Everything Is Wrong with Me

by Jason Mulgrew

He held the photo in his hand. Fate, he smiled, putting the picture on the bed between them. Fate. Before they were husband and wife, before they were boyfriend and girlfriend, they were destined for each other, brought into each other’s worlds by a stab wound and a parade. Fate.

  Only in Philadelphia, maybe. Only on Second Street, for certain.

  Really, can you blame my mom for falling in love with this guy?

  Chapter Three

  Intermezzo: Faith, Baptism, Prison

  What I’ve always found appealing about the Catholic Church is its, for lack of a better word, symmetry. There’s good, and there’s bad. Good is led by Jesus and the saints, bad led by the Devil and the demons. Do good all your life, you go to Heaven. Be a jerk all your life, and you’re going to Hell. It’s really not that hard to get the basic gist of it.

  There are two types of sins: venial, which covers everything from white lies to making fun of your sister (the small stuff); and mortal, which ranges from missing church to murder (the “big” stuff). There are two books of the Bible: the Old Testament, all the stuff before Jesus; and the New Testament, which details Jesus’ life. For every point, there’s a counter, which is helpful when you’re required to memorize all this stuff in school.

  If we enlist the help of our second hand, we can count the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride. These were my favorite. Seven was my favorite number, since I was born on the seventeenth day of the seventh month in the year nineteen hundred and seventy-nine. Not only that, “deadly” was right there in the title; if you want to talk about deadly anything—snakes, sins, whatever—well, I want to listen. And lastly, there’s your road map to Heaven right there: don’t get boners, overeat, hoard money, be lazy, get mad, feel jealous, or be boastful and you’re pretty much punching your ticket through those pearly gates.

  And if you need help against these seven deadly sins, there are seven sacraments.

  Baptism

  You, as a newborn, get your forehead drenched with holy water. This is also called a “christening.” It is supposed to symbolize purification or being born into Christ or something like that.

  Then just like that, you’re in—you are on your way to becoming a productive member of the Catholic Church. Never mind that you really don’t have a choice in the matter, because, you know, you’re a baby and all, and not exactly prepared to ponder the nature and example of Christ, preoccupied as you are with shitting yourself, crying, and boobies. * That’s why you have godparents, who are supposed to make sure that you become a good Catholic throughout your life. I’ve seen my godmother and godfather possibly six times in my life. So maybe that’s why I stink at being Catholic now and only use my Catholicism as an excuse to not use birth control (“Stella or Sheila or Rob or whatever, I can’t use a condom—I’m Catholic!”).

  Penance/Reconciliation/Confession

  In second grade or thereabouts, you go into this thing that looks like a large, glorified (literally) phone booth. The priest is in the booth with you, but in another part of it, so that you don’t see his face and he doesn’t see yours. This is supposed to allow for anonymity, even though your priest knows your family very well and knows you as the kid who pees his pants in Phonics every Wednesday or thereabouts.

  Then you say, “Bless me father for I have sinned. This is my first confession, these are my sins.” You tell the priest what you’ve done wrong, holding nothing back, then you say a prayer with him, and then he gives you some prayers to say on your own. You leave the booth, say those prayers, and voilà—you’re forgiven.

  This sacrament is the sweetest deal of all. Once you begin receiving penance, you can do whatever you want, sinwise, but as long as you tell a priest about your sins and say some Hail Marys and Our Fathers, you get a clean slate. Yes, you read that right. No matter how much you sin, you can just “confess” these sins, do your penance, and get into Heaven. Yeah, I know—pretty awesome.

  I haven’t been to confession in a while, but when I do go again, it’ll sound something like: “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been, oh, fifteen years since my last confession and these are my sins. Actually, a question first. So I had this remote-controlled airplane, and, long story short, my neighbor died. I’d really rather not get into the details, for a number of reasons, but what’ll this cost me? Two Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition? Also, a tree and most of a bakery was destroyed. So you might want to throw another Hail Mary on there.”

  Holy Communion

  Dressed up in a sweet white suit, you eat the body and blood of Christ in the form of a very bland wafer and some wine (sorry, God, but the wafer really could use some kick). The wafer and wine become the body and blood of Christ through a miracle called transubstantiation, which, yes, you will need to know how to spell.

  You can only receive communion if you have no mortal sins on your soul, which is why you must receive penance before communion. That’s another difference between mortal and venial sins: having mortal sins on your soul will prevent your entrance to Heaven, even if it’s a lame mortal sin, like missing Mass. Therefore, if when you die you are a regular churchgoer who happens to be the kingpin of the largest car-stealing ring in the Northeast, you can still make it to Heaven. If in your spare time you chew food for toothless orphans but suddenly die on a Tuesday after missing Mass on the previous Sunday because you wanted to sleep in, see you in Hell. The point is, you can’t eat a part of God or Jesus or whoever if you have a serious sin on your soul.

  Anyway, Holy Communion is a huge deal because of the consumption of Christ and a massive party usually follows. This is kind of the equivalent to the bar/bat mitzvah in Judaism in that it’s the biggest thing in a young Catholic child’s life. Although instead of talking about how we killed Christ and saying things like “We showed Him!” and “Down with Christ!” and “That Barrabas call was sweet!” and high-fiving one another like they do at mitzvahs, we talk about how much we like Him at Communion parties. A slight difference.

  Confirmation

  I’m not really sure what the whole purpose of Confirmation is, but I’m going to take a stab and assume that it is a confirmation of your faith. This usually happens in fifth or sixth grade—sometimes later, sometimes earlier. I don’t recall many of the specifics, but I do recall having to memorize a bunch of stuff about being Catholic and the Church, because a bishop comes to the church to confirm all the kids in the class, and the bishop may call on certain kids to ask them about Catholicism (a daunting prospect, indeed). You also get to choose a middle name, taken from a saint in the Church. You are supposed to pick one you have an affinity for, but in reality you should pick the name based on the saint that is easiest to write a report about, which you are required to do. Because my legal name is Jason Michael Joseph Patrick Aloysius Elizabeth Mulgrew, I didn’t take a new name and went with St. Michael, the badass archangel who threw Satan out of Heaven. * I was already set in the middle name department and St. Michael reminded me a lot of myself: just, strong, winged, great perm.

  After Communion, with its huge party and presents, the Confirmation celebration is a major letdown. If you’re lucky, you might get taken to Red Lobster. If not, you’re getting a small roast beef and baked ziti spread at home. Fuck.

  Matrimony

  This one is easy. Your marriage is blessed by the Catholic Church and you are married, linked eternally, in the eyes of God. That is, until your wife finds you balls-deep in some guy Roger you met at Target.**

  This sacrament has been taking a beating over the last few decades because everyone is getting divorced, which, like homosexuality, contraception, and being cool and having fun, is something the Catholic Church is very much against. But hey—at least there’s usually an open bar involved with this sacrament, and if you’re the one getting married, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get laid. You can’t say that about a lot of things in life, let alone sacraments.

  Holy Orders

  The sacrament through which a m
an becomes a priest, a Servant of God. I don’t know much about this one, since I don’t really have to. I think I have a better chance of becoming a pirate, a monkey, or a bestselling author (or a combination of all three) than I do of becoming a priest.

  Anointing of the Sick

  If you’re sick, a priest will come to you and anoint you with oil. If this happens, you should be concerned. They don’t do this for the sniffles or the flu, my friend. If your priest shows up at your house offering to anoint you, you’d better start making some calls and collecting some debts. Because it’s probably not looking too good.

  So far, I’ve knocked out four of the seven: Baptism, Penance, Communion, and Confirmation. I’ve figured out the only one I’ll get of the remaining three: Matrimony. I date Latin American immigrant women almost exclusively and realize that they’re not going to agree to be my wife unless we get married in a church. This is, I think, a small price to pay for the eternal and total devotion that only a poor woman who can’t speak your language and makes dynamite homemade tortillas provides.

  Holy Orders, as I hinted above, is entirely out of the question. I think it was plainly obvious from an early age that I was not cut out for the priesthood, although [insert inappropriate-molestation-joke-about-the-priesthood-that-I-don’t-feel-entirely-comfortable-making here]. As for Anointing of the Sick, I plan on dying suddenly, tragically, and nude, so I don’t think I’ll receive this sacrament—unless they have Catholic priests regularly hanging around the pool of the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas, and I don’t believe they do.

  Of those four I have received, they all pretty much went off without a hitch. My biggest sins in my first confession were missing Mass and saying the word pubes to my mom. After my first Holy Communion, we had a big party and I made almost $1,000 in cash, which is the equivalent of $349,129 to me now, and which I held on to for dear life; I still may have some of this Communion money (this, I think, would be considered greed). And after Confirmation, I went not to Red Lobster but to the Copper Penny, where I got a chicken parm as big as my head. Baptism, however, did not go that smoothly.

  My family is a religious one, both my mom and dad coming from large Irish Catholic families, but there are different gradations of religiosity. My grandparents are or were practically saints, attending Mass several times a week and being very active in the church community. My parents, aunts, and uncles are religious as well, though not quite up to par with their parents—they go to Mass as often as they can and help out with the Church to the extent that it doesn’t interfere with their dart games or girls’ nights—and they have raised or are raising their kids in the Catholic Church. And my generation, their children—well, we are heathens. But we’re working on it. Or we will be, in a few years, once the recklessness of youth and the anger we harbor toward our parents for making us go to church at 10 A.M. every Sunday for the first seventeen years of our lives wears off.*

  After my christening, because I was now a member of the Catholic faith and I have a big Irish Catholic family, we had a big Irish Catholic party to celebrate my baptism. The interpretation of “big Irish Catholic party” varies, but basically there’s a prayer at the beginning and then a lot of drinking until people fall down. Also there’s some crying and singing involved and usually one relative will try to punch another. Then comes the falling down. Welcome to almost every family christening, birthday party, graduation, and wedding I’ve ever been to. And so went my christening party. My mom and dad had rented out a local hall for the event, got it catered, and had an open bar. Father Haney said his prayer, the DJ put on some of the hottest disco records, and the party started.

  One of the traits that I’ve inherited from my father is the inability to stop drinking booze after I’ve started (gluttony). Before ye pass judgment, I would like to state for the record that this is not alcoholism. Alcoholism, roughly defined, is a biological, physiological, or psychological need to consume alcohol regardless of an awareness of its negative consequences. This is not me, and this is not my dad. What we celebrate, roughly defined, is a vested interest in continuing to consume alcohol once consumption has begun for the sake of enjoyment and possibly enlightenment, which is very, very different. This consumption will continue until it is stopped by one of the following five factors: unconsciousness, sex (lust), injury, incarceration, or a really big hoagie and/or pile of chicken fingers.

  At the end of my Baptism party, at which my father got properly soused, not one of these five factors had reared its ugly head. After the final hands were shaken, the congratulations received, the baby and wife kissed, he and his friend Eddie Foley, who was his best man at his wedding a year earlier, decided to keep the party going at a local bar called Frenzy’s [pronounced FREN-zees].*

  In about eight hours, one of these dudes would be in jail.

  Nothing spectacular happened at the bar (unless you think drinking Jim Beam and doing cocaine off toilets is spectacular, which you might) until the end of the night. Last call had been called and the final drinks had been ordered when my dad and Eddie left their new beers at the bar for a moment to step outside to smoke a joint. They walked a few feet to a nearby alley to smoke when two women barreled out of the side door of the bar. The two women, large and rough even by Second Street standards, were locked in combat, screaming in drunken rage, slapping each other and rolling around on the ground, their fists full of each other’s hair (wrath). My dad and Eddie thought one thing in their inebriated state: GIRLFIGHT. Then they thought: AWESOME. The two of them, still dressed in suits from the christening, quickly became active spectators in the event, joining the small crowd of a half dozen people who gathered outside to witness the girl fight, cheering on the two women.

  Since my dad was intoxicated at the time, he could not provide me with many details of the catfight. But speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that you have not lived until you have witnessed two grown overweight women rolling around on the sidewalk outside a bar trying to kill each other. I saw my first girlfight when I was sixteen and it was at once exhilarating, arousing, and absolutely fucking terrifying. One of the few truly seminal moments of my adolescent life, just below the first time I touched a boob but above the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

  The fight was shortened by the arrival of one of the girl’s boyfriends and his friends. They picked the two apart; some holding each woman back, others trying to pry open the women’s hair-clenching fists, everyone yelling and screaming at what was now about 3 A.M. The cops soon showed up and it appeared that the whole thing would be shortly dispersed.

  Eddie Foley, however, would not stand for this. My dad describes Eddie as someone who was almost allergic to alcohol, because whenever he got drunk he did the stupidest, craziest shit. This is not surprising; it is a well-known fact in the neighborhood that Eddie “invented” carjacking, but that is a story for another time. Either way, that my dad would say that Eddie would do the craziest shit while drunk is kinda like Dracula saying the Wolfman is a pretty scary dude.

  Eddie was upset that his evening entertainment was coming to an end and so started jawing with not only the boyfriend and his friends, but the cops.

  “Hey! What the fuck? Why you guys gotta go and break up a good time? Can’t you see it’s a special occasion! His son just got christened today!”

  My dad, in the rare role of the levelheaded one, realized quickly that this was not the best approach to the situation and surmised that the cops probably did not care that his son had been christened a few hours before. So he tried to calm Eddie down, but it proved fruitless.

  “Wat’s amatter? You guys are just pissed because you don’t look as good as this!” Eddie yelled as he held open his suit jacket and did a little twirl for the cops. “Am I right? Damn!” (Pride.)

  Eddie was not only “allergic” to alcohol, but had no fear of cops, since his father and many of his family members had been or were cops. An alcohol allergy and no fear of cops. Not a good combination, at the present moment. Or
ever, for that matter.

  Eddie continued to yell, my dad tried to restrain him, and the cops grew increasingly agitated. The situation rapidly deteriorated and soon became physical and some shoving went on. Long story short (as my father is fond of saying when he leaves out juicy and/or semiviolent details), moments later both my dad and Eddie were laying facedown on the ground in handcuffs. They were going to jail.

  They were put up on several different charges: assault on a police officer, public drunkenness, and resisting arrest. Even in jail, Eddie, housed a few cells away from my dad, continued to carry on, screaming at the cops, generally trying to incite them. Eddie was incorrigible, so with nothing else to do, my dad eventually fell asleep or passed out and was awoken the next morning for release. As he was being led out of the cell, he said that his buddy Eddie also had to be let out. But Eddie had already been released during the night. Despite the fact that he had instigated the fracas, a family member who was a cop got him out of jail after only a few hours, yet my dad had to spend the whole night in jail. Where the hell was the justice in that (envy)?

  No one actually does real jail time in my neighborhood. * My dad and Eddie had to go to court, which both of them missed the first time because of oversleeping (sloth), but the neighborhood political machine got them put on probation and the incident later expunged from their records. The whole thing was treated as a simple misunderstanding and, once it was over, it was forgotten about (legally, at least). So really, there was no loser in the situation. Eddie and my father got a good story out of it. My dad got to break Eddie’s balls and ask for favors for a few months, saying “Remember when you got me locked up on the night of my son’s christening because you were being a jerk-off?” to end any argument. And my mom didn’t even mind having to pick my father up from jail in the morning, because she thought the whole thing was stupid, too.