He smirks at me. “If you sit down, I’ll give you a kiss. How’s that?”
I grin despite my pain. “Better.” I move back towards the couch and sit, gripping my left side and wincing again as the pain increases. Charlie brings me the meds and a glass of water. I take them and swallow as he sits next to me. Then he takes my chin in his small hand and presses his lips to mine softly. It’s so gentle it’s barely there, but it’s everything to me after being away from him for what feels like an eternity and feeling so afraid I’d never have him back.
“Charlie, I’m so sorry.” Tears are filling my eyes and I’m shaking but I have to do this. My chest heaves and I grimace at the pain in my side.
“We don’t have to do this now, Papa Bear,” he tells me. “You should rest.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. Not until I tell you the whole story. It’s driving me crazy. I just don’t want you to know the kind of man I really am. You’re so good, Charlie, and I’m so ashamed.”
He reaches up and rests his hand on my tear-stained cheek. ”I know exactly the kind of man you really are. Whatever you are about to tell me is in the past, and that’s not who you are. It’s who you were. And who you were doesn’t matter. Because that’s not the man that I know. That’s not the man that took me in and cared for me. That’s not the man that made me believe in myself. That’s not the man that made me laugh and smile again, the man that made me feel seen, and worthy, and deserving, and good for the first time in my life.” He pauses, staring into my eyes. “That’s not the man I fell in love with.”
My breath hitches. I shake my head. “Charlie, don’t—”
“Don’t you dare,” he tells me, his gaze firm. “Don’t you dare negate this. I just told you I’m fucking in love with you, Paul Richards. Don’t you tell me not to be. Don’t you dismiss it. Don’t you do that right now. Don’t do that because you don’t think you deserve it. I don’t care if you deserve it, it’s here, in front of you. I’m here, and I’m giving it to you. I love you. Despite your mistakes, however big they are. And I want you to know that before you tell me how wretched of a person you think you are. Because nothing can convince me that you aren’t worthy of my love.”
I’m sobbing as he takes me into his arms and holds me close. “I’m not going anywhere,” he tells me again. “So do your worst.”
“I killed him, Charlie,” I sob. “I killed my son.” My side aches the more I cry, but I can’t stop.
“Shh,” Charlie soothes. He pulls away and takes my hand, standing. I follow him and he leads the way to the bedroom. We climb into bed and he faces me, scooting close. Taking my hand, he links our fingers, then strokes my hair with his other hand as my tears fall. “Take your time,” he says. “It’s going to be okay. Nothing you say will change how I feel about you. I’m not going anywhere. Remember that.”
I nod and take a deep breath in and let it out. I squeeze his hand. I still have my doubts about him staying, but I continue. I haven’t told a single soul my story, outside of therapists, and even that was years ago.
“I already told you Trey died of a drug overdose, and you heard the cliff notes version the other night.” Tears slide down my cheeks and Charlie wipes them away.
“Why don’t you tell me the non cliff notes version?” he says. I nod.
“So, first of all, you need to know that I grew up in a very conservative, Christian home. I was raised in church and on the Bible, and went to a Christian school all my life. Rachel and I were high school sweethearts. We got married pretty young. Mostly I think because we wanted to have sex and didn’t believe we could until we were married. We didn’t even kiss until our wedding day because we believed we’d be better people for it, that God would love us more. But if there was one sin that was worse than sex before marriage it was same sex relationships. Being gay was okay because that wasn’t a choice, but acting on it was. Which meant if you were gay you had to just accept that you would be single for the rest of your life. No sex, no family, no romance. Which was normal for me and I never saw a problem with it. It was just how things were, a part of life, and of course it wasn’t a big deal because it never affected me.” Charlie’s gaze hasn’t left my face and I have no idea what he’s thinking, but I keep going.
“We raised Trey in church just like we were. It was our life. Every Sunday, every Wednesday night. Rachel was on the worship team. I was a Sunday school teacher. Our closest friends were our church friends. Our faith was everything. Our family was everything.” I take a deep breath before I continue.
“Trey was sixteen when he told us he was attracted to boys. Our world imploded. We didn’t know what to do. We were scared. We prayed about it. We asked our pastor for advice.” I’m starting to shake now, and having a hard time breathing, and Charlie scoots closer, taking me in his arms and holding me close. He rubs my back as I take deep breaths in and out. “We were stunned, but we did our best to be supportive, or at least what we thought was supportive at the time. Now I know we were anything but.”
More tears slide down my cheeks as I continue. “We told him we loved him and that we always would, no matter what, but that he knew he couldn’t act on these desires if he wanted to follow Jesus. That he ultimately would have to choose between his faith and his sexuality. When he started struggling with that and arguing with us, telling us that wasn’t true, we got even more scared. We had raised him to believe a certain way and he wasn’t following that, and it terrified us. We didn’t want him to fall away from the faith we desperately believed would save his soul. But he insisted he could be gay and in a relationship, and love Jesus. We didn’t see that and we argued about it all the time. Our close family unit began to fray. I didn’t understand how the faith that had been such a source of strength and unity and peace for us was suddenly an area of contention and causing so much strife and pain, and I really wrestled with that. Why was my son going through this and why wasn’t God helping us? Our pastor convinced us that Trey needed counseling, and when he refused to go, we gave him an ultimatum, believing we were doing it out of love, that if we gave him the choice, he would choose to get the help he needed.”
“What did you tell him?” Charlie asks. I can tell he’s trembling, and I hate it. I know this story is hard for him. I knew it would be. I hate that he’s hearing these words come out of my mouth.
I squeeze my eyes shut as tears fall. I feel sick to my stomach, but I choke the words out. “We told him that if he didn’t talk to the pastor he had to leave.”
I’m so ashamed of my own words and my own behavior that I’m pulling away, but Charlie tightens his grip on me. A choked sob leaves me and I cling to him. “We destroyed him, Charlie. We thought we were loving him, but we were killing him. We taught him that he had to choose between God’s love and his sexuality. That he couldn’t have both. We taught him to hate his sexuality, and himself as a result. And the boy that was so lively and spirited and beautiful turned into nothing but a shell. We taught him that not only does God not love and accept him for who he is, but that we didn’t either. He told us so many times that it was who he was and he couldn’t change, that he didn’t have to change, but we wouldn’t listen. He just wanted us to listen.”
“I’m so sorry,” Charlie says, and I can tell he’s crying too.
“I was so confused, Charlie,” I say. “I wrestled with my faith even more after Trey left. I never expected him to actually choose homelessness over counseling. But he did. He said he wasn’t going to change no matter who tried to make him, and that the fact that we refused to listen just proved that we didn’t love him, so he was better off without us. We were convinced that once he realized how bad it was out there he would be back. But he never was. And we grew more and more uneasy about our decision as the weeks went by. But our pastor and the elders at our church told us if Trey was supposed to come home he would, that it was all a part of God’s plan to redeem him, and that we were teaching him a lesson he needed to learn, that we couldn’t let him walk in sin. But I felt sick over it, so after a few more weeks we started to look for him. Months went by, and Rachel and I tried calling him and texting him, but he ignored us. All the while we were reading different books and articles and watching podcasts, everything we could get our hands on that was written by gay Christians, so we could hear their stories. We watched films. We found a church that was lgbtq inclusive and talked to the pastor there about Trey and found he had a very different take on our son’s sexuality than our previous church members and pastor did, and our viewpoints started to shift. We realized just how wrong we were, and how desperately we needed to ask his forgiveness. We searched even harder after that, trying to find him and bring him home.”
“What happened?” Charlie asks, pulling back and peering into my eyes. His eyes are filled with tears now too.
“We had cops show up at our doorstep about six months after he left, telling us he’d died of a drug overdose. We went to identify his body. That was the last time we saw him. He died believing we hated him, Charlie. He was addicted to drugs because of us. He was so desperate for an escape because he wanted to feel something. Because he didn’t have the parents he deserved. He didn’t have our unconditional love. We failed him. He was alone and scared and hurting because we wouldn’t take ten minutes to sit down and listen to him. Because we were so focused on rules and regulations and not who he was as a person and what he was going through. We listened to the spiritual advice of others instead of our guts and our son, and insisted we were right, and we weren’t willing to wrestle with our faith until it was too late. And it cost us everything. And in the end, Rachel and I couldn’t handle it, and we had to separate too.”
“I’m so sorry, Papa Bear,” Charlie says, wiping the tears from my cheeks, and sniffling. “It must have been really hard for you, feeling like your faith betrayed you.”
I nod. “I haven’t stepped foot inside a church since then. I started to question so many other aspects of my faith and what the Bible had to say after all of that, and feeling like I’d been led astray my entire life. And after my own parents told me it was “part of God’s plan”, I was so upset I haven’t talked to them, either. Rachel has actually deconstructed. She’s an atheist now. I’m not an atheist, but I don’t really know what I am. I believe in God, but I don’t know exactly what I believe about him.”
“I can’t imagine going through all of that.” Charlie cards his fingers through my hair. “Losing your family, your faith, everything. I’m so sorry.” He rests his forehead against mine. “You’re an amazing person, Paul Richards. You loved your son very much, I can see that. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t care about what happened to him. And you wouldn’t be trying to be a better person because of it. It took a lot of courage for you to question what you had been taught your whole life. That isn’t easy. I think religion can be really beautiful. It’s not all bad. But I hate how often it’s used to spread hatred and animosity instead of love and hope. I think if your faith causes you to exclude anyone you’re doing it wrong.”
I nod and sniffle. “ I just wish I’d seen that sooner.”
“I know,” he tells me, hugging me to him.
