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

they die. At eighty-seven, Mary seemed no different.
    An elevator led from the friars’ quarters directly to the sacristy, much like the pole in a firehouse. When the alarm rings, the friars dash to the lift, go down it, and go to work. About ninety seconds before Mass was scheduled to began, the elevator doors opened, and Father Myron McCormick stepped into the sacristy, blinking a moment in brilliant benevolence. He was ancient, completely bald, and had long, wizardlike fingers that accentuated his medieval brown robe.
    “Hello, Scottie,” he said. Father Myron is the only person besides my mother and my godson who calls me Scottie. “Hello, Mary. And Mary. And Mary.”
    I have always been a spiritual size queen,* and Father Myron was a man of enormous spiritual endowment. His eyes exuded kindness. He never failed to greet me enthusiastically, taking my hand in both of his. His manner was what you might expect from someone named Myron: he wore big, nerdy glasses and had an endearing spastic awkwardness. To be in his presence was like taking Valium; immediately the restless spirit calmed and anger diminished. I couldn’t imagine him harming a housefly. Archbishop Sean himself had stopped by the Shrine for the express purpose of making his confession to Father Myron.
    Recovering from his stunned benevolence, Myron drifted around the room, laying hands on each and every person in the room. He opened the wardrobe that contained a rainbow of vestments for the various masses of the liturgical year and hooked his cane over the top of one of the doors. Myron was addicted to this cane that he never actually used, carrying it everywhere and forever hanging it on altars, chair rails, counters, doorknobs, and forearms.
    Myron slipped vestments over his robe. The Hale Marys paraded out to the first pew. I took a last look at the day’s reading. Mass was supposed to begin, but Myron paged through the lectionary (known as “the Book”) as if he had all the time in the world. All of a sudden, as if the Book reminded him of books in general, he turned and asked, “How’s your book coming, Scottie?”
    “My book ?” I thought he was referring to the lectionary.
    “I read about it in the Globe” he said.
    My eyes widened, my knees weakened. I wanted to explain that I was not Scottie at all. Rather I was a National Security Administration operative living under a false identity while engaged in a top-secret undercover operation, which regrettably required me to leap immediately through the nearest stained glass window and make my escape.
    “Um, my book’s good, Father Myron. Which, uh, reading do you want me to do? The feast-day reading? Or the regular one?” Or the one with the shower scene that involves whipped cream?
    “Where can I get a copy?” Father Myron asked brightly.
    An image — a very unwelcome image — flashed through my head: Myron reading my smut:
    The first kiss tickled the spot behind his ear. The hard cock was a firebrand against his backside. Slicked with soap, Troy’s hands moved one circle on Brad’s chest, one on his right hip. Gradually the circles grew closer and closer to Brad’s crotch. He tried to turn, but Troy would not let him. Like a man arrested, Brad placed both his palms on the glass, spread his legs, and lowered his butt slightly. First there was a finger, then two …
    It wasn’t that I was ashamed of the poetry of this passage. Sexuality is a gift from God, and can be sacramental in the right circumstances. And the sexual congress in our novels always took place in the grossly conventional context of sacred and enduring unions between men who were destined to live happily and monogamously ever after.
    No, what made me uncomfortable was the fact that Myron was a priest and a saint. He belonged up on that altar (read: pedestal). I wanted him to be glassed in and safe, like the dolls in the lobby of the Shrine: NOT FOR SALE . Putting aside Myron’s saintliness, the last thing I wanted