I stood there next to the baggage carousel, waiting for Lincoln Douglas's flight from New York. I was nervous and wondering why I'd said I would meet him and put him up for three nights. He was some high muckety-muck preacher with a big church in Harlem, who was down here in the research triangle of North Carolina to watch his grandson play in the Duke-Georgia Tech football game. His grandson, who is black, had married the white granddaughter of a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, and everyone in the church the professor's family and I went to were all over themselves to make the union welcome. Everyone was falling over him and herself to show they had more progressive attitudes than anyone else.
Preacher Douglas was known nationally not just because he had a big church in Harlem but also because he'd been an NFL football player and had come out gay. We were a pretty liberal Methodist church and wanted to show off how supportive we were of all of that. What most in the church honed in on, though, was that he'd been a professional football player.
The Reverend Douglas had been asked to preach at our church anytime it was convenient for him, and he'd said this Sunday was convenient for him on very short notice. His newlywed grandson and wife had no room to house the Harlem preacher, so Reverend Steve had put out a call for hosting—or, rather, he'd just called me.
"Is it because I'm gay too, Steve?" I asked when he called. "It isn't because I'm black or play football, I don't think."
"It's because you have room for him, Trip," he'd answered and then, after a pause, "and I guess, yes, because you'd be more comfortable hosting a gay man on short notice."
More comfortable than whom, I wondered. Steve had plenty of room at the church manse to put the man up.
I was gay, yes, and I had lost my partner four months earlier, and Steve had made me a "case" because I'd withdrawn from most of the world after Evan had unexpectedly died. We'd both taught at Chapel Hill and had a nice two-bedroom wooden cottage on a cul-de-sac of similar houses on small lots backing up to a small lake in the Carrboro area of the research triangle. I couldn't say I didn't have room for a guest or competing activities. I had, indeed, pretty much withdrawn from the world when Evan had had a heart attack and died quickly. He'd been twenty years older than I was but was only in his late forties. We both were runners and competitive swimmers, so it was a real shock when he'd died.
"Most in the church don't know that Preacher Douglas is a homosexual," Reverend Steve said. "They just know he was a pro football player on the Atlanta Falcons and became a big-time preacher in New York and the CEO of a major relief nonprofit. It's known in New York, of course, but most in this church hadn't heard of him at all before last week. There's no reason they need to know more, and, if they do, I'm sure they will still be welcoming. But, still, it will be good for him to stay with someone who will be comfortable with him. He's black too."
Evan had been black, so Reverend Steve assumed I would be comfortable hosting a black man. And, of course, I was. It was just that I was comfortable in my grief and aloneness too. But Steve had told me, in less bald terms, that I'd become too comfortable with that—that I was milking the grief ride and it was about time I stopped doing that. So, I could see that asking me to host this black preacher was intentional—that Steve was doing his good works, in his mind, with me as well as the black preacher. With that in mind I could see why Steve asked me to house the preacher rather than Steve doing it.
I did know Lincoln Douglas was gay. It had been a big deal in the gay community when he'd declared as such nearly twenty years earlier, when he was with the Atlanta Falcons. He had been a tailback on the offense on his university team but then he had grown taller and heavier and, when he turned pro, was moved to a strong safety position on the defensive team. His wife had died a few years before that, and Douglas had turned to someone else—a male set designer in New York—for solace. He and that man had been very publicly together and out for a good fifteen years before the set designer had died earlier this year, about the same time Evan had. And all that time Douglas was reinventing himself—leaving the Falcons, under duress, being picked up by the New York Jets but not lasting long there either, becoming a minister preaching acceptance and then a more famous preacher and, finally, adding heading up a major disaster relief nonprofit organization to his other jobs.
And now he was coming here, to Raleigh-Durham, to go to a football game I was being invited to go to too, to preach in my church, and to sleep in my guest bed. I worked over in my mind how old he must be and came up with sixty. He was a grandfather of a college student. But now that I thought about it, I remember reading in his Wiki file that he was something like fifty-seven or fifty-eight. In any case, he'd be an old codger. Older than Evan, who was in great shape and very arousing still when he died. So, no problem there. I did have a "thing" for black men, and there had been black men in my life before Evan.
And then I turned and saw him approaching with the arrivals from his flight. And I immediately went hard. He was unmistakable in the approaching group of people, given that I knew he had been a professional football player. He was well over six feet tall and large bodied—not fat. Powerfully built. Imposing. Commanding. His face was square-jawed and handsome and his hair was cropped so close that, if there was gray in it, it wasn't particularly evident. And he was looking at me, smiling, picking me out in those standing at the baggage carousel as the man who was there to let him sleep in my guest bed.
When he spoke, it was with a rich, cultured deep baritone. And of course he did; he was a renowned preacher. His white-toothed smile was dazzling. "You must be Trip Sinclair," he said. "Brian has told me good things about you. A UNC English professor and soccer team coach?"
Brian was his grandson who played for the Duke football team and who looked very much like a younger Lincoln Douglas. I had given the grandson a couple of lustful looks, I had to admit. "Only an assistant professor and an assistant coach," I answered.
"Give it time, son, and you'll get there if you want to," the preacher said. He probably was going to be a "we can do this" optimist the whole time he was here. I wasn't sure what I thought about that. Four months after losing Evan I was still feeling sorry for myself. I wasn't ready to give that up. This hunk made me feel better already, which wasn't exactly in my program plan. I was still very much in the "feeling sorry for myself" phase.
On the way back to my house on the small lake in Carrboro, we spoke of how he'd come to be invited here. He'd been here to help officiate in his grandson's wedding. I'd been out of town for that. And Reverend Steve, who had helped to officiate the wedding, had invited him to preach in the church the next time he came back. The next time was the Duke-Georgia Tech football game, which was tomorrow. He'd played for Georgia Tech before going pro. His grandson, who wanted to go pro too, played for Duke.
"So, you and your grandson will be exchanging friendly jabs all weekend about your football teams."
"I've had my college football shot," Linc said. "I'll do nothing but promote Duke—and that's the side we'll be sitting on—I have a ticket for you too if you can come to the game—and whatever I'm thinking in my mind, I'll be cheering on my grandson and his team on the field."
"I guess if you're going to be that noble, I'll cheer for Duke too. Even though the university I work for, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is located right next door to Duke, and we are rivals in everything, I'll take your lead and cheer for Duke tomorrow too."
We both laughed. And with that I'd agreed to go to the football game with him. I hadn't really intended to when I only knew Lincoln Douglas in the abstract. But now that I'd met him in the flesh, I was being mesmerized by him. I now wanted to be with him the whole time he was in town.
He went on talking while we drove, telling me about his coming out while he was with the Falcons but remaining with his wife who already was sinking into dementia at that time, and how he didn't become actively gay until after she'd died. That he'd met Sean, the set designer, while he was breaking up with the Falcons and had gone with him more permanently after he'd gone to the Jets. He was very open about his struggles in only slowly and grudgingly having become accepted and only then when he'd gone through seminary, started working with gays in New York, and built that whole ministry in a church that was fully inclusive, very popular in Harlem, and no longer completely gay even.
"I'm sorry if talking so openly about my background embarrasses you, but Steven did say that you were—"
"Gay," I said. "Not as famously open as you are about it, though," I added.
"Yes, I'm afraid it has become central to who I am and the message I try to bring to the people," he said. "But what I've been told about you. I understand you lost your partner a short while ago."
