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I’m sweating and my heart is racing and the sheets are slick with spilled semen.
should be the definition of silence. It should be a vacuum of sound, a bubble of pure, undisturbed stillness.
“It is not about what God is capable of,” I say quietly, “but what I am incapable of.”
“Opting out of the world doesn’t help anyone but yourself,” Elijah says, and there’s a real edge to his voice now. An edge sharp enough to cut. “What is the point of all this holiness if it doesn’t reach anyone else? What is the point of becoming good if that goodness begins and ends with you? If the only people ever touched by your goodness are the people who have the time or the bandwidth to make it inside your abbey walls?”
“Vows are not meant to be burdens, Brother Patrick,” the abbot says gently. “They are meant to clarify our lives and why we’re here.
And I might as well stay at Mount Sergius with the people I already loved and my big hill and my creek if I wasn’t going to fall in love with anywhere else.
“The martini is a classic,” I say. “Vermouth is gross,”
“You want to change your entire life, get away from it all, find yourself, whatever, I can understand that. But why this way?
But how do you explain that to a disappointed boyfriend and not have it sound like I chose to stare at a wall instead of come to the thing you explicitly told me was important to you?
Quid si. My heart flips over, once, inside my chest. It means: what if.
“I want you to fuck it away,” I tell him, pressing my forehead to his. “I want you to fuck me until I’m empty, until I’m drained all the way dry.”
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my beloved among the young men. His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, this is my friend.
“Hi, Uncle Brother,” she says, because at some point she heard someone calling me Brother Patrick and so now I’m Uncle Brother forever.
“Poetic is a synonym for depressing, and you know it. Even poets know it.
“Aiden Bell!” he whispers angrily. “I know you are not fucking around with my best friend on your ‘maybe I want to be an Irish monk’ trip!”
Don’t call me an asshole in front of my babies, you shithead!”
Now that our mom has died, this is endgame. The ultimate tattletale.
“This life means something to you,” he says. “And if I’m learning anything by going to church, it’s that we have to keep our promises even when it’s hard to do. Especially when it’s hard to do.”
I want is for you to have what you want. You know that, right?”
Also tell him that I already promised to brick you into a hole if you fuck him over.”
Why can’t I have both? All? Why do I have to choose?
“We forget that Christ was heterodox and radical. He was not safe, in his ideas or his passions or his presence, and he demanded everything of his followers, not the least their certainty that they knew all the shapes of right and wrong in their world. And so when I’m searching for my way forward, naively hunting for certainty, I’ve found that God nudges me back to where God wants me. Which is in the middle of questions that feel unanswerable. I believe it is there—in the fire and friction of things I’ve been told don’t belong together, of things that I’ve been taught can’t be done—that the
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I have spent the last several years trying to live like a saint. But I think right now I’m standing in front of one.
“You’re kissing me like you’re already saying goodbye,”
Who am I to hand out penitence or advice or…or…wisdom nuggets?”
You’re far more likely to remember the reasons you shouldn’t have something you want than the reasons you should, and you’re far more likely to let shame steer you than joy.
I brake the car as a sheep steps onto the road, shits a giant shit, and then meanders across to an open field.
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth… He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber… The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.
I stop, not sure how to say this without making it clear that God works just as much through SSRIs and therapy as he does through prayers and hymns. “It’s been the awakening of my spirit,”
I find his hand and press it to my scapular, to my chest, just like I did earlier. “The truth is that I wear two of these, Elijah, one for God, and another one that no one else can see. For you.”
What would happen, I suddenly ask myself, if I left? If I flew back home, went to Abbot Jerome’s office, and said, I’m sorry but I think I’m meant to be with him?
I’m going to leave the Church. I choose Elijah.
But I can’t stay. Not when the price is losing him.
And most of all, I just want to love you. Without inhibition, without guilt. Without a divided heart.”
Set me as a seal upon your heart, the Song of Songs goes. For love is strong as death. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine. And I burn with those flames for every minute that we’re allowed.
Goodbye, Brother Patrick. I love you like that. I love you like this. I love you like everything. —Elijah
I lift my eyes to the hills. But there are no hills in front of me now. From this direction, I can only see the sea.
And together we walk toward the woods.
“We didn’t bang,” I tell him, moving to my knees so I can knee-walk over to the desk and whisper, “I blew him in the opera hall. Then after the gala, we banged.”
is firmly Team Best Friend and will be until Judgment Day, I guess.
“Sean, I know you’re around babies all day, but please don’t say Jesus-binky again.”
“But I think you’ll find many saints caused problems with the Church. Saints who the same Church venerates now.”
Please, God, I say silently in the direction of the hill. Please. Be with me tonight.
“Aiden, are you flirting with me?”
It was the other parts that needed fixing. Maturing, maybe, like wine.
Beg you to forgive me and kiss me again, and every day that I didn’t felt a hundred years long.”
But you could never compete with God, because the two of you magnify each other in my heart.
“You bring me closer to God, Elijah,” I tell him softly. “Simply by existing.”
“What if we started right now?”
And anyway, I already love him like how forever feels. I already love him like eternity is in the rearview mirror. I love him like everything.
