Page 118 - What They Did to the Kid

106 Jack Fritscher

they said, running off, giggling in undisguised appreciation of his
build and his face. He had what a priest should have.
Rip and Kenny sloshed on into the water diving head first and
splashing a group of pretty girls. I said I’d better wait. A radio com-
mercial jingled in my head. “Don’t go swimming alone, because
you can’t reach a phone. When you’re in Davey Jones’ locker, it’s
too late to call. So don’t take chances. Learn all the answers. Learn
swimming today at the YMCA.”
I was always treading water, alone, waiting, perfecting my back-
stroke, biding time for something. I was jealous of boys with red goa-
tees who chewed peanut butter and jumped splashdown into lakes
churning up the water, racing past my sidestroke with a freestyle
Australian crawl.
In the Ohio winter, I ached for summers in the sun, beaches,
bongo drums, and a beatnik beard. But I was drowning in inhibition
and obedience. I was going down for the third time with purity. I
was a seminari an, a theological student, and certain things weren’t
mine to expect. Hell! Why couldn’t I be the first beatnik priest? I
rolled onto my back in the sand. I had more than all those other
boys. I had something. Not everything, but some thing larger than
life. I rose to my elbows. They were all wilder than me, the boys
who bought girls Cokes in the park and lay with them on beaches.
I had always adjusted to this social difference as my special lonely
way of life. They could all change faces for each other to get what
they wanted.
I was pledged to stay constant. I spent my vacations with maybe
one or two theologi cal students from around Peoria, or was left alone
with one of them, like Mike and I were now. We wore modest boxer
trunks and swam together like little fish for protec tion. Sometimes
we seminarians talked, lying on white towels we had ink-marked
MIS ERY, about theologi cal problems and how the whole world
danced around ignoring the true meaning of life.
Seminarians either gossiped or talked obvious shoptalk. They
bored me. I an nounced, “If our vocation could actually be explained,
no one could ignore it.” The other seminarians accepted the mystery
of the priesthood so nonchalantly that I felt myself drifting away

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