I want to be comforted, but I can’t tell if she’s talking to me or herself.
Chapter eight
“I’m not going on no fucking retreat.”
“Watch your mouth,” Mom says. “I already paid for it, and you don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s with some kids from East Catholic up at the CYO center in Indianapolis. It’ll do you some good to meet new people. Get out of the Ridge social circle for a few days, get your mind off Laura.”
“I don’t want to get my mind off Laura.” I stare at the television. For the last week, MTV has been broadcasting live from Panama City Beach, and I’ve spent every waking hour since Laura left watching the coverage in lieu of eating, showering, or engaging with the world on even a rudimentary level.
“If I have to watch you mope around this house for even one more day, I’m going to go nuts. It’s pathetic.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but going on a three day religious retreat for my spring break isn’t much of an upgrade on the pathetic scale.”
Future Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter started the Catholic Youth Organization back in the thirties or forties. The “CYO” supports a variety of youth activities—anything that keeps our dicks in our pants. And nowhere is this brainwashing more acute than the retreats.
Retreat. The word carries with it a certain connotation in Catholic circles: rebirth, resurrection, renewal…retarded. You disappear for a few days, get all hopped up on Jesus, then spend the next few months trying to clear him out of your system. Jesus is like bad lunchmeat, I guess.
I went to my first retreat last year as a sophomore. They corralled a thousand of us into the East Catholic High School gymnasium. The motivational speaker was a “rock ’n roll priest,” a guy who tried to validate his coolness by using contemporary music during Mass. Father Don was his name. He played Mr. Mister’s “Kyrie” as an entrance hymn. I made out with a girl who had a Mohawk and smelled like peaches and marijuana, which, come to think of it, wasn’t a totally horrible experience.
“You’re going,” Mom says. “End of discussion.”
Chapter nine
I enter the house. Mom is huddled over the stove in the kitchen, coffee mug in her left hand, sharp knife in her right. She looks up at me.
“There’s our good Catholic boy,” Mom says. “Glad to have you back.”
I smile. “Glad to be back.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She leans over and kisses me on the cheek, leans back, and points at my face with the knife. “Haven’t seen that smile around this house in more than a week. Nice to have you back. How was it?”
“It was okay.”
Mom’s eyes perk up. “Okay?”
“Kind of fun, actually.”
“Tell me about it,” Mom says.
I humor my mother. I tell her the retreat began like any Catholic retreat, with a procession of pep talks, a Bible study, a group sing, and a daily Mass that numbed the brain and cleansed the soul. I tell her about our retreat leader, this guy in his mid-twenties who in the span of an hour fought drug addiction, dropped out of high school, was ostracized by family and friends, found Jesus, went back and got his GED, and was now in his second year of trade school where he was studying to become an electrical engineer. The second speaker, months removed from his last “Christian Awakening” retreat and still pretty much Lorded up, gave his own stirring account of how the Holy Spirit had changed his life for the better. He interspersed Top 40 songs in with his presentation to keep us interested. He was an ex-jock, just turned twenty, who had turned his back on the four S’s—“Stroh’s, Smoking, Sex, and Satan.” He played “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and “Calling on You” by the Christian rock band Stryper. Seriously, fucking Stryper? All the girls thought he was deep. I wanted to punch him in the face, or else buy him a beer.
What I don’t tell my mother is how on the first night in the dorms we stole the Gatorade cooler out of the rec room, spiked it with vodka, and hid it in a broom closet. Or how after we ran out of dirty jokes, I read from the Book of Leviticus.
With all due respect to Orthodox Jews, the Book of Leviticus is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever read, an inane list of do and do nots that reads like a long practical joke from God:
“When a man has an emission of seed, he shall bathe his whole body in water and be unclean until evening.” (By my rough calculations, I’ve been unclean since the invasion of Grenada.)
“You shall not disgrace your father by having intercourse with your mother.” (Don’t fuck your mom. Good advice.)
“If a man has carnal relations with a female slave who has already been living with another man but has not yet been redeemed or given her freedom, they shall be punished but not put to death, because she is not free.” (As always in the Bible, slavery is cool. Got it.)
“If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” (Yeah, but have they seen my neighbor’s wife?)
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed…” (Love your neighbor as yourself, but kill him if he’s a goddamn homo. Understood.)
“A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortune-teller shall be put to death by stoning…” (I’ll have my pile of rocks at the ready next Halloween when some six-year-old dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West comes to my door and tries to get her satanic paws on my Reese’s Pieces. “Trick or treat,” she’ll say, with that cute, sugar-edgy voice. “Happy Halloween,” I’ll reply in kind, only to raise my rock-filled fists of vengeance, shouting, “Death to the infidels!”)
The Book of Leviticus’s sage advice notwithstanding, I still thought about Laura.
Our group leaders woke us up at dawn on the last day of the retreat, April Fool’s Day. Most of us had less than four hours of sleep under our belts. They were still pushing us nineteen hours later.
After midnight, they separated us into our small groups, sending each group into a private classroom in the old Latin School building. Our classroom was illuminated by a small circle of candles, with a crucifix in the middle of the circle. Our group leader asked everyone to take turns holding the crucifix and talking to Jesus. Slap happy and defenseless, we coughed up some serious shit.
The girl across the circle had a bad experience when she lost her virginity and had sworn to give up sex forever. Given that she was hot, I thought this was a rash decision. The guy to my left buried his infant brother two days before he got there, and this made me cry because I thought about Mom’s miscarriages.
I was fucking exhausted. They broke me. I devolved into a lovesick pussy pining away for Laura. None of the guys in the room liked me for the rest of the night, while I was certain all the girls wanted to fuck me.
We had an extended farewell Mass the following morning, which pissed me off because Saturday morning was too early to count as Sunday service. Two priests, three guitars, and a triangle—they pulled out all the stops. We were each given a medal—a cheap chain that ended in a medallion resembling a German Iron Cross—and an American Bible Society mass market paperback edition of the New Testament entitled Good News New Testament: Today’s English Version. We all signed each other’s New Testaments, like a yearbook, adding a cliché sentiment or two.
There was the requisite exclamation point overkill:
Hank,
You know you’re such a special person! I say that because you opened up to total strangers! That takes guts, and I admire you! Stay as special as I know you are!