My Kind of Town
Laws of nature
>> Queen's Medical Center
"But what about God, Lily?" Laird Ah Sun said and punched the elevator button for the ICU. "What about your soul?"
Lily was enjoying her brother's recent conversion less and less. "My soul? Laird, what about your brain?! For somebody who's supposed to be getting a masters from Stanford Business, I can't believe how stupid you got!"
"Don't make this personal, Lily. I'm talking about right and wrong."
"And I'm talking about you being an idiot who's been brainwashed by another idiot who writes books with ridiculous titles and has some preposterous name he probably made up!"
"Lily, stop it! Christian X.O. St. James is a holy man! His book 'Jesus Was A CEO: The Gospel of Acquisitions' changed my life!"
"Not for the better."
"Who are you to judge? You're the one panting like a dog in heat over our first cousin. It's no wonder you're so easy to accept our brother's sin!"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Morality, Lily, and St. James' new book 'Jesus Was Straight, Mister: And You'd Better Be Too!' proves gayness can be cured."
"So your Christian X.O. St. James is writing a new book, 'Jesus Never Schtupped His Cousin, Sister: And You Better Not Either!'?"
"No, but he should. Cousins mating goes against every law of nature."
"Mongoose and fishes have laws? Do their senators vote on them?"
"Don't be ridiculous. It's just that family interbreeding goes against nature, same as being gay."
"Lance was born that way -- nature made him the way he is. Don't you remember, as a kid he never wanted to play baseball."
"That's not a good example." Laird had given up baseball in the Kailua American Little League minors division because he would never be the player that Lily, an all-star shortstop, was for the Bobby Sox. So he took up soccer.
"OK, he also never wanted to go fishing with you and Dad. He'd stay home with me and bake snickerdoodles and play with my Barbies."
Laird shuddered. "Is that what he did?"
"Our parents didn't make him that way. He was born gay. Naturally."
"People are born with sicknesses and ailments of all kinds every day, Lily. And being gay is one of them. But the good news is, according to Christian X.O. St. James, he can be cured. And that's why I came home."
The elevator opened on the ICU floor.
"I'm going to talk to Lance, Lily, and you can't stop me."
"Oh yeah?" Lily made a fist and swung to sock her brother in the nose but a very large, very brown hand grabbed her wrist and a feminine voice cooed, "Uh-uh, baby. That's not the way."
Lily smelled eucalyptus and sea spray.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com