I fucked a Jehovah’s Witness
Sex and sects conclusion
‘S’ was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. He was also the first man I fucked.
I met him over a telephone meeting service. I was bi-curious, and looking for a chance to kill a few cats. He was gay, and looking for a boyfriend.
I don’t know about our bodies, but nature certainly hadn’t designed our personalities to fit together. He was a soap opera-watching fashion plate who tithed half his earnings to Calvin Klein. I was a shaved-headed quasi-intellectual in a second-hand trench coat.
Bedtime was a tragedy of irreconcilable differences. Although he introduced me to the art of cock sucking (turns out it can be great fun—I highly recommend it), our romps would usually end up at the same impasse: I wanted him to suck my cock, which he wasn’t into, and he wanted me to fuck his ass, which I wasn’t into. It was a classic square peg-in-a-square peg situation.
Our only good conversations were about sex and religion. I learned that S, as a practicing homosexual, was by definition a non-Jehovah’s Witness. Living the queer lifestyle gets you “disfellowshipped”—cast out and shunned by the JW community, to the point where they will ignore you as if you aren’t there.
S hadn’t been disfellowshipped. He’d left the church, as he was not interested in a life of celibate misery. He was living a secret gay life in Vancouver—and he sincerely believed that if his family found out, his father and uncle would jump in the truck, drive down to Vancouver and kill him.
But enough about that. Back to the explicit gay sex!
“Come on,” he’d say. “Fuck me.”
“Um, I’m really not into that,” I’d say.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” he’d say.
He had me there. Finally, I succumbed to his perverted desires and fucked him in the ass. I suppose I enjoyed it—I mean, I got off and everything—but afterward I wasn’t any more enthralled with fucking asses than I was before.
Three weeks after it began, our fledgling relationship was quietly mauled to death by the raccoon of destiny. He was getting pretty heavily into boyfriend talk, but I was not prepared to be any man’s boyfriend when I wasn’t yet sure if I was even queer. Meanwhile, I had hit the point where indulging further curiosities wasn’t worth putting up with the fashion police.
We parted ways and went forth to do what, deep down, we most needed to do—me, to eventually declare my bisexuality; him, to find a man with a better wardrobe.
* * *
A few years after we lost touch, I learned from a mutual friend that S has contracted HIV. It is about here that the gravity of the subject matter exceeds my ability to be flippant.
This was the first time I realised that someone I’ve fucked is going to be dead in a few years thanks to an STD. And it hit me like sudden vertigo.
My first reaction was a purely selfish one. I was afraid for myself. Rationally, I knew I shouldn’t worry—he’d become HIV-positive years after our fling, we’d used condoms, and if I’d caught it from him it should have popped up on a test by now—but there was still the fear. I got into a space where it seemed I could feel the virus circulating in my blood, or hear it pounding in my ears.
Then I got over myself and thought about how horrible it must be to have this disease. And how much worse it must be to face it without the support of one’s family or religious community. For unless S “abandons” his sexual orientation and a big chunk of his identity, the members of his church would pretend he doesn’t even exist, even as he dies right in front of them. The utter, dehumanising cruelty of it all is simply mind-boggling.
If the JWs took requests, I’d ask them to recognise the humanity of those they shun, and consider treating their cast-offs with a bit of compassion. Then again, that would be asking for a miracle, and God knows you can’t expect miracles from the JWs very often.
I hope S has many healthy years ahead of him, and I hope he finds the support he needs. Perhaps someday we’ll live in a society where so many queer people aren’t forced to hide their lives—and even deaths—from the folks back home.
* * *
And so we wend to the end of my little trinity of musings on sex and sects. Perhaps you didn’t appreciate the things I said or the way I said them. If so, I think Bill the Cat said it best: “Thptpth!”
These columns are an attempt to grapple with the road-kill of a poisonous legacy. The legacy of probably the most hateful document in human history—the Bible.
We no longer enforce the brutal death penalties the god of the Bible prescribes for most everyone who steps outside the sexual chalk circle of hetero marriage. At least, not in Canada. But its words remain lethal, and inspire hatred and fear and pain that does untold damage to hearts and minds all over the world.
And I have little doubt that mine are among them. •
Originally published in The Peak, March 25 2002.
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Op/ed piece I wrote for my final issue of The Peak, April 8 2002:
“I fucked a liar”
Imagine a ritual confession gone awry. The confessor feels no guilt. He shows no regret, or remorse, or respect. He even goes so far as to tell both the priest and his religion to piss off. An “anti-confession,” if you will.
That’s where the “I fucked a trinity” trilogy got started. The idea that I would confess to my (alleged) sins, but I would do so in a manner so blunt, unrepentant and irreverent that it would make a good percentage of the readers’ hair curl.
Risky? Definitely. Offensive? Definitely.
When the first episode, “I fucked a Mormon,” ran, The Peak didn’t receive a single negative letter. We did, however, get a lot of praise. Which I think is rather interesting.
Then “I fucked a Catholic” hit the stands, and the shit hit the fan. The sex was more explicit this time, and the religion better represented on campus. There were howls of outrage from the SFU Catholic community.
Meanwhile, I learned that if you really want to piss people off at this university, write about fucking drunk women.
Think what you like, but this is reality. Drinking and doing dumb shit is a hallowed rite of passage for us college folk—and women, just like men, tend to get more sexually aggressive after a few drinks. So what?
I made it clear that my partner not only consented to the sex, she boldly initiated it. Indeed, the point of the piece was that many women are so repressed that they turn to alcohol so they can get laid. If that bothers you, good.
Of course, things got ugly when N, the woman I wrote about, got angry about her unflattering portrayal and sent The Peak an anonymous letter that basically accuses me of date rape.
That letter is a vengeful, malicious lie, and I have the emails to prove it. (You would be interested to know that not only were we still friends afterward, she even joked about what happened and pursued further sexual activity with me).
I am disappointed with N for doing what she did, because few things are more reprehensible than falsely accusing others of sex crime.
I am even more disappointed with The Peak for printing her letter—and the fact I wasn’t even informed about it beforehand speaks volumes about the office politics that go on around here.
So, suffice to say that “I fucked a Catholic” was a turbulent episode. But the story is not yet over.
The week after N’s allegations scandalised the campus, “I fucked a JW” went out, and the stakes were once again raised. The sex was even more explicit, and it was gay sex this time. As well, the piece abruptly dropped the comedy with a revelation that my ex-lover is now HIV-positive.
“I fucked a JW” was effectively the ‘punch line’ of the trilogy. After the first two stories, most readers happily jumped to easy conclusions about who I am and where I’m coming from. “I fucked a JW” upsets those conclusions. Hell, the piece just upsets.
From what I gather, the majority of readers don’t know what to think at this point. Which, as far as I’m concerned, makes the trilogy a success.
This is my final semester at The Peak, and I was aiming to go out with the most daring and controversial stunt I’ve pulled. Well, I certainly succeeded.
Things turned out a lot nastier than I expected, but I suppose those are the risks you run when you take the chances I take in my writing, and work in an environment as poisonous as the Peak offices.
Through my years of Peak writing, I have rightly earned the reputation as a bad-boy shit disturber in the SFU community. But I am not a rapist, and the fact that the editors of this newspaper went behind my back and published that anonymous smear makes me angrier than I have ever been. And the anger is renewed every time a rumour about the accusation gets back to me, which is almost daily.
Now I am faced with the task of clearing my name. But alas, this is something that may be beyond human powers. Even if I sue The Peak for libel and win, many would think the accusation had merit and the case was won on a technicality.
When you are publicly accused of sex crime, not even the strongest soap can fully wash out the stain. Thanks a lot, Peak.
Dear reader, after all that ugliness you deserve some nice, easy giggles. Now would be a good time to check out The Imfallible Horoscope if you haven’t already.
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