A journal excerpt: Too Gay to Pray Sometimes – Christine Alicea Gaan

Growing up I avoided birthday parties, so I didn’t have to play 7 minutes in heaven with Victor or so I didn’t have to pretend I was excited to kiss Evans during spin the bottle; but mostly so that no one would see my accidental smile when the bottle landed on Michelle, and everyone screamed, “Do it! Do it!” I’d pretend I didn’t want to and play it off as if I was daring, but it was one of the only feelings I was able to recognize as my own. The only feeling that made me feel like being me was okay. That feeling also made me feel like I was turning my back on God, that I traded my faith and sold my soul to his brother.

For a really long time I believed that all the bad things that happened to me were because of the one piece of me I couldn’t deny, and when I’d meet with my the pastor he demanded that I speak the “truth”, rid my insides of my filth, clear my holy spirit from my sins; even though they were just thought and feelings. He was more focused on the perversions of my mind than on the perversions of the men in my life and our secrets. The devil came to collect, often.

I was 15 when my mom first saw me kiss a girl. She watched from her car as the girl, who walked me home, believed it was safe enough to put her lips to mine and there I was…leaning in. I was breathing in full breaths, steadily and my mother was choking on all the moments she thought she failed me.

I was sent to live with her sister in the middle of Bumble Fuck Nowhere, Colorado. Falcon High School was predominantly white, but I found brown bodies that waved me over at lunch. This could be my do-over. This is where I could ask for forgiveness, and mean it. When she asked if I liked girls I stared at her with the face of disgust, the one I learned from my mother. When her white cheeks turned hot pink and her face fell I said “But I’d never tell,” and when she reached for my hand I suddenly wanted to cry and smile at the same exact time.

My mother’s sister helped me get ready for a school dance. She put my hair in curls, dabbed lipstick on my cheeks, and asked if Paul would be there. He sat with me on the bus, and sometimes we played tag on our quads, and I had suddenly realized…he might be there. I gave my aunt a smile while hoping he wouldn’t find me so that I wouldn’t have to hold my breath in lieu of crying when he placed his hands on me.

My safe brown bodies made room for me, and laughed when I wouldn’t take a sip of the vodka they snuck in. They didn’t know that the other me had been getting stoned since she was 12 or that the current me was in the middle of repenting to God.

A hand turned me around by my waist, and my eyes found hers, complimenting her entire being. In my group she was met with dismissal, still she grabbed my arm and pulled me out onto the dance floor, where I was excited to have that moment and I wanted to live in it, but was too scared to even touch her. This time we weren’t underneath the school bleachers, alone. We were in a crowded room and my friends were watching, and Paul…and God. She was brave enough to step closer to me, I could feel her breath and even though our lips never touched, I felt that silent kiss, lingering in the space between us. My body felt like it had been set on fire, and God was watching me throw away all of his good graces to dance with the fucking devil.

I found Paul eating chips and swapped her out for him instead. I let his hands explore places mine hadn’t even deliberately gone before. I let him kiss my neck, and when she stormed off in tears I pretended I didn’t know why; and when Ebony said she thought she was a dyke my only defense was that she wore “skirts” because apparently girls in skirts can’t be gay. When I found her again she was being slammed into a locker, and they were screaming “dyke” into the air like they were performing an exorcism. I could hear the moments their hands made contact with her body, and I could feel the sting of my mother’s discipline. Instead of trying to help her I was frozen with fear and drowning in my shame.

I called my mother’s sister to pick me up early and during the entire ride home… I had hoped the car would crash. And that I would be the one who didn’t survive it. That entire ride home I prayed to God and said that I couldn’t live like this anymore. I couldn’t be two different people in the same body and that I was certain his brother poisoned me, like he did Eve, came to me in the form of freedom and said I could run with it, all while he held onto my lungs.

I called my mother, told her that I was straight again, cried and asked for her forgiveness and promised what I hadn’t even been able to deliver to God. I was almost 16 when I returned home. I was quiet and I didn’t complain anymore when she bought me pink shirts and jean skirts. I hung out with older boys, who were legal enough to buy me Bacardi and who took me in when she put me out.

I was 16 the first time I had slept underneath a slide because “boys will be boys” and I had too many hangovers. I was stoned enough to decide to bargain with God. I promised that I would talk to him every single day, that I would believe in him, but that if he wanted my faith then I needed to trust that as long as I was honest, giving, as long as I was respectful and strong, that as long as I was forgiving…he would not penalize me, for the one thing I just couldn’t “get right”.

I have been queer since.

I have endured the death of my relationships with people who celebrated my existence before I was even born. I have done my walks of shame in the high school hallways and scrubbed the slander off my locker. I have been met with judgement from my own lgbt community and I have had to mold and remold myself. I have remained patient throughout the growth of my society, and I have grown the sharpest backbone, and the thickest skin. In my challenging God, I found safety in my grandmother’s arms, and a shield in the form of a baby sister. I found paper and pen and in my refusal to give up I have experienced a love that swept through me, giving me an infinity of hope; that has proven time and time again that there is always a rebirth.

Sometimes it feels like I’m at war with both God and the Devil because not everything can be accounted for, not every moment is a predestined one, and not every single thing happens for a reason. I know this because sometimes children are born lifeless, and sometimes an entire race has the skin on their back split open, for the vultures. My life happened because I was born. The things that happened, happened because people took advantage of my uncertainty and my trust. Not every struggle comes with a lesson, though I wish they did because it would make it easier to be less angry about them sometimes. Forgiving isn’t up to God, neither is Karma. That’s the Earth’s decision to set the balance between time and chance sometimes. It’s up to me, and how I choose to react and what I choose to forgive.

My queerness is not up for debate these days. My queerness is not a bargaining tool. It is not something that happened to me. It is not something that requires repent. It is not a dysfunction in my brain. It is not boredom. My queerness is filled with an abundance of love that surprises even me sometimes. It is not an afterthought or a decision. It is not dirt on my skin. It is not the determining factor of what happens to my soul when I leave this Earth. It is not a ball and chains at my feet. My queerness has no definitive line, no boundary. It allows me the capacity to pardon my memories, and it gives me the strength to wake up every day and be myself without shame. There is nothing shameful about love. There isn’t anything shameful about being alive and wanting to live.

Christine Alicea Gaan
I’m a queer, Boriqua-Indian from Jersey with a bit of a potty mouth, who believes actions & words should be considered lovers, & in actively standing up when you know something isn’t right. My attitude will never depend on how you treat me but on who I want to be.