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It was late morning, and the New Mexico sun was bleaching the shadows off the ground. I'd been staring out the car window at desiccated scrub brush for two days; it was like watching a loop of a Tom & Jerry chase scene without Tom or Jerry. So my heart leapt in my chest when my girlfriend, Sam, said quietly, "We're here." I was thrilled, because I really had to pee, but I was also nervous.

We turned up a long driveway and the ashram came into view. It was a small adobe compound with exposed beams, decorated by winding rock paths and xeriscaping. Parking attendants in white robes and sandals directed us to a spot on the crunchy grass. Most of the other cars had bumper stickers featuring a lotus or the symbol for Om, or the words "Jai Jai Ma" or "Visualize Whirled Peas."

I started to make a snarky comment, then stopped myself. Sam was visibly buoyant. She was bounding up the hill, overjoyed, and this was from a stone butch who doesn't bound. I fumbled around in the dark of my brain, trying to find my cynicism dial and turn it down as far as it would go. This is serious, I told myself. These are her people.

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She's sharing something important with you. Be nice. But as we neared the ashram's open doors, I could hear chanting. And there was no one with whom to exchange a glance that said, "Seriously? Chanting?"

Like many people, I had issues with religion. But I didn't always. Growing up, my mother was the organist for the local Methodist church, and when I turned ten, she started letting me scamper around the church grounds alone while she was at choir practice. That meant for two hours every Wednesday night, I attended the Church of Me, where I made the rules and enjoyed a direct line to God.

There was no one with whom to exchange a glance that said, Seriously? Chanting?

I believed He and I were on uniquely good terms, and that, as a sign of our secret pact, he allowed me to control the flickering of the candles during Sunday service.

I cultivated a comprehensive personal dogma. People from other religions would definitely go to Heaven — anything else didn't seem fair. (In fact, as a congenital bleeding-heart liberal and moral relativist, I suspected God was a tough-talker but secretly a softie, and that nobody was going to hell.) The Old Testament was some sort of primitive beta version of the whole God-human relationship, and became obsolete as soon as Jesus broke onto the scene. Women and men were equals, divorce was a necessary option and homosexuality was both innate and, for reasons unclear to me at the time, awesome. Abortion was sad, but mostly for the mother, because it was like finding a Saint Bernard puppy when you live in a studio apartment — it's not that you don't love puppies, it's just that you can't keep him. The baby was okay, in my line of thought; it just went back into the shining, cloud-upholstered waiting room and was born in another place where it could be received with unadulterated joy.

When I went to college, I auditioned a few churches, but I never found one I liked as much as the Church of Me. So I carried around my faith in my heart, as my secret. I still felt that God and I exchanged secret winks as we lovingly tolerated other people's bumblefuckery of His divine will.

Then came Sam. When our eyes met for the first time, I didn't just fall in love — I was clocked by love. TKO. I'd never felt about anybody like I felt about her, and I was so naïve that I thought everyone would be happy for my happiness. I told my mother, the organist, right away. She withdrew. She was embarrassed and angry. She didn't want to talk about it.

But strangers wanted to talk about it. When I went to PrideFest to eat roasted corn and listen to mediocre bands, strangers stood across the street holding posterboard that said, "Leviticus 18:22. Homosexuals burn in hell." This didn't count as persecution by a long shot, but I knew that among my new friends, Christian meant that guy with the sign. I stopped telling anyone I was a Christian. It took too long to explain.