“Why does the question embarrass you?”
I stare at him in disbelief, as if anyone would need to ask such a question.
“Come on. We’ve been seeing each other, what, two months? You haven’t spared me the details of your colorful little adventures. No, I’m not being judgmental. Just accurate. Isn’t this sudden modesty just a little bit inconsistent?”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I retort. “Admitting you jack off is admitting you’re a loser.”
“So you don’t masturbate because it would make you feel like a loser?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what did you say?”
“I said no one wants to admit they jack off. How often do you masturbate?”
“I ask the questions here,” he says.
“See? You use the therapeutic relationship to avoid having to answer the question. You’ve got the perfect excuse for not admitting the question embarrasses you.”
“Fair enough.”
Actually, once the question is raised, hostility gives way to curiosity.
“I mean, uh, can you masturbate?”
Matt throws back his head and howls.
“Let’s see,” he says, holding up his right hand and wanking the air. “Yep, I guess I’m still capable of making a fist and jerking off. Seriously, what do you think?”
I honest to God don’t know. It was a sin when I was a kid, something that had to be confessed before you could take communion.
“Christ, I remember the humiliation after I’d progressed from impure thoughts to impure deeds. That fucking Father Gillen…”
Matt laughs.
“…he was stone deaf. I almost jumped out of my skin when he screamed Keep your hands off that thing! I almost fucking died when I had to face all those pious ladies waiting to confess, one of whom was, of course, my mother.”
Matt thinks this story is hilarious. Wouldn’t have figured him to have a trite, situation-comedy sense of humor. Roll laugh track.
“So you haven’t answered my question,” I say.
“I thought I did.”
“No. About whether it’s still a sin.”
“Not in my book.”
“It’s not your book that counts. Christ, what do they teach you in the seminary?”
Not a smart move to challenge him.
“What about your book?” he asks. “What’s a sin in your book?”
Funny that it’s taken me until now for me to realize who it is Matt reminds me of. It must be all this talk about sin. It explains a lot, maybe everything. It certainly explains my escalating pulse that first evening I pulled into the driveway and saw him stripped to his skivvies, well, his swim trunks, damp from the hose spray and glistening in the brilliant sun. It explains why I’ve been so resistant to him, fighting a natural impulse to draw close, become intimate, not physically (not that I would mind, but I know better than that), but emotionally, beyond the boundaries of our “therapeutic relationship.”
You look alike.
You walk alike.
At times you even talk alike.
I could lose my mind.
When Fathers are two of a kind!
“I just figured out why I don’t like you.”
“Why?” he says, surprised, maybe (and this could be my imagination and some wishful thinking) a little hurt.
“You remind me of someone.”
Father Timothy Hovis. The substitute priest sent by the Diocese of Charlotte to tend the flock of St. Matthew Parish while Father Gillen recovered from the first of a series of increasingly debilitating strokes. Tall, dark, chiseled, only one generation removed from County Mayo with an athlete’s build and a cleft chin that looked like the thumbprint of God. He was only a few years out of the seminary and still enthusiastic about his vocation, serving the Trinity and the Church as passionately as he followed his beloved Red Sox. He was a man’s man and a priest’s priest. I almost burst with pride when he singled me out for praise in his pawk-the-caw Beantown accent: Well, Mr. Nocera, it sure helps a homesick Boston boy to hear a good dago name like yours.
“Are you going to tell me who?”
“Some priest.”
“That’s it?”
I’d fought the old man tooth and nail. This time he was insistent. My mother’s gentle persuasion-Why, Tony, maybe we should wait another year when he’s a bit older-would not prevail. She must have known it was hopeless to oppose his will. One of the very few possessions he’d brought from Philadelphia was a formal black-and-white portrait of him and his best-loved brother, only a year apart in age, solemnly staring down the photographer, dignified beyond their years in their crisp white cassocks. Goddamn it. I was going to be an altar boy too, even if it killed me.
I thought it would. I shrank in terror whenever old Father Gillen barked at me to pay attention. I cowered in the presence of the other boys, my mortal enemies, wounded by their sneering disdain. And then one Sunday morning, Father Tim appeared. Even the old man was impressed by my sudden commitment to my sacred duties. I volunteered to serve at seven o’clock mass two or three times a week. I offered to do double duty on Sundays. Anything to spend a few precious hours with Father Tim.
“Just some priest,” I repeat.
“I suppose you ought to tell me why you dislike him so much since I’m guilty by association. Or by reminiscence, to be accurate.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“What is it I’m thinking?”
The sordid. The reprehensible. The predictable sad tale of predators and innocence betrayed.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I say, regretting introducing the subject.
“Well, it obviously wasn’t a small deal.”
“He was a jerk.”
“Why?”
Actually, Father Tim was perfect. Father Tim could do no wrong. Father Tim was my inspiration. We loved the same black-and-white movies, Karloff and Lugosi. He made me a Red Sox fan, much to the chagrin of my Philadelphia loyalist father. I’d decided to follow him into the seminary. I spent endless hours lost in reveries of the Adventures of Father Tim (mysteriously unmarked by age) and Father Andrew (all grown up), together conquering the world for God, inseparable, the closest of friends.
One Sunday morning he showed me and Billy Davenport the Boston College class ring he’d been left by his recently deceased father. I, who knew Father Tim so well and could sense his pride in his inheritance, was effusive in my praise. Only a true friend would know how important that ring was to him. So it was the ultimate betrayal, a stinging slap in the face, when, after Mass, I overheard him mimicking my high-pitched, effeminate voice for the amusement of Billy Davenport.
Oh, Father Tim! It’s gorgeous!
“Ouch,” Matt says, genuinely touched by the pathos of it all. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I’m still sorry that someone made you feel that bad.”
I was made of stronger stuff than you might know, Matt. Sure, I bawled my eyes out once I was alone in my bedroom. But I adamantly refused to ever serve another Mass despite the old man’s threats of medieval forms of punishment. It took his apoplectic promise I wouldn’t be able to sit for a week to force me downstairs to speak to Father Tim, who’d taken time from his busy schedule to persuade me to reconsider. No, sorry, I said, politely, but firmly. He bent down to put his arm around my shoulder and asked the question in his most empathic voice. Was it something one of the other boys did? No, I answered truthfully, pulling away from his arm as if it were a red-hot branding iron.
“Shame seems to be a recurring theme in your life,” Matt concludes.
No kidding.
“What about you? Aren’t there things you’re ashamed of?” I ask.
“Of course.”
“So, do you masturbate?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he sighs, exasperated. “Well, I’ll tell you this much. If I did, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. Time’s up. Same time next week.”
I stand up and, session over, extend my hand, offering a gruff good night.
“I bet Father Tim would be impressed by that firm handshake today.” He laughs.