TRIGGER WARNING! HOMOPHOBIA BASED ON RELIGION IS IN THIS CHAPTER
Also things are about to go down

What frightened me most was not that my father had come to visit me, but that he had come alone. Normally, my mother and maybe one of my siblings would accompany him, and they would stop by while they were out, just to see how I was doing.

I had the feeling that my father was there for a different reason that day.

I swallowed back my anxiety, however. I didn't know why my father was there, but I could take a guess. Being twenty years old, I was a man. I would face my father like one.

I opened the door wider. "Hello. Would you like to come in?"

My father stepped in. "Yes, thank you."

I closed the door behind him and led him to the living room, where he sat in my reading chair. I sat on the couch. "Can I get you anything to eat or drink?"

He shook his head. "That's not why I'm here."

"Then why are you here?" I kept my tone polite. Inside, I was shaking like a leaf, but I wasn't going to show it.

My father just shook his head again, then sighed. "Your mother and I were, needless to say, very surprised when you brought a man to our dinner instead of a woman. We did our best to raise you and your siblings." He paused. "We never thought you'd turn out to be gay."

I took a deep breath, held it in for four seconds, and exhaled for four seconds. "I'm not gay. I'm pansexual."

My father dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "It doesn't matter. You're in a relationship with a man. The Bible condemns this."

So that's what it was all about. "Not everyone believes in the same things. I believe in God, but I also believe that love is love, and we should be free to be with who we want."

"That's not how it works." My father raised his voice slightly.

"It's how I work."

My father's voice grew angry very quickly. "It's the law of the Bible, Tyler. You can't truly believe in God if you're willingly disobeying him. You can't be a real Christian. You can't be my son!"

Silence.

Art by candynao