Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir by Scott Pomfret Read Free Book Online

eat bonbons,” he warned, shaking his finger at me. “Go easy on it. How are you going to get a job as general counsel of a hedge fund and start supporting me in the manner to which I could easily become accustomed?”
    “Half hour, once a week,” I promised. “No sweat. It won’t affect worklife.”
    “Well, OK, I guess that’s not so bad. But keep a lid on it.” Then he added cheerfully, “You know I don’t believe that religious crap, but if it makes you happy and makes you a better person, I’m all for it.”
    Like a fool, I took him at his word.

III
    A Church to be proud Of
    You start off with Harry Potter, who comes across as a liveable wizard, but you end up with the Devil. There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books .
    — Rev. Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of the Vatican
    Channeling Fames Carl Jones
    LINGERED ON THE SIDEWALK like a John at an X-rated theater. I pretended to read the weekly bulletin taped to the window. I glanced nervously over each shoulder, and a voice in my head kept asking: What’s a nice porn writer like you doing at a mean church like this?
    What if someone I knew saw me there? Scott’s warning was right on the money. It just wouldn’t do for a self-respecting homosexual professional to be seen among the faithful. It was too throwback, too neocon, too much like saying I believed in magic. Or had a guilty conscience. Which I did.
    There was nothing wrong with church attendance per se. For a straight person. Within reason. On Sundays and holidays, for example. Once-a-week religion on a straight career was like a pocket square: it looked nice, but everyone understood you didn’t take it too seriously. Real piety, on the other hand, killed conversations. It was a form of spiritual flatulence on a down-bound elevator.
    I was about to turn away and welsh on my covenant with God when a homeless woman halfway down the block shouted, “Got any change?”
    Dammit! I yanked open the door and ducked inside. Change? No, I'm sticking to the deal we made. Swear to You, hope to die .
    Bulletproof glass more appropriate to a pawnshop than a church shielded the information booth in the lobby. A woman of indeterminate age with a skull as narrow as a pencil manned the booth. I smoothed my clothes and tried to project deep spirituality. And maybe heterosexuality.
    “Lector training?” I asked.
    The woman looked me up and down, as if she were cataloging my sins. This thought visibly passed through her mind: Priests might need to hear you whine in a box to now, but I had you pegged from the moment you walked in the door, homo .
    She jerked a thumb toward the basement.
    Certain people go to foreign lands, seek out strange gods and different cultures, indulge in smoking the local intoxicant, participate in local customs like the consumption of raw aardvark testicles at the birth of the third son, easily absorb languages consisting entirely of clicks and snaps, become inured to the local habit of paying one’s respects via presentation of a virgin gecko, and otherwise delight in the company of radically weird strangers as far from home as possible.
    Said people are not Boston Irish Catholics. A journey farther west than the local coffee shop gives us hives. When we are looking for a culinary adventure, we switch from Bud to Bud Light. We have trouble pronouncing surnames that don’t begin with “O” or “Mc.” Shaking hands with strangers smacks of communism. In short, we seek out and cling to our kind, and we have to be dragged screaming to make the acquaintance of others not like us.
    The basement frightened me. A dirty velvet curtain flanked a stage with an American flag and a podium. Thirty collapsible tables with folding chairs were arranged between an unused statue of the Virgin and an industrial-strength kitchen. The air stank of cigarette breath, stale coffee, and stainless steel polish. Someone had set out a plastic platter of day-old