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Ultimate Fantasy 35 American Christian

Let me begin by telling you my ultimate fantasy.

This is not a recount of one night in a gay cruising bar. This is not a recount of one drunken night in a gay bar. This is my story. My story. So I began.

In the summer of ‘89 I was in the process of becoming a fully fledged American Christian. No, really. You read that right. At the time I was working at the small boutique gift shop selling Christian girls tchotchkes and earrings. One Sunday morning I went to the Women’s March on Washington. I had just come in from a retreat in Wyoming where we had conducted a sit-in protest march to commemorate the civil rights movement. I was in the process of becoming a full fledged Christian when I noticed a young black woman sitting behind a barricade reading the words from the first chapter of the Bible.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one goes in there saying, I am, only I’m trying.”

What came over me like a ton of bricks was that woman.

“Away we go, let’s go.”

From that moment on I vowed to myself never to be ashamed of my sexual identity.

I would live every day like the story of Lazarus, refusing to be sickened by the sight of a John, or the smell of a John, or the sound of a John.

I would walk the streets of Washington D.C. with a sign that read, Fuck the Law and Fuck the Church. I would attend Bible Studies and believe that I knew God when I saw him.

I would spend days in coffee shops and on street corners with men who shared my same passions for reading the Bible and watching porn.

I would kiss boys and girls and think it was all wonderful. I would fall in love with beautiful boys and girls just like Matthew and Taylor.

I was in love!

And all of that was fake. The real Jesus was nowhere to be found. Fake. Jesus didn’t exist. All of that was wishful thinking.

You fool. You fell in love with a boy in a coffee shop who knew no one and just wanted to get laid.

You fell in love with a beautiful blue-eyed boy who fell in love with you on the first date.

You fell in love with a gay barkeep who told you that you could be anything you wanted to be if you just bent over and kissed the right amount.

You fell in love with a temple garment and a set of Five Principles and a twelve-step program.

You even fell in love with your mother.

So why’s everything all so so quiet now?

The kingdom of God is not a fairy tale. And that was enough to drive me crazy. So I packed my suitcases and left. I vowed never to return.

Seed

Do you like to have anonymous sex in public rest rooms? Sex movies? Public parks? Sex clubs? On street corners with heavy hustling traffic? How many nonsexual friendships or acquaintances lasting for decades started this way? How many ways are there to love queers? How many ways are there to queer love?

Let me begin by telling you my ultimate fantasy. . .

Corpus

Credits

Prompt adapted from A Queer History of Computing

· Christian, Womens March, Washington, God, Jesus, Lazarus, twelve-step program, coffee shop, love, gay, queer, GPT-2, RunwayML