Page 267 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 255

able to accept because his personality wants to run naked down the
main aisle to the altar for absolutely no reason but freedom?
Why not climb the cross and rescue Christ? Salvation dictates
you can’t stop a crucifixion. It’s like being possessed, twice. I slid
from the safe schoolish life I’d known, and from the safe rich life that
lay ahead of me, only this time I wasn’t slipping off a bed to a floor,
nobody loves me, where my father would come in and ask me, are you
okay, son and pick me up, rescued in his arms, I love you, honey, your
daddy loves you, and put me back in bed. I was slipping down a rope,
rope-burned, my hands were rope-burned so raw no anointing could
ever balm away the blood in my palms.
Oh God, help me. My creative unbridled attitude is immature.
I’ll have to tone myself down no matter what my vocation. Or per-
haps the priesthood will give me greater freedom than any other
life. The point of my independence, after all, is freedom to express
myself by creating something, anything, new, adding part of me to
the sum total of humanity. But what am I trying to express except
some weird metaphysics of life?
Oh God, I’m going to explode. I’m dying. I need salvation. I
need a play, a concert, a foreign film. A movie. A radio station. I’m
so worldly I can taste it. I’m too young for this. Uncle Les said so.
Maybe I should wait till I’m older. If you’re older, at least you don’t
have to live with your decisions so long. Saint Augustine waited till
his death bed to be baptized. I mean, how much of me can I abdicate
hoping God will fill the void? Is this the devil calling me like Bali
Hai? Is this that first night, all over again in a different way, when the
Polynesian girl sat on my bed, arms gesturing in a slow hula, trying
to lead me out of the dormitory. Why not? The Jesuit, the crazy mad
redheaded Irishman, says the Holy Spirit is talking to me.
I realize the insane temptation.
All I have to do is say God told me and they all believe whatever
I say.
So basically I’m alone on my own.
I could make all of this very easy for myself.
The Jesuit sees my coming back perseveringly every year to Mis-
ery, despite my awful agony of adjustment to captivity, as a sign
of my selfless wanting to serve. But why do I have this love-hate

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