transformation needed no cross!

I will try to follow the rules but disappointed that I should not curse-lol. I’m gay and that symbol, the cross, was a milstone tied around my neck. Who tied it there? It was a combination of things and not entirely “the church” . I was not forced into religion by no means but as a child living among pigs, soybean and corn fields of the midwest Sunday school was interesting for me. My mother had me dedicated to god in a ceremony as an infant but i think for her it just felt good. God was this idea that she could lean on when unhappiness and trouble raised its head. Father never said anything about god ever. He would go to church as mother would when I played the organ for offertory or my uncle was a guest speaker which was not that many times but it stands out in my memory. I had to jump up and down on my fathers bed screeching, “i wanna go to sunday school-wake up”, in order to get the ride to sunday school. The teachers were all so nice and everyone new everyone (but not friends for sure), and  they had good intentions with the lessons(basically they paid for any and all materials) but between them and the rest of society and the all important family I felt very “dirty”, and that feeling started around eight years old.  I have three siblings, two older one much younger. We were all in highschool when the baby was born. My mother’s focus turned to her new baby. I didn’t notice. I didn’t like my mother and in a few short years it turned to hatred and wishing her dead. I was not a bad child and if I did anything I should not be doing, well, they never new it because they left me home alone alot. Summers were always spent with a babysitter or at a babysitters when we were young. Later my mother’s parents stayed with us and became our sitters. I loved my grandmother but careful she’s mother’s mother. She was not religous but had been schooled in it as everyone in that time had been. She is the only one who prayed with me the “now i lay me down to sleep. i pray the lord my soul to keep for if i die before wake. i pray the lord my soul to take.”. It is morbid to me now but not then. This all leads up to my older brother and his horrible meaness. He drowned baby birds and shot them for fun and basically was an evil bully at home with words and violence. It made him happy to hurt you or make you cry. Teasing was incessant. He could be nice at times for he was human but then again what was going on in his messed up head.  I have no incite-zero. He molested me when I was eight. I merely yelled stop it and pee’d a little. He stopped. I did not dwell on it at all and forgot about it in minutes. Soon after the incident, somewhere in those murky waters one word must have been spoken that made me think I was filth. I cannot recall if it was at school, the television, or a relative but I know church taught me guilt and prayer for forgiveness . I never made a connection I never connected “the incident” to this guilt but I did connect it to my attraction to males in sexual ways. I have thought about men and their naked bodies since I was four or five-long before my brother’s curiosity. I snuck looks at my father’s Hustler mags as they had pictures of naked men which I craved but knew nothing of except what I could fanticize in my head. I wanted to have sex with a man but I did not know what sex was. Boys at school sometimes made comments but it was retarded stuff they heard or overheard from their parents. I prayed every night for forgiveness from jesus and told him i wanted to kill myself because I had dirty thoughts. I had dirty thoughts every single night-sex, filth, dirt, creep, shame, guilt, punishment. One night my sister and I wrote nasty notes to each other claiming each other liked the most undesirable person in school and other childish stuff. I drew a picture of a penis and wrote you like his (name) kiss it or whatever and she pounced on that one. Threatened to tell and did! Some mommy dearest character came out but I don’t recall being hit but that was not her thing. Her words were her paddle or the belt buckel of fathers belt-flailing around hitting whatever it hit. An instrument to torture and frighten. It WORKED! I remembered when i was younger i deliberately tried to drive my matchbox car across my father’s crotch, and he slapped me hard(but that was it-no crazy comotions or words). I was humiliated and basically thats how I learned in my world. And one must beat animals to make them behave and be ruthless at it. When one puts the puzzle together and leaves out all the good memories it seems a horror story. It was the functional disfunctioning family ignorant and retarded beyond belief. I always loved my father. Only once did he ever put me down when he was angry and I didn’t speak to him for a week which made him even more angry because I was hurting him, rejecting him-living life like I was taught! One summer my brother and I started a game. We would swim in the pool naked then run to the house all cold and take a warm shower together and played “close your eyes and reach out and touch whatever was there” and you guessed it-genitals everytime. I had an idea without seeing any depicted imagery(mags) that two people could flip around in opposite directions face to genitals and place it in the mouth. I was a porn director and didn’t even know what sex was! It didn’t work as I didn’t know exactly a pleasurable technique. Fast Foward to my highschool from hell. I dreamed thats how I made it through the first year and thought of my gym teacher naked. I don’t remember if I prayed for forgiveness. Highschool wasn’t anything like the tiny schools I had gone to and I was shy and very backwards with relating to unknowns. I lost all my male friends in an instant because the pond was huge but one girl still befriended me then she disappeared. Some said she was going to a private school. Her family got religion! -Fundamental, Independent, type. I was invited and accepted like I never had been before so I started to go all the time. Her family would pick me up! Then I learned all about the bible, which i believe should have a parental advisory label on it for explicit sex and violence-no joke! I never heard church history and theology. Clear cut rules and beliefs and evidence to back it all up, that book, that big black bible book with wisdom from god himself that needs to be in your head night and day because it is immutable and cannot be challenged for it is correct because he wrote it and gave it to us and if one doesn’t follow it straight to totured torment forever so don’t fail! but they were nice! I practically lived at her house. We shared everything and had horses together which we beat when they did not please us-thats what we were taught. Finally to college-hated it and quit then went back then off to religous school-hated it then to public university-hated it and quit. Lots of things to hate not a lot to love in those days. The shuttle blew up and so did I. Left for the USAF and guess what? hated it but could not quit! I clung to god. He would help. I did make friends in basic training and at least one enemy. My lesbian training instructor humiliated me every single day in front of everyone but she never kicked me out of her flight. I wanted to see a chaplain! She told me she knew what I was trying to do and in the most unkind and vile way, but she couldn’t refuse my request only curse at me. He said it was my duty to stay and you gave your word and god wants you to honor it-like I had a choice! I finished the training and went to air force tech school. I let the party people through my window at night but drew the line at buying them booze-graduated! I read the bible book everyday then I was home on leave. I had sung an old hymn to a pipe organ at my sisters wedding and all the old people went wow! I guess in there brand of christ it was a bit more contemporary than the one I had belonged to for ten years. They remembered me and asked if I would sing at church so I said yes. So off to practice and it wasn’t the aunt but her son who I was to practice with. My new brother-in-law said, “did he put the moves on you”, humorously. The flood gates opened. I had to know what it is like so I called him back and said I want to practice in the church. We went for a walk in the woods and he did what he must have often done and that was when my world crashed. I was quiet and dispondent for weeks. If your hand offends thee cut it off…those that do these things are worthy of death…unatural acts, swirled through my head, no time to wallow had to go to duty station. I took an overdose at the beach. It was pretty and I was not. I became sick so I took more. It doesn’t happen the way it does in the movies. Fast foward to home and my best friend called me claiming she did nothing wrong why won’t you talk to me. I refused because I know what she believed so I was doing her a favor. Although she spent time with a cousin who was gay and she did go to the movies and sometimes wore pants and educated at the public university all of which were forbidden. Hipocrisy is a human trait that can be forgiven but one shouldn’t make one the judge of all that’s acceptable and good then make exceptions for oneself because in the end he/she is the biggest failure. The faith that I embraced started to suffocate of itself. Depression and sadness became my true friend but one day I saw a chance to be gay and I took it and no preachy judgmental words and there is life and a very gay one at that-I work, I sleep, I swim, I care, I have friendships, I have sex with men, and I’m free from the burdens of that guilt forgive me old outdated song. I don’t remember the exact moment the faith disintegrated but I think seeing how many different worlds there are around the globe, from traveling ,was my best education ever, and I don’t mean tours- just take one piece of luggage and no car and you will see how other people on other continents live. We all are different but we are all human. The bible as a book is fascinating but as the basis for a religion its antiquated and absurb to me.  If I find a book in the woods written on tablets made of gold and silver will you let me be a prophet? If i am gay will you kill me? If I am of another skin color will you subjugate me? All these things have happened justified by dogmatic religion. Church became a crutch for what I lacked and a disease for what I wanted to cure but in the end I feel it saved my life because around the most turbulent time of my life people were dropping like flies not because they were gay but because they contracted a new disease that to this day is still killing in the millions.