The Advent of Hope Read online

  The Advent of Hope

  By Emery C. Walters

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2017 Emery C. Walters

  ISBN 9781634864800

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  The Advent of Hope

  By Emery C. Walters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 1

  I had to trade names with seven different people to get the name I wanted: Tory, a senior like myself. Utopia was a small college, and most everyone knew one another. It was church-based. I didn’t want to out myself as gay to anyone, really, but Tory had captured my heart. I felt I owed it to myself to at least find out Tory’s orientation.

  We both dated female students. The administration seemed to encourage it because they wanted their male students to become nicely married ministers and the girls to become teachers. The monthly school-run paper always had updates on prior students who now had a church of their own or were teaching. This was so expected.

  I wasn’t interested in that kind of life for myself. I had been brought up in a different religion, which I had semi-dropped, lately. I had come here because I’d been given a scholarship and couldn’t afford to go anywhere else.

  Now, with one more semester to go, I was almost twenty-two years old and wanted, even though it was stupid, being gay and all, to join the Navy. At least, I thought I did. Maybe it would please my father.

  But first, the Christmas party, then two weeks at home, and then the last semester.

  * * * *

  It was time. Time for me to hop on the bus to Ann Arbor, and then another bus, if there was one, to the campus of Utopia College, where I was going, because Dad couldn’t afford to send me to the university like he had my older brother. I didn’t have any kind of sport to help me get accepted anywhere, but at old Utopia, it didn’t matter. It was enough that I was a Protestant of some sort. Not their sort exactly, but it didn’t matter. They accepted me because I wrote a nice paper on how good a minister I’d make (lying through my teeth) and because my graduation picture showed me with a fresh haircut and a clean white shirt and tie. Do I sound bitter? Well, yes, and grateful, too, because after I earned a BA of some sort, I could do whatever I wanted.

  If I wanted to please the school, I’d become a minister or a teacher or counselor. If I wanted to please my father, I’d come home and do the accounting and business end of his hardware store for the rest of my life. If I wanted to please myself, I’d probably have to go way off campus to find myself a boyfriend. And for all four college years, I’d have to hide the fact that I was gay, just as I’d been doing for the last four years, ever since I figured out why I didn’t want to date any of the girls in our high school except Milly. Only as a junior did I find out Milly was a lesbian, trying as hard to hide it as I was.

  My father had been kind enough to take a few hours off work to drive me to the bus depot. I had been pleased and thought it was a very kind and loving gesture on his part, because he was nothing if not all about his work. He lifted my two bags out of the trunk for me and waited as I got my tickets. The bus was already hissing to a stop when he put his hand on my shoulder, smiled briefly, and then placed an envelope in my hand.

  “It’s time to give you this and wish you a good experience.” He patted me awkwardly, turned, got back in the car, and drove off.

  I stood there with my mouth hanging open and a sinking feeling in my chest. Still, I thought it was probably a nice fat check or a glowing accolade of praise. He wasn’t much good in the face to face emotion things, unless it was anger and criticism, but then, he’d been brought up with no father at all.

  I took a final look around my home town. I’d lived here for seven years, and they’d been difficult, but it was almost all I had. I wasn’t counting those happy days of being a kid, five, ten, eleven years old, still with that harsh and critical father but with siblings who also suffered his coldness, and a warm and loving mother. It had been not great, but good, very good, I guess, compared to many. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as I headed off, feeling like an adult for the first time in my life.

  Besides being all I could afford, this college would also please my mother. That may be the only thing I could give her.

  I knew I wasn’t ugly. I had fine dark hair, curly but not annoying, barely needed to shave yet (I think I had Indian blood), and was built as nice as I’d want in someone else. Even though I was not very athletic in the supposedly important team sports way my father worshipped, I could swim and run well enough to have made both teams in school.

  It was time. I stepped up on the bus and headed down the aisle with the other sheep, resisting the urge to say baaaa like I had always done as a child. The only seat left was halfway down, next to an overweight older man who looked none too clean. But hey, I was going to a church college—this would be good Christian practice. Maybe I could do something nice for him. Or maybe I could catch lice, which is what actually happened, but that wasn’t something I found out until later.

  I sat, nodded at him, and opened the letter. The older man looked over my shoulder, and to be polite, I looked away a minute. That gave him time to knock my arm, and the letter fell on the floor and flew up several rows under people’s feet. I was aghast.

  Then the man said, “Here’s the fifty-dollar bill that was in it. It was just wrapped up in the blank paper. I’m sorry I bumped you. Damn arthritis, ha-ha!”

  “It’s from my dad,” I said slowly, taking the money. It was a lot to me and meant a lot, too.

  “He must love you very much.”

  I guess my eyes spoke, wetly…

  “Some of us don’t express it very well, son,” he replied with a smile, “especially to or from people like us.”

  I dozed. We got off and on again. We changed buses somewhere. I forgot all about the blank paper and the old man. Except, when I went to get off in Ann Arbor, it was the middle of the night, and I was half asleep, having a seat all to myself. The driver woke me up.

  I said, “When did the man next to me get off?” We’d had the same driver the whole time. He looked at me strangely.

  “There was no old man next to you on any of the trips.”

  It was a year and a half before I remembered to thank my dad for the money and discovered he’d never included any. In fact, the paper had not been blank, and he let loose with a stream of cusswords when he told me what he’d written. I won’t repeat it here, but thank God for that old, imaginary, or angelic man w
ho may or may not have been next to me. Because of his smile and warm heart, I’d had time to grow up enough thinking I’d been loved.

  Well, I know I put that badly, but it was the first time I’d ever had any kind of paranormal or spiritual experience, and it’s dear to my heart. It’s the first time I’ve talked about it, too. What had he meant about people like us? I think I knew—I think I’d always known. That was the night my confidence as a gay man in this terribly straight world began to grow. It’s only failed me once since, but then, that was the only rock I’d had to build on, the only one.

  The one time had been mortifying, to say the least. I’d just come back from summer vacation, and the job I’d had set up fell through. I couldn’t seem to get another, so I offered to volunteer at the local kids’ summer center, where they had a sort of day camp for the kids of parents who couldn’t afford day care while school was out. It’s also where I first met another openly gay person. His name was Rocky, and he also volunteered. In a way, he reminded me of my imaginary friend, as I’d come to think of the man on the bus. He was older, probably way past retirement, and had been a teacher.

  One day, we were the only two men there, in charge of sixteen boys of all ages, from three on up to twelve. They’d never given us any trouble before. But this day…we’d gone to the pool, where we at least had two life guards to also help watch the kids. But in the locker room, we had trouble. Two of the older boys started calling a ten-year-old a faggot. He had no idea what they were talking about.

  Rocky took the two bullies by the scruff of their necks, and my heart started to swell with pride. I took the ten-year-old to the door and let him out into the hallway to meet his folks.

  Behind me, I heard Rocky laugh and say, “Yeah, he may be, but don’t worry, it’s not contagious! It’s like warts or leprosy, just don’t touch him and you’ll be fine. Just the same, if you call him any more names or bother him in any way, I will bust your butts from here to Friday.”

  The boys laughed and finished getting dressed. I could hear them saying, “You’re a faggot, too!” and “I know I am, but what are you?”

  I wanted to cry with confusion and pain. Had Rocky thought he handled it right?

  I made a mistake at supper and told my family about the incident. My dad and my brother laughed hysterically.

  Mom just ignored me, shook her head, and said, “Boys will be boys.”

  I couldn’t eat another bite. I felt sick.

  * * * *

  Anyway, here I was back at school, in my senior year. I thought I’d come out to my roommate. He’d been so happy to come back to college, and so was I, only for different reasons.

  “The girls here are so pretty, and some have the biggest tits I’ve ever seen, well, hope to see!” Jerome laughed. “Hey, I got laid while I was home, too. I was dating this girl in high school…” He went into details that, to me, were absolutely disgusting.

  Sitting up on my bed and closing my book, I said, “Jerome, that’s enough. For one thing, it’s rude to talk about a girl like she’s a piece of meat, and for another—it’s disgusting.”

  Jerome stared at me. “What are you, some kind of fag?” he asked, laughing.

  I only stared at him. I suppose silence was as good an answer as the word yes screamed in his face, for his expression changed from a smile to a smirk.

  “Just keep your perverted hands off me,” he said. “Wait ‘til I tell everyone else you…”

  He said some more disgusting things that even I, gay, hadn’t even thought of doing in my wildest fantasies. I was horrified and ashamed and could not think of a thing to say either to deny it, laugh with him, or shut him up.

  And then, our first day of classes. We had an English teacher who was married and had five children, and he acted as stereotypically gay as ever any drag queen or TV show gay man did. He was all show and talk and limp wrist and pinky finger extended. He lisped and sashayed. He did it all so unconsciously. At the time, I’d never considered he might be bisexual, that, too, in this school as in my home, being an abomination.

  The next class was Religion 401, the first four because we were seniors now. They talked about sins. Guess what they included with gluttony, murder, and theft? Loving someone of the same gender. Not just having sex with them, but just being that way. They never bothered with the other bits, you know, the mixed fabrics and eating shellfish and other things.

  That Saturday was the day my thoughts crystallized, and I decided to walk into the woods, find the swampy part off behind the boardwalk, the part that was rumored to have quicksand, and walk so far out into it that they would never find my sinful, lusting, shame-filled body.

  Saturday morning, I put on clean clothes (I know, dumb, right?), got my iPod going with my favorite songs, filled up my water bottle (for shit’s sake, God forbid I should get dehydrated, right?), and went out into the beautiful fall sunshine to go for my final walk.

  I loved nature and the falling leaves and the rainbow of colored leaves blowing down and skittering along the path like painted squirrels or kittens—that image made me smile. Then as I came to the creek, I sobered. Two little boys were playing in the water—no fears of urban run-off or animal feces here, even though it might be an issue. At that age, they were still invincible, that age being before they were interested in the opposite or, God forbid, the same, sex! The innocence of childhood. When had I stopped being innocent? I’d never been with anyone and didn’t think I ever would be, until maybe years from now if then. Self-pity descended on me like a gray fog full of fears, and I followed the stream to where it passed under the old railroad bridge, wondering how many of the men who had built the bridge so many decades ago had felt like I did. If any.

  I didn’t see another soul as I came to the boardwalk and walked on to where the marshes began and beyond that to the area behind the hospital where the swamp was supposed to suck you into eternity. Hah, I laughed at my choice of words. I wondered what that might be like, although I had a pretty good idea from what Jerome had been telling me. I shuddered, but it hadn’t clouded over or gotten chilly at all. I came to a narrow trail into the marsh and, taking a deep breath, started off onto it, into the swamp. I had never felt so lonely and devastated in my life.

  I won’t bother you with the gory details of my gloom and despair and woe-is-me pity party. Either you’ve had your own or you won’t understand. I marched into the gloom, and the ground became wetter and the mud softer and more like glue. After a while, I realized I had on my only good pair of shoes and was vain enough to think, Oh crap! My good shoes! And there’s church tomorrow! And then I laughed. And then I tripped. And then I was on my face in the mud, sobbing.

  All I heard was a bird, but it sounded like it was calling my name. There weren’t any wild parrots around here, were there? I opened my eyes, which was a mistake, but my tears kept my eyes from getting completely ruined by the mud. There was a touch on my arm and a firm hand gripping my elbow, and I was pulled to my feet.

  Behind me, a voice muttered, “That old man was right. It was so odd running into him out here like that. He pointed me toward this path and told me to go. I swear, when I looked back, there was nobody there. Maybe it was a bird?” Another arm snaking around my waist, and the voice was next to my ear. “Come on, this won’t do at all. I’m getting cold, and this is my best shirt. I’m not going back unless I take you with me.”

  When I turned around, a man with the kindest eyes I’d ever seen stared deeply at me, concern wrinkling his forehead and mud splashed all over his best shirt—it was Tory. Totally humiliated, I leaned against him and cried against his chest, allowing all my mixed emotions full play, both grief and shame, and pleasure as well, oh, yes, being held by a man like this.

  It put life back into my heart and hope back into my spirit. Even if it never came to anything more than this with him, there were others. I knew that in my head, and now, I knew it in my heart. I got to thinking of the song I’d heard called ‘Just One More Day,’ and knew
I could do that, day by day, like a twelve-step program. One day at a time. One more day. And things had to change sooner or later. I knew that.

  Not only did Tory walk me back to campus, he came in my dorm with me and laughingly told my roommates how we had been wrestling and had fallen into the lake. He made it sound all macho and manly, and it was all I could do to smile and nod. Then he pushed me into the bathroom and told me he’d see me at supper and that we could have a rematch anytime. I was confused because I knew he was a runner but hadn’t known he was on a wrestling team. It never dawned on me that he was making it up to make me look good.

  Just as he turned to leave, he said quietly, “Don’t hurt yourself or even think about it, or I’ll report you to campus ministry, and you’ll have to deal with them. And me as well. Don’t let me down, okay?”

  I had to agree. He cared, and that was reason enough for me to keep going on this one day at a time thing that had popped into my mind.

  It was while in the shower that I realized I was in love with this man. And if it wasn’t love, I didn’t care. Lust, love, or gratitude, my heart, spirit, and dick were in agreement. I hadn’t had a crush on anyone since tenth grade, and I almost fell to my knees—not to pray, and not to give thanks, but because my knees started to shake. There was no need to pretend, no ability to fake an interest in campus girls anyway. I was glad that part of my life was over, but also, not that I was going to continue to live my life scared to death. And that made me laugh.

  I laughed so much that Jerome shouted, “Well, at least we know you’re not jacking off in there!”

  Little did they know.

  Chapter 2

  I was looking at bus schedules when my father called two days later. He cut right to the chase. “Don’t plan on coming home over Thanksgiving,” he said. “Your mother’s people are coming over, and you know how religious they are.”

  I barely had time to acknowledge this, let alone take it in. My mouth opened and shut without anything but a small squeak of air coming out. I hung up before he could. Then I stared at the phone, then at the ceiling, and said, “Te futueo et caballum tuum!” which translates nicely to, “Screw you and the horse you rode in on.”