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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK102 Jack Fritscher%u201cYou go to bed. I%u2019ll sit awhile longer on the porch.%u201dAll around me in his bedroom were his things, all the junk a kid collects over the years and never throws out till all on one day. I figured Mike, like every other kid, had a shoe box full of stuff, but this kind of stuff! I had never thought of Mike being in the back seat with anybody, but I began to wonder what I would do if I ever climbed into a back seat, which I%u2019d never do. The thought made me giddy. I mean, I stopped even picturing such a scene, because I didn%u2019t want to sin with that girl, that blonde girl from the lake. With the wired breasts, no, my God! I had to drive home on the highway and couldn%u2019t afford to go to hell for an impure thought.Suddenly, I hated summers in summer places that threw us protected boys out into a wild world that asked questions, worse than Rip%u2019s, we couldn%u2019t answer. Misery, I had expected to tell me everything, but I heard nothing. At least, I knew I knew nothing. I was glad I was not like Mike, not like other men. I had that special priestly grace setting me apart. Summertime was hell and maybe the priests would be right to do what was rumored: send us off to a secluded villa for the summer, to be alone and safe together, away from the clutches of the devil and the questions of the world, and all the wiles of Barbara.In five years, the bishop would send me forth, baptizing and preaching. I was a child compared to Mike. How could I ever handle the priestly situations that might arise in real life? I felt hot, all wrong lying in that strange room in someone else%u2019s house. I knew all my life would be spent in rooms that weren%u2019t mine, in houses that were strange, taking orders obediently from old men. What is it like in a rectory at night?I grasped at straws that might delay my Ordination. Tuberculosis or something from the movies like a war. Anything, because so much was to be done to me in such little relentless time. Tick. Tick. Tick.The sacrament of Ordination to the priesthood puts a permanent mark on a man%u2019s soul. Once a priest, always a priest. Forever.Mike lounged nervously out on the porch. He had found some cigarettes, stale ones, he had shouted, in the drawer. I threw back the clinging sheet, and knelt by the bedside in my swim trunks. My senses glutted with everything I had seen driving up, at the lake, and all I had heard tonight.Something very loud exploded over the house and a rectangle of light from fireworks outside the window fell across me.Dear God, I prayed, when one looks at girls for the first time, he%u2019s delighted by what he sees. That%u2019s fine and normal, but I should have done that at fifteen, not twenty-one. I%u2019m even behind the normal calendar of my