Chapter Five
“Oh, really!” Keithe yelled throughout his car. “So that’s how you’re gonna do it, Mike? Why? To prove a point?” This was one of the rare times when Keithe couldn’t wait until church let out. No longer being able to hold in his anger, and seeing he wasn’t allowing any of the Word to seep into his spirit, Keithe called it a day and left service before the benediction.
Mike tried his best to hurry and turn down the latest Donald Lawrence song he’d been blasting. He knew Keithe would come out of the bag on him but he didn’t care any longer. He shook his head to the drama Keithe brought.
He had gotten tired of Keithe questioning him about his own life, making him feel as if he were beneath him. What he did and who he did, he finally concluded, was no one’s business but his own.
“Mad if I do, mad if I don’t, huh? I just can’t win with you, can I, bro?” Mike threw his voice into the phone, already knowing what the yelling match was going to be about. Although Keithe never gave “her” a name, laying eyes on Kenya, Mike knew it was she who Keithe wanted to get to know better.
Too many times to count had the two friends spoken about the saved and gorgeous woman, Sister Kenya, at Keithe’s church. Mike had been the dating promoter. Never knowing when the right time would be, Mike all too many times tried to pump Keithe up to ask her out.
“Oh well,” Mike said aloud about what he’d done. Having left the church for a quick bite to eat before the next service, Mike maneuvered his car into the crowded parking lot.
Removing his ascot with both hands as he steered with his knee, Keithe was furious. “Oh, well?” Keithe questioned. “It’s not a game! Why do you think this is a game, Mike? I’ve been in your corner far too long, man. I try to pray for you, try not to question you about all you do, but you’ve been making that hard, too.” Keithe had had enough of Mike and his happy-go-lucky way with life.
It had been no secret to those who were in their circle. Mike had always been who Mike was going to be. When Mike had come out of the closet in his late teens, Keithe had never left his friend’s side, even with the knowledge of him living his life as he chose: as a gay black man.
To Mike, it used to seem as if Keithe was his best support system: not agreeing with him but, just the same, never questioning him about his lifestyle. But it was obvious that was before he moved to the same city Mike had chosen to reside in for decades now.
Keithe seeing his friend’s lifestyle up close and personal rubbed him the wrong way. Especially when Mike still flirted with and dated women without letting them know all the facts: that he also dated men.
It was set in stone. Mike knew Keithe didn’t like his homosexual lifestyle, but he was sick and tired of the little innuendos Keithe threw at him every chance he got. Just the same, Keithe was tired of Mike’s nonchalant attitude about dating a Jack one day and a Jill the next. Keithe wasn’t ready to accept Mike’s lifestyle one way or the other, but being upfront with the women he dated was a start, Keithe thought, only if he didn’t start with Kenya.
Yeah, sure it was wrong to date women without letting them know he didn’t and couldn’t gather feelings for them. In the end, Mike felt it was all in friendship, and that a woman would know that when he didn’t try to take things further.
His best friend didn’t get it. It wasn’t like Mike was proud of what he was doing, because he wasn’t. Mike had tried to live a life that could parallel what Keithe had made look so easy. He’d shouted from the rooftops about wanting to be a straight and saved man of God; he wanted to be a changed man, with a change of heart, and explain how a spiritual awakening had come over him. But from where he was now, he just couldn’t. Right now he’d just be who he was: a gay man who still loved God and no doubt knew that God loved him.
Then there were times when he’d even begun seriously dating women ... In most recent years, Vicky. At the time, to anyone who would listen, Mike let it be known his days of living his life the way he had wanted were over. But just as soon as he had started on his straight and narrow path, he had veered off from the spiritual fight.
The company he had run from, stopped taking calls from, stopped hanging out with, was the same company he chose to run back to. This left his girlfriend wondering why she had given him another chance to begin with. Then Keithe decided to move to Dallas.
For all the years the two self-proclaimed best friends had lived in different cities, there was never a strain on their friendship. Maybe it was because they didn’t get to see the everyday ins and outs of one another’s lives. But once Keithe divorced Michelle and decided to move to “his city,” as Mike called it, things changed. The lifestyle Mike had picked back up and had tried to hide from Keithe had been exposed yet again.
It hadn’t been until Keithe had actually “caught” Mike on a date a few weeks ago that Keithe had began coming up with more tough-love antics. It was his realization that Mike had slipped back into his old ways that set Keithe on a tantrum. From that day on, Mike had a constant guard up and tried his best to play off what he was sure Keithe already knew: Mike had lost his battle of giving up his gay lifestyle, a lifestyle that had turned into a down-low secret for the women he dated.
Now Keithe was put in the middle.
It was becoming all too common. Anytime Mike’s back got pushed into a wall and questions started being tossed his way, he stopped fighting. When the going got tough, Mike took off the boxing gloves and threw in the towel. But this latest antic ... Keithe had no idea what his friend was up to.
Pulling his vehicle into his garage, Keithe barely threw his car in park before he got out of his ride. When he walked into his living room space, Keithe allowed his keys to clash against the wood dining room table, and walked in the other direction. He was still going off on Mike, who didn’t even know what to say simply because he didn’t know how to choose. He just knew he wanted to be happy.
“This is real. You are playing with fire, dude ...” Keithe growled through the phone.
“Why? Because you want her? Yeah. I saw the way you were looking at her. You should have asked Kenya out if you wanted to. I told you to.” Mike shrugged his shoulders as if Keithe could see. “But because I did it’s wrong, huh?” Mike no longer cared if Keithe was in his life. He wasn’t going to lie to Keithe. He knew his friend liked a woman at the church and when Mike saw the way Keithe laid eyes on Kenya, there was no longer a doubt which one. “I can’t have a good girl, huh? I can’t get ’em like you can, huh? What? I’m not as blessed as you, Keithe? I’m not manly enough to have a woman like Kenya?”
He’s disrespecting her title. Keithe thought about the ministry Kenya honored and didn’t want her getting in the midst of a scandal.
“No ... no,” Keithe responded, although he wanted to fight for the right to have a chance to have Evangelist Kenya Clark as his woman. “You got it twisted.” He calmed down. “It’s because you haven’t made up your mind. I just saw you at the restaurant last week, Mike. Did you forget you were wasted, slurring, hanging all over some young dude?” Keithe hated to even have to bring Mike’s lifestyle up. “But today, today all of a sudden you know what ... no, you know who you want?” There was silence.
It was an unspoken fact that Mike had reverted to his old lifestyle. The parties, the excessive drinking, and the crowd he’d started hanging back with. Even without sharing it directly with Keithe, who didn’t dare to speak aloud about any of Mike’s goings-on, inadvertently it was known. Mike had continued his lifestyle but for some reason cared what Keithe thought about it.
“Look. I’m here at the church and there are people walking up.” Mike had gotten out of the car and opened the back door to retrieve his suit jacket. “It’s really none of your business what I do”—he switched the phone to his other ear—“or who I do for that matter.” Mike turned the knife that was emotionally in Keithe’s heart. “Who I date and where it goes from there, it’s none of your business. Matter of fact, you don’t have to be concerned anymore, bro. It’s all good,” Mike said before he disconnected the call and walked toward the doors of the church.
Keithe had made his way into his own sanctuary and flopped on his bed. Not stopping there, he slammed his sweaty back on his mattress and just rested with his arms above his head. Right when he thought his life would turn toward a new beginning there was drama added with a little heartache.
What he couldn’t figure out was how Kenya had been so ready to say yes when Mike asked her out. One thing for sure, there was no way he was going to allow Mike to ruin Kenya’s life. He didn’t know how or when but he knew he had no choice but to let her know the real truth about his best friend Mike.