It’s about time that we had a talk about gay Aldo, and pigeons. This is an important topic for Christians to understand.
Gay Aldo is always telling me things I need to understand. How do I know this? Because he tells me so.
“Christopher, you need to understand…”
Things such as,
****, he feels like a woman.
That’s his favorite song to bring up on karaoke day at the Mental Wellness Center. That’s where things first went wrong between Aldo and Noah James, when they had an artistic dispute over Aldo’s singing abilities that graduated to name-calling over gay Aldo’s gayness.
The whole thing was rather childish. Noah James got banned for 2 weeks, which made him sad.
Aldo understands why women don’t want men in their private spaces, so he stays with the men, which is still problematic, but better. Sometimes sleeping outside is best. He knows all the Mexican cliques and they’re tight like family.
“It would be better if you just weren’t gay, Aldo.”
He laughed.
“But God made me this way.”
“That’s false. You made you this way.”
“You have your opinion, I have mine. We will leave it at that.”
“You know I won’t leave it at that, Aldo.”
He shrugs. “It’s a free country.”
I like walking the tracks to get across town, and when you’re doing that, you want to keep to your own business. The people camped by the tracks tend to like their privacy, and despise inspections, because they’re criminals.
If you look, expect, “What’re you lookin’ at.”
Well, I don’t know until I look.
So I’m walking the tracks and I hear Aldo.
“Buenos dias, pastor!” he yelled, waving. He was with about 10 Mexicans chopping up stolen bikes.
I waved back. He told the others I was a pastor, and then they all greeted me warmly. We had a moment, those thieves and I. They gave me a very Catholic-inspired response, which was to take me as a priestly portal to absolution and heaven. That’s better than stealing my wallet.
I had no wallet at that time, and I couldn’t buy one if I wanted one, which I didn’t.
I was walking through a desolate industrial zone. Kind of hungry. Then Aldo rode up on his bike. He was wearing a pink blouse and a wide-brimmed summer hat with a giant plastic daisy sticking out. In his basket were bags of food.
“Hola, Christopher. Do you want a cheeseburger?”
I took two.
I want to talk about pigeons now, because Aldo would sometimes walk around with a pigeon on his shoulder, named Paloma.
In English, if you name your pigeon Pigeon, the name won’t work right, and people might think you’re weird – and that’s funny to some people, including me, so I might name a pet pigeon Pigeon someday.
Paloma means pigeon (and dove) in Spanish, and it’s beautiful.
Difference.
Rescuing wildlife and repairing their injuries sometimes means you’re their new mommy. You fix it, you own it.
That’s what happened with Aldo and Paloma, and it’s definitely the cutest thing you’ll ever see in a homeless camp. Believe that.
Now, Paloma thinks gay Aldo is her mother. Paloma is a kind of beast – a fowl of the air – and not a man, yet she believes her mother is a man.
Paloma’s got a bird brain, don’t she.
And we should see nothing wrong in that. Men are to be above the beasts in God’s sight.
Now, let’s consider the ways in which Paloma was “born this way.”
Was she born desiring a man for a mother?
No.
Was she born with a bird brain?
Yes.
I think my point is clear:
When Paloma loves a man as her mother, that’s a cute little beastie.
When Aldo loves a man as a woman, that’s a beastly abomination in God’s sight.
“You weren’t made with a bird brain, Aldo. You know better. God gave you a conscience.”
I’m trying to explain all this to Aldo, but he’s drunk this morning. We’re sitting on outdoor couches at the Mental Wellness Center, and I’m on my 10th cup of coffee.
Ain’t no sin to drink 10 cups of coffee because you got no sleep. Fight me.
“Christopher, you don’t love me.”
Aldo’s feeling all sorry for himself.
“I’ve proved that I love you, and so has God.”
“No, Christopher. You hate me, and God loves me this way.”
Aldo stood up without having the ability to stand up. He was ruling over a section of the Mental Wellness Center centered around a little tabletop trans flag – you know the one; it’s barfy – and he almost knocked over the table getting up to come at me.
“No! You hate me!”
He crashed down on a couch like a crybaby, because he was being a crybaby. Then he started crying out for help. He wanted me to be ejected from the Mental Wellness Center for committing a hate crime.
“Come on, Aldo.”
“No! Security! Remove this man!”
(Security there is my friend.)
Security told gay Aldo that things are better inside with music and friends, and he went for that.
I saw him a couple days later at the Mental Wellness Center. He smiled, shrugged and we hugged.
A social worker praised him for being nice.
“We fight because we love,” he said.