THE PRIEST A Gothic Romance

by Thomas M. Disch

  “I think call-waiting is destroying American civilization, but what can I do? I’ll wait.”

  Bing pressed the appropriate buttons and said, “Hello?”

  A voice said, “Bing Anker?” and there was no doubt whose voice it was.

  “Father Pat! After all these years. My goodness, what a surprise. Could you hold on just a moment? I’ve got someone else I have to say good-bye to.” Without waiting for an answer, Bing switched back to Father Mabbley’s line. “Mabb, you won’t believe who just called. Bryce. I’ve put him on hold. Do you want to listen to what we say? Be the good angel on my right shoulder?”

  “Without his knowing?”

  “My telephone can do that. It’s Japanese and very clever. Come on. He may say something indiscreet.”

  “And then I’d be a witness to it. I’m not sure I like that idea. How did he get your number? I thought you said he didn’t know who you were when you were in the confessional.”

  “I don’t know. He probably racked his Rolodex. I gave him enough clues. I’m going to press the button now, so it’s a conference call and you can eavesdrop. But don’t sneeze. Please?”

  “Okay, hide me behind the arras.”

  Bing switched back to Father Bryce. “Father Bryce. My goodness, how long has it been?”

  “Since yesterday afternoon.”

  “You didn’t seem to know who I was in the confessional. But I guess I jogged some memories?”

  “Why did you come to church dressed in women’s clothing?”

  “Now, how did you know that? Is there some kind of camera system for spying on people inside the confessional?”

  “You also vandalized church property.”

  “The stickers? You call that vandalism? I guess it’s been a while since you were in an inner-city parish.”

  “This is intolerable and aberrant behavior. I will not allow it.”

  “Intolerable and aberrant behavior. That sort of gives us something in common, doesn’t it, Father?”

  “I will also not allow you to taunt me with accusations and innuendos under the guise of going to confession.”

  “You seem much more sure of yourself today. I guess you must have been talking to a lawyer? And he explained about the statute of limitations. My legal counsel went through all that stuff with me, too.” Bing paused a beat to let Father Mabbley appreciate his tip of the hat. Then, in an icier tone, “But I explained that I don’t care about winning a legal case. My interest is just in exposing the Church’s hypocrisy. And there’d also be the excitement of being in the media limelight. I’d probably be on TV. Who knows, the story might go all the way to Geraldo, or Sally Jessy Raphaël. It’s a hot topic these days. And to be perfectly honest, I would get off on a little limelight. You do, don’t you? Whenever I see you on TV, like when you were at the unveiling of that tacky Tomb of the Unknown Fetus, you seem to revel in it. Your voice goes down about an octave. Your brow furrows. It’s just like when we said Mass together. I remember it so well. You would say, ‘Introibo ad altare Dei,’ I will go unto the altar of God. And I’d reply, ‘Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,’ To God, who gives joy to my youth. And I would smile to myself at the idea of what they would have thought out there in the audience if they’d known it wasn’t just God who gave joy to juventutem meam. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure you do. You studied Latin at the seminary. And a little Greek?”

  “You disgusting little faggot.”

  “Oh, Father Bryce, you do know how to get a boy excited. You might even say that that has been your tragic flaw.”

  There was a silence, and the silence lengthened. Bing had worked as a dealer at various Vegas casinos, and he knew that when you’re playing poker against a desperate and inept player, the best strategy is to stand pat and wait for the person to do something stupid. He didn’t have to wait that long.

  “Are you after money?” Father Bryce asked. “Is that what it is? Because if you are, I can’t help you.”

  “Father Pat, are you suggesting that I have been trying to blackmail you? Have I said one thing to make you think that? Have I mentioned money? When I came to confession, did I speak of anything but the sin we committed?”

  “Bing, if there was any sin, it was long since forgiven.”

  “By the confessions I went to right after we’d had sex? Do you really suppose those were valid sacraments? I can’t believe that. In fact, it’s a wonder I can believe anything at all, that I didn’t lose my faith then and there. That’s what usually happens, and it happens a lot. When I first shared my experience with friends, in a consciousness-raising situation, I was just astonished at how many other gays had had the same thing happen to them. If it wasn’t their parish priests, then it was a brother at the high school they went to. The drama coach, nine times out of ten. Especially if it was an all-male school where the younger boys did women’s roles in drag. I guess that hasn’t changed since Shakespeare’s day. There was even a standard pattern for the way we had sex—very gentle, very quick, with the lights off, then sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened. But always the open invitation to come back soon. Until we got too tall, or too hairy, or too clingy, or someone cuter came along, and then God would revise his opinion of the gravity of the sin we’d been committing and issue a call for repentance. In other words, we got our pink slips. Does the pattern sound familiar?”

  Another silence. Bing didn’t think the man was about to fess up at this juncture, so he went on:

  “I’ll tell you what I do want. I want the Church to treat me like a human being. Not like a pariah. You know, a while ago I used to run the Las Vegas night at Our Lady of Mercy. On the nights I ran the bingo operation and called the numbers, the church brought in nearly half again as much money. But somebody—I will never know who—complained to Father Youngerman that I was queer. And I got canned. No discussion. They’d never tell me who complained. And it wasn’t as though I’d been trying to conceal who I am. You’re queer, that’s it, good-bye. How do you suppose that made me feel? I’ll tell you: bitter.”

  Father Bryce had gathered enough composure to be able to say, “I’m sorry. It’s not a perfect world. It’s not a perfect Church.”

  “So we must ask ourselves, mustn’t we, how could I help to make it a better world and a better Church? And I’ll offer a suggestion. St. Bernardine’s could institute its own Las Vegas night. And I could be your bingo caller. There’d be a certain poetic justice in that, don’t you think?”

  No reply. This time Bing did wait him out.

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be feasible,” Father Bryce said, audibly walking on eggs. “St. Bernardine’s has never had bingo nights. A lot of the parishioners would be strongly opposed.”

  “They’re too upscale for bingo? Well, chemin de fer is okay with me, if they’d prefer that.”

  “I’m sorry, I have to hang up. This has become an impossible conversation. I can’t say anything without your twisting it into something ludicrous. I shouldn’t have phoned at all.”

  “Oh no, Father, it’s a good thing that you did. It shows you have some sort of conscience. A guilty conscience, needless to say, but that’s better than none at all. If you hadn’t called me, I would surely have gotten in touch again. I’m not letting you off the hook. Which is a very Christian idea, isn’t it—being on the hook? The apostles were supposed to be fishers of men. Have you noticed how often Christ spoke of the soul as basically a source of protein? We’re all just lost sheep or fish to be caught or wheat to be harvested and threshed. Christ must have been hungry a lot of the time, don’t you suppose?” Bing paused, not for a reply, but to give Father Mabbley a moment to appreciate his little homage, for what he’d said about the soul as food was a direct plagiarism from one of Father Mabbley’s sermons on the Sunday he had to pass the basket for famine relief.

  “Seriously, Father,” Bing went on. “You asked if I wanted money. No, that’s not what I had in mind at all. I just want to be able to help you d
o what has to be done. And I’m glad you felt the need to call me. The first step is the hardest. Your getting in touch with me shows that you understand you can’t do this all by yourself. You have to surrender, to ask for help, and for a priest that must be so hard. There’s another Latin saying, which I can’t quote in Latin, but the gist of it is, ‘Who’ll put the custodians into custody?’ That’s your problem, isn’t it? And I’m the answer. I can show you the things you have to do to atone for what you’ve done.

  “First off, you’ve got to make a list (if you don’t have one already) of all your conquests. I’m sure there were lots before me, and I know many came after, because for a while I was a monster of jealousy, and I would come to your early weekday masses at OLM to see how you were relating with whoever was serving Mass for you that day. And I could always tell if you had your eye on him, and if you’d got to first base, and whether he was confused about it or gaga, like I’d been. It must be quite a list by now. Then, when the list is done, you can track down each person on it and arrange a tête-à-tête-à-tête for the three of us, so you can make amends. You may feel awkward at first, but I’ll be there and able to help you through it. You’ll be amazed, once you begin really to deal with all the ghosts in your past, how much better you will feel. Truly, this will be an emotional and spiritual adventure for you. And for me, too.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Father Bryce, trying to maintain a neutral tone.

  “It is a challenging idea, isn’t it? And not without some risks. Who knows how each of the people you’ll contact will react? Some may have very strong feelings toward you still, as I do. Yet there’s no other way to reestablish a sense of honesty and fair dealing in your life than by squaring away those old accounts. Then, with the strength you’ve gained from that process, you can begin to use your position in the Church in a positive way. Instead of seducing teenage boys and preaching hatred toward gays, you can direct the homosexual component of your character toward affirmative, life-enhancing goals. Such as? you must be asking yourself. Such as opening a chapter of Dignity at St. Bernardine’s, somewhere gay Catholics can get together and feel they have a place in the Church. And if Bishop Massey tries to put a stop to it, I’ll bet we could find one or two young men who could help persuade the Bishop toward a more charitable attitude, in the same way I’m persuading you.”

  “This is blackmail,” said Father Bryce, “pure and simple.”

  “Well, it may be emotional blackmail, but I don’t think there’s a law against that. The Church does it all the time, doesn’t it? Standing outside abortion clinics and screaming at women that they’re killing their babies. Sometimes it takes drastic measures to awaken the sleeping conscience.”

  “Clay got you to do this, didn’t he?”

  “Clay?” Bing asked.

  “I knew he’d try something else. I knew he wouldn’t be content to torture me just one day a week.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know the Clay you’re talking about. He sounds like my kind of guy, though. Maybe you can arrange for us to meet.”

  “This is unbearable. I can’t go on like this. Tell him that. Good-bye.”

  Father Bryce hung up.

  “Well,” said Bing. Then he explained to Father Mabbley: “He hung up.”

  “I gathered that, but I didn’t want to come out from behind the arras until you’d sounded an all-clear. What was that last thing about ‘Clay’?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds like I may not be the only person he’s having a problem with.”

  “Candidly, Bing, the guy sounds a bit flaky. I was happy to see you were able to resist his virtual invitation to blackmail him. And the way you did eventually put the screws on him would have delighted any Grand Inquisitor. But I don’t think you should push him any further.”

  “What can he do—murder me?”

  “Well, he could, couldn’t he?”

  “Or hire a hit man, though I don’t know if they have hit men in Minneapolis.”

  “It sounds, Bing, like Minneapolis has a good supply of all the latest vices. I’d be careful.”

  “I will be extremely careful. If I see any hit men, I will immediately cross to the other side of the street. Now, you still haven’t told me what happened in your dream. They were just about to burn you at the stake.”

  Father Mabbley finished his dream, but his heart was no longer in it, and when it came time at last to ring off, he repeated what he’d said earlier, “Be careful, Bing.” But he might as well have offered his advice to a roulette wheel or a slot machine. The machinery was already in motion, and the laws of physics were in charge of the result.

  14

  “There may be photographers there from the newspapers,” her escort explained as they waited for the traffic light to change, “but they’re not there to photograph you. They have a commitment to respect your privacy. They’re there to shoot the protesters. And I’ll tell you, sometimes I’d like to shoot the protesters myself.”

  Alison knew it would be polite to laugh at the woman’s joke, or to say something bright and sarcastic herself, but she just didn’t have it in her. If someone had asked her what her name was, she’d have had to think.

  If she’d said what she was actually thinking, she would have asked the woman, whose name was Ms. Stern, to please stop talking every minute. She regretted now having agreed to have an escort bring her to the abortion clinic. She could have taken the Lake Street bus by herself and avoided all of Ms. Stern’s worries and opinions, such as whether the protesters would be spraying people with red paint symbolic of blood as they’d done in the past, in which case Alison should have worn something easily washable, like the blue jeans Ms. Stern was wearing. She also made several rude remarks about President Bush. Not that Alison cared anything at all about the President. She’d never been able to get interested in events on news programs, and she’d hated it in civics class when she had to come up with her own opinion about some controversy or other. We should not be exporting U.S. jobs to Mexico: Discuss. Mr. Bard had made her look like such a fool during that discussion, asking her if she didn’t think this, and then if she didn’t think that, and then pointing out that she couldn’t think both things, because you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too.

  And here she was on her way to becoming part of the news. Having to wear a scarf, on a hot summer day, so she wouldn’t be recognized in case they did, after all, show her on TV.

  “Nervous?” Ms. Stern asked.

  Alison shook her head. “No. I just wish it were over.”

  Ms. Stern patted her thigh and said, “That’s the spirit,” and then they were turning left on Cedar, and there were the protesters, a great crowd of them with posters mounted on sticks, and every one of the slogans was familiar to Alison. There were even faces she recognized from when she’d been recruited to come here on weekends last summer. Till this moment it hadn’t occurred to her that there might be people among the protesters who knew her. People she’d had coffee with at The Embers. She wanted to tell Ms. Stern to drive on past, she wanted to rethink things, but it was too late. Ms. Stern rolled to a halt at the entrance to the clinic’s driveway and waited for two policemen to push back the protesters who’d stepped forward to try to keep the car from entering the parking lot. They were chanting, “Let your child live! Let your child live!” A girl who seemed no more than twelve managed to slip past the policemen and throw herself across the hood of Ms. Stern’s Toyota on Alison’s side.

  Ms. Stern honked vigorously, and the girl screamed, “Stop the murders! Stop the murders!” Her face was just on the other side of the windshield from Alison. She could see the tears in the girl’s blue eyes.

  A photographer came around to the driver’s side of the Toyota and began snapping pictures of the police as they lifted the girl from the hood of the car. The girl struggled until one policeman put handcuffs on her, and then she smiled a smile of beatific martyrdom, holding her cuffed hands above her head like a boxer proclaiming his vict
ory.

  When the driveway had been cleared, Ms. Stern drove into the parking lot and took a space between a van and a police patrol car. “I hope that little bitch didn’t dent my hood,” she grumbled as she removed the keys from the ignition and tucked them into the pocket of her Levis.

  At just that moment, Alison had been thinking: That could have been me. Throwing herself on the hood of the car. Screaming. Tears in her eyes. And being called a little bitch by Ms. Stern.

  Probably Ms. Stern felt the same way about Alison, though she wouldn’t have said it out loud. The little bitch couldn’t keep her pants on. The little bitch doesn’t have enough sense to take the pill.

  “Well, how about it?” Ms. Stern asked, already out of the car and bending down to peer at Alison.

  “Right,” said Alison, reaching for the door handle. “Let’s get it over with.”

  All she had to do was get from here to the door of the clinic, and after that it would all be out of her hands. She’d be like a car going through a car wash. It was just a matter of walking past the protesters, keeping her head down, and not listening to what they were screaming at her.

  But then, just as she took the hand Ms. Stern held out to her, one of the protesters recognized her and called her name aloud: “Alison! Alison, don’t go inside! Don’t kill your baby!”

  The other protesters took it up at once: “Alison, don’t go inside! Alison, don’t go inside!”

  As she passed by them, she tried to keep her eyes on the cement slabs of the sidewalk, only looking, as Ms. Stern had advised, at the next step she must take. But then a voice deeper than the others pronounced her name, and even before she looked up, from seeing the hem of his cassock swaying over his black shoes, she knew who it was.

  The priest raised his right hand, and the protesters fell silent.

  “Alison,” said Father Cogling earnestly. “My dear child. Can’t we talk together for just a moment before it’s too late?”