Page 308 - What They Did to the Kid
P. 308

296                                               Jack Fritscher

            prize, British, imported, from the bins of textured cardboard paint-
            ings sold at Barbara’s Book Store in Old Town.
               “Actually,” I said, “I’m, uh, trying to be honest.”
               “As an artist,” she said, “I’m interested in faces, portraits, films
            cast from life, faces, not actors, real people, and real writing, per-
            sonal, reflexive.”
               At Misery, I could have projected her, Jocelyn Jennings herself,
            face and body, from real dreams. I had known her apartment, if not
            her, already far back, distracted by Plato in Misery’s chapel, dream-
            ing about a Greenwich Village garret. I was not disappointed she
            was so literary, so bohemian, so free, so pretentiously beyond the
            pretenders preening in the Misery opera and chant society.
               “I was in the seminary longer than most murderers are in prison,
            but don’t get me wrong, as fub duck...”
               “Fub duck?”
               “...fucked up as it was, it was one of the most positive experiences
            of my life.”
               “What did they do to you?”
               “They never did anything to me.”
               “They never touched you?”
               “They never touched me.”
               “Maybe not your body.”
               “I tried, really, to be creative, find myself, get the most out of it.”
               “Hasn’t every boy in a seminary, everyone thinks, presumes they,
            you...”
               “No.”
               “Perhaps, not you.”
               “Not me. Definitely.”
               “And you’re jealous ha ha ha that they didn’t do...you, choose...
            you.”
               “Ha ha ha. One day I discovered I’d milked the experience dry.
            I’d learned, taken, everything they had to give, and shined it back at
            them. The priests had no more to offer me. I had to leave, and fast,
            or watch my creativity,” I wanted to say, my very self, my soul, my
            life, “curl up and die. As simple as that.”
               “But what did they do to you?”
               “They gave me drugs.”


                      ©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
                  HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK
   303   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313