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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 171a small splintered crack streams a coveted wisp of promise. Bits of songs. Typing ribbon eternally winding and rewinding itself. Paint oozing from tube to palette. Delicious are tastes and smells of dream. Picasso on the sidewalk. Existentialism on a picket fence. Not everyone wears a melted watch. Haunchers along a stone wall. Whispers under the droning harangue. Self-appointed Gantry. Yoo-hoo, Elmer! Fighting in others what afraid to fight in himself. I%u2019m not like other men. Everybody sing. Vienna psychologist down for count of ten. Faith means I don%u2019t have to understand. Take it from the top! God said to Moses, Beat me, daddy, eight to the bar.Ohmarywecrowntheewithblossomstoday.Sixteen millimeter. Queen of the Angels. The wreck of my happiness. Queen of the May.Every night, I pulled on my flannel pajamas.Every morning, I woke up naked.May 1, 1963 May Day, May DayAn evening rainstorm was approaching in a curtain across the Ohio valley, sweeping across the winding river, the wild, deep, flooded river, over the blowing trees, and up the windy hill. I could dare the spring rain and wait till the very last minute, the very last second, to pull my window closed. The edge of the storm hit, pounded pellets on the glass, washed down the beautiful May twilight. The sky grew orange when the front passed. Behind the clouds, the sun had set, leaving us all bathed in the trailing after light.Outdoors, arm in arm, two quartets of boys stood in lamp light, sheltered under the stone vault of an entrance stairs, catching the echo, harmonizing German lieder and the sweet, sweet air from Fiorello, %u201cTwilight descends, everything ends, till tomorrow.%u201d Out on the wet walkways, other seminarians strolled back and forth, and forth and back, cassocks snapping like windsocks about their ankles, talking shop, they called it, smoking, and waiting for the call to rosary. I did not follow them to chapel. Out of self-defense.By the Irish Jesuit%u2019s orders, I took a vanishing powder. Now you see me. Now you don%u2019t. I disappeared for nearly five weeks into an underground of my own making. In theology lectures, I perfected a look of attention while I read novels under the priestly noses of ancient professors droning on about the Council of Trent and the horrors of Albigensian