He went into one of his drawers and came out with a small black box.
“Andrew, come here,” Father Sanford said.
Andrew came to the priest on hands and knees and the priest opened the box and pulled out the Host.
“Tell Jesus everything you just told me.”
Looking at the rough cream colored disk with the small cross pressed into it, Andy crossed himself and told the wafer all that he could remember, and Father Sanford made the sign of the Cross over Andy with the wafer and then said, “Open your mouth.”
There had been the dizzying feeling of opening his mouth for Father’s penis, and almost a surprise at only the wafer, dissolving…. Don’t bite down…the same thing Father had said to him. Jesus dissolved through him.
“Jesus is making you whole and pure,” Father Sanford told him. “He is filling you up with himself. He is making sure you are a virgin.”
After that first time, whenever Andy left Father’s room or office, he left with the taste of the dissolving Host on his tongue. He began to view his meetings with Father as more important than Mass or Confession. Certainly there was more sensation, more at stake. Every time he went to Father Sanford, the priest would touch every part of his young body with all its burgeoning feelings, and he, who had known little affection or touching in life, might spend the whole night in the hot embrace of a holy man, and when it was all over, the ritual, the wafer dissolving on the tongue, the thrill of excitement between his legs let him know something had happened and he was closer to Jesus than he had been before.
That the sexual thrill was accompanied by shame in his stomach or in the pain behind his eyes when some people looked on him too long was an after taste, one of those things that had to be lived with, the devil’s temptation.
The night and morning after the track mete was nothing like this. He had never played, really played with another boy before, and whatever else this was, it was play, as light as it was intense. It was the opposite of being on guard like he always was.
And always those words, fuck, ass, jizz… come. Cock, dick, taint. How did Jeff know all that, all of those dirty words that made Andy… come quick, come twitching and groaning between his teeth? Years later, as a priest, as a priest who ran a school and understood that sometimes he was not only seen as quite brittle, but could in fact be quite brittle, Andy would marvel how he never feared he was sinning with Jeff. He never doubted the dirty, sweaty joy of what was happening in that bed.
As Andy dressed, Jeff knelt behind him, arms thrown over his shoulders.
“Next big mete’s supposed to be in Michigan City.”
“Oh, really,” Andy said, tucking a cigarette behind his ear, his tongue rolling in his mouth as he tied his shoe.
“I’m glad I finally spoke to you this time.”
“This time,” Andy turned around and grinned at him as Jeff handed him his tie.
“Yeah. Our schools have been grouped into metes three times this year.”
“I’m a dummy,” Andy said, “I keep my head down. I don’t notice things.”
“I noticed you,” Jeff said, stretching out naked and unashamed across his bed.
“I should have noticed you,” Andy said.
“Kiss me, alright?”
Andy bent down and they kissed so hard Jeff had him down on the bed, and was almost undressing him when they both looked at the clock.
“And I wanna get a shower in,” Jeff said.
“We should have showered together.”
There wasn’t really time now. His roommates might even be wondering where he was, not that much could have happened to him in Annex.
“Can I call you?” Jeff asked him.
“You can, but I share a phone with three hundred other boys.”
“Oh… Boarding school. I bet they can hardly keep their hands off you.”
“Alas, most of my school mates don’t see the gazelle in me that you do.”
“Their loss, then.”
“Can I call you?” Andy asked.
“Yes.”
He was the last to return to the room, and Rex and Rob and Jacob were grinning at him, their hair a mess as they sat around a great tray between their beds.
“Well, our Andrew seems to have had one heck of an evening,” Andrew observed.
“As you can see, breakfast is here, coffee like grown ups, orange juice, eggs, cereal and even muffins. Help yourself.”
As Andy made a plate of eggs, Jacob said, “Rob got in at sunrise with a big smile on his face and asked where you were. And then we figured you were still on your big night, and now here you come. We were about to send out the police.”
“What time are we leaving?”
“Twelve.” Rex said.
“Great,” said Andy. “If you don’t mind I want to hit the shower.”
“You stink a little, Reed,” Jacob said, ribbing him and grinning, and Andy knew that Jacob understood exactly what that stink was. It was a good kind of stink that Andy didn’t quite want to let go of, but he also didn’t want to smell like it on the three hours home. And he knew that Jacob understood the stink because in the night, while he and Jeff were roaming the halls of the hotel, he had passed this room and entered, turning the door softly to look for his letterman sweater. Rex had stayed in all night supposedly, and Jacob had been gone some of it, but whoever was there, small noises came from the bed in the corner, and in the very thin stream of light that came from the hallway when Andy opened the door, revealed figures moving together under covers. Clearly, nearly all of them had a good time.
Stripping, thrilled by the new sense of the power and beauty of his own body, Andy folded his clothes, then, naked, walked into the bathroom to shower.
He sat beside Jacob on the ride home, and soon the rumbling bus and the rolling fields put them to sleep. Andy dreamed that he was at Mass in Heaven, and Jesus stood at the altar, glorious in gold and white vestments with a crown of thorns on his head, and he had called Andy to the Communion rail where he knelt, the marble cool on his knees like on Good Friday when the kneeling cushion was removed, and Jesus said, “Receive the Body of Christ,” and Andy crossed himself and opened his mouth. Jesus lifted his robes and pressed his erection into Andy’s mouth, filling it, almost stretching his jaws with its fullness and then, at last, ejaculating, and while the semen, salty musty, burning with nicotine, filled his mouth and went down his throat, Andy found a way to say, his tongue pressed down by the wait of divine penis, “Amen.”
He woke, blinking, embarrassed and with an erection, and looked around, but most of the boys on the bus were asleep, and he laid back in his seat and went back to sleep too.
The residence halls filled with noise that evening, and Ben and Jason found Andy and started telling him about their weekend. They were full of noise about the jazz clubs on Stony Island and how Miles Davis had hit on Sefra Portis, but she said he was too wild and ugly. Tommy’s mom had fried the best chicken, and Donald had made an apple pie. Jason declared Donald could make anything, and he had taught him to read Tarot cards. But Tommy was not with them.
“He’s in the chapel,” Jason said, “and he made us go to church.”
“That’s not quite true,” Benji corrected.
“No. We would have left earlier, but Tommy said he wanted to go to Mass.”
“Well, it is Sunday,” Andy said, guiltily, realized he hadn’t been. He could go, he supposed, in the morning.
“True, but my parents always make me go to temple,” Jason said, “which is why I never tell them when I’m in town. Florence and Joe don’t go to church all the time and they never make Tommy. He just goes cause he likes it.”
Andy went through the residence halls and down the steps to the chapel. He found Tommy in the back of the chapel, reading his breviary, and he waited until his friend had crossed himself and risen from the kneeler. Tommy didn’t seem to be leaving his seat any time soon, so Andy genuflected and then went to sit with him.
“How was the track mete?” Tommy asked as if he were not being ambushed.
“Uh… Nice. Great. We won.”
“You look different.”
“Really?”
“You look happy,” Tommy smiled.
Andy nodded.
“I am.”
Then he said, “You ever think about being a priest?”
“No,” Tommy said.
“Not at all?”
“Are you asking because you’re going to be a priest, or because I’m sitting here with my prayer book and rosary.”
“Well, you do pray a lot.”
“I do a lot a lot. I set someone’s room on fire, but I’m not going to be a pyromaniac.”
Andy snorted. He loved Tommy. He always had, but he was suddenly aware of how much he loved him.
“I bought Benji’s condoms,” Tommy said. “I do terrible things.”
Andy shrugged.
“And I’m loud. And I’m mean.”
“Well, now you are mean,” Andy agreed, and Tommy cuffed him on the back of his head.
“See,” Andy lifted a finger and rubbed his head, “Mean.”
He wished he could tell him everything about this weekend, and it wasn’t that Tommy would judge him, but Tommy was, despite everything, still innocent, and Andy wanted to leave him that way.
“I guess you can be load too,” Andy acknowledged, “But… you’re quiet. In your way.”
“Well, you are too.”
“I just feel like…” Andy shrugged. “I dunno.”
“I just assumed you would be the priest.”
“I assumed I would be too,” Andy said.
“And not now?”
Andy shrugged.
“I don’t really know much about anything,” Andy said.
“Well, all we really have to know is what’s for dinner.”
