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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 1376Winter 1961The pages ripped off the calendar like months passing in an old gangster movie. In February, to celebrate Saint Valentine%u2019s Day, we watched Glenn Ford in Torpedo Run. In March, the movie for Saint Patrick%u2019s Day was canceled because of Ash Wednesday. %u201cWe have to keep it bent for Lent,%u201d Mike said.He was no closer to his vocation, but I was. Mike%u2019s questioning of his vocation clouded his quest with even more doubts. My questioning my vocation drove me closer to my calling, my surety in the priesthood. It was Lock, not Mike, who first lost interest in prying into the case of Father Dryden. No boy in our college department admitted to anything even worth telling in Confession. Seminary life thrived on hot juicy gossip that was forgotten with the new scandal of the next day. But about Father Dryden the talk was all about the golden priest.%u201cI was rash,%u201d Mike said. %u201cI got excited.%u201d He shuffled around. %u201cI guess Gunn%u2019s military methods have gotten more to me in eight years than I like to suspect. Father Dryden%u2019s a good guy after all. Very intellectual, satirical, ironic. Maybe I took him too literally.%u201d%u201cYou%u2019re as literal as a fundamentalist Protestant,%u201d I said. %u201cNever accuse me of confusing literature class for life again.%u201d%u201cI never...%u201d%u201cYou always make fun of me when I tell you one thing can mean two things.%u201d%u201cFather Dryden is a strange man,%u201d Lock said, %u201cbut a good one. He%u2019s opening the intellectual window to blow some air through this place.%u201d%u201cThank you, Sherlock Holmes,%u201d I said, satisfied, and went off, grateful everyone was being true to his vocation and obedient to the purity required. I knew unprovoked nocturnal emissions were not sin, but I never touched the deep sweet privacy of myself. I let God and nature surprise me with the natural nights in the throes of sleep. I woke with only vague images, saying, %u201cOh, my God, I take no pleasure in this!%u201d Impure imaginings quickly disappeared under the icy shower spray. Quick towel. Buffing. Secrets ever silent. Temptation. Thoughts. Star. Starlet. Starlet%u2019s chest.