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- 05/21/2019
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
His Story - 6. Table Talk
Ryan was already waiting for me, and he’d picked one of the outside tables. We always met up at the same coffee shop, and if I got there first, I’d choose a table inside, but if Ryan got there first, he’d always pick one of the tables outside on the square of pavement in front of the coffee shop.
I went right up to the table and sat down opposite him.
“Hello, Chris, I’ve ordered you a coffee and muffin,” Ryan said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“How did it go today?”
“Not bad. It’s still not easy, but I think I’m getting somewhere now,” I said.
“Good. Let me get the waiter’s eye, and we can have our drinks and muffins.”
This had sort of become a regular date for us. Every other Wednesday morning at about eleven, I’d meet Ryan at this coffee shop, and we’d have a drink and a cake together. Ryan had suggested this; he said it would give me some company after each session. Every other Wednesday at ten o’clock, I’d see my therapist, Gill William, at her office just around the corner.
Nina had found Gill William for me. She was a short and quiet-spoken lesbian who seemed to be able to understand anything. She never judged, no matter what I told her; she only nodded and would ask me a question that really made me think, that would help me open up more. I can’t say that my hour sessions with her were easy; she can get deep under my skin. But in the same way, I was beginning to feel good about these sessions. She had a way of putting things into perspective and helping me to see why things had happened and why I behaved the way I did. She didn’t make me cry; she didn’t go for the big show of emotions; she just helped me to think and to see things as they really were.
Today hadn’t been an easy session, I’d finally told her about what had happened to me as a teenager with The Release Trust. I’d tried not to be over the top and all emotional. I tried to be calm, but telling my story was still hard. When I’d finished, we fell silent; she just sat thinking for a long and quiet moment before she said, “Oh, God, that must have been awful.”
Her words were wonderful, as if someone had lifted a heavy weight off my back. It felt such a relief, and it felt so good. She had taken me seriously; she’d realised how bad it had been, but she hadn’t given me some crass answer about pulling myself together and getting over it or that I should be happy because I’m out of it now.
It was Ryan’s idea to meet for coffee after my sessions with Gill William, but he never asked about them, except a general question about how they went. Instead, we’d talk about many different things. The strange thing was that these meetings really helped, too. They stopped me from going over and over what had happened in the session before, digging away at my own emotions and leaving me feeling depressed again. Ryan was always full of news about one thing or another.
After the waiter had brought us our drinks and muffins, Ryan started to tell me about how far he’d got with his book.
“Last week I emailed off the first draft to my editor, and already I’ve got notes back from her. I’m having to start a shitload of rewrites. She wants me to lift the tone of it. God, I thought that writing the first draft would be the biggest part. I was wrong on that.”
I just sat there and looked at him as he talked. He was so attractive. Too often, I’d find myself thinking about him. I wanted to touch him and caress him, if not just to be with him. I loved this hour or so we spent together, only the two of us, every other week. It was so important to me. If I’d had my way, I’d have spent every hour of the day with Ryan. The problem is, there’s no hope of that for me; the most I’ll get from Ryan is friendship.
Only the second date after we started meeting like this, after I’d started my sessions with Gill William, Ryan told me all about Zachary, his new boyfriend. Ryan was so excited and pleased to have started a relationship with Zachary. Every word he told me about Zachary was like a knife going into my body, but I hid my pain. I learnt long ago to perfectly hide my emotions away. If I was jealous or stupid over Zachary, I’d lose Ryan’s friendship completely. If I wasn’t boyfriend material, at least, I could be his friend; at least, I could keep some contact with him; I could still keep hoping.
Today Ryan’s hair seemed lighter in colour, more blond than strawberry, and was falling into his eyes every other movement. He was so attractive today. I smiled back at him and hoped he didn’t realise how I felt.
As a teenager I was an Evangelical Christian and also a member of an ex-gay organisation. As a teenager I realised I was gay and it terrified me, were I grow-up was extremely homophobic, and I willingly jumped onto the ex-gay belief as soon as I heard it, it was my fire-escape from hell, I wrongly believed. I cut myself off from them, two-and-a-half years later, when I realised it was the only way to survive because they had left me so damaged and so deeply depressed.
My twenties were largely lost as I could not come to terms with what had happened to me, not being able to accept the damage done to me, and through this not being able to fully accept my sexuality. It was two good friends, a woman and a man, who separately confronted me with the reality that I was a damaged person and they helped me find therapy.
That was all a long time ago and I’m now happily married to my husband.
I wrote this story to explore how difficult it can be to come to terms with who you are and what damage was done to you by the ex-gay movement. Unfortunately, the hurt doesn’t stop when you break away from them. This was something I’d not seen explored in gay writing before. There are stories about going through the ex-gay ministry, both fiction and non-fiction, but there seems to be very little about surviving life afterwards.
Emotionally, all the things in this story happened to me, I just changed the physical realities of them. I do this a lot in my writing, it is one of the ways I write about the things that concern me.
For a long time, I used to say Chris, the narrator here, wasn’t me; that’s not the truth. We might not be the same but Chris and I are closely related.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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