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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOKWhat They Did to the Kid 75valedictory speech that he was glad some older, more adult interest was being shown us.But I felt more like a kid than ever, even if I was graduating, facing another summer in the world. I made up my mind. I was seventeen, about to be eighteen, feeling my innocence ridiculous. I had to know. One seminarian from Philadelphia was playing forbidden race records, Negro music, like Mickey and Sylvia singing %u201cLove Is Strange.%u201d I was intellectual enough to know. I wondered how strange. I geared myself up and made up my mind and went without stopping to the priest in the Confessional and asked him point blank how it was done, how the two, like Charlie-Pop and Annie Laurie, got together for sex.He told me all it was, and it was somehow terribly disappointing, because I had felt some tedious obligation to know one of life%u2019s big secrets.Trying to be pure had been terribly difficult, because I had no idea of what the temptation was supposed to be. Sin had something to do with girls, but no one spoke clearly.I had to know what it was besides interfering with myself that celibacy required I give up, so knowing that, I could leave it, not needing it, and be free to search in myself for the priestly self that needed finding.My need to know was real enough. My mother wrote me a special letter. Charlie-Pop was so proud, she said. She was pregnant. I could hear the pitter-pat of little feet walking in to replace me.They could have asked. Thommy was bad enough. I felt the way all first-borns feel, forever falling from being the only child.%u201cWe%u2019re so happy with you and Thom,%u201d she wrote, %u201cwe thought we%u2019d try again.%u201dMay 29, 1957 %u201cI%u2019ll never forgive you, Ry-baby!%u201d Hank the Tank jumped down from a ladder, his hands wringing a wet rag he threw at me. %u201cI%u2019ll never forget.%u201dHe had me cornered on the third floor alone.%u201cDon%u2019t say anything, baby. You talked enough already. Ski and me came near to getting shipped out of here. Twice, because of you. And we would have, yeah, you would have succeeded, but my father%u2019s name saved us. Rector Karg didn%u2019t name you as choir boy, baby, but we all know, don%u2019t we, what you are and what you sang to Gunn. Don%u2019t flinch up. I%u2019m not even going to threaten you, O%u2019Hara baby. You%u2019d only run and sing again. You%u2019re so effing pure. No man, I don%u2019t need to threaten you. You%u2019re so busy playing white knight to that pansy Dempsey, because I ride his tail. You