Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:46:46 -0800 (PST) From: Tim Stillman Subject: g/m Adult/young friend "Boy Altered" Boy Altered By Tim Stillman Father Michels did alter me really. And I really was an alter boy, in the traditional meaning of the words. I've read and heard about priests and alter boys and choirboys and the lot and much of it seems quite terrible. My experience differs. Here I recount it. I was in my 13th winter. It was a beautiful snowfall that day. Even the drafty cathedral seemed warm compared to the outside chill and deep powder snow. My mom and I had moved to Manhattan after she had gotten a divorce from my dad. It was a hard time for us. She got two jobs, as bush says, "uniquely American," sod, and I got a job after school. She worked so late and I came home from my job so late we rarely saw each other. We begin leaving notes to each other, like Oscar and Felix in "The Odd Couple." Only these notes were utilitarian, not humourous, and we said we loved each other a lot in them. Weekends were also crowded. So the only time we got together was for Mass on Sunday. It was a very old, very regal place of bricks and glass and even a tower and turrets, lots of corners and balustrades and floors and quick turnings and dark rooms. A gargoyle on its edifice would have made it perfect. It was a place of whispers and vespers and a certain kind of deep red colored curtains pulled hush over the day and the city outside its long cathedral windows. The carpeting was of deep burgundy. There was always a sense of peace about this place, a sense of something more than law and justice, more than a strict Catholic upbringing that I had had. Though we were not wealthy enough to send me to boarding school. I did go to Catholic school where the nuns did not believe in sparing the child the rod. I and my backside are living proof of that. People here were kind. I was so afraid they would be off-putting and cold and distant, but they were just the opposite. Especially Father Michels. He was in his thirties, I would guess, to me then, he was old. I have sense come to change my viewpoints on age. But he was very tall and clean-shaven and handsome in his vestments, nice aroma, very warm and had a smile that made me feel good, just looking at it. His voice was comforting and soft and he liked to touch all his parishioners and put his arms around them and talk to them so sweetly. One Sunday morning, before Mass, he had asked me to his rooms. My mom was somewhat upset about it. Had I done something wrong? Had I lied in my confessions? Had I not done enough Hail Mary's? I too was worried. About the lies. THE lie in particular. Of course, I had. And of course, I had not told him. The sanctuary was huge and filled with many pews. It was a place of echoes and immensity. The stain glass windows were so red and gold and yellow and filled with great lights that softened and mellowed like butter. After everyone had left, shaking Father Michel's and Father Beaumont's hands--Father Beaumont was a mousy little man with accusatory eyes that barked almost if he saw you doing wrong, Father Michels directed me to his study. So I stood outside and I remembered the chancel and I pretended Jesus' blood in a water fall from it, bless me Father for I have sinned, bless my back side for I know what's coming, and the sacrificial wafer and wine in my mouth that could still taste it, the Latin liturgical words in my mind, all of which I was trying to hide from. And I was terrified when I saw Father Michels heading to me. I cowered. I placed one hand a bit behind myself in protecting myself from what I knew was coming. Father Michaels, after it was over, had told me to get dressed. I did so, hurriedly, ashamed of my poor clothes in this rich regal place even though the cathedral was to be torn down in a few years, and replaced by a town house in the exodus of wealthy people further out of the city and in our exodus into where they had been and finding our shabbiness too, precedence there as well, and they might never have lived there at all. Father Michels, taking off his collar, and opening his robes to reveal himself in a white shirt and black pants, told me to come to him. The room was dark, shades drawn. A portrait of Mother Mary on the wall above his walnut desk. The room was burnt umber in lighting. Afterwards, I did walk awkwardly and with a little pain--he hit me very few times and did it very softly, however--and he put his arm round my shoulder. And he said, "You never have to lie to me. I didn't spank you because you masturbated. But because you lied." I blushed at the word "masturbated"--even though he had seen me totally naked moments before and his hand had felt my bum, in hitting me, and tried to draw back, but his strong peaceful hand touched my shoulder and I was thus enraptured, at that very specific, very precise moment in time. I know, if anyone reads this, you might think well, he was seducing me and thus screwing up my life forever. I can only say that, in our case, you would be as Mr. Spock puts it, in er-or. I kissed Father Michels. I bent over and kissed his cheek. Then I pulled back, stunned at what I had done. I had always been shy and diffident and somewhat frightened of life and people and of myself as well. Rather like him, in other words. I began my training as an alter boy that afternoon and for the next weekend and the next, then I got to put on the white robe and make my "debut." Mother Mary, I was so scared. I trembled. I knew I would do the ritual all wrong and I think I had the tip of my tongue out through all of it, which is what I do when I am concentrating heavily and feeling scared of another whipping. You may have noticed. I have trouble with reiteration, with not letting a sentence declare what it says, as I have to have a little curlicue of naming the meaning again directly after, trying to, I guess, forgive myself in my clumsy writing, I would say. . I think that is how Father Michels and I felt and I think that is how and why we begin our affair. I say this with some trembling, but also with some pride. I did not masturbate on my own, alone, much after that. I told my mom I was staying at a new friend's house or working late or just wanted to go to church and pray for a bit. Of course, I was with Father Michels. Ken, he said to call him, so Ken it was. I don't know bi straight gay or the rest of it. It just never really entered my head what I was sexually. All Ken and I knew was we had been so alone for such a long time, had been touched with a hand or an arm or a smile so very little in our lives, kindly, and we were tired of it and if we didn't have each other, if we didn't have this time together, we might have never been in love with anyone who loved us in return. I loved getting naked for him. I came to like my body, because, he, Ken, liked it so much, or said he did, and it made me feel so sexy, being naked in front of him and touching myself, as he wanted me to, all over my chest and nipples and penis and balls as he sat on the couch inches from me and studied me as though I were a work of Michelangelo, and he actually said that once, and he one time called me a work deserving of the Louvre; well, of course, we laughed when he said that, and knew my scrawny skinny pale body was not for the Louvre, but his eyes loved me. The shone with a different light when he looked at me, than when he looked some other where or at some other person who was not me, I mean. And he made me proud my penis was hard and that I was me. Somebody show me the harm there, please? My sentence curlicues continue, so I see. I think now of the first time when I still had my alter boy white linen covering on, me naked underneath, as I stood in his office, as he put his hand to my little hard on and rubbed it through the fabric, then touched my pale hairless balls and pushed up the linen, just as he knew I was to come, and put his mouth on me and sucked me and my cum in---maybe it sounds quite awful, the stating of it boldly like that, and all, but from hassock sin-covered and soiled, to a right and beautiful adventure of a man's lips kissing my penis, from penance to adoration, for we, you see, adored each other. I discovered when I kissed him that first time, that left us both stunned, I was an affectionate kid. I liked my mom well enough, but she had never been an affectionate person, that I had known. I think maybe she was burned too many times by my Dad, who was strict and unyielding, for the sole and simple reason, that it made him feel powerful and nothing else in my interest, if you understand, and that made her always skittish around me. He taught me nothing but to fear him and that was the totality of it for him. But with Ken I learned I had this capacity for hanging on to his shoulders, for the ability to say I love you to him after I had brought him to climax with my mouth. I wish there were better words in the English language to describe sex. Ken told me once that "The Amorous Adventures of Fanny Hill" tried that and it just fell to pieces, for him at least, after the second or third chapter, that the writer was just playing a semantics game, hoping it would be noticed and noted for that, as it was. I seduced Ken as much as he seduced me, in a kind way, in a fun way, in a very very human way, and I was the one to suggest first, almost all the time. We were always afraid of being found out, of course. We talked about it often. Especially that night in early March, when I was cough cough at a friend's house overnight--well, in truth, I was, of course--but except for Ken, I never had a friend back then, and never, with him, ever wanted another, after him as well. We had discussed intercourse. We were lying in his narrow cot, stroking each other, feeling each other's body head and kissing each other, when I said, "I want you to fuck me." He pulled back a little, only a little, for it was a very thin cot. I smiled and touched the tip of his nose with my index finger. "Yes, sir," please, I said it like I was Oliver Twist, sir, if you don't think me too forward. "And I've brought the baby lotion with me, and the condom, and I'd just like to feel you inside me. Feel you cum in me. Please?" And all of it. The putting of the lotion on and in me and the putting of it on his hard on, and the slow way he did it, entered my young asshole, with my legs around his shoulders and neck, as he pushed into me so very carefully, and though it hurt like hell, he was so gentle at it, stopping when I asked him too, and never going further in when I said that's about it, sir, and cautiously we began to fuck and he rubbed my semi-hard on and he looked at me so dreamily, and I felt his dick just expand and expand in me. And I moaned so loudly and said yes over and again and then fell into total incoherence. I was learning the collusion of pain and pleasure and how often they ran on the same track, benefiting the other, if I make myself clear. When he exploded in me--and it delighted me no end to see that he had the tip of his tongue out of his mouth, as I always did when concentrating so hard and being so scared---and I could feel him build and I rocked with him and I said "I fuckin' love you, sir" and his eyes so intense on the all of me, as if drinking me in. And he held to my calves and my legs and my penis which had lost its hardness, because I was concentrating solely on the pleasure down there and his own, and he came and we both closed our eyes, and I think as the load came deeper and stronger and hotter in me, we were saying our own liturgy. We were giving each other away from and our way toward totally new, deeply personal shibboleths. This was the passage not from life to death, but from death to life. Afterwards, the cleaning up and all, we lay with me on top of him. He said I was the best choirboy in the world, and I said no priest ever understood life and God and boys and happiness and deep, deepest contentment. We were vespers, we were whispers, and I think we came to understand what novices we were with life and love and being and caring and truly, genuinely helping our fellow man was all about. Oh, I would goof off during mass, or take a momentary wrong turn in my role as alter boy, and he would have me strip and he would spank me, but there was the pleasure to look forward to afterwards. In one year and one month to the day that he fucked me, had sexual intercourse with me, exact date, he left the priesthood. I never saw him to say goodbye. Just one more Sunday and he was there. The next Sunday, Father Beaumont was there to take his place, saying Father Michels had left the priesthood because of personal matters. I think, I hope I am wrong, I very much hope that, do I, that it was not me, insignificant little nothing boy who had given him so much trouble in his conscience that he could not face me or his congregation or God again. As a boy, of course, that also made me feel good in a way-that I could have such power over an adult--and it shames me, it truly does, to admit that. That the choirboy screwed up the priest's mind and sexuality, so to speak, a little curlicue of it own. Only I hope to God it was not so. I will wonder it all my days though, and will do penance for it forever. How can I ever forgive myself? Can God? I tried to find him. I asked Father Beaumont but of course he was tight lipped. I asked the persons you ask, up the wafer and wine chain, what had happened to our priest, but no one would ever tell me, and I never saw him again. I felt he had betrayed me. But that didn't last. I knew I had used him. Had betrayed him. I felt angry at myself for giving him these conflicts and my selfishness in not knowing and seemingly not caring, but I did care and I am sorry if I hurt him, so intrinsically and truly sorry. So in this turnabout in the sadly usual story of priest and boys we read of and hear endlessly about on TV, I thought it time to say how it was with Ken and me, and me and Ken, the former alter boy and the former priest, and thought you should know, if nothing else, for perspective's sake. Thanks for listening.