The Heart's Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

“If I haven’t, perhaps it’s because I know the kind of man you are. You’ve always had an affinity for deviants, haven’t you? And for peculiar sexual practices. I mean that thing you wanted to do with the tires and the garden hose that time. I still shudder when I think of it.”

“It’s because they’re all so sexually frustrated, of course,” he told me. “They can’t have sex, you see, so they beat up little boys and it gives them stiffies when they do it. It’s the closest they get to orgasms during the day.

“Sit yourself down there, sweetheart, and if you catch any diseases I promise to pay the vet bill myself.” “Charming,” she said. “You’re a real gentleman.”

I’m not sure what it was about my appearance that made me seem like a pubescent rapist but for some peculiar reason I took this as a compliment.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jonathan. “That’s not what happens at all.” At which point he proceeded to give me a very frank description of how a man and woman went about the business of fornicating, even telling me a few things that I had not known before.

“Good work. And how long has he been living in our marital home, cuckolding me?”

“I’ll have to get that straight in my head. Cyril. Cyril the Squirrel.”

I’ve always felt that the Catholic Church has the same relationship to God as a fish has to a bicycle.”

It was something that never could have happened when I was that age. And yet for all my happiness at seeing my grandson happy and secure in who he was, there was something terribly painful about it too. What I would not have given to be that young at this time and to be able to experience such unashamed honesty.