The Catholic Priest in My Bed

Akron, Ohio, April 2007

In the spring of 2007, I was teaching at the University of Dayton, and dating Paul, an aspiring writer who had just graduated from Ohio Dominican University. He had four of the characteristics I find attractive: short, husky, gifted beneath the belt (Bratwurst+), and religious (devout Catholic).

Devout Catholic.

1. He got his name by being born on June 29th, the Feast Day of Saint Paul.  Lucky he wasn't born on June 30th, the Feast Day of Saints Clotsindus and Ostianus.

2. He went to Catholic schools and a Catholic college.

3. His older brother was a priest.

4. He wore a scapular around his neck, except at the gym.

5. He had a little basin of holy water in his apartment, which he used to cross himself.

6. When he spent Saturday night with me, he insisted on going to Mass the next day.

7. And fasting before, so no Sunday brunch.

Being closeted, Paul didn't want anyone to know that we were gay.  He wouldn't take me to his regular church in Huber Heights, or go to a church near me in Fairborn, where someone might recognize.

We often drove all the way into Columbus to find a relatively gay-friendly Catholic church.  If not, we went to Holy Family, the most conservative church in town, where statues outnumbered people, and elderly nuns sat in the front row with rosary beads, and priests still heard confessions.

The nice thing about conservative churches is that it's easy to be closeted.  It never occurs to anyone, ever, that a member of the congregation -- or a visitor -- might be gay.  Paul and I could sit together, hug, answer questions as a couple, and everyone just assumed that we were heterosexual friends, or father and son (I was 45, and he was 25).

Besides, one of the priests was very cute.  Father Christopher, 26 years old, a new graduate of the Pontifical College Josephinum.  Tall, dark-haired, with glasses and a hint of a respectable physique, who threw references to Harry Potter and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into his homilies.


I have a thing for clergy: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim.  There's something about the juxtaposition of the physical and the spiritual, the erotic thoughts that leak into sacred spaces, the penis hidden beneath those gaudy robes and black cassocks.

No chance that we would ever hook up!  He was a graduate of the most conservative seminary in the U.S., and a priest at the most conservative church in Ohio!

Just looking was enough.

One Sunday Father Christopher announced an upcoming spiritual retreat, centered on the contemplative works of Thomas Merton.  Participants would car-pool to the Loyola Retreat House, near Akron, Ohio, about three hours away.

I liked Thomas Merton, and I really liked Father Christopher, so I signed up.  Paul couldn't make it.

A group of 10 of us drove up in three cars, leaving at dawn and arriving just in time for lunch.  Then an afternoon of meditation workshops, book discussions, lectures, free time for contemplation, dinner, and Mass.  It was like a Nazarene camp meeting.

The next morning, we had another Mass, followed by breakfast, more workshops, discussions, and lectures, lunch, and more free time for contemplation.  Then we headed home.

I got to spend a lot of time with Father Christopher.  My life story had to be strictly closeted, of course, but I still managed to complain about the Nazarene church of my childhood, and share lots of stories about how much they hated Catholics.

 He was shocked -- he had believed that everyone loved and respected the Catholic Church, even Protestants.

But the best part was bedtime.  Since Father Christopher and I were the only non-couples at the retreat, we were assigned to share a room.

I didn't intend to try anything, of course -- the last thing I needed was to be ejected from a retreat center a three hour drive from home.  But I was hoping for a Sausage Sighting.

Father Christopher changed into his pajamas in the bathroom, then climbed into bed with rosary beads.  "Hail Mary, full of grace," he began.  "Oh -- Boomer, I hope this won't disturb you?"

"Not at all."  I waited..

No chance of seeing any autoerotic activity later.  I looked it up: Catholics consider masturbation "intrinsically evil," like being gay.

But sometimes the penis has a mind of its own.  Especially when you lack a regular sexual outlet.

I watched.

Father Christopher finished his rosary, kissed it, put it aside, and crossed his arms over his chest like a vampire.  Soon he began to snore. 

I watched.

After about half an hour, it began to rise.

It stood at full attention.

I didn't dare touch it, but...could I move off the covers, and get a peek?

I reached over and carefully tugged at the covers.

Father Christopher murmured something, and I retreated.

It was still standing at full attention.

I tried again.

It stood, peeking out of his underwear, ready for action, a Bratwurst with a mushroom head.

Eventually he turned over.  He hadn't awakened, or even touched anything.

Later I discovered that the average person has about 5 dreams per night.  10% of those dreams have sexual content, and 5% of the sex dreams result in a spontaneous orgasm.

So if you watch most men all night, you have a 1 in 40 chance of seeing a spontaenous orgasm.  But since Father Paul didn't have an access to an ordinary sexual outlet, my chances were probably like 1 in 10.

Still, my luck was amazing.

In the morning Father Paul showered and changed, and we continued the retreat.

I don't think he even knew that his erotic life came alive every night in dreams.

See also: Barry and the Creepy Old Guy; and Paul Gives Up Men for Lent

Seeing My First Gay People: The Fairy at the Court House

Rock Island, November 1976

Up until my junior year in high school, I had no idea that gay people existed.  I knew about fairies, boys who had the audacity to pretend that they were girls (bad at sports, good at schoolwork), and fags, monstrous beings who conflated masculine and feminine. But I never associated these beings with same-sex desire or acts.

No one did.  Everyone I knew dismissed same-sex desire as something else, hero worship or friendship, and same-sex acts were simply beyond the boundaries of what could be imagined.

Even though I engaged in some at music camp during the summer after my sophomore year.

Still, I didn't figure out that gay people existed until that fall.

1. September 29th: On TV, Alice met an ex-football player (Denny Miller, left), who said that he was gay.  So of course he has no romantic interest in her.  But all men, I was told, spent their lives in passionate pursuit of the feminine.  Who was this exception?  What was "gay"?

2. October 6th: in Rolling Stone, Elton John stated that he was "bisexual."  Nowhere in the article was the word defined, but I knew"bi" from "bisect" and "bicentennial": divide into two.  Did he have "two sexes"?

October 9th: On TV: a  new patient (Howard Hesseman) joined Bob Newhart's therapy group, and the others were horrified to discover that he is gay.  Elliot Carlson (right) is particularly worried about...something.  But what?

November 1st:  On TV, Phyllis dated a man who did not find her attractive.  He explained that he was gay.



November 10th: my political science class car-pooled down-town to the County Courthouse to see a real criminal trial in progress.

The case was about a shooting that took place outside the Hawaiian Lounge, which we all knew was a fairy hangout.  Sure enough, a swish was called to the witness stand: tall and gaunt, with long, greasy hair and mascara-ed eyes. He explained that he was parked across the street at the time, so he saw everything. The attorney wanted to know why he was parked in downtown Rock Island on a bitter cold January evening.

“We had just come from the Hawaiian Lounge, and we were deciding where to eat.”
“Who was in the car with you?” the attorney asked.
He named two men and a woman.
“Why was there a woman with them?” I whispered to my friend Darry. “Swishes hate women.”
“Maybe it was two of Them and a normal couple,” he whispered back. “Maybe it was two swishes on a double date!”

This made no sense. Swishes hated women, so how could they date. ..unless he meant. ..but they couldn't possibly date each other! They were both boys!

But if you don't find women attractive, maybe you find men attractive, so you want to date....

November 14th: in the public library, researching prisons (for the same civics class), I was leafing aimlessly through a book, when I happened upon a black and white photo (not this one).

It took a long moment for me to comprehend what I was seeing; it simply didn't make sense.  Two male prisoners were standing in front of a chain link fence, with their backs to the camera. Holding hands.

I stared for a long time, thinking “No, this is impossible.” Only little kids, parents and children, and boyfriends and girlfriends held hands.. Men didn’t even touch each other’s hands. If their hands met by accident, they would jerk away, too disgusted for words.The caption talked about the “problem of homosexuals in prison.” So fairies  -- swishes -- homosexuals -- gays dated each other, held hands.

Suddenly embarrassed, as if I had been caught viewing pornography, I slammed the book shut.  Darry looked up at me quizzically.

November 15th: On TV: Maude's husband (Bill Macy) dreamed that he kissed a man, and worried that he might be gay.

So gays not only dated and held hands: they kissed!  Maybe they reached under frilly sweaters to feel each others' powdery marshmallow bodies.  Maybe they even had sex.

But I still didn't connect gays holding hands with the boys holding hands among the candles in the Don Grady song.  Or gays dating with my dates with boys.  Or gays having sex with me and Todd spending the night together at music camp.

I wouldn't make the connection for another year and a half.

We Look for a Gay Comic Book

Rock Island, December 1976

At Christmastime in my junior year in high school, shortly after I caught Cousin Joe in the act, I caught the flu.  I lay in bed for a week, missing the District Jump Quiz Tournament, unable to concentrate on books or comic books, unwilling to make the arduous trek across the room to turn on the portable tv atop the dresser, I mostly listened to KSTT on my clock radio. Boston sang "More Than a Feeling" about a thousand times; their only competition seemed to be "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing," by Leo Sayer.  I know what he made me feel like doing.

Once I heard a song called “Walk on the Wild Side,” about a man’s  descent from Acting like a Girl to Fairy to Swish: “he shaved his legs and then he was a she.” But I was puzzled by the line in which the Swish “goes to see Apollo" (I had never heard of the Apollo Theater in Harlem).  What did the Greek god, the epitome of muscular manliness, have to do with a sinister, soul-destroying walk on the wild side?







On December 29th, I was feeling a little better, so I asked Darry to bring Robert Graves' massive two-volume Greek Myths, and read up on Apollo.  In one story, he and his friend Hyacinth were playing with a discus.  The wind Zephyr became so jealous of their love that he blew the discus off course, and it hit Hyacinth in the head, killing him. The distraught god created a flower from the bloodstained grass, the hyacinth, with petals that spell out ai, alas!

“Zephr was jealous of their love,” I read. “How can you be jealous of a guy? You can have hundreds of buddies. You’re only jealous of girls.”

“Maybe Apollo and Hyacinth were girls, sort of,” Darry said. “You know. . . .” he flashed a loose wrist.

“Don’t be ridiculous! They couldn’t be gay.  There weren't any swishes in ancient times, and besides, they were like, built!”  Everybody knew that gays were thin, wispy things who hated muscles.

“How do you know how built they were? There aren’t any pictures in the book.”

Slightly embarrassed, I told him about the comic book that my boyfriend Bill gave me long ago, with Casper the Friendly Ghost making a mystical ascent to the Island in the Sky. Darry wanted to see it, so I asked him to find my box of old Casper comics in the closet. The Island in the Sky comic was missing!

Thinking it was misfiled, we sorted through my boxes of Disney, Tarzan, Archie, and superhero comics. Nothing. We even crawled into the attic  crawlspace to look through a box labeled “Boomer," leftover from our move two years ago.  It contained old toys, puzzles, coloring books, cartoon kits, Viewmaster slides, birthday party photos. No comic books.

Exhausted by the effort, I clomped back to bed and collapsed. Darry pulled the covers over me and went downstairs to fetch some orange juice. When he returned, he said, “Don’t get all obsessed. Your fever-addled brain probably invented it. A bad acid trip about Casper the Friendly Ghost, imagine that!”

“No, I’ve read the comic book – lot of times.” I remembered every detail. I remembered when I first read it -- a hot summer night, my boyfriend Bill asleep beside me, breathing softly, and Casper flying to the Elysian Fields to meet Greek gods.

 It was an essential part of my childhood, like Chekhov and Sulu smiling at each other or Robbie Douglas singing about boys holding hands.

“So, tell me all about the story you dreamed up. . .I mean, that you read in that mysterious vanishing comic book.  Casper goes to an island in the sky."

“And he meets Apollo, Pan, Bacchus, and some others. All men, no women. Muscular physiques. They live together. It was like heaven.”

Darry laughed. “Sounds like the Hawaiian Lounge to me! Nothing but fruits, on double dates with each other!  Except for the muscles, of course.”

“Waste your time doing something else!” I exclaimed, scandalized. “Nobody was gay! It was a kid’s comic!”

When Darry left, I huddled beside the space heater, trembling.  First the secret message "Brian gives free LBJs," and now the Island in the Sky.  Why did all of my most cherished childhood memories involve swishes?

It would take me another year to figure out why..