Good or Bad, Happy or Sad
by Orianne


Our Father, who art in heaven...At this moment heaven seemed very far
away, even as Chip sat on the tattered red couch with his head bent
in prayer, waiting for Wayne to arrive. The cheap, sticky-feeling,
white candles stood unlit at the small table in the center of the
room, one on each side of the bottle of Riesling. The wine was still
corked---likely it would remain that way. Neither of them were big
drinkers. It was mostly for the ambience, or for the attempt at
ambience. There wasn't much you could do with a hole in the wall.

They had rented it two months ago, when it became obvious that
neither of them was about to let go. It was cheap and it was skuzzy
and that was the way they wanted it. It made what they were doing
less obvious.

When Chip started to think about it, it seemed inevitable that he
would have wound up with Wayne. He had clicked with Wayne better than
anyone on the show. It was easier for Chip to find a common bond with
Wayne than with Ryan or Colin or even Brad---Wayne was the only one
who he could talk about religion with, and who would understand.

It started innocently enough. Chip would bring his family over to
Wayne's house for dinner, or Wayne and his wife would join them. They
watched sports together. Wayne gradually persuaded Chip to share in
his video game addiction, and they had marathon sessions of video car
racing that started on Saturday mornings and would usually stretch
into late evening or early Sunday morning, whereupon Wayne would
say, "Wow, we've got to get to church in five hours," and Chip would
hobble out to his car, his legs stiff and his thumbs swollen and
aching.

He could still remember the exact date it turned into something other
than friendship. It was on one of the endless Saturday video game
sessions, where Chip had won the last game (as a fluke, he had to
admit).

"You so cheated on that last one." Wayne said.

"Don't be a sore loser," Chip said, stretching, luxuriating in the
triumph. "I guess I'm just better than you at this."

Wayne grinned. "Don't pull that `the student has become the master'
stuff on me. It's a cheap ploy."

"So you're still better than me?"

"Yeah!" Wayne slapped his shoulder playfully. "Didn't you already
know that?"

Chip slapped his shoulder back. His voice took on a sportscaster's
dramatic tones. "Wayne's true colors are showing, ladies and
gentlemen. On the outside, fun-loving guy. In reality, sore loser."

"You know I can't let you say that without a fight."

"Bring it *on,* baby," Chip said, as Wayne lunged at him.

They wrestled clumsily, their muscles stiff from sitting on the floor
for so long. Wayne was younger and more limber than he was; he
recovered faster, and soon Chip was pinned beneath his body, skin to
skin, Wayne smelling of sandalwood. Chip raised his eyes to Wayne's,
baring his throat. "What're you going to do now?" he asked. His voice
was husky.

"This is scary," Wayne said softly, and kissed him.

It was a fast kiss, a quick, closed-mouth kiss, but Chip felt himself
vibrating like a tuning fork. They broke apart and retreated to
separate corners of the room, staring at each other.

"What happened?" Wayne said in a small voice.

"I don't know." Chip's legs felt strange. "Maybe, if we don't talk
about it, it'll go away."

Wayne said nothing. Chip left without a word, going back to his
house, where his wife would be just finishing dinner.

He spoke to Wayne at work the next week. Or tried to speak. What
started as a conversation turned into sex. And three months later,
Chip was sitting with his head bent, praying, trying to make sense of
what was going on.

Hallowed be thy name...He still wasn't sure how hallowed this whole
occasion was. Even though he told himself, *God doesn't care who you
sleep with,* thirty years of sermons from in and out of church told
him otherwise. He still remembered a phone conversation with his
mother a few years ago, when Matthew Shepard was murdered. His mother
had clucked her tongue and said, "Of course, it's terrible, dying so
young, but well, you do have to consider the lifestyle that boy
led..." The message was clear: it didn't matter that the kid had been
tortured to death, because he was a fag. Chip had hung up the phone
with a bitter taste in his mouth.

"How do you do it?" he'd asked Wayne. "How do you get past what
you've been told?"

Wayne shrugged, looking at him. "I guess it's easier when you don't
think about it."

That was the difference between Wayne and him, Chip had found. Chip
had been brought up with the fear of God imprinted on him. His
parents had made sure that he listened to every word spoken, in
church and out of it, and if he had disagreed with anything taught to
him, it was easier to keep silent. Wayne had been spoiled rotten by
his grandmother, and church had been more of a social thing for him,
rather than a way of life. Even now, Chip suspected, Wayne went to
church more because he was used to it than because he really feared
what would happen to him.

Wayne, Chip thought, didn't think that much about actually being with
Chip. He understood that they needed to keep it under wraps, and why,
but he really didn't care about going against his wife or the church.
He wanted Chip, and that was what he was going to have.

Wayne was used to getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it.
Chip had seen him fight tooth and claw for games, screen time, even
wardrobe. It was only because Wayne made it clear that it was just
business that he didn't come across as an asshole. And Wayne had
fought hard to keep Chip from walking away.

"I'm not going to let anything come between us," he'd said, a few
weeks after they'd rented the apartment. "Who cares what everyone
else thinks?"

It had almost made sense, until Chip said, "Okay then. Let's go out.
Let's go to Spago or Morton's or whatever and I'll sit with you by
the door holding your hand. Come on. I'm hungry." And then he'd stood
by the door, watching the fear forming in Wayne's dark eyes.

"Guess I called your bluff." Chip said.

Wayne had turned away. For all his bravado, he knew how dangerous it
was for them to walk out on the street together, and Chip knew he
knew. They both had played the outcomes out in their heads. Their
wives would leave. Chip might lose contact with his children. It
would become harder and harder to find work, and work, or more
correctly, `making it,' was so important to Wayne that he rarely
talked of anything else. And church was out of the question. They
would both be rendered pariahs in the community.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...He wasn't sure whose will this
was. It seemed to be almost outside of him. It went beyond just
having things in common with Wayne. It was something that had begun
the first time he had met Wayne, and the first time that he had sung
with Wayne. Because standing next to him, their voices curling
together, had stirred feelings in Chip that he thought he'd buried
long ago. "Find a nice girl and get married," the minister had told
him, and because he was eighteen years old and scared out of his
mind, he'd listened. He was still in college, overwhelmed by freedom,
and what had been clandestine desires for the boys he'd seen in
classes was beginning to bloom. Terrified he was going to hell, he'd
gone to church, asking, "Does God really care if you're gay?" And
apparently the answer was yes.

On earth as it is in heaven...Heaven had no place for gays, the
minister had told him, not in so many words. "Fight your urges," the
minister had said. "God will forgive you." So it was a relief to fall
in love with his wife and to marry her, to have children with her. He
still loved her now. But it felt more like being best friends. With
Wayne it was different.

Give us this day our daily bread...The routine was simple. Chip would
go to the apartment, bringing candles and wine and music, Wayne would
show up later with either Thai or Chinese or fried chicken or
burgers. It was something they did whenever there was a free moment,
where they could escape their real lives and come here. He couldn't
explain how, but coming here, to this ugly apartment in East
Hollywood, felt going into like a sanctuary, a place where he could
be with the person he loved. Except the world outside kept
threatening to break in, and Chip still couldn't resist praying for
an answer that he wasn't sure would ever come.

As we forgive those who have trespassed against us...Who would
forgive him if he did come out? His parents would disown him. It
would be bad enough that he was one of *those* people, but the fact
that the person he had damned his soul with was a black man would be
even worse. His family wasn't openly racist. Overt racism wasn't
proper. But his father had raised his eyebrows disapprovingly when
he'd watched his eldest son singing with a black man on TV, and his
mother had asked anxiously, "Are you sure it's all right, dear? He
looks a little...rough, if you know what I mean." Rough was his
mother's term for black. And Chip had sighed and thought of all the
things that he could have said, but he didn't. And the fact that he
was content to pretend he agreed with the things they said and did,
to let his family go on thinking that he was someone completely
different from who he really was made him feel sick, but he couldn't,
even at his age, bring himself to say the truth. Because he knew that
his family and his friends and his church, as messed up as they were,
loved the person he pretended to be. He wasn't sure if he would still
be loved if he was someone different.

And deliver us from evil...Evil? Chip thought. Everything he'd been
taught told him what he was doing was evil. There was no faster way
to go to hell. But maybe that was something he'd have to live with.

He suddenly became aware of the radio playing. It was Al
Green, "Let's Stay Together." The sad, hopeful, soulful voice filled
the tiny apartment. Chip stood from the couch, pushing the outside
world away one more time. He began to dance, by himself, singing
along softly with the radio. He could hear Wayne's footsteps on the
stairs.

For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory...He pushed
the bag of Chinese food from Wayne's hands, slipped his arm around
Wayne's back, pulling him into the dance. And as they moved together,
he found himself wishing that this could be it, that they could
remain here. Forever and ever. Amen.

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