The Prayers in Rossford

Under a portrait of an almond eyed Jesus that Noah remembered his Grandma Rainer having, Dan poured a cup of cocoa, said, “Merry Christmas, Noah,” and then headed up the stairs to bed.

“I’ve never seen the inside of a… rectory before,” Noah said. It was wide, low ceilinged, and dark polished with wainscoting half way up the walls, a large fireplace, and a faint smell of old man.

Keith nodded. “I like to call it home.”

The priest was in sweats and a tee shirt, looking completely like a man, and not a man of God. Now Noah knew exactly who he was. He was Bick Throbbing. But he was someone else entirely. It was unbelievable. Bick Throbbing might have bent you over and entered you with aching force, dripping sweat onto the small of your back. But you would not have a cup of cocoa with him in his rectory.

“Noah, why did you get into it? Doing movies?”

“No one ever calls it porn, do they?” Noah said

Keith hummed, and shook his head.

“It was better than what I had been doing,” Noah said. “Turning tricks for very little money. On the street. Feeling powerless. Like whoever this gross, fat guy was, he might kill me. I always wondered if I’d be able to defend myself. You know. When Guy came along it was the same thing but… with good looking, safe, nice boys. No diseases. Always used condoms. Everyone was always checked for illnesses. Nothing would get out of hand, cause it was being taped. I think knowing it was being taped almost made me feel safer.

Noah had a sense he was rambling. He looked across to Keith. Keith’s brow was furrowed and his hands were gripping the cup.

Noah continued: “And there was the thrill.”

“There was,” Keith spoke now, “the thrill. I think that’s why I did it too.”

Keith didn’t speak right away, but Noah had the feeling that now he was about to get his answer.

“I… I told you I always knew I wanted to be a priest.”

Noah nodded.

“And I always knew I should be. But the more I knew it the more this… ache was in me. This need. I worked in soup kitchens, in homeless shelters. I did everything in church. I put together pro-life rallies. I mean I did everything. I was top of my class at Citeaux, theology student.

“And the more I did this, the more right it felt to keep getting closer and closer to the priesthood, the more the need was in me.

“The first time it boiled over was the summer before I went to seminary. I, uh, right around the time I was supposed to be doing my psychological eval. Cause they want to make sure you’re not crazy. Right? I got online, started cruising that way, and I was literally shaking, like a fiend. I met this man. I don’t want to go on about it, but we met up. I didn’t have my own place. He… I believe he was married with kids and I didn’t care and we snuck into someone’s backyard and just did it. Looking back I think how unsafe that was, in every single way. How… depraved. But I also remember the whole time it was happening thinking, ‘God I’m so sorry.’ ‘God forgive me.’ And… ‘thank you God.’”

After that I started seminary up in Kingsford. And they give you a very long leash. They are all about looking the other way. I mean, sometimes seminarians, and the brothers at the abbey I was at, they got together.”

Noah wanted to say, I knew it, I always knew it! But he remained silent.

“I guess we all thought, this life is hard. And it is. We do good things. We really do a lot of good. And we really love God. So just… let us have this. That’s how I felt,” Keith said.

“But the one thing with me is…. I decided that I would never have a sex life inside the seminary. I would really be celibate. And to me that meant getting release outside. Port Ridge is only down the road from Kingsford, so I went there, met Guy and became… Who you knew. It was a safe way—and a way that paid when money was pretty tight. The only other options for the release and the thrill that I thought I needed would have been in bathroom stalls, in parks, with people I found repellent, doing things I felt ashamed about.”

“But didn’t you ever feel ashamed about this?” Noah said.

“Do you?” said Keith.

“Not the same,” Noah said flatly. “And…” then he said, “I’ll be honest. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never do one of those pictures again, and sometimes I feel like I might as well, and sometimes I feel like I have to.”

“I know,” Keith said. “That’s… just the way I feel. Or felt.

“Going back to Kingsford I would swear I wouldn’t do it again, that I was over it, and when I’d get back I would pretend I was someone else. And then, as time went by—seminary lasts six years—I learned how to be Keith McDonald till the moment I parked my car down the street from Guy’s. Then I turned into…”

“Bick Throbbing.”

“I can’t even say it,” Keith shook his head.

“Sorry,” Noah said. He sipped from his cocoa.

“Do you still want to do it? Make the movies? I mean, are you going to?”

“I can’t,” Keith said. “I mean, I’d be terrified. You’ve seen it. Dirk Yates. Rod Powers. That… lawyer guy. Thom Merritt. All thought they were doing something no one would ever see. I mean, that was stupid. The best thing happening was you and Paul… Not so much because I’m afraid of getting caught, but because it reminds me what a hypocrite I was. And… any thought of doing one of those movies always comes right next to me thinking about someone seeing me and thinking, ‘He’s a priest. He’s a hypocrite.’ I don’t want to take anybody from God. I don’t… I should have thought about that before.

“I think back then what I wanted was to be touched and touch another man. I wanted to make love. Out of all my experiences, those movies were the closest thing I ever had to making love. So… If you ask me if I’ll ever make a movie again, no. But if you ask me if I think about men still, yes.”

“Do you think you can be celibate?” Noah said. “Really stop having sex?”

“So far so good,” Keith said, though Noah had the sense not to ask how long it had been. “But… I honestly can’t even promise that.”

The snow had stopped, and they hoped it stayed that way. The sky was hard and clear with white stars burning over Rossford as Brendan Miller’s car moved slowly through the snow, further away from the church, to the east end of town where Kenny’s family lived.

“I was always surprised you all didn’t go to Saint Agatha’s,” Brendan said.

“I guess it would have been closer,” Kenny said. “Well, they didn’t go anywhere tonight.”

“I hope we don’t wake anyone up. Or do you think they’ll be asleep when we get in?”

“Oh, they’ll be fast asleep,” Kenny said. “You have to know, Bren, in our house everyone gets up really early to open presents.”

“Well, I’ll just head out even earlier.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Kenny said as Brendan turned south, off of Dorr Road onto Melon Street.

“Well, it beats looking all awkward while everyone else opens presents. Plus,” he added, “I got my own Christmas to get too.”

“Well, excuse me.”

“You’re excused.”

Melon Street was full of two storey, porched, old clapboard houses covered in snow and fronted by trees limned in white tonight. Brendan plowed into Kenny’s driveway, and Kenny remarked that his little brother might have bothered to shovel the driveway.

The house was not completely quiet when they came in. The television was on in the den, and Kenny’s father said, “Is that you?”

“Yeah, dad.” Kenny thought of saying Brendan was staying the night, or something like that, but in the end he simply walked Brendan through the narrow hallway and up the stairs to his room.

“Your house is tall and skinny,” Brendan commented as they took off their shoes to travel soundlessly down the hall to Kenny’s room.

There was nothing to say to this, so Kenny said nothing, and led Brendan to his bedroom.

“It’s cold in here. Isn’t it? Let me turn on my heater.”

Kenny moved in the dark and a moment later, Brendan heard a hum and the blow of hot air.

“It’ll be warmer if we get these coats and stuff off,” he said.

Brendan shuffled off his coat and heard Kenny taking off his. And then Kenny said, “Are you warmer?”

“Yes. A little.”

Kenny kissed him on the mouth.

“What about now?”

“Oh, that’s much better.”

“And now?”

“Even better. But what if… I do this?”

“Ah,” Kenny murmured.

And so they undressed each other, and then Kenny brought him to bed, and side by side, linking their arms and their limbs together, they kissed up and down, into Kenny’s throat, at the center of his breast, up and down, on his ears. Kenny’s hands moved over Brendan’s body. They tasted and touched, and in silence touched by muffled laughter brought each other pleasure.

“You better fuck me now,” Brendan said, at last.

“Hold on,” Kenny said. “I got something for that. Don’t want it to be rough.”

And when Kenny had opened the drawer by his bed and gotten the something for it, Brendan lay on his back, and then pulled Kenny to him, savoring his shoulders, his broad back, the smell of his body, the thin scent of sweat.

“Is anyone downstairs?”

“The garage is downstairs,” Kenny said.

“I didn’t want the bed to make too much noise.”

“The only thing the back of the bed’s gonna hit is the wall with the window. But… don’t you get loud… Mom’s sleeping in the next room.”

“You lock the door?”

“I’m not you, Bren. I got that shit covered.”

It had been awhile and they hadn’t done this a lot, so despite the need it hurt the first two times trying and they stopped, Kenny saying it wasn’t necessary, but then the third time it worked and when Brendan had him he didn’t let him go. He pulled him in. He squeezed him and pushed back, his head back, his mouth open, keeping quiet, speaking in tongues to himself, amazed that this shit could exist, that a man could take another man into himself like this. He kept pulling Kenny’s face down to him, running his hands over Kenny’s body, catching him like a vice, trying to take as much of him into him as was possible.

Kenny was in amazement. On this holy night his little room could contain such a large and unbelievable miracle, to not be a virgin, to go from the inexperienced boy to the one experiencing this, for Brendan to transform from the shy and distant cashier at Martin’s to this force who took him into what-he-could-not-say, was the miracle.

And then when that side of the miracle had been played, Brendan fucked him and he became the universe and the mystery and the tight abyss, biting the pillow clutching it with his fist, feeling Bren’s body spasm, Brendan gasp, Brendan slick.

They were quiet for along time. There was no point in saying anything, or even in moving. At last, Brendan reached out in the bed to touch him, and Kenny squeezed himself, still feeling Brendan inside of him, thinking how Brendan surely must still feel him too. Their bodies drew together and then, Brendan said:

“You know what?”

“Hum?

“I bet we look really gay right now.”

In the winter darkness, Kenny McGrath curled his body around Brendan’s, and laughed.