Page 75 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 63time I really was unseen by someone. I could pull the plastic curtain and listen to the water run down all over me, not minding the flaking paint on the Army Surplus sea-foam-green walls or the voices singing four different songs in the other stalls. It was worth it to play a hard game, or endure the slave labor on the free afternoon, to get to take a shower and be alone.The luxury was kind of a reward, a treat added to the maximum two showers a week. I dawdled a long time even though Rector Karg counseled us to enter, briskly scrub down, towel off, and exit. He said not to luxuriate.But I refused to hurry, even when other sems scuffed by in shower shoes impatiently flicking, hard, harder, hardest, at the plastic curtains with their towels, or sloshing buckets of pee over the shower top to drown boys in sport. I wasn%u2019t luxuriating or interfering with myself or polluting myself. I was drenching myself in privacy, wondering at what Lock termed the nondirective failures of the priests. I was simply being alone for a while in the wild communal world of boys.The shower and the Confessional were almost alike, except the priest was there to listen when I went to confess twice a week, late on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.%u201cBless me, Father, for I have sinned.%u201d I was kneeling.The darkness of the Confessional smelled like the wet hair and aftershave of the seminarian who had confessed in the box before me.%u201cIt%u2019s three days since my last Confession.%u201d Outside the heavy green curtain, I heard the shuffling sounds of the thick-soled, thick-souled lines waiting to confess. Through the Confessional screen, I saw the priest bent over, his ear close to the screen, an inch from my mouth.%u201cThese are my sins,%u201d I whispered into his holy ear. %u201cI%u2019ve especially been watching against sins of uncharitableness and have fallen fifteen times since my last Confession. I was inattentive at morning prayers twice and was careless in saying the rosary three times. For these and all the sins of my past life, especially sins of disobedience, or any unknown sin of impurity, I am heartily sorry.%u201dI looked at him, the side of his head, the white hair crested well back on the crown, hoping this time he would say some secret code word that would unite the natural in me with the supernatural outside me.%u201cMy son,%u201d he said from beneath his hand, %u201cyou do well to guard against sins of uncharitableness.%u201dI locked my fingers together in front of me.