World Aids Day has a different feel for me
than I suspect it must for many contemporaries. I spent my early adulthood in
the late eighties and early nineties surrounded by the evangelical church and
evangelical culture: I was exiled from a world where I could express my
sexuality – an exile that left me with problems I am still trying to unpick –
but it also protected me from the icy blast that was sweeping through the gay
world at the time. And so, unlike many gay men of my age, I am not haunted by
the young faces of old friends who withered away before their eyes, nor do I
share the collective memories of a community under a terrible siege: memories
of fear, ostracism, and anger.
So my approach to World Aids Day has to be
different. While I share in the concerns expressed on intellectual and
political levels, and while I recall and pray for those of my friends who live,
now, with HIV, I have to find another story to earth the day in my own heart.
In 1994 I left the church community house I
had been living in for 6 years, and moved out to stay with a kind friend in the
suburbs. I was unemployed, lost, and fairly seriously depressed. I temporarily
stopped attending the inner city church I was familiar with and which was the
simultaneous cause of much of my stress but also most of my meaning, and
started attending a large, thriving, evangelical church near where I was
staying. I will not name it here, as that would not be entirely fair on the
church in question, and I did receive kindnesses there. However…
It so happened that towards the end of my
time in this neighbourhood this large church experienced something called ‘The
Toronto Blessing’. If you are a fellow evangelical: do you remember that? If
you’re not, well… Depending on whom you talk to, it was either a refreshing
revival for the church in which the Holy Spirit visited congregations and
healed hurting people, or it was a series of linked experiences of group
hysteria. People affected in a meeting would fall down, start laughing wildly,
weep uncontrollably, and sometimes make animal noises (though generally not all
at once).
One evening I attended a service where the
Blessing descended on the congregation. Everywhere I looked people were
laughing, shaking, or falling over. Much praying in tongues was evident.
My feelings about all this were complex.
Well, actually they weren’t really: I hated it. However, I did wonder: what if
it was from God? If it was, why was I left out?
I should say at this point that one of the leitmotifs of my emotional life is the feeling of being Left Out. Whenever
I’m in a situation where I perceive this to be occurring, I generally go to
pieces quite quickly. So, there I was (again, for I had had many experiences of
this before), feeling myself to be observing a celebration, a party, to which
God had not invited me. I was separated from the life around me by impenetrable
plate glass.
I knew I needed to get out, and get out
soon. This was less easy than it sounds, as I was afraid that if I made any sudden moves this might be
interpreted as the work of the Holy Spirit and result in eager Helpers coming
to my aid. When I eventually picked a moment that seemed safe, someone started
manifesting in the entrance foyer.
Some time later I was able to escape, and
found myself on the pavement outside. I cannot remember if I cried, but I can
recall being desperately miserable, and feeling very lonely.
And then I met an old friend. I will name
him, because he deserves it: he was Chris P. It was odd to meet him there, as
he lived in inner Manchester. I had not seen him for months.
He was one of a number of people that I and
some other Christians had befriended and been ‘working with’ as part of the
work of my old church to reach out to the marginalized. More about that story
could certainly be told, but for the moment it is enough to know that Chris had not been instantly appealing. He seemed to be perpetually on the brink of
taking offence at almost anything: as he also had a very bad stutter this could
happen easily. He painted detailed posters for the church, which weren’t really
what we wanted but which we accepted anyway, and drove the church minibus
willingly but extremely badly.
My breakthrough with him occurred when he
knocked a pot of his paint all over my bible, turning much of the Old Testament
yellow. I had been furious and stormed out, slamming the door. He was so
refreshed to have someone stop being nice to him and lose their temper for a
change that our relationship improved considerably as a result. I learnt a
certain amount more of his back-story, including a history of abuse from his
father.
He was the last person I was expecting to
see that evening outside that church.
We went for a curry, at his suggestion. He
paid. I can’t remember what he talked about, but I do remember that I found myself
disclosing my sexuality to him (a newish experience for me at the time), and that he told me that he was also gay. At
the end of the meal we hugged, and parted.
I never saw him again.
Many months’, possibly some years’, later,
I learned that he had moved to London, and after this had died, from
Aids-related illnesses.
And so, at every World Aids Day, and at
every Aids Vigil, I light a candle for you, Chris, you cantankerous, straggly
bearded, paint-spilling, stuttering, mad-driving old thing. To use the words of
a hymn, you held the Christ light for me in the night-time of my fear:
you held your hand out to me and spoke the peace I longed to hear.
You were Christ for me that evening,
Chris, and I honour and remember you.
