Down On My Knees (Wt Prater’s Journey through Christianity)

After meeting Wt Prater at the GayRomLit Retreat, it’s amazing to watch his publishing progress. Please welcome Prater to Love Knows No Bounds, as he shares a very personal experience, and how it helped shape his new short story “Exercising His Options,” in the anthology, Ad-Dick-Tion, Vol. 3.

Cults suck. I know that that is a generic statement, but it still holds true. Backstory. . .so I knew that I was gay when I was five, ten, and fifteen. That's when I came out the first time. And although high school in a small town is Hell, I was fairly confident in myself. Until I got to college. I know college is when most people started exploring, but my journey was quite different. In college, I got involved with a church that was hard-core "Christian" (and unknown to me, one of the top ten cults in America). I had always thought I was a good Christian even though I was gay. But this church convinced me that I could not live "that lifestyle" and call myself Christian. So, I made the obvious choice.

I went back into the closet.

Over the next five years, I was taught how to hold a sandwich, talk with my lower register, and walk like a "straight" man. I was only allowed to hang out with manly men, told to date girls, and confess any thoughts of impurity about men. IT WAS HELL! I thought about suicide all the time, and struggled with the worst depression of my life. But it was all in the pursuit of Heaven and a relationship with Jesus. After five years of this, I was finally kicked out of the church because I had not repented enough and my homosexual nature was still too evident.

Enver Mann, the lead character of “Exercising His Options,” is struggling with and will continue to struggle with his religious upbringing. He is a man who sees religion not as an ever-evolving force through which he can grow, but rather (much as I did) a bidding force that will not let him grow. I wrote him as a character who allows himself to be guided by his love, both for himself and his wife, rather than the rules that have been dictated to him over the years. While I have never been a straight man, Enver is very much how I see myself.

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BLURB

Exercising His Options

When Enver Mann started jogging every morning, it was at his wife’s provocation. After a year, he’s still at it, but now it’s his choice. Little does he know, that choice may open up a whole world to him. While jogging one day, he happens upon two men having sex, and for the first time he wants that. The man with the red hair and the incredible ass. And while his mind might second guess him, his wife doesn’t. When she instigates their encounter, Enver knows he will never look at life, or sex, the same way again.

AUTHOR BIO

Wt Prater is a writer, having four short stories in various states of publishing, and approximately thirty works in progress. Just Write and SO Gay is his blog, which he strives to update weekly. He is a producer and host on Blog Talk Radio, partnering with Marketing for Romance Writers of which he helps lead. He is also an Assistant Organizer of the Nashville Writer's Group. Online, he has active social networking on Facebook, Twitter, Fetlife, Linked In, Tumbler, Goodreads, and Meet Up. In real life, he stays just as busy bouncing around in his non-profit volunteering from the GLBT community to the BDSM community to church community.

EXCERPT

As Enver Mann looked at Kurt’s hair caught in the wind, and the freckles on the back of his neck that disappeared somewhere into his jacket, Enver wanted nothing more than for this man to lay him down and kiss him. All of course while he was fucking him as hard as he could.  The breeze continued to blow the leaves up and around, creating still more of the tornado like shapes. As the sun continued to peek out of the sky, from behind a cloud, Enver noticed that it now set its gentle light on some places while leaving some spots completely dark.  He looked at Kurt again and saw that the light bounced from his copper hair to his now sweaty shirt. For the first time that he could remember in his life, his mouth actually watered for a sexual act. Thinking of that tender flesh, and the taste he had been yearning for since he had first seen Kurt, he got even harder. Every dream and desire for the last week or so had all involved this man, in some form or fashion. His wife made sure of that.