Penance

by Rick R. Reed

  The boy writhed on the table, screaming.

  “Shut up, kid! Shut up. This is for your own good.”

  Little T lashed out with his arms, striking Dwight’s hands away from his chest. The boy slid from the table, stumbled, and tried to run from the room.

  Dwight grabbed him by his hair, yanking him back. “No,” he said, his breathing coming heavier now. “You’ve got a lesson to learn here and by Christ, you’ll learn it.” Dwight whispered, repeating, “By Christ.”

  Dwight pulled the boy to him, wrapping his arms around the wriggling form.

  “Please, mister, I don’t want to be hurt. Please let me go. I won’t say nothin’. I promise.”

  “No, you won’t. Lie back down on the table.” Dwight moved his arm up around the boy’s throat and locked it into place, just about closing off the boy’s supply of air. He pressed harder into the boy’s throat, feeling his windpipe, brittle, against his arm. One good jerk and he could snap it. “Gonna do what I say?”

  The boy could make no sound and Dwight loosened his grip enough for the boy to nod.

  “Good. Now get back up on the table and do your penance.”

  He let Little T go. Dwight reached back with one hand, opening the kitchen drawer that held the knives. He fumbled around in it, pushing aside things he knew by touch: measuring spoons, spatulas, wire whisks, until his hand came to rest on the butcher knife. He pulled it out.

  The boy now lay on the table. Dwight’s eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to see that the boy’s eyes were alive with fear and that he was trembling. Good. A good pupil, primed for education.

  “Don’t think that I won’t use this, young man.” Dwight turned the knife back and forth in front of Little T’s face. “I could gut you like the pig you are and not think twice about it.” The boy stared at the knife.

  “You lie still. Don’t make a move.” Dwight went to the kitchen cupboard and pulled out a length of clothesline. Quickly, he bound the boy’s hands in front of him and tied his ankles together. “Restraint is a necessary element of the educational process.” Dwight moved his face in close. “At least for you.”

  Dwight left the boy lying on the table and went to another drawer. He came back with a dishcloth. Balling it up, he said to the boy, “Open your mouth.”

  “Please, sir, I won’t yell or make noise. I promise.”

  “Do I have to pull your mouth open with my hand? Would you like that?”

  The boy opened his mouth. Dwight stuffed the rag inside, pressing it back into his throat until he heard the boy gag. “Very good,” he whispered.

  Dwight ran his hands over the boy’s body, feeling the silken expanse of young skin beneath him. He stopped again at the boy’s left nipple. He pulled it out until it was far enough from the boy’s body to make a taut line, until the boy squirmed, kicking out his bound legs in agony.

  The boy doesn’t even know pain. Not yet. Dwight picked up the knife and with one quick, horizontal motion sliced the nipple from the boy’s chest. The shrieking behind the rag in the boy’s mouth reached a crescendo. He bucked and squirmed like a wild animal on the table. Dwight pressed his hand into Little T’s stomach, holding him down, feeling the warm rush of blood across his fingers as the boy rode out the pain.

  “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee,” Dwight intoned. “I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell…” The boy’s bucking and frantic mumblings ebbed by degrees.

  “But most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love…” Dwight flipped the boy onto his stomach, pressing his face into the table. In the wan silver light of the moon, the boy’s ass shone. “This is to teach you,” Dwight whispered. “This is to heal you.” Dwight leaned in close, using his hand to position himself at the small crack of the boy’s ass.

  “If only you could have learned some other way,” Dwight said, closing his eyes and guiding himself into the boy. He would be dry and penetration would be difficult.

  But it had to be done.

  In the long run, the boy would be better off. If I can save even one of them, even one, then I will be triumphant.

  Dwight pressed into the boy, forcing himself savagely until the ring of taut muscle at last yielded. Warmth and blood immediately surrounded him and he sighed. There is no pleasure here, only education. He cleared his throat and resumed his prayer, punctuating it with sharp thrusts that made Little T whimper and at last fall silent.

  He was the boy’s salvation. God would know…and understand.

  Chapter 10

  Darkness.

  It’s so palpable he feels that if he reaches out with his hands, he can clench it, scoop it up, enfold it.

  But there’s a presence in the darkness, something oily, something breathing. It smells bad.

  And it’s evil.

  He’s afraid to move forward in this darkness, afraid that even the slightest movement will give him away to the thing in the darkness, will let it know where he is.

  And the thing will grab him.

  And he will die.

  He feels he must not move. Not being able to move in this horrible blackness is constricting, suffocating. But the alternative is bleaker, too horrible for him to even imagine.

  But even with his stillness, he can feel the thing moving ever closer, closer.

  Suddenly he makes a break, dashing headlong, not knowing where he’s going.

  And with a great whoosh, the evil rises up to meet him.

  He opens his mouth to shriek, but he has no voice.

  *

  Richard Grebb awakened sweating. His heart pounded. The dream had left him cotton-mouthed, anxious. Sitting up, he ran a shaking hand through his thinning grey hair and put his wire-frame glasses on. He looked around his study, trying to calm himself by taking in the familiar: his oak desk, the theology texts lining the shelves, the worn green leather chair, the couch upon which he napped.

  The cobalt-blue and brass deco clock that his mother had had in her bedroom when he was a child.

  The clock. It was 6:45. His Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting was in fifteen minutes. He jumped from the couch and hurried upstairs to change.

  *

  As Richard steered his Chevy Celebrity south toward the Unitarian church on Hollywood, he wondered what he would say to the group this time. It was only last week that he had confessed his longing for Jimmy Fels and his fear that longing would blossom into “acting out.”

  And now he had acted out. What would he say to them? Even though he knew he wasn’t the only priest to have ever attended Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings, he felt the others in the group looked up to him, as if he had cornered the market on redemption or something. As if he were somehow closer to God. Besides, when it came each person’s turn to speak at the meeting, that person would announce how many weeks of sobriety he or she had and Richard, at the last meeting, had had almost three months.

  Sometimes, he felt guilty going to the meetings, almost as if he should be more enmeshed in sexual activities to be looking for the help he was trying to get out of attending. Some of the people who came to the meetings had sexual problems so severe they had led them to jail, or destroyed their families or careers. Some—and here Richard thought of Gary Martin, the guy who no longer attended meetings because he was institutionalized down at Zeller in Peoria—actually were being eaten alive by mental illness. Gary Martin had masturbated on the el platform near Wrigley Field…naked…at rush hour.

  But, Richard thought, the temptation and the struggle were enough. Even if he never “acted out” (and oh, how he wished he could say that).

  The sobriety could be lost so easily, thrown away in a moment of weakness. And then you were back at square one. Sometimes it almost seemed insurmountable. Richard had entertained visions of sealing up his garage and sitting in his car with the motor running until there were no more battles to fight.
/>   But he knew suicide was not the answer.

  But what was the answer? What was?

  *

  “My name’s Richard and I’m a recovering sex addict.” “Hi, Richard!”

  Richard looked around at the five men and one woman gathered around the scarred wooden table, their white plastic foam cups in front of them. Some held cigarettes. Some had placed their hands on top of their copies of Hope & Recovery, as if strength lay within.

  All wore attentive expressions; it was always easier to be sympathetic to others’ miseries, always simpler to be on the outside looking in. And for these people, all so tortured, that fact remained especially true.

  “I’ve had,” Richard sighed and looked down at the table, “two days of sobriety.” He found that his tongue failed him for a few moments, felt the shame rising up within him. Picking up his coffee cup, he nervously gulped down some of the tepid liquid, laced with sugar. It gave him something to do…a reason to avoid talking. He felt like a high school kid again, caught, with his face reddening. He looked up at the group. All of them knew where he’d been, because they’d been there themselves.

  But none of them were so-called men of God.

  “Last week, I told you about Jimmy Fels, the boy in my neighborhood. After the meeting, I saw him again, lying on the sidewalk on Kenmore, near the Sovereign Hotel. He was shivering. Someone had done something awful to this boy. He had been hurt. He was barely conscious, hardly able to even speak. I had to help him. I swear to God, my motives were pure. I picked him up and carried him back to the house.”

  “Did something happen then?” Eleanor, frumpy and middle-aged, asked. For years, Eleanor had been meeting men while on afternoon shopping sprees, and taking them to motel rooms. Her family had no idea.

  “No.” Richard shook his head. “I told you: my motives were pure. I kept him overnight, and even though the temptation was there, I never once acted on it. I read the Bible, read Hope & Recovery, did everything I could to keep my mind off the corporeal”—he looked around the group, seeing some confusion—“keep my mind off the physical, the sexual.”

  Richard took another sip of coffee and continued. “But whatever happened to him was bad enough to give him nightmares. And he would be screaming. One night, I went up to comfort him and I couldn’t help it, I got excited when I held him in my arms on the bed.”

  “Did you do anything to the boy?” Richie, the pudgy redhead who couldn’t seem to get himself away from the 900 numbers, asked.

  “No, nothing really happened. The boy felt my erection and knew. He figured I was no different from the Johns who pay him to have sex. Worse, because I wasn’t even honest enough to come out and give him some money for it.” Richard looked down at the table and whispered, “I betrayed him.”

  Eleanor piped up. “Because you got excited? Hell, we’d need to use McCormick Place for our meetings if we went around beating ourselves up because we got excited.”

  Richard looked at her, grateful for her stupidity; it had saved him from the onslaught of tears he had feared was coming. “It wasn’t that I got excited.” Or was it? Richard wondered to himself. “It’s the fact that I might have done more, if he hadn’t run out. Run out into a bitter cold December night. Anything to get away from me. I can’t blame him.”

  “Hey, Rich, we’re not here to feel sorry for ourselves. We all stumble. Remember our addiction is baffling, powerful, and cunning. So you had a slip, so did I.” Ed, convicted rapist, former Russian literature professor at Northwestern, spoke to Richard, meeting his eyes and holding his gaze, not letting him look away. “You have a problem. We all do. Lots and lots of people ‘out there’ have problems as bad, or worse, than ours. We’re the lucky ones…we have enough self-awareness to be here, helping ourselves and each other. I’ll get off the soapbox. You were saying…”

  “I just felt so out of control, like I have no say in my own feelings. I know I’m supposed to not try so hard for control, that I’m supposed to let go and let God, all that.” Richard wiped a tear away. “Even for a priest, that’s hard to do.” Handing over the reins of his life to a God who gave him such a cross to bear was especially hard. “I feel like that guy who came to a couple meetings last month. What was his name? Dwight? The one who really—and we could all see it—just came here to find out where he could pick up kids.”

  “We don’t know why Dwight came here or why he stopped,” Ed said.

  Richard breathed in; maybe it was time to let someone else talk. There was so much he could yet say, but what was the point? Would all the hot air make any difference when the fantasy of a young boy came to mind? Or when he awakened in the morning to find his sheets stained and dream images of lithe, almost-hairless male bodies being chased away by shadows of guilt and self-hatred? He could still picture Dwight: plain, slight, his hair thinning…a person you would pass on the street and wouldn’t even remember two minutes later. And yet, he was an evil man. Even so, he wished Dwight were still coming to the meetings. Dwight was the only one with the same “problem” in the group, and Richard had hoped they could support each other. But he could never feel close to the man.

  He wondered if anyone could.

  *

  After the meeting, Richard pulled up his coat collar, dug his hands in his pockets, and headed east and then south, on Sheridan Road. The evening air was cold, filled with moisture that foretold snow. It felt good on his face, took his mind off the meeting.

  Lately, it didn’t seem the meetings were helping much. Maybe Richard had lost his enthusiasm. He remembered how tortured he’d been when he’d taken that first step to attend one of the meetings, remembered how he had trembled driving there, how he’d almost gotten in an accident when he ran a stoplight, too preoccupied to notice. But he also remembered how much the group had done for him. How just sharing his secret with someone had set him free. His faith had been restored. For months, the meetings actually took the place of temptation and Richard thought—even though his brothers and sisters in the group warned him that this would never happen—that he was beginning to be cured.

  Richard crossed Sheridan Road to walk on the east side of the street, to be better protected from the wind and the little needles of sleet that had begun. His jubilation came to a crashing halt just three months later.

  He had been humbled. Mark Fowler, a new altar boy, had come to him, and Richard had felt the old temptations rise up once more. It had been all he could do not to touch the boy as he’d poured out his story of adolescent frustration, his failure to be picked for the school basketball team.

  Richard could still feel how silky the boy’s sandy brown hair was beneath his fingertips as he gave in, little by little, to the temptation.

  No, it was never much with the boy: surreptitious touches, shoulder pats, neck massages. But the boy never knew how Richard fantasized about him. Never knew how much Richard wanted to touch him in other places, to hold him close in bed, both of them naked.

  The group had helped back then, helped him fight through the temptation.

  So why had it lost its magic? Why did it now seem that the meetings were exercises in routine? Mindless words repeated without meaning or substance.

  Sometimes it seemed that only darkness lay ahead of him.

  Richard stopped suddenly as he rounded the corner from Sheridan Road onto Foster Avenue. There, in front of a motel, stood the most beautiful boy.

  He looked to be about fourteen and Greek. His skin, by the light of the street lamp above him, was luminescent, pale and unblemished. He had curly black hair, and even a hundred feet away, Richard could tell his eyes were so dark that it would be hard to distinguish the boy’s pupils. The boy had high cheekbones, a strong nose. He wore a jean jacket with a grey sweatshirt underneath, jeans, and tennis shoes. He stood near the motel and watched the traffic go by.

  Queasiness rose up in Richard, turning his stomach. The queasiness, he knew, was brought on by guilt; guilt for the immed
iate desire he felt for the boy.

  No, you can’t do this. Please, God, give me strength. You just came from your meeting, you’re stronger than this. Thoughts collided, all of them disintegrating into dust as Richard approached the boy, already smiling.

  Richard was within speaking distance, and he could now see the heavy-lidded expression on the boy’s face, as if he were sleepy (or lustful), and the full, pink lips turned down in a frown.

  “Hi,” Richard said, his heart leaping into his throat, thudding. “How you doin’?”

  The boy looked over at Richard quickly, then back to the passing traffic before him.

  Richard stood near the boy, rubbing his hands and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. What to say next? “Cold night out.”

  “Yeah.” The boy looked at him again and this time their eyes met.

  Richard swallowed hard as he felt himself stiffen, just from the boy’s gaze. “What you up to?” Inside, Richard told himself: Get away, just turn and walk away.

  But his feet stayed planted.

  “Nothin’,” the boy said.

  Richard closed his eyes, hating himself. “Live around here?”

  The boy smiled for the first time, revealing even rows of white teeth. “Here, there, everywhere.”

  “Ah,” Richard said. “You’re on your own then?”

  “You could say that.”

  Richard told himself inside, again and again, not to say the words. But he was saying them. “You need someplace to stay?” Richard looked pointedly at the boy, the guilt, the fear, and the self-hatred beginning to vanish under the weight of his desire for this conquest. “Place to crash for the night?”

  “Maybe not for the night,” the boy said. “But I could sure use a few bucks.”

  Richard nodded. “How much do you need?”

  “Twenty?”

  Richard bit his lower lip and said, “Done. You want to get a room here?”

  “Sure. But listen: I don’t get fucked.”