I put aside the biography reeling. I felt like a child with a jar of tadpoles standing next to Alexander Fleming with his Petri dish. And my tadpoles were not even alive. But what to say? Was Alphonsus meant to be a model for us? Despite the miracles he reluctantly performed we have no sense of Christ as superhuman. In his very ordinariness lay his authenticity. He fell asleep during the day, he was hungry and satisfied that hunger, he liked hanging out with his close friends: ‘Is this not the carpenter’s son?’ asked the villagers, amazed that he could be anything more elevated than the local odd-job man. But I fear this is just my pathetic excuse. I’ve set the bar as low as I possibly can in my spiritual life and still I kick it over. Perhaps Alphonsus’s way is the only way to be a priest — to jump in at the deep end at the moment of ordination and then never to leave the river. To swim all day long, to sleep on a piece of driftwood, to eat the occasional fish, to survive on air and water. Then it all makes sense. Why would you marry when the stream carries you far from home? Why own anything which you cannot carry on your back and which would perish along the way?
Yet did Alphonsus’s life have anything to do with faith as such? It seemed possible to me that he simply chose religion as his preferred form of asceticism rather than athletics or exploration or any number of ways to pour oneself one hundred per cent into life’s bottle. And was his distillation of energy into celibacy (not a second in the day free for impure thoughts, his whipped flesh literally bleeding under his cassock) actually the fruit of a disordered sexuality? But who am I to question? The only time blood has flowed down my back was one occasion when I let a tattooed rent boy hit me with a leather belt. The buckle ripped into the flesh of my shoulder. I had to throw away my shirt when I got home, stuffed down low in a plastic bag then stuffed down low in the parish rubbish bin.
Saints rarely offer models for real people. For a start they are almost always sexless, selected and canonized by the sexless, heroes to the sexless. Then they are chosen because their lives are rare examples of a heroism which, by definition, few can match. Which ordinary person can explore the labyrinth of Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle without getting lost? And if it’s unthinkable to me (obscene even) that Christ would whip himself, why then would his disciples be required or encouraged to take up the scourge? I ascended the ladder again and put Alphonsus back in his place.
Five shelves down was dear Father Faber, early companion and disciple of Cardinal Newman, later enemy and rival of Cardinal Newman: his big heart, Newman’s big brain. How I loved Faber’s excruciating failure in taste, his exuberance, his violet-scented Victorian piety. He was a roly-poly Italianate wannabe in contrast to Newman, the wizened, whippet-thin Puritan. Newman wrote the great prose; Faber wrote the bad verse: ‘Oh happy pyx, oh happy pyx, where Jesus doth his dwelling fix’. But we shouldn’t make fun of him (although it’s easy to) because his books, despite being ten times longer than necessary, have a wonderful fervour to them — magnanimous, benevolent, encouraging. With Faber there was always room for another chair at the table of the feast, whereas with Newman everyone was expected to stand and eat quickly so he could return alone to his study, a shadow of pained melancholia streaked across his tightened jaw. Nevertheless Faber could be priggish. He once suggested we should pray for rain on bank holidays so people would avoid sin by staying indoors — surely the most bizarre misjudgment of people and of sin and of the circumstances of their interaction. Both Newman and Faber were almost certainly gay but whereas Newman kept Ambrose St John, his lifelong special friend, at a controlling, Oxbridgian distance (despite insisting that they share a grave together), Faber sublimated his homosexuality with an excessive Mariolatry. Whether dressing up the statue of Our Lady in the most outrageous lace or singing her praises to the very edge of blasphemy he loved Mary as a later generation would love Judy Garland. The Blessed Virgin: a gay icon for celibate gay priests; the untouchable Woman for those who had no desire to touch women.
I put all the books back on the shelves but was not yet ready to return to my room so I went over to sit in one of the leather chairs by the window and look out at the garden. The rain splashing on to piles of wet, brown leaves on the ground. The rain dripping down the windowpane to its rotting, blackened base. My winding-down, my draining-off, my giving-up — my compost conscience, all mulch. ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value he went and sold all that he had and bought it.’ Here in this room the secret treasures of the interior life need not be sought because they are within a mere reach of an arm, to be revealed, possessed. The only cost is the desire to begin and the will to continue. I have neither. I have nothing to sacrifice except sex. But that’s what I seek. I am a merchant in search of fine pearls of pleasure. Orgasms seem to me so much more alluring than prayer and I’ve sold my soul to procure them. ‘Say only the word and my soul shall be healed.’ The word. One word. But I sit, tongue-tied at the darkening window. My only words are the words I write now as afternoon fails and evening falls.
39 Farhan
______________________
There were rich pickings to be found all over the suburbs of Manchester and Liverpool and Leeds, countless sordid staircases leading up to countless student bedsits. The flats above the fish and chip shops or kebab joints with the smell of frying batter or burning meat blending in a halo of lust with Armani’s Aqua di Gio or Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male.
I’ve had boys who were so good-looking I couldn’t perform, perfect features, bodies like athletes, smiles like the sun at noon. Then there were others who were completely repulsive to me, those whose unwashed armpits or groins left me gagging, those who spat foul-breathed lies of passion out of sticky, white-crusted lips, those with acne that was weeping, backs sprouting with spots all smeared with blood and discharge. The overly effeminate were always a turn-off, wispy creatures with wimpy bodies: ‘Oh you naughty, naughty boy’, they would pout. ‘You’re getting me all hot and bothered. What’s a gurl to do!’ The fat ones, all blubber; the thin ones like leafless twigs. The photographs or descriptions on the internet were often deceptive: hot, hung and horny could turn out to be a listless, disinterested lout with a penis the size of a clothes peg.
The most upsetting though was Farhan from Bangladesh. I climbed up the stairway to his flat in Oldham, its swirling red carpet pitted with stains and threadbare on the edge of every step. The thin front door with an open slit for post (no cover) let out a smell of curry and the sound (God help me!) of a baby crying. Dark-skinned, wiry, intensely handsome, he opened the door and graciously invited me into the flat. It was a total mess, clothes strewn everywhere. On the right a small kitchen area was piled high with dishes and on the far left sat a pretty, young woman, presumably his wife. At her feet two young children were playing with some toys and behind them was a crib with a baby wriggling inside. The wife seemed frightened and embarrassed but the kids looked up at me grinning, their eyes all open in wonder and innocence. My heart shredded inside me with shame and pity. I almost thought of changing the plan, of going over to the children and joining in their game, of chatting to the mother, finding out how long she’d been in the country, how things were going, how the kids were enjoying school, what their names were. In short, to be a priest, a pastor, a joy-bringer. The embers of my old vocation stirred into flame but Farhan was already standing at the bedroom door. It was somehow too late to change direction. The plane had accelerated along the runway to the point of take-off and could not be halted. I smiled at the mother and children and mumbled a prayer for this little family group, so tender, so full of hope, then picked my way through the debris to the bedroom.
Farhan closed the door and looked at me, coyly, teasingly, as if with real sexual desire. Could it be? Maybe he was bisexual? Maybe he enjoyed having sex with men? Maybe he was in an arranged marriage and things were different in his culture? I trampled down my doubts and began to form some strange fantasy that I was helping Farhan and his family
by having sex with him in their bedroom. Well, I suppose I would be giving them more money in the next hour than he would otherwise earn in a day. He reached over and started to undress me, button by button, kissing me, touching me. I could see the lump of an erection in his jeans. At least I knew I was not the first man to be with him in this room. This was someone who was experienced and comfortable with sex.
It was a wildly passionate session and I was embarrassed by the noises he made, which had to have been audible in the next room despite the jingle of cartoons on the television. ‘You don’t need to’ I wanted to tell him, but he continued and I turned a horrible corner where the fact that we were being overheard actually made the whole experience more exciting. You can snuff out a moral light, pinch dead the stamen of conscience when one body is squeezing pleasure out of another, deep down into the bone.
We finished, his lean, taut body glistening with sweat and as beautiful as a statue, and he went over to the corner to get some paper towels. My sense of unease suddenly returned and I dreaded the walk through the living room, past the kids with the toys, the baby in the crib, the mother with the frightened eyes. I saw one of her bras on the floor under his dark brown feet as he leant over to wipe off my body and I was overcome with sadness. I dressed and paid him and opened the bedroom door. The wife was now standing at the stove on the left, stirring a large steel pot on the flame. She didn’t turn around. ‘Bye-bye’ cried one of the little urchins, waving at me. He looked just like his father. ‘Bye-bye’ I replied awkwardly, walking swiftly across the room to the front door. It squeaked as I opened it and slammed shut coldly. The swirls in the red carpet made me dizzy as I went downstairs in despair and misery. There was a distant squeal of delight from one of the kids upstairs. Dinner time. The theme music for Bugs Bunny with its rapid xylophone riff began playing on the television. I walked to my car in the darkness.
40 Halfway
______________________
Halfway through the retreat. I’m used now to the blank spaces of each day, the lack of conversation, the absence of my mobile phone and the internet. My first days here were dark. Cold turkey. But now... I can’t say I feel at peace but I’m somewhere between numb and resigned. Peace is outside the window. I know it’s there even if I don’t experience it. That gives me some sort of contentment. I feel less lonely too even though I hardly notice the other retreatants. We sit at the same large table at mealtimes and we concelebrate Mass every morning but otherwise they’re just shadows in the corridors, a scuffle of a chair behind a bedroom wall.
Soon I’ll be back home and will have to face that storm which is likely to destroy me. The hurricane is creeping up the coast. But what is the alternative? To stay safely hidden away somewhere like Craigbourne for the rest of my life? Just writing that makes me flinch with dread. Yet I’m so stupid! I’m facing total ruination, complete disgrace beyond imagining, my naked body all over the internet, front page spreads in the Sunday tabloids — ridicule, poverty. I’ve lost everything but despite having a disease I can’t accept the cure. I cling to my sickness as if I would die without it. It’s my cancer. If you take that away what’s left of me? I can’t see that if I could only let go then everything might be reborn.
Fear of Hell might be able to stop some people from habitual sin but when you’re already sinking in the mud repentance seems as impossible as jumping out of a window and flying through the air. My situation now isn’t that I’ve taken the wrong path, it’s that I’m stationary with no legs. The eager pushing along by Father Neville is a pushing over. Step by step to holiness... for those with feet. That’s why a bullying religion is so useless. You can’t force open fingers without snapping bones, you must caress until the digits loosen.
‘Stretch out your hand!’ Christ once said to a paralyzed man. I hear him say it to me now. Can I hope that one day will and muscle will be united and that my withered limb can be made whole? This thought at least keeps the bandage in place; it allows some ray of light into the sepulchre.
41 The woman
______________________
The woman caught in the act (the mind boggles) of adultery. Men (of course), callous, brutal, prurient, burst into the room. She is naked. Breasts glistening and glowing, blood rushing through her veins. He is inside her. Suddenly, men are at the bedside. ‘You slut!’ Slap-dragged out of the sheets. Bodies wet. Clothes pulled on. Hair wild. Armpits rank. The man (quicker for him to dress) stumbles then runs away. Or maybe she was not fully naked? Maybe it was a quick slake of carnal desire — sex snatched after lunch? Or perhaps she was being raped? Dress hitched up as she struggled. Pants ripped down just low enough for entry. The crude grope. Pinned back. Slit found. Pushed in. Deep past the raw. Fuck. Gasp. Spurt. Out. Gone. Man’s two-minute pleasure for woman’s nine-month pain.
She is manhandled to the town square and flung down before Jesus, her dress torn and bloody. Her eyes are wild with fear and shame but there is still some sass in the dark-shadowed face. The dregs of hauteur are not yet fully dry. One layer of skin is still left to cover the ignominy. One thread prevents her final slip into the abyss. Their fingers point. Accusing. Condemning. Mocking. Outraged. Scandalized. How dare she?
Jesus. Doodling in the dust. Killing time. Wait... is that naughts and crosses? He looks up distractedly, disturbed in his reverie. ‘What’s up, guys? Oh, I see. Yeah, I guess you’re right. OK. The one who’s not sinned amongst you. Let him throw the first stone.’ He goes back to his doodling, looking at the ground as if in a daze. Is he stoned? Is he simple? The men are coiled with anger. Amos picks up a choice stone, with sharp edges. As his arm draws back to muster full force he glances over again at Jesus who suddenly looks up, now alert as a spark, eyes like flint boring into Amos’ soul. He squeezes the stone in his claw-like fist, then... drops it with a plop to the ground, eyes shifty. ‘Heretic!’ he mumbles angrily under his breath as he walks away, kicking other stones in his path. The others follow suit, one by one, a humiliated procession, fury’s coitus interruptus, blue balls.
Jesus is still sitting on the ground, alone now with the woman. She is sweating, dishevelled, trembling. ‘Where have they all gone?’ he asks, half-smiling and looking around in mock surprise. ‘Has no one cast a stone? Has no one condemned you, after all of that?’ Her heart opens up cautiously like a flower. ‘No one, sir.’ She waits for him to pick up a stone himself but he is still doodling in the dust, tracing lines in that powder which survives when all stones have been worn away. ‘Well I don’t condemn you either. Go now in peace but for heaven’s sake don’t get yourself into that mess again!’ He smiles at her and then looks down at the ground again, his palm now smoothing away the ridges in the sand.
She hesitates. She wants to hug him but she’s afraid, dirty, shy, so she turns and quickly runs away to wash her body now that her soul is clean. She has tears flooding down her cheeks.
I put down my pen. I have tears flooding down my cheeks.
42 Confession
______________________
Many who are not priests misunderstand the sacrament of Confession. They think it’s a time of lurid fascination, an episode of a private soap opera, shameful beans spilled in a shadowy space. Actually most priests find hearing Confessions to be one of the duller, more tedious parts of their ministry. Sins are monotonous and mundane. In more recent years we have been trained in counselling and speak of Reconciliation rather than Confession, of‘changing the direction in which you search for happiness’ rather than ‘doing penance for sin’. Good intentions, a nice try, but most people just want to get in and out of the box as fast as possible, a quick-wash setting. They talk in euphemisms: ‘gossip’, ‘lustful thoughts and actions’, ‘angry words’, ‘lies’. Many don’t really want to change habits of sin, they just want a temporary clean slate — a washable nappy, white until the next soiling and the next laundering. Many times I’ve spun what I thought was an inspired spiel of encouragement only to sense a mounting impatience on the other side of th
e partition.
When people come with heavy burdens it’s enriching to be able to bring relief. Merely for them to speak their tortured thoughts, to share a secret in confidence, can be a comfort. But some (older women in particular) are comfortless because their souls are scarred with scruples. Nothing they do brings them peace, and nothing I say can break through the crust of guilt. Every passing thought has the potential to become a new sin requiring another Confession to remove it. Like a bucket with a constant drip from a leaking tap, the bottom is never dry. One sad old lady used to come to me almost every day for Absolution and any attempt by me to show her the false nature of this understanding of God and sin was itself a temptation in her eyes. If you believe the Devil is out to get you at every step then every step is a dance with Satan.
I’ve never felt the remotest desire to betray the seal of Confession. Even here I would not write down anything private. We were told in the novitiate the (possibly fictional) story of a priest visiting a university who was telling the students about his first time hearing Confessions. ‘I had a baptism of fire. I was only in the box for two minutes and a man came in to confess that he had raped an under-age girl and then had persuaded her to have an abortion. That’s quite a debut for a newly-ordained priest.’ Then, at the end of the lecture, before the students had left, one of the senior professors came into the room to meet the priest. ‘Hello Father. Good to see you again after so many years. You won’t remember this but I was your first penitent immediately after you were ordained.’
The Final Retreat Page 9