When I came out in my church I was 16 and still wearing ascots for ties. I was a mop of hair looking for guidance in the faith that had given me a home. I chose to be a Baptist because of its overt grounding in community and its personalism over the Latin coldness of my mother’s Catholicism. Being a Baptist was a call to dance, and there can’t be a revolution without dancing.
Then I was called into the Pastor’s office. He gave me a choice. I could choose either my “desires” or my religion. The church could never be a home for my perversion.
But it wasn’t just God’s flock that was after me. God himself was waiting for me—with a sniper rifle. The Pastor told me about the high rates of HIV, depression, suicide and death from drug use in the gay community as empirical evidence of divine wrath.
“God’s waiting to cut you down,” he claimed. “And he’ll get you eventually, when you least expect it.”
I left the church, where I’d been renowned for my poetry. I even placed in a national competition for it, but I felt like that voice would never be heard. I hugged the people who loved me goodbye, the ones who vocally supported my coming out.
Have you heard of 
Last week I got to meet a man in the last six hours of his life, although I obviously didn’t know that at the time. I don’t remember his name or where he was from, but I believe he was born in India. I shook his hand and looked at his face. He was visiting my roommate, dressed in a comically oversized suit and a cheap bowtie. He looked like he was dressed to perform at a child’s birthday party, the kind of man who might be secretly versed in magic. With golden apple cheeks covered in whiskers, he had the kind of warmth that sticks with you, like someone out of a Bob Hope movie.
As a rule, I try not to think about Kim Kardashian much—especially her pregnancy, because I’m concerned her child might be the anti-Christ. However, a friend recently made me consider Kardashian in a different light.