I’M HEADING HOME for Christmas.
There’s a phrase I thought I’d never use again: heading home for Christmas. The plane ticket was not an insignificant expense given my limited budget these days. A former colleague recently hooked me up with a gig ghostwriting an advice column for Cosmopolitan, a job that appeals to me because of its anonymity and mindlessness, though it pays me much less than my former position at the Profile. But this trip home felt like an essential investment, though I don’t know if I can describe my father’s farm in Illinois as “home.” Still, there is a familiar ache in my heart as I sit in the airport and wait for the plane that will take me to the man I miss more than anyone: my father, who art in Kabumfuck, Illinois, hallowed be thy name.
Jeremy said I could call him if there’s an emergency. We’ve been working toward this moment for months. Back when I first hired him, I said that I longed to reestablish a connection with my father. I wanted to apologize for telling the lie that destroyed his life and our family. Despite Jeremy’s insistence that I first needed to forgive myself—that I’d lied to ensure my own survival, to escape conversion therapy—I still felt incredible guilt. I feared that my father would be furious, that he would still believe I was going to hell.
Finally, my need for resolution overwhelmed my fear. With the support of Jeremy, I responded to my father’s e-mail—the one he sent back in October of 2017—and requested that we talk on the phone. “I’m so sorry, Jonah.” His distant voice was fractured by shitty reception; it sounded like he was calling from the past. “I’m sorry for everything I put you through.”
His words shocked me. This was the one possibility I hadn’t prepared for, that he would feel responsible for what happened. That I was not to blame. Our first call was not productive, as I was barely able to speak through my sobs. But over the ensuing months we were able to sustain a dialogue, offering up stories to explain away the years of silence.
My father told me how he’d wanted to die. He’d wanted to die when he first heard my false accusation. He’d wanted to die right there in the church office, right in front of my weeping mother. He’d wanted to die right in front of the church elders instead of listening as they debated how to “handle” the situation, like my father was a problem to be solved instead of the man who’d held them as they wept in his arms and confessed their sins. He’d wanted to die when no one believed that he wouldn’t abuse his son. But suicide was a sin, and so he’d wanted to die but couldn’t do anything except pray for a car accident, a lightning bolt, a plummeting piano.
My father told me that when everyone lost their faith in him, he lost his faith in God. After all, what kind of a God would punish him, the minister who’d adhered to every last rule and regulation, who’d devoted his entire existence to celebrating God’s love? It didn’t take long for him to arrive at an answer. He’d made one crucial mistake: me. Somehow, he’d ruined his only child. He’d taken the Lord’s blessing—a beautiful baby boy—and turned it into an abomination. A homosexual. And for this reason, he concluded, God punished him.
My father told me about how he’d moved home to live with his own father, my grandfather. He told no one of his whereabouts. He became a man without a past, only a future. There was plenty of room on my grandfather’s farm. My father’s pulse quickened when he saw that familiar stretch of strawberry field outside of Woodstock, Illinois, and turned into the long dirt driveway that led to the home where he was raised. This is where I will begin my new life, he thought as he rolled up to my grandfather’s farmhouse. Thank You, God, for bringing me home.
But soon, my father told me, the trouble started. My grandfather was not exactly thrilled about the return of his son. He’d always been a stern man, a lifelong evangelical who’d survived a miserable Depression-era upbringing due to his rigid asceticism, and he became even more taciturn and judgmental after my grandmother passed. Years of solitude had hardened my grandfather, who had no one to talk to but the men who worked his farm and the chickens that produced eggs for his daily breakfast: an omelet, two pieces of toast, and seven fresh, farm-picked strawberries.
My father told me that my grandfather viewed his return as a sinful flaw in his character. A real man would never leave his wife and child. My father didn’t offer the story of how his family had fallen apart, and my grandfather never asked, but still, a painful silence swelled between them. Soon, my grandfather’s health began to fail. He believed his demise had been precipitated by the presence of sin within his home. As dementia eroded my grandfather’s brain, he grew increasingly spiteful, lashed out against my father for the slightest infraction.
My father told me how he started to drink because he began to believe what his father believed: that he was an abomination, that he had brought shame to his family, that he was beyond saving. And so all there was left to do was drink and take care of his father until the day my grandfather died in his sleep—a rare smile on his face. My father viewed this final, peaceful expression as proof my grandfather had made it to heaven, a fact that filled my father with dread, because it meant that my grandfather had been right all along: my father was destined for hell.
His drinking got worse after that. He was searching for oblivion, a way to forget the fate that awaited him in the next world. He drank and drank, and the days disappeared, and the nights blended together, and time collapsed, until one evening he grabbed a bottle of aspirin and did what he’d wanted to do for so long: he consumed the entire bottle. Then he rifled through the medicine cabinet, found another bottle, and downed all the pills in that one too. He stumbled outside, took in the beauty of the landscape one last time, dropped to the earth right outside the chicken coop, and fell asleep on the ground, waiting for the Devil to claim his property.
My father told me he died that night. Or, rather, a version of him died. When he woke the following morning in the hospital—brought there by one of the farmhands who’d discovered his unconscious body on the way to feed the chickens—my father felt an urgent need to speak to me. To tell me he was sorry. To fix the years of brokenness.
My father told me he had a vision that day—he saw his son crying in the strawberry field. He rushed toward me, swept me into his embrace. Our history, healed.
My father told me he’d joined Twitter because he read about a growing online movement of “ex-vangelicals,” people who had left evangelicalism due to trauma inflicted on them by the church. They were finding healing in community, attempting to discover a new understanding of God that did not oppress them because of race, gender, or sexuality. Many of these ex-vangelicals were unapologetically queer—freed, for the first time, from the closet, or forced celibacy, or conversion therapy. When my father read these stories, he thought of what he’d put me through and how he wanted to make things right.
My father told me how, through this online community, he found a real-life community, a small support group of ex-vangelicals who met every week in Chicago at the city’s LGBTQ community center. He drove an hour and a half each way to attend these meetings, where he’d listen to stories of broken families and broken bodies and broken spirits, where he’d share his own. Gradually, this support group became larger until eventually it took on the qualities of a church, but a new kind of church, a space where everyone was welcome. A space of healing.
My father told me all this over the course of many phone calls, and finally, last month, he asked if I’d like to come visit him. I said yes. And I had been happy with my decision—until today.
It started this morning in the cab to JFK. My gut churned with doubt. Adrenaline surged through my veins. No matter how many times I assured myself that my father had changed, all I could think about was our past—his hands shaking my body, his voice raging toward heaven. The harder I tried to banish these thoughts, the more immediate they became, until they no longer felt like memories. I sat there, lost in this violent time warp, until the car came to a stop and the cabbie barked in my direction and I forced my feet to move.
As I entered the airport, I became convinced that returning home would ruin me. I needed to numb out. Find a bar. But Jeremy had warned me against the dangers of self-medication. It took all my strength to bypass a TGI Friday’s in favor of the airport bookstore. I rounded up all the tabloids and junk food my arms could contain and stood in line poring over Us Weekly, hoping that news of Candace Cameron Bure’s go-karting accident and a pack of jumbo Twizzlers could distract me. I practiced the deep breathing technique Jeremy taught me—inhale for three seconds, exhale for three seconds, hold, repeat. My pulse had nearly settled when I reached the cashier and looked up from my magazine.
Which is when I saw Richard.
There he was, standing behind the register. All the adrenaline came rushing back. I dropped my magazines and screamed, “Get away from me,” and ran out of the bookstore. It was only when I looked back and saw the confused face of the cashier that I realized my mistake.
I took an Ativan—I had a few for emergencies—and now, as I wait to board the plane, I’m starting to feel better. Writing to you also helps. And yet I can’t stop thinking about how the men in my life always fail me. How trauma seems to follow me wherever I go. How I find it impossible to trust the embrace of another man, to experience touch as anything other than a precursor to violence. Even so, I keep going back for more. Even so, I’m getting on this plane, hoping this time will be different.
Hoping my father’s love won’t destroy me.