Page 77 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 47

low-hanging trees, trying to knock Ryan off its back.
Ryan had been carried at full gallop, scared and weirdly thrilled, hold-
ing on for dear life. He had cum involuntarily in his pants.
Five days later, Ryan left home, afraid his accidental ejaculation
might have cut him from the state of grace. Fear made his train ride a
blur. He arrived in Ohio at Misericordia Seminary, dragging his army-
green foot-locker. The cuts and scratches on his arms and face were nearly
healed. He went to confession immediately, trying, not too successfully, to
explain what had happened. The priest seemed understanding. Ryan was
relieved. He was thrilled those first days by the majestic Catholicism of
the seminary. The architecture was inspirational gothic, something Ryan
later called Misery’s reign-of-terror decor. He was fascinated by the forty-
foot-tall, nearly naked, bearded, muscular Jesus hanging crucified over
the main altar. He liked the side chapel of Saint Sebastian, tied, suffering,
stuck with arrows, “stuck with eros,” he later said. But it was the huge,
handsome Jesus that immediately caught his interest and for ten years held
his attention. This Jesus, though Ryan hardly knew it then, was his first
lover, and a hard act to follow, unless you were Kick Sorensen.
At Misericordia, Ryan was one of the prettiest of the new class of
minor seminarians. Some of the older boys showered him with attentions
he refused to understand. He prayed to the huge Jesus to shut impure
thoughts from his mind. Fear of hell and love of God combined to keep
him steadfastly free from masturbation. He was the epitome of the perfect
Catholic altar boy. Thom, I think, was himself always attracted to that
in Ryan. Their parents, the nuns, the priests always prodded Thom to
follow the good example of his older brother. Ryan hardly noticed that
his younger brother, finding Ryan the favored son, began reacting like
the prodigal. To Ryan, Thom was a tagalong whom he resented the way
the firstborn son often resents the second born, the potential usurper of
their parents’ affection. Ryan refused to be Thom’s hero; Ryan was himself
looking for heroes. At Misericordia, he found them in the older seminar-
ians. His friends were always the best of the seminary jocks.
“The better athlete you are on the playing field,” Monsignor Linotti
said, “the better the priest you’ll be.” It was the old jock equation men
have always made. It sounded good to Ryan who knew, of course, that
Monsignor Linotti was right. If Ryan wasn’t really a jock himself, he could
make up for it by accepting the older boys’, the best of the older boys’,
invitations to go off to the woods to wrestle. Ryan spent every semester
tumbling body over body, hugged and held and fighting back, pulling
punches and rolling down the ravines to Misery creek that ran into the

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