by Layla Wolfe
And now discovering the good Father was gay, well . . . I have to admit, my thoughts had turned in that direction. The first night in my single-wide trailer, lying atop the flimsy double pull-out mattress, I’d fucking greased my dick nice and slick with some lube I always conveniently carried. But now I had to fantasize I was the sub—the submissive in the BDSM power play, or so I’d read on the net—and I was kneeling between Noel’s cassock-clad thighs. I was the one slowly peeling the garment from his jacked torso. I actually never got too far in my dreams. By the time I made it to the part where I took his heavy, juicy prick into my palm, I’d always shoot. One time I even hit the floor fan operating at the foot of the bed. I kid you fucking not, my jizz splashed back on me. On my feet and shins, but still. I was baptized in my own fluids. It was some kind of omen that homosexuality was the right way for me to turn.
“Your palsy. You have tremors and bad balance.”
Twinkletoes waved the hand that wasn’t holding the sampling pump. “Ah, that’s nothing. Really. Nothing really.”
I walked through another decrepit, crumbling doorway. The house had been roofless for decades, the earthen bark roof having blown away during the Cold War. Once in a while I’d find something sad and pathetic on the ground, like a wooden kachina doll eaten by worms and age, or a broken piece of handmade pottery. Items that now sold for top dollar to tourists had been left behind in the great mining bust after the war. “Multiple sclerosis?”
Twinkletoes looked up at me. His watery eyes flickered with recognition. “Yeah, maybe. That’s what they said ten years ago, anyway. No big deal. People live forever with MS. We have the same life expectancy.”
“Yeah. Must be rough, though.”
He shrugged his bony shoulders. His T-shirt and leather cut hung like heavy flags on his frame. “I get help. The club protects me.”
I thought you were supposed to protect the club, I wanted to say. It was nice that they protected him. But was I supposed to protect him now? Ozzie didn’t even know I had an assistant. I wasn’t paying Twinkletoes. The club was doing it out of the kindness of their hearts
Heavy, creamy gunmetal grey clouds were racing to cover the sun.
Twinkletoes nodded at the sky. “It might hit us before we reach the car.”
I nodded too, returning to the front room to pack away my radiation scanner. This would be the first in a series of storms that looked heavy duty on the radar, all sweeping across New Mexico and Arizona from the Gulf. They might wipe out Corpus Christi, peter out, and regain strength by the time they hit us. Flash floods thundering down gullies were common in the Sonoran Desert. I had parked the car on a slight rise just in case, out of habit.
Still, we wound up running the last few hundred yards to the car. It was exhilarating, man against nature. I felt like Indiana Jones racing against the giant boulder as I leaped over tiny, water-starved prickly pear and the compact rosettes of pincushion cacti. I didn’t run all-out like I had in high school football, though. I didn’t want to make Twinkletoes feel bad, and he had heavier equipment bouncing on straps from his shoulders. Still, he grinned at me, and I could tell he was having a good time, too. We made it to the rental car just as the first plump drops splattered the windshield. Tossing our bags into the back seat, we flung ourselves into the car and slammed the door, panting and laughing.
“We won that race,” said Twinkletoes.
“Barely. They come on fast here in the southwest. I tried to outrun a giant sandstorm in Niger once. Not only can you not run too fast on sand—it’s like those dreams where you’re running balls-out but not getting anywhere—but the clouds seem to take on evil shapes, like in the Mummy movies. I was pretty sure a giant genie hand was coming to pluck me out of the desert.”
“Did you make it?”
“I made it to the tent, but it was rolling away like a tumbleweed. So we had another thing to make a run for.”
“Wow,” said Twinkletoes as I pulled onto the road and a sheet of water. The clouds seemed so low it was like a battleship grey space station hovered over us, about to suck us up into their interrogation chamber. “You must’ve had so many dramatic adventures.”
“Speaking of dramatic adventures! You’re a member of an outlaw biker gang.”
“Club,” Twinkletoes corrected. A drop of rainwater perched on the tip of his nose. “But you’re right. We probably deal with more dead bodies than you. Only yours are mummified.”
“Hey. I’m not an anthropologist. Although once in Libya I did find a mummy.”
It was plain by now that Noel’s truck was parked outside my trailer. Things became uncomfortably quiet in the rental car, for reasons I couldn’t fathom. Twinkletoes had slept a few nights on my couch, but could he have known I pleasured myself to fantasies of the naughty priest? I knew Noel kept his homosexuality a secret because he’d told me so. Was he like me, skulking around seedy nightclubs that offered filthy glory holes and booths in the back lined with used Kleenex? I had never dared to go in. My fake cop in my bedroom, well, I’d found him on Grindr. He’d been dressed as a cop in his profile photo, although you could tell the badge was fake, and no real cop would wear a harness like that.
So why did Twinkletoes suddenly start coughing, clearing his throat, saying he would take his bike over to the Bloodgood’s house?
It was fine by me. I barely noticed him going inside to get his helmet. I was too busy locking glittering, dazzling eyes with the good father.
Was it my imagination that Noel reserved his deepest, most pained and overflowing expression for me? I knew he’d bet a lot on me. A failure on my part meant a failure on his part, too. He’d bet the fucking farm on me, and I didn’t see how I could fulfill his wishes. No one knew how huge of a hate-filled tyrant Oswald Avery was. The extent of his vengeance knew no bounds. Kelly had told me that a biologist had once told Ozzie it was impossible to clone the particular cows he wanted. Ozzie circulated Twitter rumors that the woman had told another lesbian that she wanted to be her tampon.
That was Charles and Camilla over in England, but no one seemed to care who had really said it. Jokes abounded in the Twittersphere and the woman was actually laughed out of town.
“Emergency?” I asked Noel.
God, I loved that serene all-knowing smile. “Not unless you count a spiritual emergency. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” He gestured at the front door. “I’ve never seen your trailer.”
“Oh!” What was I thinking? I’d never invited the pastor of the parish into my lavish new trailer home.
We went inside just as Twinkletoes barged on out. I waved at the brand-new couch, offering it to Noel, as I took approximately three steps into the kitchenette. “Beer?”
“No thank you.”
I froze with my hand on the fridge door. “Drinking isn’t allowed for priests, but being gay is?” I didn’t want to drink if he wasn’t going to.
Noel stabbed his fingers through his long salt and pepper hair. “Oh, drinking is perfectly all right for priests. In moderation, of course. I just choose not to tempt Indians around here, if you know what I mean. Plus, a man with my background in self-abuse shouldn’t drink.”
I handed him a bottle of water. I could have sat in the upholstered chair, but I sat next to him on the couch. We turned toward each other. The atmosphere was cozy and homey, to be honest. The rain battered the trailer’s metal sides and roof, enveloping us in a cocoon of safety. “Self-abuse? Sounds like fun,” I joked, lamely.
Noel turned serious. “It wasn’t. Dublin Northside of the Liffey River was rough, and I was up to the task. I was a regular old equalizer who battered other boys. When we moved to New York, to Bed-Stuy when I was ten, my father hoped for a fresh start for me. But I just kept on. People thought I was clean on handsome, so I fell in with the worst crowds who continually stoked my ego.”
I was shocked he was being forthright with me. “That’s a long stretch to becoming an ordained priest.”
Noel leaned forward, f
orearms on his knees. “It seemed so at the time, but when you really think about it . . . “ His mouth twisted when he said, “I was selling meth, selling my body to the highest bidder. Breaking into stores and houses and fencing the stolen property. A good life as far as income went. I had a . . . an insight when I was about twenty-five. I woke up, or I should say I came to, in a Dumpster. I was surrounded by bags full of used needles. I flailed about in the waste bin, but I was too doped up to clamber out. I realized the needles came from an AIDS patient and I was in danger of being stuck by them.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“I guess I finally got out, I don’t know. I went straight to my sister, who had tried to do interventions on me before. This time it was I who asked for help. That makes all the difference.”
“You have to want it.”
“Right. If it’s pushed on you, it’s no good. I got clean, and actually wound up being a counselor in the rehab joint. That’s when I realized I could do more good doling out advice because I’ve been there. That’s why I choose to work with the downtrodden, the marginalized, the forgotten, like these Indians.”
“That’s amazing. You make me feel like a useless moron.”
“Don’t feel like that. I was still running from things. I was ordained Catholic because I thought it’d help me avoid who I was. I figured being a Roman, I could be a righteous know-it-all giving lock-hard advice to the teeming masses. I would forget I was gay, kind of like the reorientation of electroshock therapy of the ‘50s. Believe me, ordination into the church is one giant LSD brainwashing.”
I was incredibly aroused by this story. Honestly, I wanted to know more about his youthful prostitution. “But you didn’t forget you were gay.”
Noel chuckled and sat upright. “Absolutely not. It really doesn’t work that way, does it?”
“I should say not. Like grandma’s nightshirt. It covers everything.”
“Indeed. For a while I thought my pain meant there was no God. Or maybe a twisted one, because He allowed the Holocaust to happen.”
“Yes. I’ve been torturing myself lately with just that theme. Not that my agonizing over being straight or gay compares. But you know the torment of the human condition.”
“I was mulling over hurricanes, firestorms, earthquakes. It seemed like Armageddon was here, climate change created by man. I was giving people slick comfort, and I felt it was worse than saying nothing. Here were people truly suffering the rigors of the damned, and I was placating them with verse.”
“But that’s what a priest does.”
Noel set his mouth thinly. “Not this priest. My anguish was equal to the people who had been through tragedies of the most unimaginable sort. I had lost dozens of friends to addiction and violence, and I came that close to being a victim of my own weakness too. Telling myself that suffering is cleansing didn’t help. It’s far more difficult to revolt from the immediate pleasure of drugs or sex than from the ugliness of death or natural disaster.”
“You were strong. You beat it. You were selling your body, but there must’ve been some pleasure in it.” I thought I was being sly, steering him back to talking about his destructive youth.
I don’t think he fell for it. He allowed himself to be steered. Leaning back into the couch cushions, he ran one long arm along the back, his fingers close to my bicep. I leaned back too. “Of course. A man’s penis doesn’t ejaculate without the pleasure stimulus. Men have that ability to divorce their brain, their moralities, from their bodies. Have you noticed that?”
“I should fucking say so. Why else would I have let Sheriff Leroy blow me?”
Damn, he was one delectable hunk of man when he laughed. “Of course. I forgot about that for a minute. It’s the same thing, then.” But he had to look away when he ventured deeper into his past memories. An overcast glaze came upon his face. “I had men far seedier than Sheriff Leroy blowing me. As long as they could come up with the three hundred bucks.”
“Wait. Three hundred? Wow. And I gave it away for free.”
He still didn’t look at me. “They could suck my penis all they liked. You have to understand, I had businessmen, married men, men in suits, not guys in alleyways. I’d go to their homes when their wives were away.”
Like my Village People cop . . .
“Just to be sucked,” I marveled. How deft I was, leading him into a lewd confession! Little did I know, Noel Moloney was always in charge. He knew where I was guiding him. And he probably knew it was making my own penis stiff. I shifted uncomfortably, wishing like hell I could adjust my lengthening cock.
He chuckled morosely. “Well . . . it’s amazing how many bicurious men want to get fucked, too. I started believing there was a war going on in heaven, it was so chaotic.”
“So, you were . . . the top?”
He finally looked at me. His eyes brimmed with emotion. “I was a fantastic Dom, if you want to know.”
“I do want to know.” I moved my arm an inch, so his fingertips would graze it if he moved.
He shrugged dismissively. The brushing of his fingers swelled my cock by about an inch. “They wanted to get fucked like women. They wanted to be slapped, and beaten, and told what motherfucking losers they were because they wanted to get fucked up the ass.” His mouth twisted at his bittersweet memories.
“Did you become involved with anyone just for . . . for the fun of it? Because it stoked your heart? Someone who didn’t wear a suit?” I was a hopeful failure, I had to give myself that. I’d been sucked off by a pockmarked sheriff, and now I was lusting after a god damned priest. Had the lonely desert turned me into a submissive, desperate man who’d cling to a one percent chance of success? Meanwhile the rain slammed against my trailer’s siding, rushing in gullies toward the dry river bed a hundred yards away. The deafening noise would have obliterated any sounds of lustful humping inside. Just knowing that, I squirted a few drops of precum. I knew it would leave a round stain on my jeans. I didn’t care. My heart raced, my pectorals were pumped, and my balls were fuller than a butcher’s dog.
Again, he shrugged. “I suppose so. But it didn’t happen until after I was ordained.” His voice dropped in register, as though he recited a fairy tale about a land far, far away. “I fell in love with another priest. He was an exorcist from Spain. Came to New York to help this boy who was dying from lack of food or water, just chained to his bed. But that’s another story. I asked to be transferred before things could spiral out of control. I kept transferring to parishes farther and farther afield, even after becoming Episcopalian. That’s how I wound up in Standing Rock.”
“Helping Indians.”
He didn’t answer right away. “I suppose you could say that . . . “ Sighing deeply, he turned to me and smiled. “Have you ever been in love? With another man, I mean.”
“Oh God, no.” I realized my protest might have sounded a bit defensive. “I mean, I never had much of a chance. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I met the right man.”
It was then that it struck me. I already had met the right man. Father Noel Moloney was the man for me. With just the right authoritarian streak, just a hint of dominance, and the perfect bitter snarl. I respected the hell out of the fact that he counseled all these Native Americans, some bikers, a few farmers. My upbringing hadn’t been nearly as seedy as his, and I wanted some of that to rub off on me. I wanted to delve into the depth of some depravities. I wanted to be slapped, and smacked around, just like the business suited men of his youth. I wanted a man to lead me by a leash or whatever the hell it was Doms did.
And I wanted that man to be wearing a clerical collar.
All in a rush, Noel took my hand between both of his. He placed our hands on his knees and scooted a little closer to me. His look was sincere, pleading. “You’ve got what it takes, Fremont. You can do this. Don’t be shy. Freedom is the freedom to make mistakes. And that means risks, the risks of being hurt, of loss.”
I encircled his beautiful, tapered thumb in my palm. I w
atched my hand squeeze him musingly. Just squeezing him was causing my cock to jerk reflexively. “Can I do it without any pain or loss? I’ve long been unable to reconcile a God who would allow all this pain and suffering to take place. I mean, it’s not God I don’t accept, only I respectfully must return him his ticket to paradise.”
“I’m afraid not. That’s the worst part of my job. Standing still in the face of another’s suffering is the greatest of all suffering. But maybe raging against God isn’t the sin it’s made out to be.”
I had never felt closer to Noel. “Oh, so I can rant and rave, then? You’ll tell me that’s okay?”
“I most certainly will.”
This was the part in a romcom where the guy would kiss the girl. We were already sitting close by, already holding hands awkwardly, and our thighs were practically touching. It was like we were making love to each other with our eyes. Could Noel fake that? He probably could. He had to give everyone a benign, loving expression at almost every phase of his Sunday services. This was probably his go-to expression. He had a skill for making it feel that he only wore it for me.
But then, between the waves of water crashing against the metal siding, a motorcycle roar. I squeezed Noel’s thumb tighter, like a dick I aimed to milk. Quickly I said, “Maybe God isn’t so fragile that He would get mad at our anger at the world’s injuries. Maybe our pain is already His.”
Noel covered my fist with his other palm and shook them all heartily. It was like we were drowning, grasping at each other for life. “Most certainly, Fremont. Through our tears, we see the tears of God.”
