Red Bull

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I remember at the age of 16, my little brother was at home and my father didn't like the way that he would walk. See back then Joshua had what we in the hood called a switch. He walked in a way where his hips sways delicately from side to side in a feminine manner.



"You need to teach that boy how to walk, you hear me?" my father states.

"How?"




I knew he walked strange but even back then I felt like I was fighting something in my conscious that was saying that my father was wrong. But back then my father was my authority. So if I believed something was right or wrong didn't really matter in the end. All that mattered was to obey my father. See it wasn't just that he was my father...it was also that he was a pastor. And most of the times my father never disconnected the two. For us he was a punishing father but also a strict religious leader. He wouldn't go a day without reminding us of all the sins that sent you to hell.

And the sin touted above all else...stealing, fighting, cursing or even murder was being gay. Before I learned not to kill in Church, I learned not to be gay.


Don't be gay, no matter what.

That's my childhood.

"Teach him how to walk right," my father said back in the day, "Not so feminine. You know what I'm talking about."



"Why don't you do it?" I ask.

"Because I asked you to do it and you do what I say. God is watching you boy...honor your parents. Didn't you hear that?" my father told me.

I remember feeling so lost back then. I remember wanting to push back but the most I can say is.

"It's just that Jesus said to love thy neighbor as yourself..." he explains, "I don't think he'd want us...I don't know..."



"You going to tell ME what Jesus said boy?" he asked.

I remember back then not even being confused about why he didn't answer the question. He never denied what Jesus taught.

"If you don't teach him how to walk he will walk away from us. If you don't teach him how to walk, he will walk away from God. He will walk right into sin and temptation. And he will walk into the flames of Hell. Is that what you want, Joyous? You want Joshua to go to hell?"




"No..."



"Good. Then you have to change him. For his own good."





Those words stuck in my mind for so long. I knew that was what my father wanted. He wanted me to change him. And for a long time I tried. For a long time I felt justified in changing who Joshua was. Things were different now. It wasn't that I was older. It's that I was more religious now than ever before.


And I regret not pushing back on his teachings. I regret not arguing all the ways that Jesus celebrated diversity and had personal affirmations that gay people could tie into their lives and their faith. I regret just letting my father shape the narrative. And now, even when he's gone, murdered by the hand of one of those kids he tormented, I feel him still. I feel him now guiding me.

And I know that I am OK.

~

I started reading the Bible when my Dad died. I don't know why. I just wanted to understand more about this man named Jesus. I wanted to understand more about who he was. I wanted to understand more about how he worked. So I did research at first. Googling him. I wanted to understand him more as a teacher. Then I realized I never read the Bible. Ever since then I started to believe. I started to believe everything.

The lessons I learned from my father would stick with me all my life even if I didn't want them to. The only thing I could do is correct them. The only thing I could do is try to be better. And it's weird how God works. It's weird how one day you're sitting there thinking one thing and the next moment you're opened up to something completely different.