WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL me your mother was Jewish? With a Protestant father you must have had the same kind of deal I had. I’m not upset that you’re such a sly one, I’m upset over the missed opportunities. A million times I could have said Some of my best friends is Jewish. Seriously, however, if I ever expressed any anti-semitic sentiments to you I want you to know that I meant every one of them. I didn’t tell you, but Mary showed up at the funeral home. A right nice geste, I thought. I mean, she didn’t know my father particularly. So we went out and had a drink afterward, and all the old thing came back. She is the third-most-beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. You know how I met her? In second-year high school I was the villain in the annual play, and between acts we all amused ourselves by peeking through the curtain and appraising the quiff in the audience. Up in a box was an assemblage of bright Irish-faced girls. Funny, I say that now, then that’s all there was. If it wasn’t a bright Irish-faced girl it was invisible. O there were sullen exotic Jewish girls, but one viewed them and was viewed by them with suspicion, and Protestant girls didn’t seem interested or interesting. Fantasy directed you to the immaculate rosy mick, who you were sure ached as you did for carnal release. You just knew that she too lay abed at nights with the feminine equivalent of the implacable cock, seeking, seeking. She didn’t, of course, but since girls never talked about themselves sexually you projected your own feelings into them, and you had the sense that she was locked, like yourself, against communicating the great need to anyone who could do something about it. Who knew then that girls are different creatures? Who knew that their tiny heads are full of flowers, dresses, silver service and a strong man standing by to kill spiders, make money, escort them to social functions, and occasionally in the darkness of the marriage bed kiss them on the cheek? Who knew then that just as the way to a man’s heart is through his genital, the way to a woman’s genital is through her heart? Don’t tell me you did. All right, but if you did, it’s because you were a Protestant Jew bastard. This is information they don’t give out in Catholic grammar schools, where as far as the nuns are concerned, everyone, male or female, is dying to screw or at least play with himself. Grammar school was one long series of cautions. Keep your hands out of your pockets, don’t linger in the bathtub, avoid dirty movies, dirty magazines, dirty books, dirty jokes and, most of all, provocative girls. Where the hell were the provocative girls, we all wanted to know. Anyway, I was peeking through the curtain, and there in the box, among the bright Irish faces, was a great bright Irish face. I see these great faces every now and then, in a bus, on the street, clerking in a department store. I’ve seen them all my life, but I never got to know one before. I mean, what are you going to do, walk up and say Miss, you have a great face? Well, it took me a half-hour to get the makeup off, but there in the lobby on the way out, being entertained in high style by an usher (a creepy guy who didn’t get a part in the play) was the great face with her friends. The usher was big-dealing it as best he could from his ignoble station, and he called me over because I was an actor, put his arm around me and introduced me as if he was my proud father. Well, it turned out that the great face belonged to a senior in a local Catholic girls’ school. Now, is there a longer distance than exists between a girl senior and a boy sophomore? Ah, but remember, I had been in the play, I had been the villain, and she accepted my invitation to go on the school boat ride. Since then I have anticipated parting other legs, grabbing other asses, but the month that separated that night from the day of the boat ride was the most expectant of my life. During the month I recalled only that she had a face you could swim in, and when I finally saw her again I was not disappointed. Tall and haughty with honey hair. Large round blue eyes and a perfect mouth, one of whose corners turned down and the other up when she smiled. And what a nose! It had a little bump from breaking it when she was a kid, which gave her that last touch of class. One of the guys on the boat ride asked me if she was my sister, and I nearly died with pride. Later I used to daydream about her really being my sister and me being in love with her nonetheless and crawling into her bed at night. So you can see, this was not a healthy relationship. The rest you’ve heard, up and down, in and out. After a couple of years, when I discovered that her silences were not signs of deference to my wisdom but simple incomprehension, things became more difficult. But the great face remained, and the great face came to the funeral home. We’ve been out three times since then. Once we went to see a revival of La Dolce Vita, which I thought was tremendous and she thought was dirty. The second time I took her to an all-Mozart concert, which she said she liked but didn’t. And the last time, which was two nights ago, we went to confession together. I mean, need I say more? Well, I will say more. A year or so ago I had reached the stage where if she’d listen to me I’d propose. It was like saying hello. Mary, dear heart, how have you been, will you marry me? I don’t even know if I meant it. I’d ask, I think, with the idea that if she said yes, then I’d decide if I really wanted to. Not that there seemed to be much chance of that. I can only marry a Catholic, she’d say, a practicing Catholic. And you don’t even try, you’re not even interested, she’d add. How can I try, I’d ask, can I try to believe that peaches are blue? She didn’t seem to get this. Say one Hail Mary every day, that’s all I ask, just go through the motions, and grace will come. But I don’t believe in grace, I don’t believe in Hail Marys. Nonetheless, will you say the words? But I don’t believe anybody’s listening. At which she’d sigh a rattling sigh. All right, I’ll say the words, I’ll say the words. And she didn’t understand me, I didn’t want to be forgiven my sins or attain sanctifying grace or abide forever in the kingdom of heaven. The thought of never experiencing the presence of God did not fill me with a tragic sense of loss. All I wanted was to hold this beautiful Irish-faced girl in my arms. But I kept my promise. Hail Mary, full of grace! the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. And when I said it I thought that that Mary, whoever she is, wherever she is, is a bright Irish-faced girl like this Mary, perverted into religiosity by some crabbed rabbi. Hello Venus, full of juice! Cupid is with thee; blessed art thou among lovers, and blessed are the uses of thy womb, squeeze us. Sweetest Venus, Mother of Love, lay for us sinners, now and at the point of climax. Amen. That’s my prayer. Anyway, she started it again at the funeral home and was at it every date since. If I go to confession, that will be making an honest effort, and she’d agree to be engaged. Suppose it doesn’t work, I said. Suppose what doesn’t work? Suppose I open my heart to grace and grace doesn’t enter therein, what then? She’d be engaged to me anyhow, she said, because I tried. But there was about her smile when she said it a quality that meant such an eventuality was impossible. How could I open my heart to grace and grace not enter? God is ready with great syringes of grace, looking for the slightest aperture. Well, the last time I went to confession I had been fourteen. I was laying my hand on my gun and not telling it, and the rules of the game were that if you went to confession and withheld a mortal sin you were in effect lying and thereby committing another mortal sin. So at fourteen I decided it was better to break the vicious circle and quit altogether. What a relief that was! I remember the day I made up my mind to chuck it. I was on my way to church, inventing sins to tell. Inventing them, like I cursed twice, Father, I was mean to my friend once, I took a dollar from my mother’s purse, I committed the sin of pride by thinking I was smarter than everybody at a party, Father. Anything but the real thing. So I quit, and here I was now, ready to sink back into the whirlpool, begin again the endless alternation of sin and forgiveness. When the hell is it that you can live at peace with the Church? If you’re not married, what do you do with your whacker, that tingles at every thigh emerging from a taxi, that as you crawl under the covers at night fills unprovoked with bloody blood, asking dumbly for shelter? And if you marry, if you do the bit, what then? They demand that you impregnate as you ejaculate. OK if you’re rich, but suppose you’re only a former writer at MUI? I figure the only way to be a good Catholic is to be rich, sterile, impotent, inhibitedly queer, or old. Old is best, old but with a wild sinful past, so there’s no chance of senile where-did-it-all-go blues. Well, I’m none of these. Yet fixed by that great face I agreed to go to confession. Not on Saturday afternoon by myself, when I could sneak in one door and out the other. O no! Diabolically—or divinely, as you will—she had discovered a church that stayed open all night, ostensibly to service actors and such, but actually to catch the subtle change of mood, the lapse of sense in got-away Catholics. Like a twenty-four-hour cafeteria, the Church is ever ready with its ministrations, waiting for the suppressed guilt to rise and bring the sinner to his knees. And sure enough, there in the darkness of this ugly little church was a knot of penitents (from the Latin penis?) preparing themselves in pews that attended the brown-curtained box of forgiveness. When our turn came, Mary preceded me, and stayed but a minute or two. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I farted in public and caused others discomfort. My daughter, this is no sin, the others may offer up their discomfort for the suffering souls in purgatory. “Well, she popped out and, head bowed, went to the altar to say her penance. I followed, down in darkness I went, onto a felt-covered kneeler, and began. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been seven years since my last good confession. In that time … , and I stopped. I hadn’t given a thought to what I would say. Neither had I invented imaginary sins nor recollected real ones. And kneeling there I realized that if I ever intended to confess sincerely it would take enormous preparation. I had been away for seven years, not giving a damn—consciously anyway—and even when you’re trying, really doing your best, it’s a bitch to stay clean. You have to left-face, right-face, halt, march, double-time. Let me give you an example. When I was a kid, O twelve or thirteen, I had a compulsion to fashion naughty sayings from the call letters of radio stations. WEAF: Whores Enjoy All Fucking. Great witty truths like that, and each was a mortal sin. So what was I to say now? It was absurd. But this was an old story to the good all-night Father, I guess, because he helped out in my silence. Have you sinned against the sixth commandment, my son? I couldn’t remember what the sixth was, but I had faith that like any Catholic cleric he had hit the trouble spot, so I said Yes, Father. Nor was I wrong. The sixth commandment, you Protesting Hebraic freethinker, is Thou shalt not commit adultery (or do any other dirty thing). He moved right in. Was this sin, or these sins, committed by yourself, with another person, or with an animal? So help me God, that is exactly what he said. By yourself, with another person, or with an animal. Well, two can play this game. All three, Father, I said. He wasn’t fazed. Were the sins committed by yourself sins of thought, word, or deed? All, Father. How many times did you commit these sins? Many times, Father. Can you tell me how frequently? Quite frequently, Father. For seven years, he inquired. Yes, Father. How frequently did you commit the sin of deed by yourself? It varied, Father. Once a week, he asked. Yes, Father. More often? Sometimes, Father. Did you commit the sins of word and thought more often than the sins of deed? Yes, Father. How often have you committed sins with another person? Not as often, Father. (Which was putting it mildly.) Did you commit these sins with one person or more than one person? Do you mean at the same time, Father? No, serially. More than one person. Were the other persons of the same sex or the opposite sex. As myself you mean, Father? Yes. (Why should I discriminate, I thought.) Both, Father. Did you commit these sins more often with persons of the opposite sex or with persons of the same sex? (Here I thought I’d draw the line.) Opposite, Father. And have you sinned with animals? (Jesus, what a dirty mind!) Yes, Father. Very often? No, Father. Have you committed mortal sins against any of the other commandments? Yes, Father. Which commandments? I was silent, I didn’t know the goddamned numbers. But again he helped right out. Have you stolen? Yes, Father. A large amount? I paused, thinking of the complications, but what the hell! Yes, Father. More than a hundred dollars? Yes, Father. More than five hundred? Yes, Father. How much did you steal? Fifty thousand dollars, Father. Have you made restitution? No, Father. You must make restitution if you are to be forgiven, do you understand that? Yes, Father. Do you still have the money? Yes, Father. Do you intend to return it? Yes, Father. You must do this, if it is in your power. I understand, Father. Are you under suspicion for this crime? No, Father, I don’t believe so. It is not necessary that you confess to the authorities, returning the stolen money is sufficient. Yes, Father, thank you. There was a mutual silence. I think he was afraid to go on. Finally, though, Have you committed any other serious sins? Yes, Father. Have you injured anyone? That isn’t it, Father. You must tell me what it is, if you are to receive absolution. It’s a very bad sin, Father. There is no sin beyond absolution if the sinner is repentant, what is the sin, my son? I’m ashamed to tell it, Father. You must, otherwise you cannot be absolved, do you understand that? Yes, Father, but I don’t think this sin can be absolved. To believe that is a sin in itself, my son, God’s mercy is infinitely large. Well then, Father, I said, I have … lied in confession. And I broke out into nervous laughter, and I couldn’t stop, so I beat it, nearly taking the curtain down as I went. Luckily Mary was waiting outside on the church steps. But talk about orgone boxes! The Pure Food and Drug people ought to get hot on confessionals, that’s what I say. Anyway, she was suffused with happiness, certain that I must feel reborn. Quickly I got her away from the church, I was afraid somehow that the priest would come tailing after us. He didn’t, of course. Did you say your penance, she asked. Well, I explained, the penance will take a little doing. She nodded understandingly, and we went off for a few drinks. Now we are engaged, really engaged, she said. But I had lost my taste for Mary. I took her home finally and kissed her lightly on the cheek and decided she was not for me.