A memoir by Caleb T. Maupin
Chapter 4
The Maupin men were born preachers. Not the TV begging kind, and not the megachurchy kind either. No, they were old school, fire and brimstone, repent or burn, King James Bible types. For six generations, each firstborn Maupin took the pulpit by sixteen, married a pious girl by twenty, and spent the rest of his life wrestling with God, the IRS, and the Federal government.
At twelve years old. I knew I would break the chain. Not because I doubted the existence of God. But because I doubted the lies they wrapped Him in.
While the other boys in Dayton traded baseball cards and boasted about kisses behind the bleachers, I sat in the library, buried in Marx and staring at the crucifix. I was drawn not to the expression of agony on Christ’s face, but to the curve of his ribs, and the tension in his thighs.
“You’re soft,” grunted my father one day, catching me sketching instead of shooting hoops.
“You’ll turn into a faggot. A man’s gotta lead. To want.”
And I did want. Just not what I was supposed to want.
The football team locker room was a torture chamber. Youth group retreats in the woods were a minefield of forced prayers, arms slung over, and forbidden warmth. The altar call was the worst. Kneeling at the rail, in the full knowledge that if they knew what I did, they’d cast me out like a rotten sheaf of wheat.
When I was fourteen, Pastor Rick pulled me to one side. The bugs buzzed around the fluorescent lights, as he thumbed his Bible open to Leviticus 18:22.
“You’re different Caleb,” he said.
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