by Mia Kerick
Inclination
Mia
Kerick
Inclination
Copyright © 2015 Mia Kerick
Cover design by CoolDudes Publishing
Cover design Creative commons license images royalty free
Published by CoolDudes Publishing
In association with
All Romance E-books
64 Windsor Street, Gerdview, Germiston, Gauteng
South Africa, 1401
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All characters are a figment of the author’s imagination.
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Edition 1
ISBN
(13) 978-0-620-64556-0
Dedication
To
Michael Bowler
for showing me
what it means to
be a true Christian by
living as one
Now
Adding Injury To Insult
Having gained a measure of steadiness when I realized that all I wanted in the whole entire world was to get as far away from St. Mark’s Church as humanly possible, I race toward my car. But before I climb inside, I collapse against the icy metal of the car door in an effort to catch my breath—because at the moment, I’m nothing but a panting, wheezing mess. On the bright side, the relief I feel at being out from beneath the spotlight of my youth group’s collective, not to mention accusing, stare is so powerful it’s almost surreal, and it’s definitely one of those things I’ll have messed-up dreams about for weeks to come. But the distinctive sound of pounding footsteps on frozen pavement coming from the corner of the parking lot suggests I’ve let my guard down too soon. I don’t even turn around, though. I know it’s just my friend Laz, who’s come up to the parking lot to again offer me a ride home. I mean, after what just went down in the church we both know I’m too freaked out to drive.
“Got somethin’ to tell you, Del Vecchio!” The angry voice doesn’t belong to Laz, I realize, as an image of the Incredible Hulk forms in my mind. It’s the enraged bellow of the guy who I’ve long thought of as the gentle giant, Rinaldo Vera. And he’s issuing his heated demands before he’s even reached my side. “Shit man, you gotta swear to me right now that you ain’t gonna be one of them faggots!” The guy is basically ranting.
I turn around slowly to see Rinaldo stalking toward me, and it hits me that before today, I’ve never heard him raise his voice. Today, it seems, is a day for firsts. Rinaldo has always been such a quiet sort—a couple of notches higher on the stoic scale than me, even. Without giving it much thought, which is totally uncharacteristic of my usual overly cautious self, I blurt, “I can’t help what I am, Vera. I can’t change it, either—God knows I’ve tried.” I’m totally off my game.
“No! Not gonna listen to that bullshit from outta you! I’ll make your ass change if I gotta—an’ you’ll thank me for it someday!” That’s when the pain starts. The first punch to the right side of my nose spins me halfway around so that I’m backed up against my car. Even when my body stops reeling from the blow, my stunned brain continues to whirl. And since Rinaldo’s a decent-sized guy, I don’t think the spinning-Anthony-around-like-a-top move took too much effort at all. Like I expected, punch number one is followed by another more frenzied swing that connects Rinaldo’s knuckles with the outer corner of my lower lip. My hands are too slow to block the punch, and I instinctively close my eyes, but not before I catch a glimpse of Rinaldo’s rage-twisted features.
After the second blow I sway like a dizzy toddler, but even with the painful throbbing in my head, I somehow manage to stay on my feet.
Quiet, sweet, sensitive Rinaldo Vera….
I’m seriously dazed, now, and all I can see in front of me is a blurry vision of the boy I’ve known for so long. The boy I’ve liked…and trusted.
But it’s not that gentle version of Rinaldo who yells directly into my face, “Come on, fight back, asswipe—be a fuckin’ man!” His deep voice is thick with passion—out of control even. From between his two front teeth, a glob of spit spews onto my forehead as he barks his agitated command.
I wipe the wet spot above my right eyebrow with the back of my hand, as I whimper, “Stop it, ‘Naldo…stop it….” My voice sounds high-pitched and whiny, even to my own ears. And for some messed-up reason I use my nickname for Rinaldo from when we were kids. It just pops out as I plead.
“Fags like you wrecked my family—you assholes don’t deserve to walk the face of God’s fuckin’ green earth!” With an enraged grimace I won’t soon forget, he reaches forward and shoves me to the ground—the pavement greets first my backside, and then the back of my head, with a couple of excruciating thuds. Before I adjust to this fresh source of pain, though, he kicks me—just once on my side—but he kicks hard. I struggle not to yelp like a mistreated puppy, but maybe I still do, it’s hard to say under the circumstances. “I hope you die, Del Vecchio, and you burn in hell with my old man and his so-called husband!”
And then, poof! Rinaldo Vera’s gone.
And I’m left with only the pain and the shock and the frigid night air.
I waste no time lying there. “Get up, Anthony.” I speak out loud into the darkness, albeit weakly. One thing I still have enough sense to recognize is that the rest of the youth group can’t find me here, like this. They’ll all shake their heads, purse their lips, and say that I got what was coming to me for being gay… an abomination. A person whose very nature is in opposition to God’s natural plan for humanity. With a soft grunt, I drag myself up off the pavement and unlock the car door, lower myself into the driver’s seat, and soon, I’m pulling erratically out of the parking lot. “Not gonna let them see me… they can’t know ‘bout this.” The car jumps forward when I first step on the gas, and jolts back when I stomp on the breaks, but I somehow find my rhythm and keep going. It hits me that I shouldn’t be driving in this condition but I can see no other alternative. So I continue to murmur senseless phrases in an effort to calm myself as I drive. “You got this, Anthony… everything’s okay….”
I’m not at all sure how I do it, but I manage to drive a couple of streets away from the church, and then I pull off to the side of the road, fully convinced that I now understand the meaning of “side-splitting agony.” With a trembling hand, I reach up and touch my mouth—my fingers return to my lap covered in blood. My right eye is swelling up more as each second passes, and soon I won’t be able to see well enough to drive home, but I don’t care.
I’m not ready to go anywhere and…
I need to think and…
I have to sort this whole thing out.
It’s dark and freezing cold in my car…and in my life.
I’m not one for drama, but still I have several rather burning questions in my mind.
Oh God, what did I do to deserve this? How did I end up this way?
Two Months Earlier
“Tendency Toward An Intrinsic Moral Evil”
I crack open my well-used laptop, and, with a degree of wariness, speak the words as I type them. “Roman Catholic policy on homosexuality.”
This should be depressing.
But I have a strategy in place to prepare me for what I’m going to see on the computer screen: before I so much as glance at the results of my search, I take a quick look around my tiny basement bedroom to fortify me—and my plan works, because I can’t not smile. Not a grin, just a smile—one of
those small smiles that means a whole lot because I’m all alone in my bedroom, smiling at a freaking wall.
And how I ended up sleeping down here is kind of a drawn-out story. I guess all that really matters is at the story’s conclusion, Anthony Duck-Young Del Vecchio’s bedroom is set up downstairs in a tiny storage room that Dad has lovingly converted into the family’s single boy bedroom, so that my four little sisters can share the two upstairs kids’ bedrooms. My smile comes from seeing the kite-flying theme I’d so painstakingly chosen to paint on my bedroom walls when I was in seventh grade and had to make the big move downstairs. But moving down here had been all right with me then, and it still is okay now. A teenage guy needs distance from four little girls. And truthfully, I still kind of like the way my walls look like cloudy blue skies, spotted with bright-colored kites soaring in the breeze. Sappy, but true.
Before the first smile has even dropped off my lips, I grin again, remembering the day Mom and I had covered all of my child-sized furniture—all that would fit into my postage-stamp bedroom—with sheets, broken out the paint and brushes, and created what would, from that day on, be my place. In fact, it’s the only place I can escape the terminally cheerful chatter and intermittent bickering of my four little sisters and my rather outgoing—cancel that (the SAT is right around the corner and I need to think in terms of vocabulary in the Critical Reading section)—my ebullient parents. Hehehe….
I shift around in my tiny chair and then choose a link: www.americancatholic.org.
“In Catholic belief, "marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman, joined as husband and wife in an intimate partnership of life and love….” I read it aloud and then blow out a weary gush of breath, as this is pretty much what I’d expected. I decide to try another site. This time I choose www.catholic.com.
Again, I speak the words. “Homosexual desires, however, are not in themselves sinful. People are subject to a wide variety of sinful desires over which they have little direct control, but these do not become sinful until a person acts upon them, either by acting out the desire or by encouraging the desire and deliberately engaging in fantasies about acting it out.”
Great—I can be gay but I can’t act on it. Or even imagine acting on it.
That doesn’t bode well for my future…um… satisfaction.
Maybe it’s time I try a source of information that’s geared toward teenagers. How much worse can the news be? I select http://christianteens.about.com.
I clear my throat and read. “Despite his call for compassion, he (Pope Benedict) has not stepped down from his stance that homosexuality is a moral evil. He stated that the inclination toward homosexuality is not necessarily a sin, it can be considered a ‘tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.’”
Apparently, the news could be so much worse.
I shudder, and then, being the analytical type, I summarize.
If I act on my sexual inclination, which is actually a disorder, I will be acting immorally as a Catholic. I will be a sinner.
I’ve heard of cold sweats overtaking people’s bodies, but this is the first time one has overtaken mine. My forehead prickles with heat as it simultaneously drips with cold perspiration. I am a literal human paradox. I turn around in my child-sized chair and grab yesterday’s T-shirt that’s hanging on the side of my undersized laundry basket. I yank it over my head and it sticks to my cold, but sweaty, chest.
I’ll keep searching. There has got to be more to the story than this.
Sometimes when I’m on the computer, I swear that each of my individual fingers has a tiny fingertip brain that acts without my permission. As in, each finger types by its own free will…with its own little finger-agenda. Cool, huh? Kinda creepy, too. In any case, now is one of those times—my independent digits are typing furiously as I basically sit there gawking at them. And finally, when my worn-out fingers rest peacefully on my lap, satisfied that they’ve found what they want, I hear the printer come to life beneath my desk.
"Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care." I state the name of the document that is sluggishly making its way into the world in the paper form. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak—or, from the mouths of the participants of the 2006 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who might just resent being likened to any part of a horse. But I’m not really up for continuing to decipher my own sordid fate right now. I mean, how much depressing news can a guy take in one sitting?
Yeah, I’m so very done for tonight.
There’s plenty of time for me to sort this out—it isn’t like I have a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, for that matter, or any pressing need to get the facts of my sexual life in order tonight.
I climb back onto my creaky twin bed, flop down on top of the covers because I’m way too hot to get underneath them, and I lie there both shivering and perspiring. In an attempt to quell my sudden panic, I focus on the familiar clanking and churning sounds of my printer, and I choose a comforting thought.
Aaahhh, here’s one... My best pal, Laz, always calls me Duck-Young, which is actually now my middle name. It was the name given to me at birth by the South Korean social services people who were responsible for me from the time I was born until I “came home” to my adoptive family in the Unites States.
Duck-Young. Irony seems to follow me everywhere.
In Korean, the name Duck-Young means eternal virtue—which is exactly what I’d recently started searching for within my soul, and for all practical purposes, within the confines of my church. But, jeez, seeing “intrinsic moral evil” in print is so much more real than wondering, “think it’s cool if I kiss a boy?”
Once again, I disembark (another stellar vocabulary word) from my pint-sized bed, take one step over to my miniature desk, pull out my dollhouse chair, and sit down. After grabbing my assignment notebook and a pen out of my backpack, I turn to the notes pages at the end and make a list:
Stop thinking about guys like that:
*Peter Norbert in tennis lessons
*Front guy of Neon Trees
*All leading men in movies
*Basically, any dude wearing shorts
I will stop!!!!!
Priorities:
*Obedience to God
*Getting into heaven
Please God take these unnatural feelings away from me.
Back to bed.
Try to sleep.
Exercise in futility.
Time for music.
When I was in sixth grade, Mom picked up this old hymnal for me from a church tag sale in town. I’d wager that no hymnal had ever been more leafed-through in the history of hymnals than mine. Sometimes when I find a song I like, I search for it on YouTube and if I really like the way it sounds I put it on a CD. I listen to homemade hymns CDs in bed whenever I find my head spinning with too many maddening thoughts to be able to fall asleep.
Like now.
I lean over to my bedside table and press play, knowing that one of my “comfort-music” CD’s is in the player.
Lead me gently home, Father, lead me gently home;
In life’s darkest hours, Father, when life’s troubles come,
Keep my feet from wand’ring, lest from Thee I roam,
Lest I fall upon the wayside, lead me gently home.
Mio Figlio
Breakfast at my house is always something of a zoo combined with a mob scene, with the added twist of a relay race. Mom and I work as a tag team; I make whole wheat toast and she pours juice. I smear peanut butter on Resa and Lulu’s, jelly on Frannie’s, and honey on Mary’s toast. Mom puts the cover on Lulu’s sippy cup. Resa and Frannie eat their toast while milling around the kitchen, collecting school items they’d left here and there the night before, and then shove them into the shadowy depths of their leopard-print backpacks. As Mary sticks her nose into whatever paperback book she is currently wrapped up in,
I sit down to cajole Lulu into eating her breakfast, while Mom puts together four nutritious bagged lunches. Lulu doesn’t need a bagged lunch as she stays home with Mom all day.
“Anthony, baby—you look awful. Like you didn’t sleep even a wink last night.” Mom is always very aware of little details like this. She can sense an oncoming head cold before my first sniffle. It’s a true gift.
“I had trouble falling asleep, that’s all.”
Mom steps over to the kitchen table were I’m busy pulling apart Lulu’s toast into little pieces so she can make a heart shape with them. She takes my face between her hands, and she’s not too gentle about it. “It’s not right that you can’t fall asleep, sweetie… you must have something on your mind. Tell your mother.”
I look up into the dark eyes I know so well, staring down at me from under a long mop of brownish-gray curls that haven’t yet been tamed by a hairbrush this morning, a worried frown on her lips.
Mom, I’m not myself this morning because last night at midnight I did an online search for “Roman Catholic policy on homosexuality” and my greatest fears were confirmed. It appears that your straight-A, youth group treasurer, Wedgewood High School varsity boy’s tennis team first seed, devoutly religious and always obedient South Korean/Italian American son is likely going to burn in hell for all eternity for being gay. Really, it’s nothing for you to get all worked up over—no big deal at all. But the concept of everlasting flaming (excuse the play on words) torment isn’t exactly conducive to a good night’s rest.
“I had a cup of coffee last night when I was studying…probably at about ten. Just couldn’t fall asleep with all of the caffeine in my system.” That technically isn’t a lie.
“How many times have I told you—decaf, Anthony! Drink decaf after dinnertime, yeah? Or hot cocoa…that’s a good substitute for coffee. As a matter of fact, I found a gourmet brand at TJ Maxx the other day….” She goes off one of her typical tangents, detailing what she plans to feed me, which will, in her mind, make all of my problems go away. “And we’ll have pasta and gravy for dinner…with plenty of meatballs and sausage.”
