Snapshots of God's Image

This is a ghost story, but not the way you think.

Snapshot 1: A Crooked Smile

I wasn’t sure if I was bi until I met Elliot. He sat down next to me in Comparative Literature and that was the last nail in the coffin. I found myself staring at the shapes and lines of his face—his jaw, the way he nudged his glasses up his nose—symmetry adorkably skewed by a crooked tooth whenever he smiled. I melted. He was a revelation.

He’s cute, I thought. Exhilaration and colors.

Oh god, I think he’s cute. Guilt, despair, confusion.

A Mormon choir screamed at me from all the way down.

Snapshot 2: White Sneakers

Flashback to seventeen years old. Abed was the only openly gay person I knew at school. He was tall and thin with chocolate skin and a proud nose. I knew I liked him, though I didn't understand why.

One day, under the cafeteria table, Abed touched his foot to mine. His flawless white sneaker to my dirty converse. I moved my foot away an inch. He closed the distance again. My ears burned.

I was surprised. I was confused. I didn't understand what it meant, too inexperienced in the subtleties of flirting.

I didn't know myself yet. I turned away from him.

Snapshot 3: Ugly Sweaters

Elliot hugged me at an ugly Christmas sweater party. I didn't know he would be there. Suddenly self-aware in my gaudy, LED light-up sweater, I nearly fell over.

"Nice sweater," he said with his crooked smile.

I could have bronzed my sweater and preserved it behind glass.

My LED lights reflected in the lenses of his glasses. The room smelled of peppermint and cocoa. Frank Sinatra wished us a Merry Little Christmas from a tinny speaker.

When he leaned back against the kitchen counter across from me, mug of cocoa in hand, the way he looked at me said everything I wanted to hear.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Sweat tickled my back. I swallowed hard and took a chance at the foot flirtation Abed taught me years before.

Elliot didn't turn away.

Someone took a polaroid of us; I paid them a dollar for it.

The party was over too soon.

Snapshot 4: Praying for Collin

Eight months later, I taught Sunday school at church. The topic was the pure love of God.

Collin attended my class. Collin was the funniest person I had ever met. He could make anyone cry laughing.

No one was laughing that day.

Collin had just returned from conversion therapy. Everyone knew he was gay—that he "suffered from same-sex attraction," as they say in the Church. Ostensibly, the love of God had cured him. He became the centerpiece of discussion.

"I bear solemn witness that God loves all his children despite our flaws," Collin said. Tears shone in his eyes.

Everybody prayed for him.

I opened my eyes during the prayer to look at him. He stared at the cloudy azure carpet beneath his feet. He looked hollow, like his soul had vacated his body.

God, I felt like shit. A camouflaged, passing, sinful piece of shit.

I ended things with Elliot that afternoon. When he asked me why, I said I didn't know. Everything just felt so wrong.

Snapshot 5: The River that Swells in the Summer

Collin went missing the following summer. They dragged the river and found his body. The current was so strong it broke half his bones. Self-inflicted scars made a raised ladder up his thigh.

Everybody prayed for him.

Snapshot 6: Wedding Photos

Two years later, I knelt at an altar in the Salt Lake City Temple. Above me, a chandelier clinked to the current of the air conditioner.

I shivered.

Olivia knelt across from me. Her eyes shone with love and pride. We'd made it. We'd leveled up. We'd achieved the orthodox dream. The golden gates of our future opened before us: three to five kids, prestigious church callings, potlucks in our backyard for the members of our ward. In the years to come, I'd become a Bishop. Our sons would become missionaries. Our daughters would raise children of their own, links in a chain.

Something jarred within me. It didn't make sense; I finally fit the mold. This was what I wanted—what I was raised to want.

But a fire in my bones choked and extinguished.

As the officiator droned, my thoughts fell upon Elliot. I'd never told Olivia about him. I'd resolved to hide that part of myself in the smallest of secret compartments, and never let it out.

We spoke the marriage vows. The officiator bound us together.

"I do," I said. Then I coughed on my spit.

I am a coward. I am a dirtbag.

Snapshot 7: Shoebox

Twenty years later, I came home from work to find Olivia crying at the kitchen table.

"Honey? What's wrong?"

Olivia cried harder. I rubbed her back.

My wife had caught Becca, our middle child, our 16-year-old violinist prodigy, kissing a girl in her bedroom.

I had suspected, but I didn't know.

My wife sent me to talk to her.

"I'll make some calls," Olivia said. "What was the name of that center out in the valley—the place where they..."

I climbed the stairs without answering. Family photos and framed paintings of white Jesus hung on the walls. My memories of Abed, Elliot, and Collen rang like church bells. I passed Becca's door and climbed the ladder to the attic.

I moved a few things aside and pulled the shoebox from from its hiding place. A layer of dust had gathered since the last time I opened it, this vault of touchstones and secrets. I closed it again and descended the latter with the shoebox under my arm.

I knocked lightly on Becca's door. She let me in, then retreated to her bed. She had been crying for hours. Her shame hung dense in the air. I sat down next to her amid crumpled tissues.

"What's that?" she asked, eyeing the shoebox in my hands.

My daughter. I would destroy myself forever to exorcize the smallest fraction of her pain. Fallout be damned.

Wordlessly, I retrieved the polaroid of me and Elliot wearing ugly sweaters from the shoebox and handed it to her.

"Who's this?"

"That," I said with a deep breath, "is a man I once loved."