I look at Sil and start to SCREAM and yell and yammer excitedly with this new idea bursting forth - Let’s go to Sunday mass hungover, or maybe still drunk. Maybe we can puke in the pews or confess our sins to the pederast priest! Sil, always an easy read, agreed instantly so we left the watering hole in the wall, brimming with stalwart stoic sin and soaking in ***, gin and ugh…pheromones.
“fadder I puked in yer pews. How many hail Marys is dat?”
“fadder I smoked a joint in the rectory.”
“fadder I occasionally sleeps wit men.” I cry,
We see his previously shock beet red face light up.
“Wit MEN fadder wit men. Not little boys”
Disappointed pederast priest preaching piously about the sins of drugs and alcohol and *** and ****** and y’know, pretty much everything fun ever.
“fadder I sold me mudders dentures for new headshots.”
“fadder I was in a ****” et cetera. After the pederast has a coronary we’ll steal the communion wine and dance on the church *****. You can play a sweet soft soothing melody accompanied soliloquy or Debussy’s Claire de Lune. We’ll remember better days when he could still play and cry red tears, ****** drunk. Stuck in our respective funk ruts our calls to the coronary catholic become more somber.
“fadder I’m afraid. I’m afraid of dying…I’m afraid of living.”
Rolling around on the confession booth floor now,
“fadder I want to die, fadder I tried to **** myself”
Sil shows strong salient scalpel scars that we both still remember suturing shut.
“fadder I should be in the Waterford In-patient wing”
By now we’ve revived the poor old Father…As it happens he’s a rowdy red whiskey noser. Sil’s feeling good, rambunctious and reeling secretly seething I believe.
“So fadder explain to me why it’s a sin to love another man but every other ******* week some ******’ pillar of the community cops for kiddie ****?!” His ire is up, red cheeked wide eyed boiling over.
The priest is mute silent on the subject at first, finally looking up from a leather bound book, he starts to speak in careful, measured words unfamiliar to the impatience of our generation.
“My son, I’ve never ****** any boys, nor do I hate ‘the gays’ and what’s all this about killing yourselves and Waterford Bridge Road?” I feel a lecture coming on…”What’s the allure of this demure throwaway life attitude you have, so many of you.”
This question throws a long echoing silence through the puke stained pews. A symbol for broken, wasted, busted, beat down lost youth. Or whatever. (Say it like a valley girl honey.)
Breaking the silence I turn to him quietly, “I guess for me I really don’t see the point of any of it beyond a couple of laughs and a lot of highs. I see the corruption that I’m too stupid to fix, that I can’t realistically change.”
Sil interjects “I think generationally we just don’t really have a tether – Everyone exists superficially, digitally we don’t know how to talk to one another we just get drunk or high and crash into each other blindly praying for a little connection on those rare occasions we realize how disconnected we really are.”
“Generationally? Is that even a word?!”
“Shut up milk drinker!” Sil punches me
“Yeah everyone sitting alone in rooms or all together with a *** and coke and a cellphone silently tapping away.”
The pederast nods “you boys need family, children, religion even. You know it brings us together as a community. The ****** of the masses son” He pauses, wagging a finger “and I don’t consider that to be a pejorative.”
Taking a ridiculous swig I nod “I understand the appeal really but I prefer actual opiates and being alone and not changing.”
After a box of communion wine, (Yes it can come in boxes, look it up) we bid farewell to the swell drunk ‘ol pederast priest, promising to return someday with Irish Mist for his thirsty Irish lips, (Is that bigotry?) the old coot.
“Sil come over and stay in my bed we can binge watch a season of Louie and drink ******’ Borises and I’ll play guitar for you an…” I stammer on
“STOP! You had me at BED” Sil yells at me belligerently as we stagger down Bully Street arms intertwined drunk walking. It’s foggy and misty, our feet soaked and my body is drained of life. Finally we knock into my front door struggling with keys, we must have dropped 5 times.
“I think yer scars are beautiful Sil” (I love it, I do) I tell her softly as I run my hand over them, feeling the slight texture change, the scar raised…We kiss and stare into eyes, not alone not for tonight.