THE
MONK
AND THE
SKEPTIC
Copyright © 2013 Frank Browning
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Though formally others in the Dominican Order referred to Peter, an ordained priest, as Father, that term didn’t seem quite right for our relationship, so I refer to him as Brother Peter.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Browning, Frank, 1946-
The monk & the skeptic : dialogues on sex, faith, and religion / Frank Browning.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-59376-568-2
1. Sex—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title. II. Title: Monk and the skeptic.
BT708.B79 2013
261.8’357—dc23
2013014417
Cover design by Michel Vrana
Interior design by Domini Dragoone
Soft Skull Press
An Imprint of Counterpoint
1919 Fifth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.softskull.com
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a god sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées
CONTENTS
FOUR The Function of Fornication
SIX A Band of Secular Brothers
SEVEN The Burning Flesh of the Impure Soul
EIGHT The Eternal Flesh of the Pure Spirit
In which the inquisitor cruises his first Holy Father and finds him quick of flesh.
Our story begins when the two of us are in the Jeu de Paume gallery on the Place de la Concorde looking at a new show by Pierre et Gilles, the French photographic artist whose work wavers between the kitsch and the surreal. We are standing side by side before an image of Saint Peter, rendered as a gymnast porn star crucified upside down. I hadn’t known the details of Saint Peter’s crucifixion, having had no childhood religious instruction. I draw in my breath in polite shock. “That’s rough,” I say to the tallish man standing next to me.
“It’s just how they crucified Saint Peter,” the man answers. He is dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. I nod, then turn my attention back to the painting. I haven’t yet noticed the rosary beads hanging from the watch pocket of the gentleman’s Levi’s.
A moment passes.
“Do you always cruise priests in art galleries?” he asks.
“Only attractive ones,” I answer, startled, but eager for a reasonable response.
So our friendship opens on a cold, sunny December afternoon. We stop for a coffee at a nearby café where he—we’ll call him Brother Peter—explains that contrary to my expectation he doesn’t find the Pierre et Gilles images at all sacrilegious. Moreover, he knows the artists to be practicing Catholics, which leaves me more startled. Before he departs for his daily swim we agree to meet again. Brother Peter’s daily swim was as inviolate as his daily hour of silent prayer before he joins his fellow monks. He always dwelt, even in his travels, within a Dominican community.
A few days later we meet for another coffee in my apartment. He lingers for an hour afterward. Our meetings continue over the following several months in one city or another. He is quick to explain that he is not at all available for what is called “a relationship,” as he is married in the most profound sense to his spiritual community. Nor I, I answer, since I am completely comfortable in my own decidedly more secular relationship. Our conversations advance, sometimes with physical interludes, surveying, debating, exploring the nature of secular and spiritual friendship; the relation of the body to God, or gods; the mission of charity enacted by the notorious high-drag Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, several of whom he has known rather well; the value and the danger of transvestism, which, while he has never tried drag, he appreciates immensely; the biblical interdictions about improper pleasures of the body and how he manages his confessions knowing that he is unlikely to quit having sex with other men; the matter of sinful use of another’s body; his unyielding opposition to gay marriage; and his conviction that the human body, and in particular his own body, will persist in its finest perfection for all eternity—so long as he maintains his faith and follows the duties and obligations prescribed by Christ.
We both liked sex. More to the point, we shared a similar sexual sensibility: aside from short-term excitement, we both experienced sex as a route to another kind of knowledge. For me sex has always been a means toward a human connection greater than the thing itself. Even in the anonymous variety in the parks, forests, and undergrounds around Paris, San Francisco, and New York, orgasm, jouissance as the French would have it, has seldom been the point. (Or as an old friend once put it, if it’s just about orgasm, he’d rather have a Cuban sandwich.) The acts may be brief and possess no intention or capacity for enduring companionship. What is usually called romance may be utterly out of the question, but what has always been essential is the disarming intimacy of naked touch—knees, nipples, tongues, buttocks, though (almost) never undressed penises. Odd as it may sound, the caress of skin to skin lets loose a calisthenics of rich and complex intimacies, animal and atavistic, unrelated to the mindfulness of romance. Sex for Brother Peter is, he says, never about romance. Certainly it is not about confessions of devotion. It would take several months