How Father Tam Ruined Ash Wednesday for Everybody
Part 4: What Didn't Happen
But Father Tam didn’t make it on the 13th because somebody beat him up bad. As in unconscious in the hospital with tubes and stints stuck in him ‘bad’.
That night I had been asleep for hours when Justin banged once on my door and flipped on the light. He stood next to the bed looking down at me and speaking but the part of my brain that processes his raspy denasal voice was still asleep.
“Hey, now.” I croaked and squinted. “Suppose I was entertaining?”
“You never fail to be entertaining, but listen to me. Obie’s not here.”
“Seriously.” I looked at the clock: 2:37am. “What if I’d been fixing to hop onto Cage, or Diesel Washington, or making a reverse Oreo?” Diesel Washington was my most recent favorite porn god. I actually had been dreaming about Cage when he burst in.
“Dammit to hell Carl, listen to me. Obie didn’t come home and he didn't call.” He pulled the pillow out from under my head.
“So?”
“So something is wrong. He always calls me if he's out past midnight.”
“He does? Why?"
"Because I asked him to. So he doesn't startle us when he comes in."
"Startle you? You could sleep with a gaggle of angry geese in your room."
"Oh goddam it, never mind. Something is wrong. He never stays out this late, ever.."
"Not true. Remember that time he and wasshisname almost got arrested for trying to steal the G off The Red Angus Diner? Or when his motorcycle broke down somewhere desolate in Williamson County?"
“That’s my goddam point. Twice, maybe 3 times in a year. And he always calls or texts me when he's not coming home. Something's off. I need to call him.”
Now I was awake enough to be irritated. “So pick up your stupid phone and call him. It's not rocket surgery. Do you really want my permission?” And yes, I said rocket surgery on purpose.
“No. Well. But . . . do you think I should? Is it too intrusively parental or something? I’m not a fucking mother hen with her brood.”
“Then you’re doing a good imitation of one,” I said. I got up and gave him my phone. “Here, Galena. Call your little lost squab.”
He turned his back to me while he dialed. “Apparently somebody was having pleasant dreams.”
“Oh.” He meant the tent that was the front of my boxers. “Cage did that.” I popped my wood through the fly and put my hands on my hips. Shocking him would be revenge for waking me up. “There. Is that better?”
He looked and then turned away again unscandalized. “Keep your widow maker away from me. I have no desire to end up like Cage.”
“Like Cage? What’s wrong with Cage?” I roared at the back of his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Please,” he said, walking away. “After a night with you, the poor guy whistles in the wind like a beer bottle.” I wedged my hard on under my boxers’ waistband, pulled my tee shirt over it and followed him to the kitchen to defend Cage's honor and continence.
“He does not whistle. Liar. His sphincter is so tight that … that … the carbon in his poop turns to diamonds when it passes through it. When he flushes it’s like a hundred carets going down the toilet.” Justin snorted. “A hundred carATS, not carROTS, you harlequin. You don’t know my sex life. He is versatile. He can catch and pitch like a pro.” He snorted again. “Listen, Colonel Mustard, Cage is an awesome top and no part of his anatomy ever whistles except sometimes his mouth. I mean lips. But he does that on purpose." I stopped when I was awake enough to know I was babbling.
Justin leaned against the overhanging breakfast bar with my phone to his ear, cool as Bugs Bunny regarding an Elmer Fudd tantrum. “Seriously? ‘Colonel Mustard’?”
“Shut up.”
I didn’t think Obie would pick up but he did. “Obie?” Justin said. “No, it’s me. I know it's stupid but Carl wanted me to call because he was worried about you.” Then I watched his face morph gradually from stunned to afraid to angry and determined.
“Father ... ? Fuck. Oh fucking God. Okay, okay.”
To me: “Somebody beat up Father Tam in Karitz Park. Obie’s with him at St. Sebastian’s.”
Back to Obie: “Oh hell no. Hell no. We’re leaving now…. Yes, we are. This is not up for fucking discussion, Obadiah. We are going over there now.”
“How hurt is he?” My eyes were filling up fast.
“He's hurt enough to be unconscious in a hospital. That's all Obie said. Somebody apparently tried to kill him. Put some clothes on, we’re going."
To Obie: “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I zipped to my room and to pull on some shorts and get my car keys. Because of either grogginess or adrenaline or a slapstick mix of both, I dropped my keys twice before I convinced my fingers to grab and keep them. I ran back -- but he just stood there, looking at my phone in his hand.
“What’s the hold up?” I asked. “Let’s move.”
“No,” he said. His fear and anger was now a confused sadness. “Obie’s coming home. Father Tam will be all right but he’s knocked out on sedatives, and his family is there wondering who the Hispanic guy is.” He handed me my phone and went to his shabby recliner. “You know, the hospital called Obie because his name and number were in Father Tam’s wallet. He had Obie listed first as who to call in an emergency.”
"Yes. That's good, right?"
“No, it's not, because that son-of-a-bitch gave Obie his power of attorney." He sank into his chair and pushed back like he wanted to disappear in its dusty blue upholstery.
“Ah,” I said. I knew where he was going with this.
“You know what that means in gay terms, right?” I hated to hear the thick sadness in his voice.
“It could mean a lot of things,” I said, trying to be upbeat. But he gave such a pitying look, I conceded his point. “But yeah. It means they’re in love.”
Something inside the recliner creaked like gears grinding as he pitched backwards and the footstool part popped out. “In love with a cock sucking Catholic priest,” he said. “What could he possibly be thinking?”
“I know, who knows. But thinking isn't always up at the top of the list for a man in love. Mr. Heart and Mr. Dick gang up and ambush Mr. Brain. Poor Obie. Poor Father Tam.”
He grabbed the arms of his chair. “Poor Father Tam? Are you fucking kidding? He was beaten up in Karitz Park, Carl. There is only one reason anybody would be in Karitz Park in the middle of the night and it is NOT to hear confessions.”
That was true. Many men have knelt there in the dark, but they weren’t praying, at least not in the ecclesiastical sense. Five years ago it was Austin’s premier nighttime anonymous sex venue.
On a pole at the entrance of Karitz Park, there's a bronze plaque with a bas relief picture of Helmut Walther Karitz and the words he used in 1805 to dedicate this land to the City of Austin: “Let this be a public recreation area where all citizens may come and enjoy what nature has given.”
That was the going joke among Karitz Park habitués; they were nothing more than citizens desiring to “come and enjoy what nature has given.” I popped in a few times in the early 1990s but being so close to the university, it tended to fill up with two kinds of men: young, skittish college guys from the nearby student housing (what Cage calls “boy-curious”), and the men who pursue them exclusively. I prefer them older and furrier so I got bored pretty fast. Still, I have a few good memories of one or two forty-somethings with facial hair and no-holds-barred attitudes. It was an adventure to have sex in a dangerously public place, the smell of the night air, the stars wheeling romantically overhead, my ass exposed to mosquitoes as big as your hand. Fun times. It’s just wasn’t something I’d make into a staple of my sex life.
Later drugs moved in. Dealers and thugs scared off the university boys and the cops really cracked down. Last I heard the only men who still cruised for sex in the ligustrum of Karitz Park were extremely volatile types, pale with jonesing, who’d blow you or let you fuck them for 25 dollars, then freak out in the middle of it and bite you or something. My friend Robin, a pillar of the late-night-anonymous-sex community, persevered until the very end. When one night the guy he was 'entertaining' used his long pinkie fingernail to scoop a white substance into the pee hole of his penis, Robin flew out of there and never went back.
It overloaded us with emotion to think that this man that Obie admired and loved would be lurking there at night, looking for sex or drugs, unfaithful to his community at large and unfaithful to Obie specifically. Justin's sadness was as usual temporary and his ire was back full tilt.
“What that Tartuffe sonofabitch has done to Obie,” he fumed. “I swear to you that if he ever comes into this house, I will personally with my own hands and dull scissors, make sure that celibacy is never an option for him again.”
“When Obie comes home he needs to be our focus, not Father Tam's actions. As hurt as he is right now, Obie probably doesn't want to hear us dissing Father Tam,” I said. I felt tears coming fast and talking was a way to keep them to a minimum. “It might not be as bad as we’re thinking, you know? Maybe he and Father Tam had an open relationship.”
“Obie? Our Obie? Or the one who doesn’t hand out communion wafers at mass and teach ‘How To Become Catholic’ classes?”
“As soon as I heard myself say it, I knew it was stupid. Okay, so let's make a game plan using what we know for sure. Like I know for sure that he’s in a lot of pain, like down to the bones of his soul, and he’ll try to copy and paste his Obiescent tranquility over it. So we won't push him. We follow his lead. We'll listen if he wants to talk and if he doesn’t, we give him space but not advice. No preaching, no righteous indignation, no talk about castrating Father Tam slowly and painfully, all right? Remember, we're his brothers now so we're giving him four gentle, sympathetic ears and all the brotherly love he wants.”
“Right, that’s good. But give me some hints, for fuck’s sake. You read him more often than I do, which is never. He always looks the same to me, like he’s at one with the goddam universe, like you could point a cannon and he’d just smile at it.”
“All right, I'll do my best,” I said. “But pay attention and follow my cues for once, ok?”
Justin squeezed his eyes shut and put his head back. “I don’t understand this fucked up need some men have to have anonymous sex in public places.”
“I totally understand it. It’s a quick dip into something that is pure instinct. The danger of getting busted amps it up, and then there’s the exhibitionist part too.” He shot me a look, so I added, “Or so I’ve read.”
“Don’t you mean proof-read? In your finally authoritative book published by Rechy and Sons Press? You know, it’s a fucking miracle that you aren’t oozing diseases.”
“Diseases aren’t a necessary part of the scene. You can have safe al fresco sex just like in your bedroom with the doors locked and the curtains drawn. Back then I had a wad of condoms on me 24/7. It was a fragile, more hormone driven time.”
“Oh sweet lord above. You mean there was a time when you were more hormone driven than now?”
You’ll notice that I ignore him with he gets rhetorical about my sex life. What he calls slutty, I call gregarious. “Cruise park sex,” I said, “is basic male sexual politics taken to its logical end. It’s drummed into us since birth, that ‘real men’ go after what they want no matter what. They sneak it into our brains, that sex is not really about love and sharing and intimacy like the rest of the world thinks …or at least pretends to think.”
“Oh, God, sexual politics. Here we go,” he said.
“It’s about getting something from another person. You’re told that sex is all about what you want, your orgasm, Foxtrot Tango Whiskey, screw social convention and splatter sperm its face if you can get away with it.”
“You are so full of shit. Nobody is taught that sex is only about conquering and social convention bukake.”
“In so many words, no. It’s never put that way because to say it would be to give away a secret, i.e. this secret: that selfish, macho-man point of view implies that all male sexual acts are really just masturbation. You’re just using another person’s mouth or butthole or vagina instead of your hand. Cruise park sex offers the perfect venue for that: you don't know your partner's name and if it's dark enough, you don't even see each other's faces. And when you follow the syllogism through from 'real men take what they want' to its logical end, that's where you end up.”
"You end up fucking a faceless masturbation toy in some bushes in a park?"
"Yes, more or less metaphorically."
"And you're all right with depersonalizing another human being until they're just a fucking orifice?"
"I never said I'm all right with it. I said I understood it. It's just a fact of the world. As long as some men believe that it's their right to depersonalize their partners, and others are all right with being depersonalized, it'll keep on happening."
“Who the hell are you? What cold cynic is skulking under that cuddly bear costume? That’s your goddam Catholic brainwashing. Aquinas and Augustine were nothing but frustrated, dirty minded douchebags who were warped with sexual frustration and that’s why they built your church on terror for the uncomplicated act of fucking.”
“That's what I'm saying. Anonymous sex is how some men try to uncomplicate it, to pare it down from the frou frou of making love to plain old fucking."
"Men that debased and self indulgent are the minority. Most of us don't have a problem dealing with lust, at least not to that extreme."
"Maybe not. But it's still a struggle between nurture and nature with the odds stacked in nature’s favor. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to ask what two men in love are thinking. It’s reaction versus response, probability versus actuality, intellect versus testosterone, heads versus tails.”
“So are you yammering to keep from thinking about Obie and weeping like a cold glass in a warm room?”
“Yes. Did you know that the Abe Lincoln heads-side of a penny is a bazillionth of a microgram heavier than the Lincoln Memorial tails-side?”
“I do now.”
“So when you flip a penny, you’re supposed to have a 50/50 chance of getting heads or tails, but it will come up tails more often than heads because it’s skewed from the beginning.”
“So the fuck what? You get tails 50.00000000001 times more. That’s statistically insignificant. Can we focus on ... ”
“Maybe, but it isn’t real-life insignificant. When you’re talking about a drive as strong and basically mindless as sex, that wee, half an iota is all it takes to tip the scales. You can pretend it’s all even-steven and that we’re all tamed and domesticated, but in the long run the head,” I tapped my temple, “loses to the tail.” I pointed my thumbs at my crotch.
“Please stop,” he said. “Your waxing philosophical about The Gay Male and Fast Food Sex is absolutely fucking scintillating but Obie will be here any minute. None of that helps right now. We're supposed to be thinking about how we're going to deal with this. The man he thinks he loves -- a priest for fuck’s sake -- is caught lurking through the brambles in Karitz Park. That’s our focus."
I took a deep breath. "You're right. Sorry. You know how I get."
"Remember: I’m the tactless yet lovable one and you’re the affable, nurturing crybaby. You’re supposed to do all that emotional edification business so now is not the time for a thesis on clandestine public sex.” His voice was getting a little shrill.
I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what had to happen next. “Stand up,” I barked. He was startled enough to do it, but he was suspicious. I went over and put my arms around him and held on. I held on through (1) the surprised recoil, (2) the very loud threats and epithets; (3) the twisting and fighting; (4) the appeals to my rationality (5) fists pounding on every available part of me. I held on until he knew I wasn’t letting go and he relaxed and rested his chin on my shoulder. That lasted for less than a second, but it did the job.
He fell back into his recliner and I sat on the sofa. We turned the TV on and watched in silence, waiting for Obie. After a few minutes he said softly, “You know, this is never going to be public knowledge. It stays here, in this apartment.”
I was genuinely hurt. “Have you ever known me to gossip? I would never tell Obie’s business.”
“I was talking about that hug,” he said.
In five minutes or less he was snoring. I turned the volume on the TV down to listen for the grumble of Obie’s old blue Harley. I heard it coming down the street and turning into the condo parking lot, and it got closer, but stopped too far away. Quietly I opened the front door and went out to wait for him.
In a few minutes he appeared pushing Old Blue. Backlit by an amberish mercury light, he set the kickstand and took off his helmet then shook his head to free his hair. In that weird mix of light and dark, drops of sweat flew and glinted silver. He walked toward me rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and holding his helmet in other.
“I know you didn’t run out of gas,” I said when he was still a yard away.
He stopped. The parking lot lights were behind him, so his face was dark and I felt afraid. Something weird about me: I panic when people's faces are obscured from my view.
“Right, I didn't,” he said. “But Old Blue gets loud when he has a sore muffler and I don't want to wake people up.” He took another step, close enough to enter the cone of yellow from our door light. I relaxed. It was the usual almost smiling mouth and tranquil eyes of Obie’s face. But I scanned it quickly and there it was in the distance between his black eyebrows to his lashes, a different set to his lower lip, and a new droop to his eyelids: grief.
Another two white-silver drops fell onto his shirt and then I understood they were not sweat. I had a choice; I could do the easy thing – pat him on the shoulder and usher him inside, maybe crack a joke – or the hard thing: hold him close and in all likelihood douse him.
In two steps of his long legs he was a few inches away. He put down his helmet then straightened up to look at me. Easy way or heartbreaking way; I didn't get to decide because both his arms were around me squeezing and he leaned forward at the waist so that his cheek was on mine. I pushed toward him and clutched him, one hand on the small of his back and the other around his shoulder blades, like we were slow dancing.
His crying was a series of muted hiccups that shook his chest. His tears were on my face and mine were on his tee shirt. My arms were sore from holding onto Justin flailing a few minutes ago, but even when they started to ache I wanted to stay there with him. Finally he loosened his hold on me and stepped back. I immediately felt awkward and self conscious, but he wasn’t. He held my gaze and I felt safe. How fair is it that some men are handsome even with their noses running?
“Pleurnichard*,” he said with a terrible accent, like 'ploony shard'.
To admit this to Justin would crash the devil’s advocate app we keep running, but I’ll tell you what I was thinking while Obie and I were crying together: that if you added up all the orgasms in all the cruise parks in the world, all the glory holes of New York City, all the elaborate back room orgy places in Los Angeles, all the anonymous-quickie outlets in North America, then multiplied it by a million, it couldn’t touch this. No human interaction is more seared with joy and packed with meaning than two friends who are also brothers, the politics of sex erased from the agenda board, holding onto each other with no other goals than love and healing.
I wiped my nose with my hand. Don’t judge me. It was either that or let snot drip onto my shirt and how much would that have ruined the moment? “Let’s go in,” I said.
Justin’s hug aversion was 50% claustrophobia, 40% confusion over the meaning of non-sexual bodily contact, and only 10% the WASPy stick up his ass. Embracing people was enclosing, entrapping, and he claimed that the only reason he was a top was because he was claustrophobic.
So when we walked in and he saw our wet faces, he cringed at first but then surged ahead with stoutheartedness in his eyes. I stood behind Obie and watched. I admit feeling a little bit proud; the hug I forced on him earlier primed him for this. It was totally worth dislocating both shoulders.
He patted Obie’s wide upper back, signaling it was over. “You want me to make a cup of spearmint tea?” Justin asked.
“I’ll make it,” he said. He pulled a red bandana out of his back pocket and rubbed it across his nose. “I need to do something familiar and grounding.” We followed him to the kitchen and sat at the table.
“I am so sorry you’re having to go through all this,” I said.
“Me?” Obie asked. “I’m not the one who's going through anything. No that’s not right. Of course I’m in pain too. But that’s like a hangnail compared to what Joseph is dealing with.” He slowly turned a knob on the stove until blue and yellow flames wiggled under kettle.
An ESP moment with Justin. His eyes said to me Joseph.
“We realize you’re in love with him,” I said. “We didn’t know it before. I didn't even suspect.”
“Y’all probably knew before me.” Obie said. “I mean, like, I knew but … tonight made me face some stuff. It forced me to put those soupy vague feelings into coherent thought. It’s been a rough night. I have so many emotions storming through me right now, buffeting me in like, twenty different directions.” His face was as calm as a Byzantine Christ's.
“My fucking God, of course it’s been rough,” Justin said. “Nobody should have to endure something like this. What your priest did is unthinkable, completely out of my comprehension.”
“If you knew him, you’d understand. He didn’t think twice.” Obie stopped and turned toward us. “Y’all know what happened? How did you know?”
“We don’t know the details, but we have a good idea.” Justin said with equal parts kindness and sorrow.
Obie put the teabag into a mug as gently as laying a sleeping baby down in its bed. “You do?” he asked, but without inflection.
“We’re here to listen if you want to talk, no judgments,” I said.
“I know it’s hard. I’ve been there more times than I’d admit. You give your whole fucking heart to a man and he cheats and lies," Justin said.
There was a pause while Obie leaned against the counter looking down. It was a silence filling fast with the feel of something that I didn’t understand, and as long as his face was focused down on his boots, out of sight, I was lost. When he raised his head again I knew something was wrong; the arcs of the corners of his mouth were different, his neck had a slight forward thrust, his forehead had different furrows, and the tilt of his head was a degree off vertical.
“Justin, wait,” I said. He ignored me.
“Betrayal has to be one of the most persistently painful human conditions and one that isn’t … what? Stop kicking me, Carl.”
“Justin, shut up,” I said.
Obie stared at us and smiled a frostbiting smile. The Byzantine Christ vanished and this emoticon took its place: >:) So, I thought, this is what Odie looks like when he’s mad.
“No and yes,” he said.
“What?” Justin asked, still clueless.
I sputtered, “I … we …”
“No, y’all don’t have any idea of what happened to Joseph tonight, so keep your judgments to yourself. And yes, now that you mention it I am feeling betrayed at the moment. But NOT by Joseph. You have no reason to make ignorant assumptions about a man you don’t even know. FUCK this.” Almost everything he said only a fraction of a decibel louder than his normal speaking voice. The words NOT and FUCK, though, filled up the room like gun shots.
“I’m going to sleep now,” he said and was gone.
Justin was stunned. I was ashamed. A pressure in my chest reminded me that I hadn’t taken a breath in a few seconds.
“Who’d have known Obie had such lung power?” I said, just to break the spell.
“What just happened?”
“We’re idiots. We are idiotic foolish idiots who deserve to be described in redundant terms,” I said.
“What just happened?”
“Father Tam didn’t get beat up for cruising in the park.”
“Then what happened to him?”
The kettle whistle blew like a piccolo’s high E flat. I turned it off. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe Obie’ll tell us. But we made some awful assumptions and we owe him a giant, whopping, groveling apology.”
I knew I wouldn't sleep tonight so I got a glass of water and an Ambien. I offered him one but he shook his head. He looked up at me for another ESP moment. His face: We fucked up but we’ll make it right. Mine: Of course we will, but we’re still assholes. Now go to bed.
*Cry baby
Part 4: What Didn't Happen
But Father Tam didn’t make it on the 13th because somebody beat him up bad. As in unconscious in the hospital with tubes and stints stuck in him ‘bad’.
That night I had been asleep for hours when Justin banged once on my door and flipped on the light. He stood next to the bed looking down at me and speaking but the part of my brain that processes his raspy denasal voice was still asleep.
“Hey, now.” I croaked and squinted. “Suppose I was entertaining?”
“You never fail to be entertaining, but listen to me. Obie’s not here.”
“Seriously.” I looked at the clock: 2:37am. “What if I’d been fixing to hop onto Cage, or Diesel Washington, or making a reverse Oreo?” Diesel Washington was my most recent favorite porn god. I actually had been dreaming about Cage when he burst in.
“Dammit to hell Carl, listen to me. Obie didn’t come home and he didn't call.” He pulled the pillow out from under my head.
“So?”
“So something is wrong. He always calls me if he's out past midnight.”
“He does? Why?"
"Because I asked him to. So he doesn't startle us when he comes in."
"Startle you? You could sleep with a gaggle of angry geese in your room."
"Oh goddam it, never mind. Something is wrong. He never stays out this late, ever.."
"Not true. Remember that time he and wasshisname almost got arrested for trying to steal the G off The Red Angus Diner? Or when his motorcycle broke down somewhere desolate in Williamson County?"
“That’s my goddam point. Twice, maybe 3 times in a year. And he always calls or texts me when he's not coming home. Something's off. I need to call him.”
Now I was awake enough to be irritated. “So pick up your stupid phone and call him. It's not rocket surgery. Do you really want my permission?” And yes, I said rocket surgery on purpose.
“No. Well. But . . . do you think I should? Is it too intrusively parental or something? I’m not a fucking mother hen with her brood.”
“Then you’re doing a good imitation of one,” I said. I got up and gave him my phone. “Here, Galena. Call your little lost squab.”
He turned his back to me while he dialed. “Apparently somebody was having pleasant dreams.”
“Oh.” He meant the tent that was the front of my boxers. “Cage did that.” I popped my wood through the fly and put my hands on my hips. Shocking him would be revenge for waking me up. “There. Is that better?”
He looked and then turned away again unscandalized. “Keep your widow maker away from me. I have no desire to end up like Cage.”
“Like Cage? What’s wrong with Cage?” I roared at the back of his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Please,” he said, walking away. “After a night with you, the poor guy whistles in the wind like a beer bottle.” I wedged my hard on under my boxers’ waistband, pulled my tee shirt over it and followed him to the kitchen to defend Cage's honor and continence.
“He does not whistle. Liar. His sphincter is so tight that … that … the carbon in his poop turns to diamonds when it passes through it. When he flushes it’s like a hundred carets going down the toilet.” Justin snorted. “A hundred carATS, not carROTS, you harlequin. You don’t know my sex life. He is versatile. He can catch and pitch like a pro.” He snorted again. “Listen, Colonel Mustard, Cage is an awesome top and no part of his anatomy ever whistles except sometimes his mouth. I mean lips. But he does that on purpose." I stopped when I was awake enough to know I was babbling.
Justin leaned against the overhanging breakfast bar with my phone to his ear, cool as Bugs Bunny regarding an Elmer Fudd tantrum. “Seriously? ‘Colonel Mustard’?”
“Shut up.”
I didn’t think Obie would pick up but he did. “Obie?” Justin said. “No, it’s me. I know it's stupid but Carl wanted me to call because he was worried about you.” Then I watched his face morph gradually from stunned to afraid to angry and determined.
“Father ... ? Fuck. Oh fucking God. Okay, okay.”
To me: “Somebody beat up Father Tam in Karitz Park. Obie’s with him at St. Sebastian’s.”
Back to Obie: “Oh hell no. Hell no. We’re leaving now…. Yes, we are. This is not up for fucking discussion, Obadiah. We are going over there now.”
“How hurt is he?” My eyes were filling up fast.
“He's hurt enough to be unconscious in a hospital. That's all Obie said. Somebody apparently tried to kill him. Put some clothes on, we’re going."
To Obie: “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I zipped to my room and to pull on some shorts and get my car keys. Because of either grogginess or adrenaline or a slapstick mix of both, I dropped my keys twice before I convinced my fingers to grab and keep them. I ran back -- but he just stood there, looking at my phone in his hand.
“What’s the hold up?” I asked. “Let’s move.”
“No,” he said. His fear and anger was now a confused sadness. “Obie’s coming home. Father Tam will be all right but he’s knocked out on sedatives, and his family is there wondering who the Hispanic guy is.” He handed me my phone and went to his shabby recliner. “You know, the hospital called Obie because his name and number were in Father Tam’s wallet. He had Obie listed first as who to call in an emergency.”
"Yes. That's good, right?"
“No, it's not, because that son-of-a-bitch gave Obie his power of attorney." He sank into his chair and pushed back like he wanted to disappear in its dusty blue upholstery.
“Ah,” I said. I knew where he was going with this.
“You know what that means in gay terms, right?” I hated to hear the thick sadness in his voice.
“It could mean a lot of things,” I said, trying to be upbeat. But he gave such a pitying look, I conceded his point. “But yeah. It means they’re in love.”
Something inside the recliner creaked like gears grinding as he pitched backwards and the footstool part popped out. “In love with a cock sucking Catholic priest,” he said. “What could he possibly be thinking?”
“I know, who knows. But thinking isn't always up at the top of the list for a man in love. Mr. Heart and Mr. Dick gang up and ambush Mr. Brain. Poor Obie. Poor Father Tam.”
He grabbed the arms of his chair. “Poor Father Tam? Are you fucking kidding? He was beaten up in Karitz Park, Carl. There is only one reason anybody would be in Karitz Park in the middle of the night and it is NOT to hear confessions.”
That was true. Many men have knelt there in the dark, but they weren’t praying, at least not in the ecclesiastical sense. Five years ago it was Austin’s premier nighttime anonymous sex venue.
On a pole at the entrance of Karitz Park, there's a bronze plaque with a bas relief picture of Helmut Walther Karitz and the words he used in 1805 to dedicate this land to the City of Austin: “Let this be a public recreation area where all citizens may come and enjoy what nature has given.”
That was the going joke among Karitz Park habitués; they were nothing more than citizens desiring to “come and enjoy what nature has given.” I popped in a few times in the early 1990s but being so close to the university, it tended to fill up with two kinds of men: young, skittish college guys from the nearby student housing (what Cage calls “boy-curious”), and the men who pursue them exclusively. I prefer them older and furrier so I got bored pretty fast. Still, I have a few good memories of one or two forty-somethings with facial hair and no-holds-barred attitudes. It was an adventure to have sex in a dangerously public place, the smell of the night air, the stars wheeling romantically overhead, my ass exposed to mosquitoes as big as your hand. Fun times. It’s just wasn’t something I’d make into a staple of my sex life.
Later drugs moved in. Dealers and thugs scared off the university boys and the cops really cracked down. Last I heard the only men who still cruised for sex in the ligustrum of Karitz Park were extremely volatile types, pale with jonesing, who’d blow you or let you fuck them for 25 dollars, then freak out in the middle of it and bite you or something. My friend Robin, a pillar of the late-night-anonymous-sex community, persevered until the very end. When one night the guy he was 'entertaining' used his long pinkie fingernail to scoop a white substance into the pee hole of his penis, Robin flew out of there and never went back.
It overloaded us with emotion to think that this man that Obie admired and loved would be lurking there at night, looking for sex or drugs, unfaithful to his community at large and unfaithful to Obie specifically. Justin's sadness was as usual temporary and his ire was back full tilt.
“What that Tartuffe sonofabitch has done to Obie,” he fumed. “I swear to you that if he ever comes into this house, I will personally with my own hands and dull scissors, make sure that celibacy is never an option for him again.”
“When Obie comes home he needs to be our focus, not Father Tam's actions. As hurt as he is right now, Obie probably doesn't want to hear us dissing Father Tam,” I said. I felt tears coming fast and talking was a way to keep them to a minimum. “It might not be as bad as we’re thinking, you know? Maybe he and Father Tam had an open relationship.”
“Obie? Our Obie? Or the one who doesn’t hand out communion wafers at mass and teach ‘How To Become Catholic’ classes?”
“As soon as I heard myself say it, I knew it was stupid. Okay, so let's make a game plan using what we know for sure. Like I know for sure that he’s in a lot of pain, like down to the bones of his soul, and he’ll try to copy and paste his Obiescent tranquility over it. So we won't push him. We follow his lead. We'll listen if he wants to talk and if he doesn’t, we give him space but not advice. No preaching, no righteous indignation, no talk about castrating Father Tam slowly and painfully, all right? Remember, we're his brothers now so we're giving him four gentle, sympathetic ears and all the brotherly love he wants.”
“Right, that’s good. But give me some hints, for fuck’s sake. You read him more often than I do, which is never. He always looks the same to me, like he’s at one with the goddam universe, like you could point a cannon and he’d just smile at it.”
“All right, I'll do my best,” I said. “But pay attention and follow my cues for once, ok?”
Justin squeezed his eyes shut and put his head back. “I don’t understand this fucked up need some men have to have anonymous sex in public places.”
“I totally understand it. It’s a quick dip into something that is pure instinct. The danger of getting busted amps it up, and then there’s the exhibitionist part too.” He shot me a look, so I added, “Or so I’ve read.”
“Don’t you mean proof-read? In your finally authoritative book published by Rechy and Sons Press? You know, it’s a fucking miracle that you aren’t oozing diseases.”
“Diseases aren’t a necessary part of the scene. You can have safe al fresco sex just like in your bedroom with the doors locked and the curtains drawn. Back then I had a wad of condoms on me 24/7. It was a fragile, more hormone driven time.”
“Oh sweet lord above. You mean there was a time when you were more hormone driven than now?”
You’ll notice that I ignore him with he gets rhetorical about my sex life. What he calls slutty, I call gregarious. “Cruise park sex,” I said, “is basic male sexual politics taken to its logical end. It’s drummed into us since birth, that ‘real men’ go after what they want no matter what. They sneak it into our brains, that sex is not really about love and sharing and intimacy like the rest of the world thinks …or at least pretends to think.”
“Oh, God, sexual politics. Here we go,” he said.
“It’s about getting something from another person. You’re told that sex is all about what you want, your orgasm, Foxtrot Tango Whiskey, screw social convention and splatter sperm its face if you can get away with it.”
“You are so full of shit. Nobody is taught that sex is only about conquering and social convention bukake.”
“In so many words, no. It’s never put that way because to say it would be to give away a secret, i.e. this secret: that selfish, macho-man point of view implies that all male sexual acts are really just masturbation. You’re just using another person’s mouth or butthole or vagina instead of your hand. Cruise park sex offers the perfect venue for that: you don't know your partner's name and if it's dark enough, you don't even see each other's faces. And when you follow the syllogism through from 'real men take what they want' to its logical end, that's where you end up.”
"You end up fucking a faceless masturbation toy in some bushes in a park?"
"Yes, more or less metaphorically."
"And you're all right with depersonalizing another human being until they're just a fucking orifice?"
"I never said I'm all right with it. I said I understood it. It's just a fact of the world. As long as some men believe that it's their right to depersonalize their partners, and others are all right with being depersonalized, it'll keep on happening."
“Who the hell are you? What cold cynic is skulking under that cuddly bear costume? That’s your goddam Catholic brainwashing. Aquinas and Augustine were nothing but frustrated, dirty minded douchebags who were warped with sexual frustration and that’s why they built your church on terror for the uncomplicated act of fucking.”
“That's what I'm saying. Anonymous sex is how some men try to uncomplicate it, to pare it down from the frou frou of making love to plain old fucking."
"Men that debased and self indulgent are the minority. Most of us don't have a problem dealing with lust, at least not to that extreme."
"Maybe not. But it's still a struggle between nurture and nature with the odds stacked in nature’s favor. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to ask what two men in love are thinking. It’s reaction versus response, probability versus actuality, intellect versus testosterone, heads versus tails.”
“So are you yammering to keep from thinking about Obie and weeping like a cold glass in a warm room?”
“Yes. Did you know that the Abe Lincoln heads-side of a penny is a bazillionth of a microgram heavier than the Lincoln Memorial tails-side?”
“I do now.”
“So when you flip a penny, you’re supposed to have a 50/50 chance of getting heads or tails, but it will come up tails more often than heads because it’s skewed from the beginning.”
“So the fuck what? You get tails 50.00000000001 times more. That’s statistically insignificant. Can we focus on ... ”
“Maybe, but it isn’t real-life insignificant. When you’re talking about a drive as strong and basically mindless as sex, that wee, half an iota is all it takes to tip the scales. You can pretend it’s all even-steven and that we’re all tamed and domesticated, but in the long run the head,” I tapped my temple, “loses to the tail.” I pointed my thumbs at my crotch.
“Please stop,” he said. “Your waxing philosophical about The Gay Male and Fast Food Sex is absolutely fucking scintillating but Obie will be here any minute. None of that helps right now. We're supposed to be thinking about how we're going to deal with this. The man he thinks he loves -- a priest for fuck’s sake -- is caught lurking through the brambles in Karitz Park. That’s our focus."
I took a deep breath. "You're right. Sorry. You know how I get."
"Remember: I’m the tactless yet lovable one and you’re the affable, nurturing crybaby. You’re supposed to do all that emotional edification business so now is not the time for a thesis on clandestine public sex.” His voice was getting a little shrill.
I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what had to happen next. “Stand up,” I barked. He was startled enough to do it, but he was suspicious. I went over and put my arms around him and held on. I held on through (1) the surprised recoil, (2) the very loud threats and epithets; (3) the twisting and fighting; (4) the appeals to my rationality (5) fists pounding on every available part of me. I held on until he knew I wasn’t letting go and he relaxed and rested his chin on my shoulder. That lasted for less than a second, but it did the job.
He fell back into his recliner and I sat on the sofa. We turned the TV on and watched in silence, waiting for Obie. After a few minutes he said softly, “You know, this is never going to be public knowledge. It stays here, in this apartment.”
I was genuinely hurt. “Have you ever known me to gossip? I would never tell Obie’s business.”
“I was talking about that hug,” he said.
In five minutes or less he was snoring. I turned the volume on the TV down to listen for the grumble of Obie’s old blue Harley. I heard it coming down the street and turning into the condo parking lot, and it got closer, but stopped too far away. Quietly I opened the front door and went out to wait for him.
In a few minutes he appeared pushing Old Blue. Backlit by an amberish mercury light, he set the kickstand and took off his helmet then shook his head to free his hair. In that weird mix of light and dark, drops of sweat flew and glinted silver. He walked toward me rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and holding his helmet in other.
“I know you didn’t run out of gas,” I said when he was still a yard away.
He stopped. The parking lot lights were behind him, so his face was dark and I felt afraid. Something weird about me: I panic when people's faces are obscured from my view.
“Right, I didn't,” he said. “But Old Blue gets loud when he has a sore muffler and I don't want to wake people up.” He took another step, close enough to enter the cone of yellow from our door light. I relaxed. It was the usual almost smiling mouth and tranquil eyes of Obie’s face. But I scanned it quickly and there it was in the distance between his black eyebrows to his lashes, a different set to his lower lip, and a new droop to his eyelids: grief.
Another two white-silver drops fell onto his shirt and then I understood they were not sweat. I had a choice; I could do the easy thing – pat him on the shoulder and usher him inside, maybe crack a joke – or the hard thing: hold him close and in all likelihood douse him.
In two steps of his long legs he was a few inches away. He put down his helmet then straightened up to look at me. Easy way or heartbreaking way; I didn't get to decide because both his arms were around me squeezing and he leaned forward at the waist so that his cheek was on mine. I pushed toward him and clutched him, one hand on the small of his back and the other around his shoulder blades, like we were slow dancing.
His crying was a series of muted hiccups that shook his chest. His tears were on my face and mine were on his tee shirt. My arms were sore from holding onto Justin flailing a few minutes ago, but even when they started to ache I wanted to stay there with him. Finally he loosened his hold on me and stepped back. I immediately felt awkward and self conscious, but he wasn’t. He held my gaze and I felt safe. How fair is it that some men are handsome even with their noses running?
“Pleurnichard*,” he said with a terrible accent, like 'ploony shard'.
To admit this to Justin would crash the devil’s advocate app we keep running, but I’ll tell you what I was thinking while Obie and I were crying together: that if you added up all the orgasms in all the cruise parks in the world, all the glory holes of New York City, all the elaborate back room orgy places in Los Angeles, all the anonymous-quickie outlets in North America, then multiplied it by a million, it couldn’t touch this. No human interaction is more seared with joy and packed with meaning than two friends who are also brothers, the politics of sex erased from the agenda board, holding onto each other with no other goals than love and healing.
I wiped my nose with my hand. Don’t judge me. It was either that or let snot drip onto my shirt and how much would that have ruined the moment? “Let’s go in,” I said.
Justin’s hug aversion was 50% claustrophobia, 40% confusion over the meaning of non-sexual bodily contact, and only 10% the WASPy stick up his ass. Embracing people was enclosing, entrapping, and he claimed that the only reason he was a top was because he was claustrophobic.
So when we walked in and he saw our wet faces, he cringed at first but then surged ahead with stoutheartedness in his eyes. I stood behind Obie and watched. I admit feeling a little bit proud; the hug I forced on him earlier primed him for this. It was totally worth dislocating both shoulders.
He patted Obie’s wide upper back, signaling it was over. “You want me to make a cup of spearmint tea?” Justin asked.
“I’ll make it,” he said. He pulled a red bandana out of his back pocket and rubbed it across his nose. “I need to do something familiar and grounding.” We followed him to the kitchen and sat at the table.
“I am so sorry you’re having to go through all this,” I said.
“Me?” Obie asked. “I’m not the one who's going through anything. No that’s not right. Of course I’m in pain too. But that’s like a hangnail compared to what Joseph is dealing with.” He slowly turned a knob on the stove until blue and yellow flames wiggled under kettle.
An ESP moment with Justin. His eyes said to me Joseph.
“We realize you’re in love with him,” I said. “We didn’t know it before. I didn't even suspect.”
“Y’all probably knew before me.” Obie said. “I mean, like, I knew but … tonight made me face some stuff. It forced me to put those soupy vague feelings into coherent thought. It’s been a rough night. I have so many emotions storming through me right now, buffeting me in like, twenty different directions.” His face was as calm as a Byzantine Christ's.
“My fucking God, of course it’s been rough,” Justin said. “Nobody should have to endure something like this. What your priest did is unthinkable, completely out of my comprehension.”
“If you knew him, you’d understand. He didn’t think twice.” Obie stopped and turned toward us. “Y’all know what happened? How did you know?”
“We don’t know the details, but we have a good idea.” Justin said with equal parts kindness and sorrow.
Obie put the teabag into a mug as gently as laying a sleeping baby down in its bed. “You do?” he asked, but without inflection.
“We’re here to listen if you want to talk, no judgments,” I said.
“I know it’s hard. I’ve been there more times than I’d admit. You give your whole fucking heart to a man and he cheats and lies," Justin said.
There was a pause while Obie leaned against the counter looking down. It was a silence filling fast with the feel of something that I didn’t understand, and as long as his face was focused down on his boots, out of sight, I was lost. When he raised his head again I knew something was wrong; the arcs of the corners of his mouth were different, his neck had a slight forward thrust, his forehead had different furrows, and the tilt of his head was a degree off vertical.
“Justin, wait,” I said. He ignored me.
“Betrayal has to be one of the most persistently painful human conditions and one that isn’t … what? Stop kicking me, Carl.”
“Justin, shut up,” I said.
Obie stared at us and smiled a frostbiting smile. The Byzantine Christ vanished and this emoticon took its place: >:) So, I thought, this is what Odie looks like when he’s mad.
“No and yes,” he said.
“What?” Justin asked, still clueless.
I sputtered, “I … we …”
“No, y’all don’t have any idea of what happened to Joseph tonight, so keep your judgments to yourself. And yes, now that you mention it I am feeling betrayed at the moment. But NOT by Joseph. You have no reason to make ignorant assumptions about a man you don’t even know. FUCK this.” Almost everything he said only a fraction of a decibel louder than his normal speaking voice. The words NOT and FUCK, though, filled up the room like gun shots.
“I’m going to sleep now,” he said and was gone.
Justin was stunned. I was ashamed. A pressure in my chest reminded me that I hadn’t taken a breath in a few seconds.
“Who’d have known Obie had such lung power?” I said, just to break the spell.
“What just happened?”
“We’re idiots. We are idiotic foolish idiots who deserve to be described in redundant terms,” I said.
“What just happened?”
“Father Tam didn’t get beat up for cruising in the park.”
“Then what happened to him?”
The kettle whistle blew like a piccolo’s high E flat. I turned it off. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe Obie’ll tell us. But we made some awful assumptions and we owe him a giant, whopping, groveling apology.”
I knew I wouldn't sleep tonight so I got a glass of water and an Ambien. I offered him one but he shook his head. He looked up at me for another ESP moment. His face: We fucked up but we’ll make it right. Mine: Of course we will, but we’re still assholes. Now go to bed.
*Cry baby
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