Short Stories About You

by Jeffery Martin

  You slide the little window shut and wait with dread for the next one.

  There are mutterings, of course, from the people. You hear them. They’re saying you’ve become cynical, dour. This is funny. You were cynical and dour before you joined the priesthood. These are people who have never listened to This Mortal Coil’s “It’ll End in Tears” or The Cure’s “Disintegration.”

  You sigh and lean your head back, looking up. “Up” is where you were taught Heaven is, where the angels in their grandiose hierarchies wait hand and foot upon the Father, the Holy Spirit and He Who was Crucified, the Trinity itself, Three in One, One in Three. There is music the likes of which no one living has heard, the joyful songs of the saved and the blessed, with the underlying hum of all the prayers of the faithful rising up from the earth, pleading and praising, so that the whole place vibrates on some ethereal level, pulsing with love and joy and concern and the shimmering elegance of every dream come true.

  “Up” is also the home of the ceiling. The ceilings that are home to paintings and ornate light fixtures and intricate plaster and stucco that eventually succumbs to the elements. Leaky roofs let the moisture in, and things rot. Ugly black stains set in, greedy mildew, festering mold, until the seduction of gravity pulls it earthward. Beauty fades. The structure fails, cohesion and integrity give way. You believe that one thing that pulls them down is the weight of all those prayers, whispered, shouted and cried upwards, that never go anywhere else. They float like errant balloons the night of the birthday party, when you’re too tired to clean the place up, and they collect, bouncing inoffensively against each other until they fill up that space, aching to go higher, like Icarus towards the sun, but instead they stay until the helium leaks out, their energy dissipates and they sink dejectedly back to the common earth, never reaching their full potential.

  Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which hand gets full first.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession.”

  You snap out of your reverie. “Get on with it, then.”

  The silence is uncomfortable and short. “I, um, I’ve had impure thoughts about this woman at work.”

  You shake your head. Another one.

  “She makes me crazy, Father. I don’t even know how to talk to her. I stutter and stammer every time I try, and I know she thinks I’m just insane. But I can’t stop thinking about her, and at night when I’m trying to go to sleep, I just… I mean, I think…”

  “Enough,” you interrupt. “Why don’t you just ask her out?”

  “Father, I couldn’t.”

  “Oh, you absolutely could, you wimp. Man up. Talk to the girl. Take her out on a date. Romance her. Take her home. Bone her. If it goes bad, you don’t have to talk to her again. It will make work awkward, but you’ll have gotten what you wanted, right?”

  The penitent clears his throat. “This isn’t the kind of advice I was expecting, Father.”

  “Listen,” you say. “Do you think God really gives a shit about what you do? Who you sleep with? If you sleep with anyone? Don’t you think he has enough to deal with without having to worry about you feeling guilty for having a penis? Famine, war, pestilence, oh, and your cock. Get over yourself.”

  “Are you okay, Father?” the man on the other side of the screen stammers.

  “I’m fine,” you say. “Now get out of here. Go get laid. Do it for my sake. Do it, for Christ’s sake. And when you do it, if you feel guilty later, come back so I can slap you upside the head.”

  “Thank you, Father,” the guy says in an excited voice. You can hear his tennis shoes squeaking on the cathedral floor as he scampers away.

  You weren’t done yet. Should you chase the guy down, grab him by the shoulders and tell him not to even consider the possibility of love? You’ve heard it before. Some guy sleeps with some pretty girl and the next thing he knows, he thinks in love with her. Two weeks later, he’s crying over a breakup. Three weeks later, he’s in love again.

  It’s a sham, a gorgeous lie. You have learned this from a life of asceticism and self-denial. The whole concept is part and parcel of your job, your lifestyle. You sell love. The love of God, the care of the angels, the love of the Father for the Son; you’re a licensed agent for love in its purest form.

  Yet, you’re selling a product you haven’t seen since you were a child. Memories fade, things change. Now, you can’t even be sure that what you felt then was authentic. Children are easily influenced. Somebody told you God loved you, and you believed it. You bought the whole thing, hook, line and crucifix.

  Why wouldn’t you choose to devote your life to someone who loves you, especially when their biography paints them as being Love Itself? It sounds like a great deal.

  Most things that are bullshit do. The whole “love” thing is a master course in self-deception and mass hysteria. You are a brain washer, pure and simple, with only a white collar to make it seem legitimate. You know how to make the dopamine flow, with carefully chosen words and reassuring smiles. Chemicals create the illusion of affection and bonding. It’s all a hallucination.

  It’s a simple equation. There’s no such thing as love. God is love. Therefore, there is no such thing as God.

  The only reason you haven’t left the order and gotten some shitty retail job somewhere is because the economy is lousy. The church pays your salary. You have room and board. It doesn’t matter that your life is a total lie. No one ever has to know that. Just keep saying the scripts and making the hand gestures and you’ll be able to retire before you know it. Be a cheerleader for the devout and their holy aerobics routine. Stand up, sit down, pray, pray, pray!

  You check your watch. Only twenty more minutes on this confessional shift. Good. Soon you can put on street clothes and head off to a bar. There’s a local Battle of the Bands going on, and you haven’t missed a round yet. One of the bands has this kid who sounds just like Layne Staley. It’s uncanny. Three or four shots of whiskey, a few beers and it will be 1994 again, a dramatic re-enactment, an artist’s rendition of The Last Good Time.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” the woman next to you says, and you jump a little. “I’ve seen movies, though. Can we just do it that way?”

  Interesting. “Of course,” you say, before hastily adding, “My child.”

  She clears her throat. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  “How long has it been since your last confession?” you ask.

  “Does submitting to PostSecret count?”

  “I don’t know what that is,” you say.

  “Never mind,” she says, slightly embarrassed. “It has been forever since my last confession. I’m not Catholic.”

  You laugh. “I think you’re doing this wrong.”

  “No, no,” she says. “I need to do this. Don’t make me leave.”

  “That never even crossed my mind,” you say. “You obviously have something on your mind, something you need to talk about.”

  “It’s okay that I’m not Catholic?”

  “I believe I can make an exception in your situation.”

  “Lucy,” she says. “My name is Lucy.”

  You shake your head. “I thought you said watched movies.”

  “I do,” she says.

  “Then you should know that I’m not supposed to know your name,” you tell her. “Confession and anonymity go hand in hand. You and I have the same kind of implied confidentiality that a person has with the doctor or their lawyer.”

  “Then what does it matter if you know my name?”

  Her voice lilts. You can almost see it sparkle. She doesn’t have the typical tone of shame and penitence everyone else has. It’s refreshing, like a cool breeze in a July-hot tenement.

  You shrug. “I suppose it doesn’t,” you say. “So, are you here to confess or are we discussing other matters?”

  “I don’t know. It’s sort of a confession, I guess,” she says, her voice suddenly affecting a child-li
ke tone.

  “Well, why don’t you start from the start and see where it takes us?”

  She breathes deeply.

  “Well, I told you I’m not Catholic. I’m not much of anything. I don’t think about God a whole lot, as a reality or a concept. But I do believe in love, Father. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”

  “Depends on the day,” you say.

  “That’s pretty cynical, coming from a priest,” she says, almost scolding.

  “This isn’t my confession, Lucy,” you say.

  “Maybe this is a mistake,” she says. You hear rustling from her side of the booth. She’s trying to leave.

  “Don’t go,” you say. “I’m sorry. Sit. Keep going.”

  Silence from the other side, then you feel the booth shift slightly as Lucy sits back down.

  “I had a friend once, Father,” she says. “His name was Adrian. Sweet guy. Always happy, almost bubbly, all the time. Exasperatingly good-natured. He was my best friend. He came out to me, you know. Not like it was a surprise. I mean, Jesus, his name was Adrian and he owned all of Barbra Streisand’s records on vinyl, even that shitty one with Barry Gibb. I wasn’t really shocked.

  “He died, of course, far too young, in a car wreck about ten years ago. He was born Catholic, and he clung to that faith for reasons I never quite figured out. He wore a crucifix like he meant it. He prayed the Rosary. He burned candles everywhere in his apartment, although that might have been a decorating thing more than a religious thing. Anyway, when he died, the fact that he was gay came out, and it was kind of a big deal. There was a big hullaballoo because he wanted a Catholic funeral and the church wasn’t really keen on giving full props to a dead queer.”

  You can hear her voice drifting, in and out of reverie, as she remembers her friend. And somewhere in the back of beyond, you hear a bell faintly ringing.

  “Adrian’s mother was Episcopalian,” Lucy continues. “The Episcopalians were willing to give Adrian a decent funeral, but the fact remained that wasn’t what he wanted. He was Catholic, and that’s how he wanted to go out. Can’t blame the guy. I want to be buried next to my parents. I would be pissed if I ended up in an urn on someone’s mantelpiece. Sorry I said ‘pissed.’”

  “Believe it or not,” you say, “I’ve heard that word before. I absolve you.”

  “Cool,” she says. “Anyway, there was one guy. A priest. And he stepped up to the plate, man, he stood up to the Catholic bigwigs and said he would do the service. He said love was love, no matter how it appeared and if that Jesus couldn’t handle that, he was in the wrong business. Pretty nifty, I thought.”

  “It was the Bishop,” you say. “Bishop Franzen. He’s the one who didn’t want it to happen.”

  “You remember!” Lucy says, her voice squeaking with happiness. “Oh, and it was a beautiful service. Even I thought so, and I’m not religious at all. The priest didn’t bring up Adrian being queer at all. He just talked about love, and how the world ceases to function without it, and how who you love is the least of God’s worries, only that you love.”

  “That’s a beautiful sentiment,” you hollowly say.

  “I thought so,” she says. “I never forgot it. It gets weird, though, after that. It’s hard to say it aloud.”

  “Remember, Lucy. Confidential.”

  “Right, right,” she replies. “So. This priest who did Adrian’s service. I kind of, well, I kind of fell in love with the guy. Which was stupid and I knew it, but those things he said? About love? They were just what I needed to hear. It was like he was talking through a microphone right into my soul. I could feel my cheeks redden as he talked, and I wanted to… well, never mind what I wanted to do.”

  You let out an unconscious uncomfortable laugh.

  “It’s natural,” you say. “You’re only human.”

  “So I started kind of half-assed stalking him. I showed up to Mass a few times when I knew he would be officiating services. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just did what everyone else did. And when it was time for Communion, I went up to the front, like everyone else did. I didn’t know any different. I wasn’t aware there were rules for that, you know?

  “And when he put that wafer on my tongue, I was aroused. Ridiculously aroused. I kept thinking of him putting something other than some holy cracker in my mouth. And when he came back around with the wine? It was more erotic than spiritual. It made me surprised at myself, really, because I thought I could control that. But sometimes your body does things, and your heart does things, and you have no idea why any of it is happening. It just is, and you sort of roll with it.”

  Adrian? Adrian.

  “I guess I went to Mass five or six times, staring up at his adorable face, listening to his words of love, peace and understanding, feeling my spirit boil with lust while my heart almost broke with this love I hadn’t felt since high school. I didn’t know what to do! I felt unsure of myself, of my feelings, so I just stopped. I walked away. I figured I was torturing myself, and there was no sense in pining away for a guy I couldn’t have, a guy who was already married to God. So I backed off. Until today.”

  His name was Adrian Williamson. You remember the lining of his casket was neon pink. Was that her, right in front?

  “I came here thinking that priest was still here. I came here, ten years later, hoping against hope, that I could find him and talk him out of his job. I wanted to see if I could get him to come away with me. Maybe grab a drink. Talk for a while. Get him to go back to my place.”

  “That’s an awful tall order, Lucy,” you say, as you wipe your suddenly sweaty forehead with the back of your hand.

  “It’s stupid,” she growls. “I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  You think of a woman in the front row. Red hair. Green eyes. A face shining like she had just come down from the mountaintop. Shekinah glory. Could this be?

  “I was hoping he was still here,” she says, talking faster now. “But obviously that isn’t the case. I thought for a second it might be you, but the guy I fell in love with wasn’t so flippant. His voice wouldn’t have been so tired. He would have been more aware. Alive.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” you say, but it’s too late. You look through the screen just in time to see Lucy rushing away.

  You get up and slam the door open, frightening the old women praying for their nephews in prison, their sons married to horrible women. You look around, but Lucy is already gone.

  You think about the funeral, where you did the right thing and stood up for the right of a young man to be buried the way he saw fit. You remember how Lucy stared at you from the front row. You didn’t understand it at the time, as far removed from human emotion and kindness as you had been. You get it now. You comprehend. And you want it.

  You run towards the heavy wooden front doors of St. Michael’s, the place you have called home for decades, and ram them open with your shoulder.

  It is raining outside, and the skies are as grey as your dreams. You look left. Nothing. You look right. No sign. You look across the street. You don’t see her bright red hair, her piercing green eyes. There is no sign of her.

  “Lucy!” you scream. “Lucy, come back!”

  Some pigeons waddle their way down the sidewalk, mindlessly pecking. People huddle under umbrellas, collars pulled up on their way to somewhere, anywhere.

  “Come back, Lucy!” you cry. “It was me! I’m still here!”

  But no one comes back to you, arms open, tears welling. No one approaches you to ask you out for cocktails. No one even looks your direction. You stand on the cathedral steps, screaming at the sky, your hopes and wishes like balloons, rising until they stop, eventually losing momentum and sinking back to the cold ground.

  There’s nowhere to go but back inside. You have ten minutes left on the Confessional Line.

  You sit in that tiny booth, soaking wet, smacking your closed fist into your hand. And for the first time in six years, you pray. S
ort of.

  “Fuck you, Jesus,” because you’ll never leave this place now.

  “Fuck you, Jesus,” because she might come back, but you won’t know about it unless you’re here.

  “Fuck you, Jesus,” for giving you hope and then trapping you with it.

  “Fuck you, Jesus,” for daring you to believe again, and then pulling the rug out from under you.

  Maybe she’ll come back. If she does, maybe she’ll come back into your confessional. You’ll never get the chance to escape this place with her if you don’t stay here to find out. It’s a holy Catch-22. Very funny, God. Very fucking funny. Har-dee-har-har.

  The door opens and you hear someone come in.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two days since my last confession.”

  It’s not her.

  You’ll wait here and take confessions until it is her again. God damn it. God damn you. God damn you to hell.

  Beside You in Time

  The storm moves in fast, shaking the ground, making the trees bend like seizure dancers, pelting the ground with furious rain. Purple lightning shoots from cloud to cloud like a Richard Edlund nightmare. Instead of taking cover, you are outside on the porch, watching the show. Your daughter, who has just turned nine, stands next to you.

  “I thought you were scared of storms,” you say.

  “Not if you’re out here, too,” she says.

  She is wearing a pink t-shirt with a unicorn on it. The shirt comes down past her knees. Her hair is pulled back into a black pony tail. Each of her fingernails is painted a different color.

  “How come it storms sometimes?” she asks.

  You shrug. “Upper atmosphere disturbances. Cold air and warm air collide. Makes storms.”

  “Then why doesn’t it rain in the kitchen when I open the refrigerator?”

  You laugh. “I don’t think that’s enough cold air.”