My Inspiration for “But Only Say The Word”
Ideas come together and connect.
People, experiences, conversations, casual comments: so much of our lives seems like a piece of needlework, all random strands and threads that when you turn the fabric over, reveal an intricate design.
As I reflect on the people I’ve met in over five decades, I’ve been struck by the stories of numerous friends and family members who have served in the armed forces. A high school classmate who joined the U.S. Marines shortly after graduation and decades later, slowly heals from depression and PTSD. The first man I ever told that I loved, who cried in my arms on his first visit to the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, DC. as we looked for the engraved names of Marine comrades he lost there. Another Marine for whom I was best man at his wedding, before he died eight years later of an inoperable brain tumor caused by chemical pollutants from the Gulf War. Even stories of my father-in-law, an Army veteran buried at Arlington years before I ever met his stepson, who would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, traumatized from the horrors he saw in the Korean War.
Each of these men and women, and countless others’ stories of service, are woven into my own life, filling me with enormous respect and admiration. It is in their honor that I write.
But why this novel, this story? That takes a little more time…
Almost thirty-five years ago when in college, a dear friend of mine, Gwen, expressed a desire to write a story about a minor character mentioned in the New Testament. About the same time, while driving across the Midwest in those deadspots where the only clear signals are from AM radio stations (remember those?), I heard a fire-and-brimstone preacher declare with unwavering certainty that “there were no homosexuals in the Bible.” The two thoughts stuck way back in the recesses of my mind, lingering, waiting.
Over nine years ago, at dinner with my friends and English Department colleagues Sarah and Nita, I wondered aloud whether a post-modernist narrative voice was so linked to the anxieties of the 20th century that it couldn’t be as effective with a historical setting. (This is what English teachers discuss over a few glasses of wine…) Nita recommended I reread Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ and my question remained even after devouring that amazing novel.
Five years ago, I read an article in The New York Times about a U.S. Army officer fighting his involuntary discharge for beating up an Afghan commander who sexually abused a minor boy. At that same time, I began rereading The Iliad after learning about how reading groups of Vietnam veterans were studying Homer’s text to process wartime trauma. These two ideas fused in my mind, prompting me to imagine how soldiers coped with PTSD and battleground trauma pre-Freud, whether warriors depicted as damned by the gods in ancient plays like Sophocles’ Ajax or New Testament stories of healing from demonic possession.
All of these musings evolved into this novel: a parallel narrative about the experience of two soldiers — a 21st century African-American U.S. Army officer who witnesses sexual child abuse and a 1st century Roman centurion stationed in occupied Palestine — both forced by circumstances to deal with emotional trauma from their childhood and their military experience.
The main narrative of the two examines the relationship between the Roman centurion and his servant, both mentioned in two of the four Gospels (Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10). Over the past decade, conservative and progressive Biblical scholars have debated fiercely over the nature of the men’s relationship, based upon the Greek word pais (paiß) used in the ancient text – a word translated into English as "servant" or "boy," but which some Greek scholars believe also carries sexual undertones.
Through flashbacks reaching from the two men’s childhoods to their chance fateful meeting at a slave auction in ancient Antioch, my narrative explores the deep emotions that would drive a Roman legion officer to prostrate himself before an itinerant Jewish rabbi. For the Roman centurion, Marc’s repressed trauma from childhood abuse and the deaths of those he loves, in addition to his compounding guilt over violence done by his own hands, causes him to suffer night terrors and elliptical flashbacks, which he attempts to deaden through alcohol and emotional withdrawal. For the servant, Theo, his childhood experience being sold into slavery and abused by past owners forces him to confront the trauma of his past and his developing feelings for Marc.
Three years of work on weekends and evenings has produced this 95,500+ word, 300+ page literary/upmarket novel: a sweeping historical narrative that addresses toxic masculinity and emotional/sexual trauma, both in our #MeToo present and two millennia ago; a Biblical setting, but with a modernist, queer approach to two minor New Testament characters’ relationship that undoubtedly most evangelical Christians will denounce vehemently.
My goal in writing is that readers across multiple demographics who are attracted to different types of novels — historical fiction, Bildungsroman, mysteries, even romance — might find healing, light, and ultimately love in my work, with the hope that my words might change their ideas about what it means to be a healed, and whole, human being.
And I write in honor of all who serve and who have served, and for any individual who survives past trauma and strives to become whole.