Lay down those preconceptions...

Spent the week last week in New York City at the National Court Reporter Conference – had a great time, and my stamina lasted to keep me vertical most of the time – yoohoo!  Being there brought back many great memories, but one trip in particular stands out as I think back this morning.  I think Talia had just finished being Miss WV when we took this trip, and it was in October of 2010.  She had modeled for a gown designer the previous year in NYC, and we had spent a week up there while she did that and had a great time.  This trip, she had decided to sell purses and jewelry while she did some other part-time job that for the life of me I now can’t remember.  Anyway, we set off for a trip to do the buying of the merchandise.

When we have gone to New York, we have stayed in this motel in New Jersey that had the cheapest points to be exchanged on my Choice Privileges charge card account.  It is a dive.  Well, worse than a dive.  I think it’s a crack motel – no kidding.  The last time we checked in, there was a bullet hole in the glass of the lobby.  When we would pull up to this motel, it was so seedy and scary that we would look all around, make sure no one was out, and literally run for our lives to the door, unlock it as fast as we could and jet in, slamming it back locked.  Tom would carry on about how stupid that was, and we would justify it by the fact it left more money for shoes!  Well, the bullet hole trip was our last at that place – even I was scared.  And now after staying at the Hilton this week, my tastes may have changed….I digress.

The week we went to do the buying, Talia had just come back from a trip to New York where she helped a Parkersburg gown shop, Elizabeth Michaels, sell their gowns at the National Miss Teen America pageant in Orlando.  While there, she met this guy named Raj, who invented the Ped-Egg, while he was there on the board of the Miss Teen.  She came home talking about this man and how much fun he was and on and on.  While we’re in NYC, she’s texting him and we’re to meet up with him for dinner one night.  We shopped and shopped and spent days just looking at what she might want to buy, making lists and running the budget.  We end up picking a day to do our actual buying, and that was the day Raj was available to meet.

I was thinking it was going to be pretty weird to meet with this man who was so successful, and what was a 50-year-old man doing hanging out with my kid anyway?  Tal insisted I was going to love him, so I agree and we set up the plan.  We’re to do our buying and then contact him and meet somewhere.  Well, when we stay in Jersey, what we do is drive into the city and then park right off the Lincoln Tunnel in a parking garage where you can get a coupon and ONLY pay like $25.00 for a day of parking.  Then we take the subway or walk wherever we need to go. 

On the buying day, we were heading to Chinatown for tons of purses.  So we take off in the subway, and when we come up, it is pouring the rain.  Chinatown is outside shopping, booth to booth, so rain is a bit of a problem.  You can get in the booths, but walking between them is out in the open.  Long story short, we dicker and dicker and end up buying like 50-75 purses.  They are placed in garbage bags (yes, not thick ones either), so we were both trying to hold these massive bags, slicker than snot, and walk in the rain to the subway.  Fail.  We had so much stuff, we just couldn’t do it.  We stop at this shop and buy a huge tote thing that we could stuff some of the bags into.   It weighed so much that we had to carry it together, with our other arm still trying to hang on to another slick garbage bag. 

We work and work and make our way to the subway, almost get stuck in the turnstile with our bags, looking like the Pillsbury dough boy trying to walk.  We have been in and out of the rain all day, so we’ve gotten wet, dried, wet, dried – you get the picture.  Frazzled, bedraggled drowned rats.  We throw ourselves down on the subway seats, thrilled it was not too crowded and we had to try to stand with these contraptions we’re dealing with, and we’re dying laughing because it was one of those “laugh or cry” moments.  After we get off the subway, we then have to drag the mess to our parking lot to get it into the car.  In the rain.  Again.

Now mind you, we are so insane at this point, that it never even crosses our mind to get a cab from Chinatown to our parking lot.  Did not even rise on the radar.  About two days after this ordeal, I said to Tal, “What in the world is wrong with us?  Why didn’t we just get a cab??”  Sometimes the brain just does not work when you are shopping….that’s the only excuse I have.  I say all this so you get the picture of what we look like and smell like – clothes have been on all day long, things that did not match the tennis shoes that we wore just so our feet did not fall off.  Hair has been soaked, dried, resoaked and redried.  Makeup is pretty much gone as well.

So Tal keeps insisting we’re going to meet this Raj.  I’m like, “Look at us!  We look like something that crawled out of a hole in West Virginia and wollered itself all over this city.  Let’s forget it!”  Oh, no, no, Raj was really wanting to meet me, blah, blah, blah.  So I insist that we aren’t eating somewhere nice, but just meeting him at some salad place or something.  We end up reworking the plan and we are to go to his place and then we’ll leave from there.  We get the address and off we go to this high rise that has a doorman and the whole works.  I am mortified but being drug along by this strong-willed kid I’ve raised and too weak by then to overpower her.

We arrive at his apartment, having been escorted up the elevator after we were cleared.  We step inside this place and it is truly one of those deals like you see on TV.  He later told us he got it for a steal of a deal at 30 million.  Or maybe 10 million.  I can’t remember – I mean, all those millions, what’s a few off?  The weirdest thing – this huge apartment, and there is a galley kitchen with about as much countertop as my first house trailer.  People just don’t cook – they eat out.  He invites us in, very gracious and warm, and I can instantly see why Tal liked him so much.  He didn’t seem to care we looked a wreck but he did get that it was bothering me, so we decided to order in and just stay at his place and visit.  We curl up in these comfortable leather chairs, take our shoes off and make ourselves at home.  Talia has told me that he’s gay, but he was married before, from India, and he invented the Ped-Egg when he was an assistant on modeling gigs and saw a model scraping her feet with a cheese grater.  Now he is the owner of several other made-for-TV products.

We begin to visit, I tell him about me, what I do, etc. and then I say, “Well, tell me your story.”  He looks at Talia and says, “Do I tell her?”  Tal says, “Oh, yeah, I already told her.  She knows everything.”  He laughs and says, “Well, I grew up in India, was married for 20 some years, have two children, and now I’m kind of gay and live here with a guy named Brian who is an opera singer.”  Mind you, I’ve just met this guy, but I go, “Whoa, whoa, whoa – what do you mean, you’re ‘kind of’ gay?”  He says, “Well, I came to America, dated several women, and then I met Brian, and he is the nicest person I have ever met in my life, and now we’re together.” 

I am floored.  I said, “So you don’t think you’re gay, but you’re just with him because he’s nice?”  He laughs, says, “Yeah, pretty much.”  We end up talking and talking and talking about this thing – he tells me about the culture in India and about what it’s like to have maids and servants, how divorce is an absolute no-no in India, and being gay is even worse - how when he goes to visit Brian’s family in North Carolina, they all stand around and hold hands when they pray over a meal (and of course I break in with, WE DO THAT!).  He says he knows the whole time they’re praying out loud for the food, they’re silently praying, “And Lord, please, please make Brian not be gay.”   I cannot remember laughing so hard and enjoying meeting a person so much!  He was so open, easy to talk to – no pretense, no putting on of airs.  Just terrific.  Like someone you had known forever.

I could go on and on and tell more, but this story is becoming a novel, so I won’t.  As I think back on Raj and his home (which he invited us to come and stay in any time we wanted as it’s usually empty because he has a real house in Jersey and a place in London and on and on…can you imagine?) but when I think of him, I wonder, what is it that is missing in this world that would make a straight man engage in gay practices out of literally nowhere?  I think it’s love.  I think we are so badly searching to be loved that a lot of this homosexual experimentation and orientation is a search for love, and being willing to find it in places that are not normal.  I believe the explosion in the number of homosexuals in this country is truly an indicator of how many people want to just be loved and accepted.

And isn’t that what Christ came to bring?  Love for each other and a confidence in who we can be in Christ, with the Holy Spirit able to guide us?  I know there are battles every day for the culture of this land, and I am in those battles – I give and I write and I vote and I call – and I believe those battles are important, that the entire structure of the family not be redefined and the face of America not be changed from being a God-fearing nation.  But as we walk the life we’re in, we need to be reminded that as a Christian, we are not going to win anyone with judgment; we will win them by love. 
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The Bible clearly tells us that is our mission – “They will know you by your love.”  I have many homosexual friends, and I truly love them.  They are phenomenal people, and they have much to offer this world.  I know Christ loves them too.  His message to them is no different than his message to us:  “Repent and be saved – and go and sin no more.”  It is our duty to tell the truth about what Christ calls ALL of us to, a life without sin, but it is also our duty to love them enough to wrap our arms around them and love them through this battle they’re in.  Let’s do it – we are big enough for this….