Free Buried Dreams by Tim Cahill

a man of mystery as far as sin was concerned, and a wonder to the devout elderly of St. John Berchmans’.
    Sunday nights, John usually was at the rectory, playing cards with the parish priests. And both of them—perfect Chicago Irish priests—would talk to the teenager about a possible vocation. “John,” one or the other of them would argue, “you’re around the church six, seven days a week as itis. Maybe God is speaking to you in a very special way.” John’d play a card and really consider it. Doing things for people made him happy, helping poor people made him feel warm inside. The respect sanctity brought scoured a soul like steel wool cleans a soiled pot.
    There wouldn’t be any problem with the chastity thing: “Oh, sure,” John explained later, “I was dating broads and getting laid, but there wasn’t anything serious. And why would you wanna get married? Why take on the burden of having some stupid broad around you day and night?” Being a priest was a natural, John felt, because he was different from the other boys. “I was sickly, and I certainly wasn’t no physically built individual, and I didn’t have no sex drive, so being a priest seemed perfect, a natural thing to do for a kid like me.”
    He would wear the robes with dignity; he would be compassionate and help the poor and the homeless and the bereaved. People could come to him for advice, and one thing he’d know is that every problem, everything in life, has two sides. Nothing is just one way. As a priest, Father Gacy would use that knowledge to help others. When people came to see him, he would be understanding and liberal, very different from the way his father was.
    He’d be a good priest.
    “You’re going to be queer just like your friend Barry,” the Old Man said.
    A bookish boy who collected antiques, Barry was one of John’s few close friends. Barry was interested in Illinois history and landscaping. He and John talked about flowers, shit like that. Neither of them liked to repair cars, neither liked sports or, especially, fishing. “The kid’s a fairy,” the Old Man said.
    John never remembered the Old Man telling him he was going to turn out “queer,” but his sister Karen recalled it clearly. “Dad had an attitude about John and was hard on him because of it. He thought John was a mama’s boy just because Ma was a buffer between the Old Man and John. Just because John could talk to Ma.”
    “My dad,” John said, “I don’t think he ever mentioned homosexuals in the house. Never said anything about them. Just like, there was this lesbian couple, they lived down the block, and I remember he made fun of them. They soldbrushes and one came to the door dressed like a man. Dad called her a he-she. But he never came right out and called them homosexuals. You just knew they were bad people.” So bad, in fact, the subject wasn’t fit to discuss. “Nothing had to be said.” If you weren’t dumb and stupid, you just knew.
    There was some spectacular murder case with homosexual overtones in Chicago at about that time, and the Old Man kept harping on how it happened early in the morning. “It’s what comes of being out after midnight,” he said. Anytime you were out after midnight, the Old Man knew you were up to no good. That’s when they all came out, like some dark flower that bloomed only at night: the fairies and the he-shes, perverts up to no good, killers. You got what you deserved after midnight.
    Strange, then, that it should be late at night, after midnight, when troubling thoughts invaded John’s mind. In the dark, when it was lonely and quiet in his room, or in the hospital, John would wonder how it would be to hug one of his friends, hold him tight, just for a moment. No sex thing. It was a kind of compassion, all tangled up with a desire to help people, like being a priest, except that you could get an erection thinking that way, and John didn’t like to talk about it. Nearly twenty-five years later,