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One Woman’s Journey from Gay to Straight
My life spun off its axis the night I turned 35. The band had decamped in a stinky hotel just outside Paris. I turned on the bedside lamp, slipped the Down Home Almanac I’d bought in La Guardia out of its paper bag (the bag I was using to hide total lameness from my bandmates). The feature article showcased American bridgeworks, everything from the Golden Gate to those quaint Tennessee covered bridges. The article ended in the back of the magazine. And there it was: the bony lift bridge from my hometown looking like a giant erector set perched just above black floodwaters.
On the nightstand sat two empty bottles of Bordeaux and three roaches—the smoking kind. A long crack on the wall seemed to change position, like the second hand of a clock. Beside me slept a girl, fifteen years my junior. I didn’t know French very well and she’d taken out her awkward fury on my body. Something about her nails in my back, her teeth in my neck and her sophisticated European desires at odds with my desire to wrap POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS around my butt inexplicably reminded me of Vicky, my high school crush. Actually, Vicky had a more timid intensity than this girl, but she had something powerful, not yet unleashed back when I knew her.
My lyrics were often about this Vicky. As if she might hear them. But that was as effective as sending a message in a bottle to someone who never visits the sea. My God, I thought, I am never going to see Vicky again. And then it came, that first existential swarm of regrets you get at that age. Vicky was alive in the world somewhere. Perhaps still in my hometown. But what if she’d been struck down by disease? What if she’d taken the switchbacks up on the bluff too fast? What if she got pregnant and bled out in childbirth or . . . I leapt from the bed, ran to the bath but not before the Bordeaux came back up and splashed across the floor planks. A couple pink pills I don’t remember taking glared up at me.
After a shower and another clumsy session with nameless girl, I still could not sleep. Yes, Vicky probably was married. And why wouldn’t she be? She’d dated guys before and after me. I had no reason, no right to invade her life and say “How are you, Vicky, who did you marry, do you remember me, do you still think of me, do you forgive me?” No, we would go to our graves as mere memory fragments to each other.
I lay on my belly, one eye closed into the pillow, the other staring at the nightstand. A small black and white ad spoke from the back of the magazine: Make the Journey Home from Homosexuality. It was for Sojourn Reclaimers.
Praise Jesus
Posted by Liesl ~ 9:45 PM ~ 24 comments
Patrice commented:
I am speechless. Why did you feel the need to fill this post with your filthy past? Move forward with Jesus.
Rolf68 commented:
Patrice, you’re on the right track being speechless. Liesl, you came home for Vicky, not God. Be careful.
InChrist commented:
Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life — James 1, 12
RugbyLVR commented:
LOL! I can’t believe there are still people devoted to the scribblings of ancient sheepherders.
Patrice commented:
I second that scripture InChrist. Without temptation, there is no salvation. We’re all praying for you Liesl.
RugbyLVR commented:
OMG. Places like Sojourn are making a killing off you people.
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