Welcome to Love, Us, a column for telling queer love stories in all their glory. (And by glory, we mean all the big, beautiful moments and otherworldly little details that make making and falling in queer love so, so fun.) Read more from the series here.
My first boyfriend broke up with me on a bus. On a city bus. It was the H4 bus, heading from some part of Washington, D.C. to another part of Washington, D.C. I’m not particularly good with directions, and to be honest, I don’t ever plan to be. I’m gay.
But that’s not the point. The point is that I was broken up with on a bus.
We had been dating for six months-ish, depending on who you ask. Embarrassingly, I was in love for the first time. And although we would continue having sex for the better part of another year, for all intents and purposes, this was the “end” of our “relationship.”
Pop culture would have you believe six months is a long time for a gay relationship, but I think this isn’t true. It’s a myth that stuck because somewhere between seven and 12 queer people on Twitter dot com dictate what life for gay people is actually like. “Six months? That’s half a decade in gay years!” a friend would yell over buy-one-get-one rail vodkas months later. At the time, maybe it felt like it. But now, an actual half-decade removed, I can definitively say it was absolutely just six months.
The reason he was breaking up with me, in his own words, is that I “wouldn’t make a good pastor’s wife.” I think he was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t land. Famously, he was and is a pastor. A man of the cloth, if you will, and they’re not exactly known for their humor.
Now, I feel like when I say pastor, people draw up images of someone who’s balding a bit and has calloused hands and bad breath but a sweet smile. Straight, married, maybe a kid in second grade. Depending on my mood, I would totally fuck that pastor. However, this wasn’t him. This pastor was a twink. An out and proud, gay little twink. For Jesus.
And this pastor twink, who yes, I met in church, back when I still went to church, told me that I wouldn’t make a good pastor’s wife, which is why he was breaking up with me.
First of all, that’s ridiculous, and second of all, it’s also probably correct. On one hand, I would’ve made an incredible pastor’s wife. I challenge you to find anyone who could do a better job organizing a bake sale or Easter egg hunt or Christmas pageant. I’m incredibly organized. I love telling people what to do. And if I’d had the slightest opportunity to dive head-first into any kind of interpersonal drama that might have been taking place between congregants, mama, I’d have been there. I was raised Catholic with a southern Baptist twist, shaken, not stirred. I was born for this.