XXVII
ESCALATION
Can you feel it?
Everywhere. Everywhere.
Hostility mounting. Anger building.
Signs go up around the school: GOD HATES FAGS!
FAGS GO TO HELL!
AIDS IS GOD’S SOLUTION TO HOMOSEXUALITY!
Some are more pointed, as if there’s a plan afoot. And that’s more worrisome:
HOMO GO HOME!
REPENT OR REGRET!
And: CONVERT THE PERVERT!
In what can’t be a coincidence, Dottie Babcock, the high priestess of the God Squad, has begun leading a morning prayer group to rid the school of THE RECENT HOMOSEXUAL SCOURGE that has been threatening the good, decent, Christian values of the Eisenhower student body, of late.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, your Scourge of One!
BOO!
HERE I COME! I’m coming for your decency! YES, I AM!
It seems rather ironic, to me, when THEY are the ones chasing after ME.
Yes, yes. They hound me. Harass me. Hunt me down.
The Sinister Ministers, I call them.
The Cruci-vixens.
Sisters of No Mercy.
With their eerie perma-smiles (holy molars!), excessive eye contact, and sticky-sweet messages of hate, THEY SCARE THE CRAP OUT OF ME!
“Sinner!” they scream at me the second I step off the bus in the morning.
“Sodomite!” they shout.
I smile and wave and try to say something pleasant: “Not today!” or “Don’t I wish?”
Then come the bible quotes.
“First Corinthians chapter six: verses nine through ten:!” one of them will scream. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
I give them a cheery thumbs-up. “Wow! Great! Thanks! I’ll be sure to tell all my idolater friends about you guys. Bye, now!”
But they aren’t finished with me yet.
They gather oh-so-sweetly around me. They smile and take my hand. (I hiss and snatch it back—“It BURNS!”)
“Deuteronomy chapter twenty-two: verse five,” another will call out, and the chorus responds: “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD your God.”
“Good to know!” I say. “Thanks so much!”
“Leviticus chapter twenty: verse 13,” another calls out, and in unison everyone says, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
And they continue to multiply, and their prayers for me become increasingly hostile until I am, suddenly, literally under siege, surrounded by five, then seven, then twelve determined little soldiers, all angrily praying for me and at me, telling me the horrible fate that awaits me in the next life. And all the while, their smiles never slip.
And this is just what happens BEFORE school begins. . . .