The Minister and the Rock Star by Steve Milton

Author:Steve Milton [Milton, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-01-13T23:00:00+00:00

Seven

He had the kind of night he always tried to give his congregants on Sunday evenings: sleepless with self-questioning, soul-searching. He wanted to email Dan, and he knew the words would come with difficulty -- he was adept at writing sermons, not indignant come-hithers to a guy he likes who’d nevertheless said something painfully racist.

At midnight he clicked Compose. The To: was easy enough. On Subj: he at first tapped out “Hey, race baiter!” and laughed uproariously before backspacing it out. “Hi again, Dan” -- no, too formulaic, almost having a mass-murderer-in-kindergarten feel to it. How about “saying hi again,” all lowercase. That would do it. He was just saying hi again, not following up on racism, not chasing after a rather cute guy who looked like a tall, lanky office paper salesman.

On to the body text. Dan’s body wasn’t too bad altogether. Not as athletic as Darius’s, not a guy who spent days at the gym, but there were some biceps and triceps of note -- clearly a guy who lifted weights at least occasionally, to look better when the cameras focused on the guitar on his arm. Darius had quite enjoyed the videos of Dan fiercely strongarming his guitar during solos. Dan’s body was a body of work Darius could very much accept.

As for the body of Darius’s email, he decided to begin, Hi Dan, I really enjoyed meeting you, and I mean that. I’m sorry if we seem to have gotten off to a bad start after you said something that I’m pretty sensitive about. I don’t know what else to say, other than that I like you, but I don’t like that word, or the thinking behind it. Let me know what you think. That was good. That was casual but precise. That was firm but not anywhere near being confrontational. And it left the door wide open for however Dan was feeling, whatever path he’d want to follow.

Darius wasn’t one for pushing anyone to conclusions, intellectual, moral, social, or otherwise. He’d present the circumstances and let people make their own choices. His parishioners were smart enough for that. Dan was smart enough for that.

Email sent. He’d found amusing how his parents didn’t send email if they wanted a quick response, because they firmly believed that an email has travel time, while a phone call is instant. Darius would explain that an email takes a second to go from their email to his. And they’d always say, sometimes it’s a second, sometimes it’s a few days -- remember that time you didn’t get our emails for a week? Of course he’d received the emails. he just hadn’t replied for a week. They were reminding Darius to bring a girl to Atlanta for Christmas dinner. He’d never had a boyfriend to hide, so he’d always either ignored such questions from his parents or evaded them with non-answers. He always truthfully told them that he was busy with school and not seeing anyone, then that he was busy with ministry and not seeing anyone, and truthfully emphasizing that he didn’t have a girlfriend.

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