Page 15 of Saint
“No, it’s fine,” I say, my face hot. “He was my boy—ex-boyfriend.” How is it that I can forget theexpart after so many years of it being true?
“Oooh,” Brother Thomas says, leaning forward into a sunbeam. His face, ordinarily a deep olive, begins flushing pink under the early summer sun. “What did he come back here for?”
“Closure, I suppose,” I say uncomfortably. I’m not uncomfortable talking about an ex-boyfriend with the Lectio Lexapro group—they know many of the intimate details of my life, and they know I’m queer—but Iamuncomfortable talking about Elijah specifically, because it’s too close to talking about how I still feel about Elijah. How I still feel the tendrils and vines of him whispering around my ankles and snaking up my thighs.
It’s gotten better since his visit, but I don’t think it will be totally fixed until I leave. Until I find the monastery that can press everything out of me that’s not living for God, press me like grapes being turned into wine.
“Does this have anything to do with why you’re going to Europe?” Brother Crispin asks curiously.
“No,” I say quickly. “That was proposed before he came.”
I didn’t agree untilafterhis visit, but I don’t say that out loud.
“Do you really want to be a Trappist?” Brother Denis asks. He’s the oldest of our group, a white man with a short beard and an accent straight from a BBC documentary. “They’re quite diligent, aren’t they?”
Brother Francis scoffs. “I think you meandour.”
“Better stock up on Welly before you become a Trappist then, so you can smile through the dourness,” Brother Crispin advises, half teasing.
I smile at him. “Maybe the dourness is the point.”
“Is it safe?” Brother Matthew asks after a moment, quietly. “Will it be safe for you?”
I think about this a moment. While managing depression isn’t—in my experience—a recipe that stays precisely the same over time, some things make it exponentially easier. Therapy. Meds. Good community. Friendship. Meditation. While I feel certain that I’d have plenty of meditation in any monastery, I can’t be sure of the other ingredients. So much depends on the abbots and priors, on the particular culture of a monastic house. “I don’t know,” I finally reply. “I’d have to be vigilant.”
“But you’re not turned off by the potential suffering?” Brother Titus asks.
I shake my head. “They’re hardly wearing hair shirts or flogging themselves. They’re just quieter than us, a bit more rigid. That’s all.”
But again, I’m not telling them the entire truth here.
I am the opposite of turned off by the potential suffering—I crave it, I crave it to the point of masochistic desire. Suffering can be good; suffering can be essential.
Paul the Apostle says that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, which is the Jesus-y photo-negative of Yoda’s speech in the Jedi Council scene inThe Phantom Menace.
And if I could only set my feet on the right road, if I could only follow this flickering candle all the way to its finish, then I will be better than empty by the time my life is done. I will be filled with hope.
“Anyway,” I say, “it’s only a visit. Nothing’s decided yet.”
Sort of.
* * *
Before I became a monk,I spent Saturday mornings jerking off and eating Toaster Strudels, and now I spend my Saturday mornings singing psalms and vacuuming the abbey offices. It’s funny where life can take you sometimes.
I do miss the Toaster Strudels.
I’m nearly done with the individual offices, and I’m moving on to the central office area when I hear it.
A distinctboing BOING boing BOING.
I turn off the vacuum, verify that I am indeed hearingboing-ing, and walk to the office door, where I see Brothers Titus and Thomas on those big rubber bouncy balls—the kind with the handles—bouncing exuberantly down the hallway.
“Gangway for the bouncy ball parade!” Brother Titus shouts as he bounces past me, the rubber slapping against the sealed brick floor of the hallway with each landing.
“Halt the parade!” Brother Thomas says, executing a nearly perfect one hundred and eighty degree turn in a single bounce, so he can bounce back to the doorway I’m standing in. He stops at my feet, peering up at me.
“You should have a turn,” he declares, and Brother Titus moves to join him, looking thoughtful as he bounces.
