Free Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir by Scott Pomfret Page A

aw-shucks voice. “It’s not me. I just read what’s in the Book. God’s word and all that.”
    “Well” she said, raising her voice. This was not a woman who tolerated contradiction. “I appreciate it. It takes my mind off of all this!”
    “All this” was the phrase parishioners at Saint Anthony Shrine used to denote the pedophile priest scandal, and it gave me the opportunity to change the topic from the pitfalls of pride and praise.
    “But O’Malley’s coming,” I reminded her.
    “So’s the Lord,” she snapped, “but I’m not holding my breath all this is going to change soon.”
    But it did change — or seemed to change. O’Malley’s first acts gave reason for hope. He insisted on being called by his first name. He hired my former law firm with the goal of reaching settlements with the victims. He rejected the luxurious trappings of Bernard Law, his pandering predecessor. Gone was the mansion, gone the orgiastic installation ceremony. Sean took up residence in the rectory of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, auspiciously located in my gayborhood, the South End, and used proceeds from the sale of the mansion to compensate victims.
    O’Malley’s first homily as archbishop of Boston described how lepers converted the heart of Saint Francis. All his life, the sight of lepers had disgusted Francis, until one day, by the grace of God, Francis embraced a leper and kissed him instead of fleeing and holding his nose. This homily made my heart leap.
    Brother Sean , I thought, aren't gay men America’s lepers?
    Seeking a big wet smooch of reconciliation, I sent Archbishop Sean a welcome letter. I wrote that I looked forward to his coming and restoring pride. Basically, I pinned my hopes on Bishop O’Malley’s arrival as if it marked the return of Christ himself.
    I never got any sort of reply. The Brown Bag was too busy, no doubt, fixing all that was wrong with the Church.
    Calculating the Odds
    Shortly after the installation of Sean O’Malley as archbishop, Scott Whittier and I launched Romentics, the first-ever line of romance novels featuring gay men. We modeled them explicitly after the Harlequin line.
    The venture was Scott’s idea. For years, he had watched Gram and his mother devour truckloads of cheap Harlequin novels. After reading, they coded the novels with their own shorthand ratings scale on the first page: “good story,” “nice,” and, very occasionally, “sexy.” This latter rating was no compliment. For Scott’s mother and Gram, sex got in the way of the story.
    Scott and I had a different perspective. We wanted every reader to write “sexy” on the flyleaf of our Romentics novels. Sex was integral to our characters’ relationships and necessary to driving plot. Ours were romances, yes, but romances with testosterone. Blushes and saving your maidenhead for marriage simply wouldn’t do.
    Our first romances appeared on November 1, 2003. They had intentionally sassy titles: Razor Burn and Hot Sauce . Warner Books agreed to publish the latter, and this stamp of approval attracted media, beginning in Canada —- natch — with a profile in the Globe & Mail .
    But it wasn’t until the Boston Globe profiled us that news of my venture got back to the Shrine. The Friday after the Globe came out, I showed up in the sacristy a few minutes before Mass. The three Hale Marys had already arrived. We went about our usual business, which consisted mostly of watching the sacristan pour out a bag of unconsecrated hosts — Oops! Dropped one! Five-second rule! — and set out the chalice and ciboria.
    It didn’t surprise me that no one mentioned the Globe . My conversations with Mary Flanagan in particular were always lopsided. She never asked a single question about my personal life, not even where I lived. It was “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” That is how old ladies get along in a changing world: they converse at a level of generality that allows everyone to pretend nothing has changed. Then