Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir (14 page)

My answer was to blind yourself and go methodically from one person to the next, saving whomever fell first in your path.

The teacher called my answer “advanced thinking.”

“No thinking about it, really,” I said. “Just common sense. You can’t save everyone that falls down in front of you. You have to move on, stop thinking about it, put it out of your mind, don’t dwell.”

The teacher knew better. It was advanced thinking or nothing, and her mealy public approval in front of the rest of the class made me want, even as a little kid, to put a bullet in my brain.

But advanced thinking seemed like a pretty good model for getting to Archbishop Sean. I could confront dozens of people before I finally confronted him. I imagined it would go like this: Scott and I would hit all the gay marriage rallies, hold hands, and sing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” until we went blue in the face. Pastor Bob and Mr. Sodomy would instantly see the error of their ways. Mr. Sodomy would drop his “No Butt-Fucking” sign and turn back for Appalachia, remarking, “That bald-headed gentleman with the chip on his shoulder about his archbishop was remarkably persuasive. Homosexuals should definitely be entitled to equal rights under the law.”

Pastor Bob would say, “Yeah. Too bad about the gay voice.”

“Yes,” Mr. Sodomy would say, “he reminds me a little of our beloved president, but with a three-digit IQ.”

Then Pastor Bob would suggest they both drop to their knees. “Let’s pray for the bald gentleman to get a nice manly voice. Maybe then he can find the husband God Himself has selected as his mate.”

How to Come Out to Hardcore, Bead-Counting Catholics

1. Talk butch. Advocate the virtues of a two-deep zone and a four-man front in a second and long situation. (Sounds hot, doesn’t it?)

2. Resist attempts to be set up with a nice Catholic girl.

3. Spend half a year referring to your boyfriend sans name or gendered pronouns.

4. Float Mr. Rogers—like observations comparing the rainbow to the diversity of God’s children.

5. Wear lavender frequently. Pay no heed to comments that you must be very secure in your heterosexuality to wear such a color.

6. Remark on the joys of all-male communities who share particular friendships, vacation together, and think highly of a muscular man in a loincloth affixed to a torture device. Clarify that you are referring to priests, of course.

7. Stop trying to speak like a Hollywood harlot who’s chainsmoked too many Lucky Strikes. Embrace the gay voice God gave you.

8. Offer to loosen the kinks from the hot new friar’s muscular back.

9. Get outed in the
New York Times
.

10. Break out the sex toys.

The reality of my confrontations proved considerably more mundane. Take the Hale Marys, for example. Each had a thoroughly Irish name and sufficient stubbornness to outwait the Second Coming of the Lord, so I planned my coming-out carefully. Most days before Mass, I did a once-over in the bathroom mirror at work to rid myself of any direct or indirect indications of homosexuality: a little concealer on the hickeys, sleeves pulled over the entrance stamp from the gay club, shed the rainbow flag, lose the copy of the local gay paper, etc.

Only my perennial lateness undid my plans. One cold November Friday, I had no time for precautions. Fraudsters on the mind, I raced into the sacristy late. Mary Flanagan greeted me with a great big hug. Her face glowed.

“Oh,” she asked, “what does your pin say?”

I looked down in horror at the political pin on my lapel.
Oy vey
.

She peered closer. I resisted the urge to cover her eyes as you might a child gawking at a car wreck.

“Hi!” she read aloud, sounding the words out like a child learning to read. “I’m … loved … by … a… second-class… gay … citizen.”

Seconds ticked by. Light years. Eons.

Then Mary threw back her head and laughed. She hugged me again and kissed me on the cheek. “I love you.”

It turned out Mary had a confession of her own. No, she didn’t munch rug. She came out as a thoroughbred professional faghag since before I had been born.

“Every Sunday,” she said, “I go to Aunt Sadie’s — do you know Aunt Sadie’s?”

I did. It was a gayborhood boutique that sold fabulous, overpriced, one-of-a-kind versions of various housewares so wealthy gay men could exhaust their disposable income in an orderly fashion.

“Do you know Mr. Ho and Mr. Mo?” she asked, naming the gay men who ran the store. (Straight people tend to assume that all gay men know one another; it’s true we have all probably slept with one another at one time or another, but we rarely use our real names.)

“Well, Mr. Ho and Mr. Mo have a piano in the store, and every Sunday …” Mary regularly patronized Aunt Sadie’s to drink mulled hard cider and crowd around a grand piano with a dozen gay men singing show tunes.

Hallelujah!

A few weeks later, one of the regulars at Friday mass cornered me in the Shrine’s lobby. “You’re the famous author!” she squealed. “I saw you read at Borders! What’s your book again?
Salsa
, or something?”

“Hot Sauce”
I mumbled.

“What’s it about?”

A light dew formed on my bald head. “It’s a novel,” I said.

“I’ve got
to get it.”

I suggested she try the
Q Guide for Wine and Cocktails
that Scott and I had written. “You’re Irish,” I explained. “You must fancy a wee drop now and again.”

“No,” she insisted, “I want the novel.” She continued to pester me for my novel’s title. Every time someone new came into the Shrine, she introduced me as the “famous writer.” A dozen people vowed to converge on Borders the next day.

I debated managing expectations, but in the end I just sent them off. Call it another inadvertent coming-out party. It was time to stop apologizing for my gayness, as if a wayward child had inadvertently broken the ceramic candy dish of decorous conversation.

God Hates Fats

The last person standing between me and Archbishop Sean was a coworker well call Tony Cinnabonini in homage to his diet and ethnicity. Cinnabonini had signed a petition in favor of an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution banning gay marriage.

Before incapacitating him for a couple of days, I prepared for the workplace showdown. I consulted my lesbian boss, the SEC Equal Employment Opportunity Office, the SEC Office of Ethics, the union-management relations person, the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Father Bear-Daddy, Cinnabonini’s supervisor, my mother — in short, just about everyone but Gram and the good Lord Himself. Only the EEO lawyer supported me, waxing nostalgic for the old days when — I am not making this up — she came under gunfire while confronting the mining industry on behalf of female coal miners.

Everyone else said, “You must be
nuts!  
Don’t engage him.”

“His baby is two years old,” I explained. “I just can’t wait for God to bless him with a gay son or for his daughter to grow up to be a porn star. I have got to incapacitate him for a couple of days right now — before he has a chance to vote to restrict gay rights.”

One Friday mass soon after, the Gospel reading told how Jesus stuck his fingers in the ears of a deaf-mute. “Be opened!” Christ commanded, and the deaf-mute instantly could hear.

I took it as a sign. I snuck up behind Cinnabonini and gave him a wet willy in the right ear. “Be opened!” I cried.

OK, I didn’t actually do this. The EEO representative specifically told me not to. But I did corner Cinnabonini in his office, brandishing my four main talking points: the financial security of same-sex marriage; questions of health-care rights; the message-sending power of same-sex marriage (since others internalize the inequality as a license to do us violence); and questions of equality with the elderly who can get married and the heteros who marry but don’t want or can’t have kids.

Cinnabonini nodded throughout my discourse. But when I first mentioned a “Catholic perspective,” he interrupted me to describe the circumstances around his signing the petition.

“There was no hate,” he insisted. “They just pitched it as defending the sacrament of marriage, making sure those vows have a special

place. To be honest, I didn’t think that much of it. Everyone was signing the petition as they went out the door, so I signed it, and my wife signed it. I don’t know that I would sign it if we had to do it again.”

That surprised me. “Why not?”

“My wife’s getting liberal in her old age,” he said. “She’s been watching Rosie O’Donnell. She sees how Rosie cares for those kids. She thinks now that gays can be as good parents as anyone.”

“Maybe better,” I murmured. “Thank God for Rosie.” We take our bigotry-reducing lessons anywhere we can find them.

“Anyhow, I hear what you’re saying,” Cinnabonini said. “If I can split sacramental marriage from civil marriage, I would do it. I would vote against the amendment.”

“But they’re already pre-split for you, like an English muffin.”

“Huh?”

“If you get married in the Church but don’t get your marriage license from City Hall,” I explained, “you’re not legally married. End of story. Similarly, if you go to City Hall but aren’t blessed by a priest, you’re not sacramentally married. Two totally separate concepts. Only the timing and the Church’s willingness to be an agent of the state links them.”

Cinnabonini continued to nod, but clearly didn’t get my point. In desperation, I invited him to join me at Mass. I told him about the friars’ belief that the Vatican’s stance is a cruelty. Playing this card made me feel like I was betraying Father Francis.

“I see what you’re saying,” he said. “I try to do what the Church wants, but I think about it. My Protestant friends always laugh at me. They say I do whatever the pope tells me to do. Not true. I think about it. My parents were divorced,” he explained.

“You’re losing me,” I said.

“That’s why marriage matters so much to me. I try to do the right thing. I bring my whole family to church on Sundays, I volunteer at the church, I go to the International House of Pancakes afterward with everyone who is involved.”

“But gays aren’t asking for sacramental marriage or the Church’s blessing to go to IHOP,” I countered. “Most of them don’t want it. They want to make a civilly recognized vow to each other, just like straight people do. The Church can withhold its blessing, but the state should not.”

“Did anyone else in the office sign?”

“Not that I know of.”

Cinnabonini then ratted out another one of our colleagues. “You should talk to her,” he said.

“Maybe I will,” I said. “But what about you?”

He scratched his head. “It’s still against the Church. Nothing you say changes that.”

“So’s gluttony,” I fumed, “but that doesn’t keep you and your wife from stuffing your faces at IHOP until you’re both big as houses.”

Actually, I didn’t say this. Not to him. But I said it afterward to Scott — over and over and over.

Obviously, I had some homework to do in the charity department. The Hale Marys were all fine for comfort (and, apparently, show tunes), but I needed gay spiritual warriors and martyrs more advanced than me to assist my quixotic quest to convert Archbishop Sean. I couldn’t greet him on Christmas Eve alone.

“Charisms” are “those gifts and graces of the Spirit that have benefit, direct or indirect, for the community.”

*Blurk 
(v) tr. To read a blog without commenting on or contributing to it. From
blog + lurk
.

VI

Land(s) of the Misfit Tops

Charlie: I am the official sentry of the Isle of Misfit Toys. My name is
—
Rudolph: Don’t tell me: jack
.

Charlie: No, Charlie. That's why I'm a misfit toy. My name is all wrong. No child wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-Box, so I had to come here
.

— from
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Cruising for Catholics

Y NEW GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME?
—personal ads for spiritual lonely hearts. Craigslist, Man Hunt, and Match.com be damned. I want a site where you’d see the following:

• Purebred Buddhist with light karmic burden seeks similarly highly evolved being with nice yoni for frequent tantric sex and occasional satori.
  

• Heterodox Hindu to share passion for mosquito swatting and Philly cheese steaks.
  

• Ye Olde Piety Show participant looking for fellow liturgical dramatists skilled in the fine art of prostration.
  

• Catholic strip-club patron looking for blushing, gorgeous, virgin parochial schoolgirl raised by nuns to be mother of my children. Must be OK that I sleep around.
  

• Lutheran humorist seeks mate with good posture and collection of Old Testament knock-knock jokes.
  

• Ecumenical Unitarian Universalist group seeks anyone with a pulse.