New York City – Peter (not his real name) was friendly, partial to shiny accessories and owned about a dozen pairs of shoes.[rssbreak]
I assumed at first that he was gay. The week I moved in, he emerged from his room with his face covered in a white powdery substance, a face mask, actually. That sealed it for me. Surely he was gay. Peter was my gay musician hipster roommate.
We lived in the north Brooklyn neighbourhood of Greenpoint with an African-?American dancer and hip-hop artist from the South named Tom (also not his real name). It struck me as the kind of arrangement I’d expected when I moved to New York. In other words, it was perfect.
But then Peter began to slowly out himself. One day he left a Bible on the kitchen table. Then I overheard him listening to an online sermon.
I was confused, and so was Peter, it seemed. Was he in the closet? Was he some kind of religious metrosexual? Then it occurred to me that we were Facebook friends but I had never bothered to read his profile. Aside from being “interested” in women, he summed up his religious beliefs with “God is totally awesome and responsible for everything good.” Apart from the obvious reasons why this struck me as odd, I was perturbed by the trend among God-?fearing Christians to talk like Ninja Turtles.
One day, Peter was watching The Bachelorette. I suppose straight men can watch reality television geared to 14-year-old girls, worship Jesus and wear mud masks, but this was the first time I’d come across someone who, even by NYC standards, I felt could accurately be called unusual.
I knew it wasn’t my business, but the mystery of Peter was killing me. I needed a sign. What I got instead was inside information. One day in the kitchen, Tom, out of the blue, said, “So you know Peter’s gay. I mean, he likes guys but doesn’t do anything about it because he thinks it’s a sin.”
A few questions to Peter revealed that he believed the Rapture would be happening any day now. He started in on gay marriage, but I stopped him before he could elaborate. The Rapture stuff I found intriguing, however messed up, but I wasn’t prepared to hear his (for lack of a better word) opinions on gay marriage.
This was not so much because I was sure he was about to say something hateful, but because he hated himself. Whatever side of the culture war you’re on, this has to be considered, if nothing else, really sad.
On a personal level, Peter’s proselytizing didn’t make me angry. After all, he cared about my soul. Actually, even though I would have moved out the next day if he had gone to any great lengths to “save” me, I was a little pissed off that he didn’t try harder. Wasn’t my soul worth it?
While Peter hoped I would become a Christian, I wanted him to just become who he in fact was: a nice gay man. Conveying that to him was beyond my expertise. He needed a therapist, not a liberal roommate.
When I told Tom that Peter’s fundamentalism made me want to move out, he said I was being intolerant. But is it intolerant not to accept the intolerance of others?
I never had to figure this out. I doubt it was divine intervention, but something answered my “prayers.” Pestilence, to be precise. A suspected bedbug infestation sent me packing.
For the record, Peter doesn’t know why God created bedbugs, just as I imagine he doesn’t know why God gave him the burden of having to suppress his sexual desires. Perhaps the Lord works in mysterious ways.
But if God does demand such sacrifices, I think he’s more like that girlfriend or boyfriend we all had in college who at the time seemed really mysterious or “complicated” but in retrospect was just a douche.
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