Page 21 of Saint
I finally manage to speak, although there are still visions of Elijah wearing board shorts sliding through my mind. “Your key is on the hook by the door,” I tell him. “I’ll leave you to get settled and everything. Do you need help getting your things from your car?”
He shakes his head, walking over to the window and looking out onto the cloisters below and the steep hill beyond. “It’s very pretty,” he murmurs to the glass.
You’re so pretty, he used to tell me, in that same low, appreciative voice. Usually before I was bent over the nearest flat surface.You’re the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror over the desk and sigh at the stubble and the plainly sewn habit. Not so pretty anymore.
“I’ll leave your towels on the bed, then, and be back in about thirty minutes to get you—”
Elijah comes away from the window before I can finish, his hands outstretched to take the towels and soap I’ve been cradling in the crook of my elbow. I put the towels on his upturned palms, a transaction that should be as touchless as a banker’s deposit drawer, but then the paper-wrapped soap threatens to slide off the top and he moves to catch it—trapping it between his hand and mine.
For the first time in years, our hands are pressed together. And even with a wafer of homemade soap between us, even with his palm to the top of my hand and my own palm pressed against the old terrycloth, I still feel his touch like I’d feel a tongue of fire licking my skin.
I can’t meet his eyes—I could barely do it before, but certainly not now, not while we’re touching—and it seems like the only thing that exists in my world is the top of his hand. It is so geometrically precise, that hand, with the strong lines of his fingers, with the short, squared-off nails. The metacarpals like the hammers on a piano, held in absolute stillness. Poised to move at a second’s notice.
His hand is like everything else about him. Perfect. And soon there will be a slender band of metal decorating one of those fingers and this Jamie person will get to look at it and know it’s for him.
I slide my hand out from under his, and he clears his throat in the way a polite person does to cover an awkward moment, and of course my drooling over his hand was obvious, of course it was.
He deserves for you to be good for him, I remind myself.That’s the least of what you owe him.
I take two big steps back, still not able to meet his eyes. “I’ll let you get your things and get settled. I’ll be back in a bit.”
13
From Mode Magazine
I used to be a fairly devout Catholic, however those things can be measured. My parents were front-pew Catholics; I was an officer in the Junior Knights of Peter Claver; I flirted with the fantasy of becoming a priest after learning the Jesuit motto: ite, inflammate omnia.
Go, set the world on fire.
But then sexual abuse committed by my parish priest—which resulted in unspeakable tragedy for my best friend’s family—tore our world in half. The deep friendship between my family and my best friend’s family ruptured, along with my faith.
And I was getting old enough to see that there was no place for me in the Church anyway. I knew I was gay; now I also knew that the church didn’t want me if I wasn’t willing to embrace celibacy or an outright lie.
So I left.
That should be the end of the story...but somehow the Church keeps inveigling itself into my life. My sister, one of the smartest and best people I know, was a postulant for religious sisterhood before she began seeing the man who’s now her husband. And then a year later, the love of my life left me for the cloister.
And sometimes when I ask myself what I should write about, when I ask myself where I need to use my voice, I hear Ignatius of Loyola speaking to me.
Go, set the world on fire.
—“The Eternal Cool of Monks: Beer and Prayer in Some of the World’s Loneliest Abbeys” by Elijah Iverson
14
Piano notes waftthrough the church, floating up to the vaults of the ceiling and echoing off the stained glass and limestone of the sanctuary. The scent of incense pervades the space; decades and decades of smoke curling up to God. Racks of votive candles flicker and dance from invisible drafts, and high above the altar, an oculus window made of clear glass reveals a circle of bright blue sky.
Sunlight slants in from the clerestory windows and bathes the life-sized figure behind the altar in light and shadow.
We walk slowly up the center of the nave, passing the dim recesses of the transepts and then stepping into the choir, where the monks stand to pray and sing. We are the only ones here—save for the brother practicing on the piano—but it feels holier for its emptiness, even more sacred somehow. There is no escaping that this place has always been the living crypt of the god who chose to die.
We stop as we get to the shallow steps leading up to the altar.
“That is”—Elijah seems to search for the right words as he looks at the sculpture hanging behind it—“very affecting.”
I follow his gaze up to our crucifix, which despite the beautiful things around it, eclipses everything else in the sanctuary. No amount of candelabra or fresh flowers or gold-trimmed linens can compete with the corpus of our suffering god, because this crucifix hides nothing, softens nothing. You can see the strain in Jesus’s arms and in his stomach; the muscles of his thighs are flexed with the effort of it all. His head is not bowed in surrender or death, but turned to the side in agony, struggle manifest in the tight cords of his neck and in the clench of his jaw. His eyes—half-lidded—gaze out with some wordless plea. His full lips are parted as if in a gasp.
