals and pyramids—until one day I attended a seminar on crystal magic. 

 

I don’t remember much about it now, with one exception. Near the end, a mystical chart was displayed that had at the top the very last thing I expected to see: the Tetragrammaton—the four Hebrew letters representing the Name of God, יהוה .   

This name is sacrosanct to Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as Jews, and to use it in the context of occultist practices was utter blasphemy! I left that place stunned and dismayed. The last thing I needed was a blatant reminder of what I’d left behind months before. I was happy with my life. I had a gorgeous boyfriend, a few close gay friends whose companionship I really enjoyed, and I wasn’t even thinking about “the Truth”—until that damn seminar. 

 

Shortly thereafter, I made the fateful decision to return—back to the Hall to face what I’d done and try to get back into Jehovah’s favor. That meant breaking up with Glenn and abandoning the friendships I’d gained in the gay community. I could not live two lives, one gay and completely immoral, and one anti-gay, pious Christian; it was one or the other, and I chose the ‘higher road.’ In spite of my conviction that I’d sinned way too seriously, I also knew other Scriptures that kept coming to mind, giving me a glimmer of hope, particularly these two, which I took on a deeply personal level (hence the bracketed pronouns):

Though the sins of [mine] should prove to be as scarlet, they will be made white just like snow. … If [I just] show willingness and do listen... – Isaiah 1:18, 19

Jehovah is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness. He will not for all time keep finding fault... according to [my] errors has he [not] brought upon [me] what [I] deserve [which is death]. … For as the heavens are higher than the earth, His loving-kindness is superior toward those fearing him. As far off as the sunrise is from the sunset, So far off from [me] he has put [my] transgressions. As a father shows mercy to his sons, Jehovah has shown mercy to those fearing him [including me]. For he himself well knows the formation of [me], Remembering that [I am] dust. – Psalms 103:8-14

Perhaps my sins were not so bad, after all; maybe—just maybe—He would give me another chance. I sincerely believed with all my heart the message behind these Scriptures and resolved to try one more time to be moral, clean and upright—”good enough” for Ted and my other Witness friends, and for Jehovah God; I would show them just what I was made of!.

I moved out of Glenn’s apartment into my own place on Capitol Hill, ironically just across the street from an adult bookstore/video arcade. That would prove to be a test later, but initially I was completely Bible-oriented, and began to assemble what would become a very impressive library of Bible translations, dictionaries and lexicons (many of which I still have to this day). I also began to study Greek and Hebrew in an effort to understand the original language meanings behind key words and phrases in the Bible; I was never satisfied with basic, lay knowledge.

My efforts lasted about four or five months before I gave in to desire and went to the adult store across the street...and there I was again, back in the gutter, wallowing in the mire I’d left behind for a second time. I therefore did the only logical thing: I went out to a gay bar, got drunk and picked some guy up, went home and had sex. Once again, guilt and shame consumed me and I once again left the Kingdom Hall in disgrace.

It’s important to note that the vast majority of the congregation had absolutely no idea what I was going through. Only Ted and a couple of others knew what I’d done while away, and how ashamed I was when I returned to the fold, so I wasn’t publicly shamed before the group or anything. It was all in my head—the shame, the guilt, the impossibly-high bar that I knew I could never reach. When I returned to the flock, the congregation just assumed I’d been away and were truly delighted to see me again. It would be a while yet before others began to see a problem, but in those early days I was regularly welcomed back by all, including Phillip, with open arms.

By now it was 1986, and that summer, I decided I could bear the shame no longer and made the decision to leave Denver and return home, to Virginia. Maybe there, I could get my head together and figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my life. I’d met a handsome deaf man at a gay bar who had family back east, so we decided to take a road trip together, down through Texas to visit my mom, then through Arkansas and Louisiana (never again; the bugs were atrocious!), on up through South and North Carolina to Washington, D.C. He taught me some sign language on the way, which I remember enjoying immensely; I wish I’d continued learning it, but never really took the opportunity to do so.

Since I had no place to live, after a week of staying at my friend’s brother’s apartment for a week, I decided to head south to visit what was left of my family. On the way, my car broke down; apparently the distributor cap had cracked. A man stopped to help and offered to buy a new cap for my car if I’d agree to attend a Buddhist ceremony nearby. Since I really had nothing else to do, and I wasn’t interested in any Bible-oriented discussions, I agreed. It was the first time in my life I’d seen the inside of a Buddhist temple; I remember thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?”

After the ceremony, this man, whose name I forget, gave me a prayer book written in Chinese, and a small altar before which I was supposed to repeatedly chant, “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo” and everything I wanted would come to pass. I figured, “What the hell? ‘The Truth’ isn’t working out for me, so let’s give this a try,” and for several months I did.

The next day, I reached my godmother on the phone and told her I was in the state and wanted to visit. I wound up living there for nearly a year, helping out in the family store and working at a deli. The rage I’d felt growing up here had subsided, making the situation relatively manageable. My mom later told me that my godmother was proud of the work ethic I’d developed in the years I’d been gone. Things were going well for a change and I felt I could relax for a bit, get my bearings and decide what to do next with my life.

While living there, I made routine trips north to D.C.—about 50 miles one-way—to go bar-hopping. That winter, I met a very nice-looking young man from Texas named Jed. He and I hooked up regularly and had a great time together, to the point where I began looking at him as a possible life-partner. One night, he confided in me that he had tested positive for HIV and was terrified his father would find out and disown him. I hadn’t even thought about HIV in several years; it was still taboo, especially among Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I hadn’t discussed it with them at all.

That discussion got me thinking about the possibility I may have it, especially now that I’d been intimate with someone I knew for sure had it. Right about this time, I began questioning my own mortality, and what would happen to me if I died from AIDS. My studies with the Witnesses had taught me to believe in resurrection in Paradise, but what about Buddhism? I’d been chanting in front of this altar words I didn’t understand. Was there really any future in this?

I met the guy who’d introduced me to Buddhism one day for lunch and I asked him point-blank, “What happens when we die? The Bible talks about resurrection; what do Buddhists believe?” He talked about reincarnation, reliving our lives over and over—complete with mistakes, sin, sickness and death—apparently forever, or until one achieves some higher plane where reincarnation stops. Frankly, it made absolutely no sense to me. That was not hope; it was a futile repetition of pain and suffering for all eternity, as far as I was concerned...and I knew right then what I had to do.

That day, I took all of my Buddhist stuff—prayer book, altar and all—to our store and threw it all in the wood furnace. My younger brother was watching the store at the time, and he told me he saw a spirit leave that furnace and fly away. That was all the convincing I needed—Buddhism was spiritistic and demonic and there was only one place for me to go: back to “The Truth.” I knew where the local Kingdom Hall was and made up my mind to start attending right away.

But what about Jed? He’d just told me he had HIV and was scared, and I wanted to be there for him...but he was gay and I couldn’t continue being with him if I wanted to make things right with Jehovah. So I wrote him a three or four-page Scripture-laden letter explaining in the most diplomatic terms why I could not see him again, crying the whole time. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, or anybody for that matter, but I had no choice; I had to take the “high road” and do what was morally right. It was a very painful process, but it would not be the first time I broke someone’s heart—and my own—in this eloquent but cowardly manner.

Thus began to swing the Great Pendulum of my life; for a time, I’d be “out and proud” as long as I didn’t run into any Witnesses, then the Pendulum would swing the other way and I’d be the best damn Witness one could possibly be. It was a sometimes-violent conflict that struck at the very core of my being, and I began to lose sight of who I was, what I really stood for—and for the next 22 years I lived in that limbo, becoming whoever others expected me to be at any given time. 

 

Over the years I became ever more determined to “get it right,” at one point making a sworn oath to Jehovah God that “I will not stop trying to get it right, until the day I expire,” in those exact words—and I meant it. I would prove that even someone as damaged as I, who had repeatedly returned to this Satanic world as all it had to offer, could become clean and upright, and acceptable to Jehovah as one of His children. I was convinced that my sexuality was something I could change with enough will power and constant prayer—and I tried so very hard to prove it, time and time again, but to no avail. I simply could not escape who I was, and it would be decades still before I figured that out.

How I Lost My Faith . XVI - The Test

After a couple of months renting a room, a Witness couple, Gary and Elizabeth, invited me to stay in their house, in the basement bedroom.  It was a bit rustic, but I wasn't interested in material things, just my spiritual library and meeting clothes.  I remember having a very frank discussion with Elizabeth once about the habit I was striving to overcome, and she responding, "It's better to masturbate than go out looking for sex."  That counsel helped as I fought to get it under control, but I had a goal to meet: two weeks straight with no self-abuse.  Ted had actually suggested that to me during a Bible study: 'make it two weeks then we'll talk.'

Finally, I did it; I made it through two weeks of agonizing self-control!  It may not seem like such a big deal, but it was all I had, all I could tangibly do to prove my love for Jehovah God and my determination to be clean in His eyes.  I was  anticipating joining the Theocratic Ministry School and giving talks before the congregation.  I knew enough about "the Truth" to qualify; it was down to just this.  Ted and I met with another elder, the School Overseer, Sam J.  I explained how much progress I'd made, and that two weeks of clean behaviour had passed, so "Can I join the School now?!"

Ted gave his okay, but deferred to Brother J., as he was in charge of the School.  I remember feeling exhilarated...this was it; this was my vindication!

He said, 

"Why don't we give it two more weeks and then talk?"

I was stunned.  What I heard was not, 'only two more weeks';  what I heard was, 

"You're still not good enough and you never will be!!"

I was completely devastated, and I’m sure Ted could see the change that began taking over me. In my mind, I threw my hands up in the air in disgust...and, for the first time in months, I thought about having a drink...in a bar...with guys. By the time I left the Kingdom Hall that evening, I knew what I was about to do—betray Jehovah, as I felt He had betrayed me and condemned me as unfit for service. He was not there with me that evening, I felt, or I would be heading home to prepare for the School now.

In my mind, Jehovah God himself had rejected me. It was the most devastating thing that had ever happened to me—bar only one, when I was 5 or 6 years old—and I simply could not bear it. That night, I went to a gay bar and decided to leave the congregation; Jehovah obviously didn’t want me there, anyway.

After the bar, I went to an adult bookstore/theater and met a young Navy stud named Glenn. He was gorgeous, and I was instantly drawn to him. Within a month of walking out of the Hall, I moved out of the basement bedroom and into Glenn’s apartment. As I was moving the last of my things out to Glenn’s car, my former close friend, Phillip, stopped by and, passing me on the porch, said, “Have a nice life!” I felt like he’d slapped me in the face, and I resolved to never come back.

Two weeks. It doesn’t seem like such a long time, now that I’m much older, but back then it was an eternity. I was one who wanted...needed...everything done now. I’d wasted too much time away from Jehovah and was determined to make up for it by progressing in the organization as quickly as I could. Two more weeks—it might as well have been two years. I’d put all I had into that one effort, and it wasn’t enough.

I’d failed the test, and so I slunk away into the darkness of sin and despair.

How I Lost My Faith . XV - Off The Streets

The switch from hedonistic homosexual to anti-gay, moral Christian happened almost instantaneously; I embraced "The Truth" with a fervor.  I had no ties to the gay community in Denver, anyway—unlike D.C., where I'd left behind a number of really good friends—so it was easy to ignore those feelings and focus solely on remembering and gaining as much Bible knowledge as I could.

For the next several months, Ted and I studied as often as we could, especially publications about Bible prophecies; I was a sponge and eagerly soaked in everything I'd missed over the past four years and everything deep, deep Bible study would reveal.  After leaving the hotel, I was picked for a 30-day stay at the Catholic-run Samaritan Shelter, which got me off the streets for a while.  I specifically remember sitting at a desk there one day studying the All Scripture Is Inspired publication, a book-by-book in-depth study of the Bible, highlighting parts in yellow and orange.

At some point during my stay, some business representatives came by the shelter to talk to some of us about jobs.  There were two I found interesting: staffing a print/copy shop, and telemarketing for a carpet cleaner.  I almost took the former, but the latter promised more money faster, so I chose it, instead.  That turned out to be the wrong choice, as I discovered a couple of months later that the actual cleaners were scamming their customers by offering one price then, once at the home, adding 'this room' and 'that couch,' resulting in a bill over twice what they expected.  I witnessed this first-hand when I switched from the phones to the field, and I quit within a week of learning the truth about their business practices.

During that first month, however, I made enough to move out of the shelter into my own place, a dorm-like room in a converted house on Capitol Hill with weekly rentals.  It wasn’t the Taj Majal, but it was a place to sleep that was all my own.  I remember the landlady teaching me to play cut-throat acey-duecy backgammon; by the time I moved from there, we were quite evenly matched, and to this day I play very aggressively.

Finally, I was no longer homeless.  I had no car, but it didn't really matter.  Even if I'd had one, I couldn't have afforded the insurance, so I just relied on public transportation.  I remember riding the bus down Federal Boulevard one day in February and staring at the crisp, snow-covered mountains and being in awe of Jehovah's creation.  Back then, you could actually see the mountains perfectly, there being virtually no air pollution blocking your view.  Sadly, today that view is not so pristine; Denver has grown exponentially since the early 1980s, and with that growth came commensurate levels of smog, creating an ever-present brown cloud.  I miss those days.

This house had a common kitchen and bathrooms, but no refrigerator.  Fortunately, it was the dead of winter and my room was on the north side, so I would hang my perishable food out the window in a plastic bag to keep it cold.  In this way I could store milk, cheese and other items without spoiling.

While there, I met a young Witness couple and their baby who were also in survival mode, and we became instant friends.  We studied the Bible and Watchtower articles together, and relished in each others' spiritually-uplifting fellowship.  They were into furniture restoration; I remember a cane-back chair they were repairing for an antique shop.  

Not long after we met, Richard returned to Houston, determined to resume his Bible study with the older couple he'd talked about.  There was a pay-phone on the first floor of this house, so he and I were able to keep in touch.  Strangely, whenever I was down, depressed, unsure of myself and my resolve to be faithful to Jehovah, Richard would call me out of the blue on that pay-phone—and the exact opposite was also true: when he needed support, I would inevitably call him out of the blue and we'd talk for hours.  This went on for years, actually, whenever he would move to Houston or I back east (which occurred in 1986).  This bizarre connection between us convinced both of us that our meeting was Jehovah's will; that he'd brought us together so that we'd each have the support we needed to change who we really were so as to please Him.

After making the decision to serve Jehovah, there were a couple of loose ends that needed tidying up: my books on the occult, and my box of porn, which amounted to $300-worth of magazines. There were a couple of used-book stores in town that would buy them for resale, but doing that would simply be propagating an immoral lifestyle...so I threw them all in an alley-way dumpster and walked away from them for what I thought would be “for good.”

I continued to progress in my Bible study with Ted and was anxiously anticipating enrolling in the weekly Theocratic Ministry School, where students learn public speaking, reasoning from the Bible, and how to engage in the ministry of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’d been to numerous meetings where the School was conducted during my teenage years, despite early opposition from my family, and knew that joining the school was a privilege, one that heretofore I had not earned. I wasn’t going to bars drinking or hooking up with other guys; I strove to not even think of those things. The only issue I had, that I really struggled with—that would prove to be my undoing—was masturbation.

For me, this unclean habit was the one thing preventing me from proving that I was finally “good enough” to join the School and put my talents to work for the congregation. Remember, for four years I’d been sated with sex and masturbated at least five times a day. This was not a habit that was going to go away as easily as swearing. If I could make it through a day only masturbating once, it was a monumental achievement. This habit was deeply ingrained, but I was resolved to overcome it.

One result of my upbringing was the nagging feeling that I was never good enough to please those in charge of my life, and would never be good enough for anyone, ever. It was this feeling that largely fueled my promiscuity in the early '80s; I wasn’t worth anything, anyway, so why the hell not? 

 

If these feelings were already present prior to my return to “the Truth,” can you imagine how I would feel if I could not overcome this one habit of self-abuse? Is my faith in prayer and holy spirit strong enough to overcome fleshly thoughts and actions? Jehovah knew how badly I wanted this, and would give me the strength I knew I didn’t have—I just couldn’t keep my hands to myself, so-to-speak. 

 

I placed everything I had, all my hope and resolve into this one thing: overcoming masturbation. Everything hinged on proving that I could do this, that I could stop this one habit that served as a constant reminder of the past I so desperately wanted to leave behind.

I fought like hell for weeks, until finally I managed to go two weeks straight with no setbacks. For two weeks, I fought the urge to play with myself, praying constantly, tearfully each time I became aroused until the urge went away, or reading the Bible out loud.  I would even wake up in the middle of the night to find myself already “engaged” and would force myself to stop, praying until I went back to sleep.  It was, quite literally, the most difficult thing I’d ever done, and I was so proud of myself for a change; two weeks for me was synonymous with ascending the peak of Mount Everest! I was anxious to share my success with Ted, and perhaps discuss my desire to finally join the Theocratic Ministry School.  Didn’t this prove that I was able to control my desires and rely on Jehovah to help me overcome sin?

Ted arranged a discussion with me and another elder after the meeting one day, and I remember feeling the best I had in a long time, and really enjoying the meeting. This was my day! Surely they’ll see how hard I’m working to do what’s right and let me join the School, the first step on my way to the baptism pool! 

 

Surely...

How I Lost My Faith . XIV - The Choice Which Lay Before Me

One might ask, “How could a promiscuous, young gay man such as myself, who had been completely out of the closet for four years, suddenly turn all of that off and do a complete 180°, taking a stance against homosexuality and all it stood for?”  I’ve asked myself that question numerous times over the years, and the simplest answer I can come up with is that I genuinely loved and believed in God and His Word, and my desire to be a good, moral person and a loyal, faithful servant of Jehovah was stronger by far than any temptation the Devil could place in my path.  I believed my sexual tendencies were a result of the female-dominant environment in which I grew up; I never actually chose to be gay, and I didn’t believe that I was “born this way,” that God made me homosexual: 

How could a loving God create me to be gay then tell me that being gay is a sin worthy of death by stoning??

I didn’t buy it for a second, and I never bought into the “gay Christian church” concept. Their God condemns them in their own Bible, and they build a church in which to worship Him??  I simply could not wrap my head around that, any more than I could a Baptist church celebrating witches and demons in a house of God and angels. For many years I couldn’t even walk into a church, or any house of worship,  that wasn’t a Kingdom Hall without being deeply offended at all of the “false worship” that went on there; it would later make attending funerals very difficult for me.  I knew too much about the history of Christendom’s beliefs—thanks to books like The Two Babylons by Presbyterian Rev. Alexander Hislop (1919), and “Babylon the Great Has Fallen!” by Jehovah’s Witnesses (1963, the year of my birth)—and would not allow myself to be exposed to idols (crosses, statues, etc.) and false religion.  I took my faith and service to Jehovah very, very seriously, and I would allow nothing to sully it.

I believed to my very core that the Bible was God’s Inspired Written Word and that Jehovah’s Witnesses, alone, had “The Truth.”  The Baptist church from which I’d turned away in disgust one Halloween as a child certainly didn’t have it—and from what I’d learned in years past and was learning anew, neither did anyone else; no other religious organization could give clear, concise answers to mankind’s most basic questions of existence straight from the Bible, without making stuff up as they went along, as so many religious leaders and preachers were doing.  From my point of view, practically all of the so-called “spiritual nourishment” offered by the churches of Christendom was filled with speculation, wishful thinking, and out-right falsehood, with practically no Scriptural support—and at age 22, I could prove it “twelve ways to Sunday.” 

In spite of my horrible experience with the elders back east four years before, in my eyes Jehovah’s Witnesses—viewed as a whole—were the embodiment of Christian faith and moral fortitude.  They were to be the core of the ‘unnumbered great crowd’ of Revelation 7:9 who would survive Armageddon and live forever in Paradise, and I particularly admired the older generation who had lived through the likes of Hitler and Stalin, as well as violent religious intolerance even in the U.S. during and after both World Wars; the 1974 Yearbook I’d borrowed from Michael years before had numerous accounts of Witnesses who refused to compromise their faith even in the most extreme circumstances.  After living through my own version of that hell at home, I wanted to be like them—loyal, faithful, unselfish, morally clean and upright, and full of holy spirit.  I looked up to them and strove with every fiber of my being to emulate their faith; what I didn’t realize at the time was that I’d raised Jehovah’s Witnesses up on a pedestal so high it would prove to be utterly impossible to reach.

During the four years I’d been “out and proud,” the teachings I’d absorbed during my teen years—from the Bible, Watchtower books and magazines, and meetings at the local Kingdom Hall—were always hovering way in the back of my mind, particularly those regarding the ever-imminent Battle of Armageddon.  I just figured that I’d lost that hope by openly embracing a lifestyle completely at odds with God’s will, so why even think about it?  Once I stepped into that Kingdom Hall in Denver for the first time, however, the hope that I might actually become acceptable to Jehovah washed over me like a tidal wave; I felt like I’d finally come home.  I knew it would not be easy, but I was determined to do what I knew was right, and if that meant changing the very nature of my being “for the sake of the Good News,”—suppressing the sinful, unnatural tendencies that had estranged me from my Creator—then so be it!

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that homosexuality is unnatural and demonic.  For the vast majority of my life, I believed as they do, thinking that will-power, prayer and faith could change me into someone with more “natural” inclinations.  I knew everything the Bible and Watchtower literature had to say on the subject, and resolved to be in complete agreement, even nodding my head in approval when a brother would denigrate my previous lifestyle from the podium.  I discovered years later that some of my closest friends at the Hall would look to see my response during such talks, worried that I might be offended, but I took it all in stride.  After all, the Bible was clear, was it not?  

I was bound and determined to prove that even someone like me—unclean, immoral, utterly sinful—could take a stand for “the Truth.”  I’d read accounts in Watchtower and Awake! magazines of others who had been gay but made drastic changes in their personalities to be part of Jehovah’s organization.  If a transsexual could teach him/herself to walk, talk, dress and act like a straight man in order to worship Jehovah acceptably, then so could I overcome my past!  These examples gave me courage and the knowledge that I wasn’t alone in this battle between good and evil.

The efforts I went through to change my personality had an unexpected side-effect: swearing became offensive to me. I used to cuss like a drunken sailor, and suddenly I couldn’t bear the sound of even “mild” words like damn-it and shit; it was strangely like flipping a switch, but none of my new friends cussed, being Christian and all, so it wasn’t a difficult habit to break.

I also realized that, while I would occasionally “look” at guys walking down the street, I could’t do that with male Witnesses; unconsciously, I'd created a wall of sorts that made even the idea of intimate relations with a Witness offensive. Regular guys I’d see in public were, as far as I was concerned, doomed anyway without a relationship with Jehovah, so they were fair game; but not the Witnesses—they were Jehovah’s sheep, not to be lured away, tempted from their walk with God; it was exactly the same way Richard felt about me when we first met.

When I told Ted at our first meeting that I hated being gay, it wasn't that I hated myself—that would come later (I had a measure of self-loathing and low self-esteem before 1985, but it was nothing compared to what lay in store).  It was because my sexuality was the one thing that got in the way of my faithfulness to Jehovah God and prevented me from reaching my goal of baptism, and I was desperate to excise it from my soul.  

The reason I bring all of this up is to help you, the reader—as well as myself—understand that I had a choice: I could remain openly gay, ignoring the growing void in my soul and accepting the consequences, which included an ever-nagging guilty conscience and eventual death at Armageddon; or I could walk away from sin and death to become one of Jehovah’s loyal, faithful Witnesses, with the prospect of “everlasting life in Paradise on Earth”.

If this were the end of the story—had I “lived happily ever after” as one of Jehovah's Witness—my recounting of these events would be utterly meaningless.  But it wasn't the end at all; it was merely the beginning...

Completely oblivious to what lay ahead, I chose Jehovah.

How I Lost My Faith . XIII - 'I'm gay and I hate myself for it!!'

The congregation meeting that cold, wintery Sunday in early 1985 ended with a brief conversation with Phillip, where I explained that I really needed to talk to an elder about some serious stuff.  He directed me to the front of the Kingdom Hall and introduced me to Ted, who was the kindest, warmest elder I think I'd ever met.  My experience four years before with the elders in Virginia had made me a bit gun-shy; once I told them the truth about myself, how would they react?  Would these elders treat me as unfit, "marked" before they ever really knew me?  I was nervous, but I knew I had to do this...I had to be honest with Jehovah's people, and I would need all the help I could get.

Ted drew me into one of the side-rooms near the stage, and I told him outright:

"I'm gay. I hate being gay!  I want to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I need your help."

Ironically, one of my goals on this journey westward had been to change my name and identity, to let the previous me vanish from the earth and start over from scratch.  I remember thinking shortly after this conversation with Ted that, had I actually managed to follow through with that plan, the kind of honesty with which I was compelled to open up to Ted at this first meeting would not have been possible; my conscience would have forced me to tell them who I really was, undoing that whole process.

I think Ted was a bit taken aback at my forthrightness, but he agreed to have someone study the Bible with me.  I insisted, however, that he be that person, as I did not want to risk opening up to a brother like the ones back east.  For the first time in four years, I felt like I had arrived at a spiritual place I could call "home," and I felt an instant bond with this man.  

No one really asked me back then what was holding me back from baptism; they knew how knowledgeable I was and how strongly I wanted to be a Witness—only Ted, Phillip, Dan and Joy (and a couple of the elders) knew about my past, and only because I told them so, not some small-minded elder.  I may have hitherto been openly-gay, but I was never flamboyant or obvious, so most people never suspected; the Witnesses just thought I was a single young man willing to devote his life to serve Jehovah, and that was really all that mattered to them.

I really, really wanted to be a loving, God-fearing, well-balanced young man—I always had—someone Jehovah could be proud of and could use to further the Good News.  I wanted to be baptized, to serve as a ministerial servant, a Pioneer (full-time minister), and a missionary.  I hoped to attend Bethel—the headquarters of the Watchtower Society in New York—and perhaps even serve as an elder someday.  I certainly had the knowledge and the empathy necessary to shepherd others, but I did not have stability.

During my subsequent studies with Ted, he often pointed out how knowledgeable I was about the Bible and my ability to understand very deep subjects, particularly Bible prophecy and chronology, even at age 22/23 with four years of no study at all, and that I knew more about "the Truth" than many dedicated, baptized Witnesses at that time.  I knew Watchtower teachings inside and out, including many behind-the-scenes organizational proceedings, having paid very close attention at meetings back east.

Ted also gave me a warning: all too often, very smart people have problems accepting simple answers from the Bible; their ego prevents them from accepting direction from the "faithful and discreet slave," as they understand the Governing Body to be.  Many, therefore, leave the Truth in search of more academic pursuits.  I took that counsel to heart and strove for the next 25-plus years to remain humble and open to direction, as one of Jehovah's "sheep" should do.

But I could not come out to my new-found spiritual family.  The only reason those few I told knew was because I grew to trust them, and they my overwhelming desire to overcome one of the most destructive, immoral and demonic lifestyles there was (as they viewed homosexuality).   As with most religious organizations, back then it was believed that homosexuality was strictly a choice, with possible environmental factors thrown into the mix—and that's exactly what I believed: I was a text-book case of environmentally-induced homosexuality, having been raised in a female-dominant family with no father-figure to speak of.  I was thoroughly convinced that I could overcome such "learned behaviour", not believing for a second that I was genetically predisposed to such tendencies; those that did, I believed, were using that as an excuse to condone an immoral, spiritistic lifestyle.

The thing was, in order to succeed in reaching my spiritual goals, I had to suppress—kill off—one whole half of myself.  I spent most of the rest of my adult life living as half a person.  I never pretended to be straight in order to make the congregation comfortable; I was just...myself—only, practically no one knew that I was gay; hell, even I didn't want to be that way, so the less others knew, the better.

In other words, I had struggled with my sexual identity all through my teen years, had come completely out of the closet in 1981, and then voluntarily walked back into that same closet in 1985 because I wanted to be a good Christian.  I was willing to do whatever it took to make Jehovah God, and my new friends, proud of me.

If I'd known the psychological impact this struggle would have on me over the years, I'd have made completely different choices, but the roller coaster had left the station and was climbing to the top of a terrifyingly-steep hill—and once on the track, there was no getting off. 

How I Lost My Faith . XII - The Turning Point

When I left the east coast in the summer of 1984, I brought with me—in addition to clothes and calligraphy supplies—three dichotomous collections: books on astrology and the occult, a large box of gay pornographic magazines, and all of the Watchtower publications I possessed.  Everything else I just left where it was, including hundreds of dollars of sex-related items which I'm sure embarrassed the hell out of whoever had the task of cleaning my vacated apartment.

Why I held onto my Watchtower publications, I do not know, except that somewhere in the far recesses of my mind, I knew that eventually I would have to face what I knew, all I'd learned from the Bible.  Even though I'd managed to live the last four years as a hedonistic, openly-gay young man, "the Truth" (as Witnesses call their body of beliefs) was ever-present in the back of my mind, haunting me, as I'd been taught that the battle of Armageddon was just around the corner, and only those dedicated to Jehovah and baptized were guaranteed a place in Paradise.  I knew that I was no where near reaching that goal of "everlasting life in Paradise on Earth", and I put off fretting about it for as long as I could, but in January, 1985, I found I could put if off no longer.

I had to make a choice: an immoral, openly-gay life or Jehovah God.  It was one or the other; I could be either gay or straight, good or bad, black or white; there was no gray.  The Bible was very clear about my lifestyle, and the Witnesses would never compromise on Bible laws or principles.  I'd be either good or bad, faithful or degenerate; it was, for me at the time, literally a matter of life and death.  I could not—and would never be able to—live both lives; I am not and have never been a hypocrite, so it was one or the other.  My very soul was poised on the edge of an extremely sharp knife, and the wrong move one way or the other would scar me for life; little did I know how large that scar would grow.

When I was granted by Welfare a seven-day stay at a less-than-stellar hotel in downtown Denver, I took from my car (which was by now completely undriveable) the box of Watchtower books and magazines and settled in for a long reading and contemplation of my situation.  I remember reading at least six books in just two or three days, each one nudging closer and closer to the decision that would change my life forever: I needed to return to Jehovah and His people.  I actually, deeply felt that I had no choice; there was a reason I was here in this circumstance, and had met Richard, a man after my own (real) heart.  I felt very strongly that Jehovah was drawing me back to Him, and how could I refuse?

So, that Sunday, I decided to find the nearest Kingdom Hall and take the first step back to Jehovah's favor.  In the phone book, I found the closest Hall to be near City Park, at Gaylord and 22nd Street, north of Colfax.  I took the bus over to York Street and walked, in the middle of a blizzard, the seven or eight blocks to meet my destiny.  I showed up wearing jeans and a full beard; I knew this was not proper attire for a place as sacrosanct as this, but I had nothing else.  I felt completely out of place, but the folks around me quickly made me feel welcome, including the sister who gave me a song book at the beginning of the meeting.  Three people in particular, however, stand out above all others in my memories of that day: Phillip, Dan, and Ted.

Phillip was the first man to shake my hand that morning. He was a young ministerial servant, and we hit it off right away; that friendship would last through good times and bad for the next 25 years or so.

I also met Dan and his wife and six boys, two of whom were twins.  I felt an immediate connection with this couple and quickly endeared myself to them, and they practically adopted me into their family. Dan and I clicked on a really profound level and had hours-long conversations about the Bible and Watchtower literature, particularly the “deeper things of God” like prophecy and chronology, and how close we were to Armageddon and what it would be like in Paradise. He studied the Bible with me off and on for years before I was finally baptized.

That day I also met the most influential person of my young life: Ted, a black elder in a predominantly-black congregation, as well as its current presiding overseer. I grew to love and respect this man as a father-figure and mentor and he would be critical to my progress toward baptism years later.

 

These three people would become integral parts of my struggle to be clean and upright before Jehovah, and my desire to serve Him with every fiber of my being, and that cold, wintery day in January, 1985, would be the turning point in my life, the beginning of a long road of learning, discovery...and despair, and I would never be the same again.

How I Lost My Faith . XI - My Conscience Awakens

Not too long after meeting Richard, I was injured at one of my assignments by a huge building-truss-cutting machine.  The operator had stopped the machine for a few minutes, so, of course, I started wiping away sawdust from the conveyor track, when suddenly the operator turned it back on going in the opposite direction from what I was used to; the machine caught the tip of my left glove's middle finger, pulling me with it.  Luckily, I pulled back in time to save my finger, though I did lose the tip, just shy of the bone.  The foreman drove me to a clinic where the doctor sewed the skin to my fingernail, said it would grow back normal (which it never did), gave me a prescription for pain medication and let me go.  Workman's Comp paid me $300, which at the time was a whole lot of money for someone living on the streets and in shelters (I could have gotten a whole lot more if I'd known better!).  

The pain medication required it be taken with food or milk, which, ironically, turned out to be easier to get on the street than at a so-called "Christian" shelter, the Denver "Jesus Saves" Rescue Mission.  My one-night stay there was hands-down the worst shelter experience I have ever had.  A day or two after the accident, I decided to shoot for a bed there.  Instead of just one night like most others, if your number was drawn, you'd get a bed for a week.  I needed a stable resting-place in order to recoup from my injury, so I drew a ticket...and won!  I had a bed for a whole week!  

My immediate need, however, was for food or milk, as it was past time for my pain medication.  Thinking, "these people seem nice and claim to be Christian, surely they will give me something to tide me over until dinner...," I approached the man at the desk and asked if I could get something to take with my pill; I was in pain and it was growing.  

"You'll have to wait for dinner," was the annoyed response.  

"When is dinner?" 

"In an hour, after the sermon."

Sermon? What sermon??

"I can't wait an hour!  I have to take this medication and I need something to take it with.  Isn't there anything?  Can you ask the cook?"

After doing so, he said, "The cook said you'll have to wait for dinner."

"Look, all I need is some milk.  Can't you give me a little milk, please, so I can take my medication??"

Finally, they acquiesced and I was given a glass of milk, but not after nearly raising hell in what should have been a no-brainer, "We're Christian and we'd love to help" moment at which I was quite taken aback.  I knew from years of studying the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses what proper Christian conduct was supposed to look like, and this was not it!

But worse was yet to come!  Before any of us freezing, homeless, starving souls could have a meal and some sleep, we had to attend the afore-mentioned sermon presented by some preacher I'd never heard of (and wouldn't have cared if I had).  At one point, a middle-aged black man stood up and gave his testimonial about how God had saved him, "Praise the Lord!" and so on.  Several months later, I saw him enter an bar attached to the Kitty's Adult Book Store & Theator on East Colfax; "so much for his 'praise to the Lord,'" I thought.

Some things about that night are a littel blurry—as I was in a lot of pain and taking narcotic pain medication, which my body at the time was not used—there is a portion of this...fiasco...that I remember clear as a bell to this day: 

The preacher said something about Hell and some guy behind me shouted, "I think hell is right here on Earth!" to which the preacher responded: 

"If you think this is Hell, then wait 'til you see the Hell God has prepared for you if you do not repent!"

I came within a hairsbreadth of throwing the song book sitting next to me at the stage!  I was livid and would have walked out then and there if I wasn't so hungry and so looking forward to finally having a hot meal and a bed.  It was bad enough we all had to wait an hour before we could eat (after waiting for an hour or more just to get in the door), but we had to sit through a sermon by a man who, as I saw it at that time (and, frankly, still do), knew absolutely nothing about what the Bible really said and used literal fear of God to coerce these poor, ignorant souls to despair.

You see, I was convinced from my study of the Bible that Hell is not a fiery place of torment, but simply the common grave of all mankind.  Not only did this man lie about that, he blamed God for it, making it seem as if God enjoyed such torment!  Blasphemy!!  Even though I hadn't read the Bible in four years—with the exception of parts of Genesis and a few others, which I used as text for my calligraphy projects—what I'd learned during my teen years had become very deeply ingrained in my mind and heart, and I was deeply offended by this complete distortion of truth.

Thankfully, the sermon ended shortly thereafter and we were finally ushered downstairs to the dining room.  I knew I had a guaranteed bed for a whole week, but during dinner I decided that I would not be returning, not if I had to sit through that bullshit for an hour every night; I'd rather sleep in my car or under a bridge.

After dinner, all the men are ushered single-file into a locker room, while the women were directed elsewhere.  All of our belongings were placed in boxes and the room was locked until 5:00 the next morning—which was an issue if you had to be at the day-labor office at 5:00 for a pre-arranged assignment.  We were then directed into a large shower, where we were sprayed for lice, given robes and assigned to a "bed," which was little more than a cot in a large room of cots.  It was, quite frankly, demeaning and dehumanizing, and I never went back.

That was the second in a brief series of events that forced me to face the reality of my situation, both materially and, most significantly, spiritually.  I began to realize that my knowledge of the Bible was both a blessing and a curse—a blessing in that I knew more about the Bible and the teachings of the Watchtower Society than did most of the Witnesses with whom I associated (this was confirmed once by an elder who studied with me off and on for years after this), and could reason circles around most lay people, including preachers and ministers—a curse because once those things started coming to mind, my conscience began to flail me everytime I did or thought about doing something I knew was wrong and immoral, like getting drunk and having sex with guys.

My conscience was starting to really nag me after this experience and I began questioning what I was doing with my life, and where I was: homeless, in constant pain, and living in shelters run by religious hypocrites...what was I to do??

A day or so after I left the "Jesus Saves" shelter, I managed to get a (very) little help from the Welfare Department; they gave me some emergency foodstamps and a hotel room for one week.  What they didn't tell me is that the hotel was probably the scariest place I'd ever stayed at.  It was in lower-downtown Denver and seemed barely liveable when I got there, but I quickly adapted and settled in for a week's sleep in a room all to myself.

(To be continued)