The Church Lady
an excerpt

“Six o’clock on the dot.” I announced to myself, glancing at my watch. I double checked the address from the printout of internet driving directions I had made earlier that day against the address engraved on the cornerstone of the huge glittery monster of a building I had parked in front of. It was the right place alright. I folded my hands in my lap and sighed. “Oh yeah… Here we go again…”
It was the third “mega church” I had been to this month, and I was certain that it would not be the last. It was only the beginning of June, and wedding season was well underway, so I knew that as a wedding photographer, I was used to spending many of this year’s summer days in places just like this.
The funny thing is, I hated church. In fact, I was rather jaded about religion altogether, but Christianity in particular. When it came to Black folks, religion and these mega churches, I had learned from personal experiences that the bigger and flashier the church and the more expensive the attire of the pastor, the more hypocritical and drama filled they were. I had quit attending church regularly at nineteen, after coming out to my parents as a lesbian. In mama’s church, as in a lot of Black churches, being gay was treated as the worst sin, and was sometimes the only sin they talked about. They harped on it constantly, and it was a rare Sunday sermon that didn’t mention or at least, allude to “the sin of Sodom”. Never mind the abundance of teenage mothers, street hustling sons and the rumored philandering of not just the pastor but several deacons, elders and other higher ups. At least they sinning the way God intended.
Bracing myself weekly for the Sunday message of persecution had gotten to be too much, and I decided early on that swallowing that much self-hatred couldn’t be good for my mental health. So six months after I met my first girlfriend, I broke the news to my family. Six months was really longer than I could stand, the first two months was all it took. After my confession, my parents started me on extra services plus counseling in the hopes that it would “cure” me. I would have left sooner, but I needed the additional time to build up my courage and my savings account. The rule of the house was no church, no shelter. And I had to be sure that I had enough money to call my mama’s bluff. As soon as I got enough money and found a suitable place to live, I announced that I would no longer be going. Just as I expected, all hell broke loose. My mother lectured me over and over on how running away from the church wasn’t going to change the fact that my lifestyle is wrong. My sister, Deandria, made her disapproval more than clear to me, and my dad remained silent as usual. To this day I still don’t know how he really feels about everything. He’s always been one to just let Mom have her dramatic episodes, as he feels the less you say, the less time it will take for it to blow over. The only one I received support and encouragement from was my older brother Kenny. He stood up for me when I needed him to and he even helped me move into my new place.
Eventually my family calmed down enough for me to resume contact with them again, though to this day, my mother and sister never fail to make it abundantly clear how much they disapprove. And they never cease to amuse me with all the creative ways they had found to do so.
I finished college with the help of a few part time jobs and a couple student loans, then ironically, found a job as a photographer for a studio that specialized in weddings. And even now that I had my own studio, even though I tried my best to get away from it, we still got most of our business from heterosexual weddings. Although thanks to advertising in the local gay publications, we did a few commitment ceremonies a year as well. But though I had worked so hard to escape churches and religion, I now spent more time in churches than I did as a kid. Also ironic was the fact that it was my primary responsibility to photographically archive the one thing that so many people in America were adamant that I be denied – weddings. Ceremonies of commitment between two people in love. Even though the human species was supposedly so evolved, and even though it appeared to me that love and commitment were gender neutral, marriages between two people of the same biological sex were still a subject of controversy. All this talk about preserving the sanctity of marriage while marriage is being commercialized and degraded by the breeders who take it all for granted. It was a fact that both boggled and saddened me. For underneath my smartass persona, I was a romantic, always dreaming of the perfect wedding. I even made mental notes of things I liked from the ceremonies I photographed, determined and convinced that with all this exposure, my wedding would trump them all.
Such exposure was exactly what my mama hoped would change me. She liked to think of my work as divine intervention. She was delighted when she found out about my job and not so secretly hoped and prayed seeing all that wedded bliss would help me realize what I was missing. And she hoped that in turn, I would magically become straight and pursue as she put it, a “healthier lifestyle” with a man of her dreams. However, after each wedding, she was disappointed. For no matter how many weddings I witnessed, my dream beau was always a girl.
Today I was at the Deliverance Tabernacle of God to meet with some clients, the future Mr. and Mrs. Dante Coleman, as well as the church wedding coordinator, Sister Selma Ambrose. We were meeting at the church for a walkthrough and tour of the areas designated for the ceremony and to finalize all paperwork before their ceremony that weekend. It appeared at the start, to be business as usual. But I had no idea that what was coming next would climax months later in a cruel twist of fate.