The Minister's Gay Husband

There was a thick shrub just beyond the gate to the parish manse. Bruce stopped behind it keeping out of sight from the windows of the large house. He wondered if there were dogs on the loose. While he did not really fear them, he could do without their noisome barking, alerting other occupants of the house besides the minister herself. He wanted to spring a surprise on her, yet keep his visit all under wraps. It would not do to have it said afterwards that the minister entertained a strange man in the evening, and in the absence of her husband, too!

In that moment he rewound his tapes back the time she had met her future husband, Donald.

Donald was his friend from their very early days when they were in the youth group in church. They had done exploits in the name of the Lord, not only in their parish, but also beyond, in Masailand. The youth ran these missions to go into remote places, build a school and a church for their less fortunate brothers and sisters. They arrived at the chosen site on a Friday, and immediately started work. By Sunday morning they had a building that would be used as a school during the week, and as a church on Sunday.

As the parish was very wide, and had at least ten congregations scattered over an area of almost fifty square kilometres boys met girls from other congregations and began to pair off in marriage. There was a period of two years in which there was a wedding between youth members every six months! Donald, however seemed to want to live the life of Apostle Paul, never seeming to be interested in any of the girls. Some questions were asked but none very seriously. Soon even his friend Bruce married a girl who had seemed impossible to court to almost everybody else. She was a teacher, but her mother had died while she was still in teacher training college, leaving her effectively in charge of her father's household. Perhaps she had always been a very serious minded person but it seemed that she took herself even more seriously after the demise of her mother. How Bruce had overcome that tough exterior remained a mystery even to his friends.

Months turned into years and still Donald was not making any move. That was when Bruce discussed the problem with Rev Joel, also previously a member of the youth group during the mission years. They held a suspicion that Donald had gay leanings but they could not really be sure. If he seduced men, it was not from among their circle; he must go outside to find his 'victims'.

"But we cannot allow him to continue that way. It is sure to explode in his face one of these days. We will not be remain unscathed ourselves, if it is discovered that one who purports to be a servant of the Lord indulges in animal behavior, sleeping with other men. It is most unnatural and against God's Word." Joel was most emphatic.

Janice came from a presbytery in which Joel had served some years before. She had meanwhile gone to theological college and been ordained a minster of Word and sacrament. He introduced Bruce to her with a view to finding out if she could make a suitable wife for their friend Donald. She did not exhibit any obvious negative traits, but they could not be sure of her favourable ones either. They both agreed that at that point the bigger risk actually rested with their friend.

"The worst that could happen is for the marriage to be rocky. That is something that we can handle with the help of counselors. But a homosexual scandal would ruin not just their lives, but ours and many others as well." Joel agreed with his friend and so they went ahead to introduce Janice to Donald.

The friendship between these two people who might have been regarded as each having delayed to marry progressed well from the viewpoint of Joel and Bruce. Probably they saw themselves in this light, too. Before long a wedding was on the cards. Bruce could not be more pleased with that development, so he lent a helping hand wherever he could; in fact he agreed readily to become Donald's best man.

The family grew as placidly as they had reason to expect. Children were born, proving that if Donald was gay, then he was at least bisexual. But then one August the minister reached out to Bruce, asking him to come and see her in the parish office.

She revealed that she had begun to see some strange behavior in Donald. "I am not sure if it is my sensitivity that made me notice small things, or maybe he was always like that but I was blinded by love."

"What kind of things, Reverend?"

"He would leave the house in the evening, saying he wanted to buy airtime for his phone and be gone for nearly an hour. I didn't think anything about that but when it became frequent I could not fail to notice."

"What did he tell you was the cause of such a delay?"

"As I said, I did not really notice. So I held my peace. Last month, he left home and said he was on a mission to Masailand. That was the third time he had gone off. I have heard stories from you people that you carried out such missions in your youth, so at first I took it to be a continuation of that."

"Do we have any reason to believe that he was not on mission?" In the back of his mind Bruce was aware that Donald had not been active on the mission field since they had been youth. For some years now, neither Bruce, Joel or himself had been on any mission. Why the zeal now, he asked himself.

"His phone is very often off, which was not unusual for Masailand. But it would be that way for days. When I reported that to him, he did not seem surprised, or think it odd. But on the off chance I asked a friend who works at Airtel to surreptitiously query their databases about where he had been. You cannot imagine my shock."

His eyes grew as wide as saucers, and his heart beat faster. "What?" he managed to croak. He hoped against hope that Joel and his suspicions of Donald's homosexuality were not going to be proved correct here in the minster's office.

"He was only in Bahati estate, barely seven kilometers from home!"

Bruce felt his whole world rocking upon its foundations. "For how long" After returning from mission he first went to Bahati?"

"He had never gone further than that the whole time he was away from home."

Bruce sat mute and immobile for several seconds, unable to formulate a reply, or a reaction of whatever nature. He tried to reconcile such deceit with the way the whole group conducted themselves and failed.

"It seems your friend has to go further and tell us where and with whom, if their systems can show that kind of information."

"I had never thought of that. Thank you, Bruce. You really are a valuable friend."

With that Bruce left the minister. She called him three days later saying that it was probable to say whom Donald had been with in Bahati. Before he had left home there was a number that he had communicated with severally. It showed to have been in the same location that Donald was later to be found.

"Do they know who the person is?"

"But it proved to be of no use," said the minister dejectedly. "It is a man."

Bruce's blood ran cold. "A whole day and night in the company of a man?" he tried to keep his voice level.

"What?!" she exploded into his earpiece. And immediately disconnected the call. In fact she sat in her chair, rocking back and forth as the implication of Bruce's question slammed into her mind. She wondered how blind she had been all the years she had been married to Donald, if he had been hobnobbing with men friends in her own neighbourhood. Was that why he took an hour to buy airtime from a shop that was barely five minutes' walk away? Did his neighbourhood boyfriend move away to Bahati or was it that he had more than one lover? She tried to think back to when he had returned from his 'mission' to see if he continued staying out in the evening but she could not be sure.

There was nothing for it but to confront him squarely. She could not bring herself to do it that evening or night, but after a lot of soul-searching throughout the next day, decided to bite the bullet. She invited Joel (after he had been brought up to speed by his friend) and Bruce to supper and sprung the question upon the unsuspecting Donald after they had eaten.

"How is the mission field growing in Masailand?"

Blithely, Donald answered, "We are seeing the hand of the Lord in all that we have done. We hope to start a school in the near future."

"It may not happen any time soon," said Joel quietly.

"The march of God's work cannot be stopped, Reverend." Donald still looked very sure of himself. "We will come to people like you to support us when the time comes."

It was time to burst his bubble. Bruce said, in the same quiet voice that the reverend had used, "If you continue neglecting the work for so long, while holed up in flat number A006 in Bahati, it definitely will not happen."

Donald choked on his tea. "What do you mean?" he managed to splutter. When nobody answered right away, he looked from his friends to his wife and a sinking feeling hit him at the navel. "Janice, you mean you have brought these people whom I thought were our friends to embarrass me?"

"Your own actions, which you thought were secret, have embarrassed you, Donald. It is a good thing for your family that you became overconfident and careless to conceal your tracks, so that your wife became suspicious and alerted us." Now Joel's voice held some steel.

"You need not fear that we condemn you. Foremost in our minds, and I hope yours, is that your family is shielded from exposure and humiliation," Bruce put in. "You can trust us that these things will never be spoken of outside this circle."

Donald broke down completely. "I never wanted to hurt anybody. I have struggled with wanting men since my schooldays. When you guys brought Janice to me I thought that marriage would eradicate those feelings. They receded but only for a time. I enjoy being with my wife, but after a time I also want to be touched by a man. Only a man knows how to really please another man!" He tried to stick his chin up, but neither his friends nor his wife were impressed.

"So you are a bisexual." His wife stated with finality. "You must never do anything to bring disrepute to the church you served so well in your young days. I promise to be a good wife to you, although I am a realist enough to realize I cannot erase those cravings for love outside the marriage." She gave a little shudder.

The next day she phoned Bruce. "You have been more than a friend to us, Bruce. May I buy you lunch one of these days?"

"I will not accept to have lunch with you only because of what has happened lately. I will only do so for old times' sake. Can you accept those conditions?"

She laughed easily. "Of course. That is a very good reason for two people to have lunch!"

So they did.

It was only the first time for them to be together, and it soon became habitual. Because of the ease they discovered with each other and the secrets they held, it became possible for her to tell him of her sexually unfulfilling life with Bruce. She shared with him when she felt low, so that he became her means of replenishment, after she had poured herself out for her parishioners. "Shepherd of a shepherd, that what you are!" she said to him once.

Embracing her in greeting or farewell soon morphed to comforting when she felt low, which restored her every single time. Neither of them could afterwards determine at what point these feelings turned sexual, but they found themselves baring their sexual souls to each other. Bruce's stern wife sometimes pushed him out of her daily life so that he frequently found himself in need of someone to talk to. That became Janice in a very organic way.

They found that getting into bed and relieving each other of sexual stress flowed very easily as if it was they who were married to each other.

That was why we found Bruce coming to her house so carefully wanting more than anything to keep both secrets safe; their coupling, as well that other one which was the cause of it.