Many social movements begin with the simplest of acts. In the fall of 1975, a group of parents called Parents of New York United complained to a local school board that school policies on library books were too “permissive.” Among the offensive tomes were Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” and Langston Hughes’ “Best Short Stories by Negro Writers,” which, the parents moaned, were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.” In response, the school district removed the books in February of 1976. But a senior high school student, Steven Pico, and four classmates challenged the board’s decision; claiming the books were removed simply because “passages in the books offended [the group’s] social, political, and moral tastes and not because the books, taken as a whole, were lacking in educational value.” Other libraries and free speech organizations filed briefs on the students’ behalf, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982 as Island Trees School District v. Pico.
While many parents surely were upset that a group of high school kids had the audacity to circumvent their authority, the more significant issue was the school board’s actions. And, on a grander scale, who has the right to determine what is acceptable and unacceptable?
As the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once declared, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
Shortly after the SCOTUS reversal of the aforementioned school board’s decision, “Banned Books Week” was founded. Since then it has grown into an international event with the goal of ensuring that true freedom begins with our ability and the right to read and see pretty much whatever we want. There’s a reason, after all, why the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is first.
Like any legitimate scribe, I strongly support the right to free speech and free expression. We in these democratic societies don’t often appreciate the importance of it. But speak with anyone who grew up in a totalitarian state – where people are told what to read and how to think – and you’ll realize the value of it.
Sadly this battle will never be won. We will ALWAYS have to combat those who feel that, since they’re offended by something, no else should have access to it either. In the current chaos of extreme political correctness and assaults on the media by a deranged American president, none of us should have to tolerate the narrow-minded choices of others.
Keep writing and keep fighting!
Banned Books Week runs this year from September 23 – 29.
The animal rights movement in the United States is nothing new. But the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” was something of an anomaly when the New York State Legislature granted Henry Bergh a charter for it in 1866. In the more than 150 years since, the ASPCA has been advocate for the netherworld of animal welfare. The Texas branch of the SPCA was incorporated on September 22, 1938 and works in conjunction with state and local leaders to oversee the well-being various non-human creatures (not including, of course, politicians and child molesters).
Currently, the ASPCA is monitoring the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which hit the East Coast last week. After the debacle involving Hurricane Katrina – and the literally millions of animals forcibly left stranded to be killed or die in agony – people demanded better protections for human and animal survivors of natural or even human-made disasters.
But, just as importantly, we now understand that animal abuse is tied to more severe problems in society. Some of the world’s worst serial killers, for example, had a history of animal cruelty. While most people who do something mean to an animal won’t turn into a Hannibal Lecter-type monster, we take it seriously now and often involve law enforcement.
I implore everyone to help in any way possible. Besides, animals actually appreciate when you help them out.
I first posted this essay five years ago and I’m posting it again, as this day marks the 25th anniversary of the death of one my closest friends at the time. It’s hard to believe so much time has passed – a quarter century. Now my father is gone, and my mother may not be far behind. Other people – friends, acquaintances, coworkers, etc. – have come and gone as well. That’s to be expected from living more than fifty years on Earth.
There are those moments or events that settle into our lives, take root in our minds and never leave. For me this is one such event.
September 12th fell on a Sunday in 1993, and I was sick. I lay in bed that night, listless and fatigued, when the phone rang at 10:12 P.M. Curiously, I hadn’t turned on the answering machine, as I always did before going to bed. But, I knew who lingered on the other end – even before I answered. It was Linda*, the mother of one of my best friends, Daniel.
“He’s gone,” she whispered, her voice raspy and quivering. She’d walked into his bedroom earlier that evening and found him with his eyes half-open.
We talked for quite a while, although I don’t remember all that was said. But, I do recall telling her, “It’s over. It’s finally over.” Then, I went to sleep. But, I wasn’t sad. In fact, I was – not happy – but relieved. Daniel had stopped suffering – and maybe so would his mother.
That night, though, I wondered why I was so sick. Just allergies, I kept thinking; that’s all it was. I’d realized years earlier how my allergies usually coincided with the Atlantic / Caribbean hurricane season, becoming most severe in August and September. In reality, it’s the change from summer to autumn, when mountain cedar and ragweed blossom with impunity. But, I have this obsession – almost a fetish – with tropical storm systems, so I make that odd comparison. Yet, that year was different. The infection seemed to have settled in my stomach, instead of my sinuses.
I’d felt fine the preceding weekend. I’d visited Daniel and Linda that Monday, Labor Day. I gave Daniel a much-needed bath and shave, trimmed his nails and put him back to bed. I also vacuumed and mopped the kitchen floor. I chatted with Linda for a while. Her hands trembled, as she sat on a couch; as much from growing arthritis as dealing with Daniel.
“I don’t know how much longer I can go on,” she mumbled, staring at the floor.
“You’ll make it,” I said, trying to reassure her. What else could I say?
I’d met Daniel at birthday party for a mutual friend four years earlier. We were two completely different people, but had a few things in common: dogs, cars and rock n’ roll. Like me, he also had been born and raised in the Dallas area. He was the third of four children to parents who were mixed Irish and Cherokee Indian extraction. He didn’t have a happy home life. When his father wasn’t working, sometimes six days a week, he was drinking booze; occasionally, he’d burst into drunken rages, a stereotypical drunk-ass Irishman or Indian and lash out at anyone nearby. Linda often bore the brunt of his attacks, until the night her oldest son lunged into his father. For Linda, that was the proverbial last straw; the catalyst that prompted her to pack up the kids and leave. By the time I met Daniel, his father had died.
As I’d planned, I took the day after Labor Day off from work. I visited my gym to lift weights, worked on a short story and partook in a Tae Kwon Do class that evening. The Tae Kwon Do session exhausted me, even though it wasn’t particularly intense. I thought nothing of it until the next night, when I returned to the gym and left after less than an hour. Fatigue settled over me like a ton of hot, wet blankets.
I awoke the next morning feeling awful; body aches and chills and a stomach that was churning like – well – like a hurricane. My supervisor sent me home just after noon. I sat near the building, waiting for the bus. The late summer sun warmed me up, and I stopped shivering. I felt well enough to stop by a fast food place on the way back to my apartment – and regurgitated the food that night. I stayed home the next day, but returned to work on Friday. I spent most of Saturday in bed; no energy, no strength. Damn allergies, I kept telling myself.
On Sunday, I visited my parents for lunch as usual. My father grilled steaks – their thick, juicy aromas wafting throughout the house, intermingling with the scent of the butter-saturated mashed potatoes my mother made. But, I couldn’t eat. I was still nauseous. My dad suggested I visit their family doctor, if I didn’t feel better by the next day. He even offered to pay, since my finances were strained at the time.
I had just purchased my truck six months earlier and was still paying off credit card bills for repairing my previous vehicle. I had health insurance at work – with a $1,000 deductible. I told them I’d be fine. It was just those goddamned allergies.
I had been anticipating that call from Linda for months. I knew somehow it would come at night. She called me because I was one of the last friends Daniel had remaining; one who didn’t turn his back on him. That’s just not my nature. I didn’t have many friends back then and I still don’t. But, the people I do consider friends mean a lot to me.
It’s amazing, though, the number of friends people lose when they fall on hard times – even when they become terminally ill. Some time in the 1970s, my mother’s hair dresser became seriously ill and had to be hospitalized. When my parents visited him, he mentioned they were among the few who’d made the effort. All the people who were quick to accept his party invitations where mounds of food and alcohol would be served were curiously absent as he lay in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV.
I think Daniel had known he was HIV for at least two years, but he didn’t start getting sick until the spring of 1992. By then, he was unemployed and uninsured; he could no longer afford his suburban Dallas apartment. In May, I and another friend moved him back into his mother’s home in another Dallas suburb. Daniel’s health deteriorated throughout that summer, but unexpectedly – almost miraculously – began rejuvenating by fall. He gained weight and color returned to his face. He actually looked pretty good when I spent Christmas Day with his family, including his two older siblings; younger sister, Andrea; sister-in-law; and a niece and nephew. I took a photo of them as they gathered around a couch; one that Linda placed on her refrigerator, beside another picture of her beloved mother.
We all thought – if only for a moment – he would make it. In less than six months, however, Daniel’s health began crumbling again. And, one by one, his gallery of friends slipped into anonymity.
I took my father up on his offer. After a cursory exam, the doctor stepped back into the room and asked, “Have you ever had hepatitis?”
“Hepatitis? No.”
“Well, I think that’s what you have.”
Hepatitis! If he had told me I was pregnant, I would have believed him sooner. Hepatitis! Wasn’t that an old world disease – like small pox or typhoid? No one got that shit anymore. But, that’s what I had – Hepatitis A, the contagious kind, and a particularly vicious strain of it, too. The doctor hospitalized me – almost against my will. I stayed there through the following Wednesday – the day they buried Daniel.
“Where’d you go?!” Linda cried that Wednesday night on the phone, a sense of betrayal coating her voice.
I told her what happened.
Her anguish shifted to empathy. “Why didn’t you call me?! I would’ve come visit you!”
“But, Daniel had just died, Linda. And, I was in the hospital.”
“But, you’re my other son!”
I had helped Daniel pick out his burial suit in the spring of 1992. He hadn’t bought a new suit in years. He must have scoured through a hundred of them before he latched onto that one. He zipped it up and stored it in the back of his closet, complete with a matching tie and a new white dress shirt. He was proud of the ensemble; he wanted to be buried in style.
“You are going to be a pallbearer,” he asked me, “aren’t you?”
“Of course,” I said. What a silly question.
Watching a loved one die and not being able to do anything about it is the most frustrating emotion anyone can ever experience. I’d seen cancer consume my Aunt Mariana, my mother’s older sister, a few years earlier. It just wouldn’t let her go, until one rainy Tuesday morning in June of 1989. She’d already known tragedy. Her first husband died in a freak car crash in 1968; practically leaving her to raise their six kids alone. In January of 1983, one of her daughters took her own life. Mariana had entered into a brief marriage with a man who – later on, as she fell ill – didn’t seem to understand she was in no mood for sex while undergoing chemotherapy. What, I beseeched God, did she ever do to deserve all that?
I asked God the same of Daniel and Linda. What did they ever do to bring this upon themselves? God remained silent. He / She always does. But, it made me angry nonetheless, and I finally just blurted out, “Fuck you, God!,” into my darkened bedroom.
Daniel was especially close to Andrea who’d completed nursing school about two years before he passed away. She had moved into an apartment complex across the street from him and became involved with a truck driver named Jimmy. Jimmy was part Cherokee, too, and unfortunately, fed into the stereotype of the same drunk-ass Indian as Daniel’s father. One night Jimmy returned to the apartment he shared with Andrea and attacked her. She managed to call Daniel before Jimmy snatched the phone from her. Daniel had been asleep, but donned a pair of exercise shorts, charged across the street and barreled into his sister’s apartment – where he beat Jimmy into a bloody, shriveling mess. The police took both of them to jail, but released Daniel almost immediately.
Recollecting what his father did to his mother, Daniel was unrepentant about Jimmy. “Now, he’s going to have to tell the guys in prison that an AIDS-infected fag beat his ass!”
In November of 1992, I happened upon the obituary for a guy I’d known in grade school. He was 29 and had died after a “brief illness” – code words, a friend told me, for AIDS. I revealed the true nature of Daniel’s death to only a select few people. Even in the early 1990s, the affliction bore a terrifying stigma. I told most everyone else – my parents, my colleagues – he’d succumbed to cancer. I just didn’t want my folks to worry anymore about me than necessary. My workplace, on the other hand, was populated with evangelical homophobes – the kind who preach forgiveness and compassion, but practice hate and bigotry.
Daniel always introduced me as a “true friend” to people he knew. I was embarrassed, since I felt I was doing nothing extraordinary. But, to Daniel, I was someone who gave my compassion and generosity, asking for nothing in return except trust and respect. I promised him I would stay with him through the end. And, I did – until the night he died.
For anyone who’s ever lost a relative or friend, there’s always something that triggers thoughts of that person; something relatively small and insignificant – a color, a sound…something that literally makes us stop and think about the better times we had together. In 1992, a group called Snap! came out with a song entitled “Rhythm Is a Dancer.” Both Daniel and I really liked that tune. We’d visited a nightclub together in late 1992 where the deejay played it. I don’t know what it is about that song, but it bridges a connection to Daniel and how good life was for me in the early 1990s. So, I listen to it now, and all the feelings of friendship and those carefree days flood my subconscious. It’s just one of those things that transport me to ‘Way Back When.’
Daniel had two dogs when he returned to his mother’s home – a male named Alan and a female named Veronica, both Lhasa Apsos. The male was fiercely protective of him. The female was spoiled; Daniel had the habit of carrying her wherever they went, instead of letting her walk. As Daniel’s health waned in the summer of 1993, he and his mother made the painful decision to turn them over to the local animal shelter. Two years after Daniel died I seriously thought of purchasing a dog and just happened to peruse the ads of the local newspaper for animals, when I saw a blurb about an “adorable white Lhasa Apso named Alan.” I almost fell off my easy chair. Is it…no, it couldn’t be! Surely, it’s not… I didn’t know what to think. I realized, though, that I couldn’t afford a dog at the time. I could only hope some good families adopted Alan and Veronica.
We measure the important events of our lives in the increments of time we know: one week, one year, five years, ten years. Seven weeks after Daniel died I turned 30. My colleagues at the bank bought me an ivy plant – which I still have – and treated me to lunch. They also bought me a mechanical red crab emblazoned with the words ‘30 AND STILL CRABBY.’ You wind it up and it marches along the surface in the standard sideways crab walk. I still have that crab, too, buried among my slew of possessions. In seven weeks I’ll turn 50. Life keeps moving, no matter who lives or dies.
I’ve always wondered why I never dreamed of Daniel. I didn’t expect his ghostly apparition to appear before me one dark and stormy night – albeit something like that wouldn’t have frightened me. But, I kept thinking he should at least visit me in a dream to tell me he’s alright. Or, I hoped he would – just for my own peace. Is he mad at me? Did he think that I’d abandoned him at the last moment? But then, I realized I’d never dreamed of my Aunt Mariana either. And, we were family. When I was a child, she’d sit me down at her dining room table and feed me. Was she mad at me, too?
No – of course not. I finally understood that I’ve never dreamed of them because they didn’t need me anymore; me or anyone else. They’ve gone on to another and hopefully better life. My job was done, as far as they’re concerned.
I did for Daniel what few people – friends or relatives – would do: I took care of him at the worst possible moments of his life. I bathed him, I fed him, I took him shopping for that suit, I gave him all the undivided love and attention I could muster. I even cared for his mother because her own body – racked with arthritis and emphysema – allowed her to do only so much. Some people do good just to send a get-well card.
September 12th fell on a Sunday in 1993, and I was sick. I couldn’t do anything about it then and I can’t do anything about it now. I did what I could for my friend – the first friend I’ve ever had who died. My last wish for him and everyone else who has gone before me is to know that they’re safe and happy.
“Most of the alleged victims were not raped: they were groped or otherwise abused, but not penetrated, which is what the word “rape” means. This is not a defense – it is meant to set the record straight and debunk the worst case scenarios attributed to the offenders.” – Bill Donohue, PhD, Catholics for Religious and Civil Rights, “Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report Debunked”, 16 August 2018
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
Once more, the ugly head of hypocrisy has arisen for the Roman Catholic Church. A mammoth report issued by the state of Pennsylvania last month has left the oldest and largest denomination of Christianity in turmoil – again. According to the results of a grand jury, top Catholic leaders covered up roughly seven decades of abusive child behavior by hundreds of priests. More than 1,000 victims, the report alleges, fell prey to the antics of pedophilic clergy. During that lengthy period (more than half a century, if you think about it), the Church put the welfare of itself over that of the affected children. That should surprise no one. One of the wealthiest and most powerful institutions on Earth, the Roman Catholic Church has metamorphosed from its humble beginnings as an ideology that regards everyone as essential and vital to the construct of humanity into an omnipotent criminal organization more intent on destroying anyone who dares question its authority.
The Pennsylvania scandal is painfully reminiscent of a similar fiasco that tore through the diocese of Boston nearly two decades ago. That mess centered mainly on one man, John J. Geoghan, a former priest who had molested a gallery of young boys in the Boston area starting in the 1960s. The focus then shifted to Cardinal Bernard F. Law, the former archbishop of Boston who was forced to resign in 2002, when proof arose that he became aware of Geoghan’s perverted predilections not long after he had arrived in Boston in 1984 to helm the diocese. Like any criminal syndicate (think a street gang or a drug cartel), the Church decided to handle the matter quietly and internally. The results have been catastrophic – and sometimes deadly.
Instead of doing something reasonable and decent, such as turning Geoghan over to outside authorities, Law moved him around. Even one of Law’s own bishops thought assigning Geoghan to another parish was too risky and wrote a letter to the prelate that same year, 1984, protesting the transfer. As early as 1980, Geoghan himself admitted to church officials that he’d engaged in predatory behavior with children! In one case, he repeatedly abused 7 boys in one extended family – something he claimed wasn’t a “serious” problem.
These various allegations and the Church’s documentation analyzing them were eventually uncovered by the “Boston Globe” and revealed in 2002 in a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorials by 5 investigative journalists.
Not until the mid-1990s did some of the Boston-area survivors begin coming forward to tell their stories. These couldn’t have been easy decisions for them, especially when confronting such an indomitable monolith as the Roman Catholic Church. No one wants to believe that someone like a priest, or any religious official for that matter, is capable of such horrors as sexual assault and child molestation. People often look to their places of worship as refuges of safety and hope; places to seek guidance in moments of trouble and despair or to reaffirm their faith in the greater good of humanity. The men and women who function as leaders in these institutions are supposed to be above such humanly transgressions as sexual perversions.
We often forget those leaders and officials weren’t born into those roles. They came into this world like the rest of us; they’re human beings first and foremost. But they made the decision to lead lives of religious individualism. Being a faith leader may be a spiritual calling for some individuals, but it is also a profession; something that person chooses to do with their lives. People, therefore, choose to become drunk on the power bestowed upon them – supposedly by some deity – but, in reality, by elders in those organizations. They choose to take vows of celibacy or piety and to stand as the proverbial beacons of hope. And they choose to use their positions for good or bad.
In the Roman Catholic Church, priests don the fanciful regalia befitting their roles as leaders of the masses. They dress differently and (are supposed to) behave differently. Sex, which is a natural part of the human experience, is strangely viewed as base and demeaning. It is too much of a distraction for the individual; hence, the vow of chastity.
But the human libido is often stronger than the human-designed definitions of proper individuality. Thus, many priests (and nuns) stray from those vows and either hide their moral transgressions or leave the Church altogether. Church history is replete with priests and nuns who had the audacity to fall in love. I personally feel it’s perfectly normal and don’t see anything wrong with that.
Yet no one in their right mind can look upon the scourge of pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church and consider it misguided love. The tap-dancing semantics that people like Bill Donohue spit out to explain these transgressions doesn’t mitigate the significance of it; it only amplifies it.
Me at my 1978 confirmation with the late Thomas Tschoepe, then Bishop of the Dallas Roman Catholic Diocese.
I was once a strong devotee of the Catholic faith. Like most Hispanic-Americans, I grew up in it. It was a fact of life for me. I even became an altar boy at a church in Dallas in the 1970s and served that church – and what I felt was the greater good of my community – with some measure of faith and distinction. And, in case you’re wondering, no, I was never molested by anyone in the Church. I was never molested by anyone outside of the Church, for that matter. I never knew of anyone at that particular church who suffered physical or sexual abuse at the hands of a priest or a nun. In retrospect, I realize most were good and decent; a few of them were actually fun to be around. And sadly, some were assholes. But I can’t find that any scandal erupted within its walls.
It’s ironic, though, because the Dallas diocese was the nexus of one of the largest pedophile priest scandals within the Church. In 1997, a Dallas County jury awarded 11 plaintiffs of a class-action suit $119.6 million; the largest monetary award of its kind at the time. Eleven young men claimed they had been molested by a former priest, Rudy Kos. Tragically, by the time the case went to court, one of the young men had committed suicide. He was 21, and his family had pursued the matter. The Kos case served as the proverbial catalyst for the avalanche of similar claims and subsequent lawsuits across the U.S. Then Bishop Charles Grahmann testified in court that he knew nothing of Kos’s antics; claiming he’d never even opened Kos’s personnel file. If he had, he surely would have found letters dating to the 1980s from other priests warning of Kos; that the latter often gave alcohol and even drugs to some of the boys. Grahmann surely knew something was amiss, as he moved Kos around – which apparently had become standard procedure within the Church by then. Grahmann only exacerbated the dilemma when he blatantly insinuated that some of those boys were partly responsible for the abuse. That, of course, is a typical reflex-type response to sexual assault victims, especially those who are male. Remember, in the bloodthirsty psyche that is American culture, males – even very young ones – are never supposed to be victims. Kos was sent to prison, and Grahmann remained bishop for another decade before resigning. He passed away recently.
As with serial killers, I often wonder how many victims of a pedophile remain hidden. Who else is out there who just didn’t have the courage and / or support to come forward and tell their story? Like I stated earlier, these matters aren’t easy to discuss. Going up against an outfit as powerful and affluent as the Roman Catholic Church is overwhelming and sometimes impossible. What the Church has done to distance itself from these crimes – and even discredit the victims, in some instances – is beyond abominable. Their actions are truly monstrous.
One thing I find curious, though, is that other people within individual parishes had become aware of the pedophilia (or whatever crimes were taking place) and chose to put their concerns in writing. They apparently tried to do something; to bring it to the attention of higher authorities within the institution. Yet, when nothing was done, what did those other people do? Were they so bound to the laws and regulations of the Church that they felt it could go no further? It had to stop there and then? It is against the law to fail to report child abuse. But, with the separation of church and state a building block of the United States, how is that to be handled?
I haven’t waited for either the Roman Catholic Church or the U.S. government to respond. I left the Church more than a quarter-century ago over its disrespectful behavior towards women who comprise more than half of the world’s estimated 1.2 billion Catholics. Like its siblings, Judaism and Islam, Christianity is patriarchal at its core. A number of men within its environs had dared to say women should hold more leadership positions than head nun or head housekeeper. While other branches of Christianity have moved towards gender parity, the Roman Catholic Church remains unyielding. But the pedophile priest scandals that have exploded over the past several years solidified my decision to leave the Church in the dust of its own glittering arrogance. Shortly after the Boston fiasco, many wondered if the Church would survive the chaos. And I thought, who cares? The real question should be if the Church will admit not only that it has a serious problem in its ranks, but that it has been conducive to that problem.
I also have to be fair in that I know the majority of people who run the Church aren’t pedophiles or accessories after the fact. Most do try to uphold to the Church’s two millennia old principals that all humans are valuable and should be treated with respect. They work hard to ensure a safe community for everyone. When I think of those who embodied this dogma, I always think of Oscar Romero; the former archbishop in El Salvador who spoke out against the country’s dictatorial regime and was gunned down while performing mass in 1980. While Romero tried desperately to feed and clothe his parishioners in one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, his counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world were paying out millions in settlements because they didn’t want any bad press.
Yet, I now feel the Church has run its course. It’s done; it’s served its purpose. It no longer has the right or the power to dictate how people should live their lives. Indeed, it is wishful thinking on my part that the mighty Roman Catholic Church simply fold up and somehow melt into the rest of society. It has too strong of a grip on the world.
In the late 1930s, my paternal grandfather, a carpenter, landed an ideal contract with the Catholic Diocese of Dallas: build a new parochial school. My grandfather, Epimenio, had mixed feelings about the Church. Sometime before then, my grandmother had fallen ill, and my grandfather had called their local parish priest to ask for some money to take her to the doctor. When he arrived at the rectory, the grumpy old priest flung the few dollar bills at his feet.
“If this wasn’t for my wife,” my grandfather told him in Spanish, “I’d make you pick this up and hand it to me like a real man should.”
One afternoon, as my grandfather and some of his men were atop the newly-attached roof of the school, the bishop appeared at the construction site to survey the project. One of Epimenio’s employees immediately stopped what he was doing and began bowing, as was the custom at the time, upon seeing a high-ranking Catholic official. Bowing to the bishop while perched on a slanted roof of a 2-story structure.
“Pendejo!” Epimenio muttered to the man, a Spanish curse word whose closest (polite) translation is moron. “You’re going to roll off this roof and die when you hit the ground! Then the bishop is going to wonder what happened!”
That’s what I’m thinking now. The Roman Catholic Church seems to be marching itself into oblivion. Its acolytes are literally dying to keep it relevant. Can any of them see that?
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro releases the findings of a two-year grand jury investigation into clergy abuse at six of the state’s Roman Catholic Dioceses:
I wrote this poem in the summer of 1986, just as things were getting better for me, and I began to have more confidence in myself and my abilities. By then, I had asserted my desire to become a professional fiction writer – much to the chagrin of my parents who still saw me as a computer geek. But that’s when I first began to affirm that goals for my life must be made and pursued by me. And I conceded I would also stand alone in accepting any unfortunate repercussions from those decisions.
I no longer feared life and he people who occupied it. My desire for learning more about the world around me exploded, as did my passions for reading and writing. I’d always loved the latter two, but they took on new levels of importance by 1986. Some of my closest family members and equally close friends may have a different understanding when they hear me speak of my “whorish” nature. And they are more than welcome to keep their mouths shut.
Pardon me,
If I may sound critical of I.
But I realized once a short time ago,
That I’m a whore.
A whore of the spirits.
My mind and body and everything in between are open to everyone and everything.
It’s not that I have no moral turpitude.
I’m a glutton for emotion.
I’m a fool for curiosity.
I’m in need of knowledge.
And the people who possess it.
People like you.
I’m a whore of the spirits.
Your spirit and mine.
The spirit of anyone who’s lived in this world,
And wants to share their ideals.
I’ve let myself be used for good and bad.
For all others to enjoy.
Now I demand to enjoy myself.
And be a whore for my brain.
I have no more qualms of life.
I don’t fear mysteries of the human creature.
I frolic with my pod of friends,
In orgied lusts of the good.
Beneath a midnight sky or a crystal sun,
Call me as you please.
I gleefully admit,
I’m a whore.
Because I understand my true soul.
I’m in need of company,
But only to learn.
Always and forever.
I feed from that.
I must nourish from a bountiful mass of gray matter.
This is something I scribbled down on night in the spring of 1985, shortly before college spring break. That year would turn out to be the single worst in my entire life to date. Just about everything went wrong. It was already starting to go wrong when I wrote this. I was failing academically; trouble with a stupid fraternity; problems with my parents; and a dog in faltering health. For me, the only good thing about 1985 was that it ended.
Continuing with my poetry streak, here’s a piece I composed in December 1984. Like “Coal Black” hints at my obsession for women with long black hair, this speaks more loudly of my love for women who play guitar – either professionally or as a hobby. Part of the inspiration springs from my admiration for one of my favorite rock bands, “Heart,” founded by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson more than four decades ago. Together the duo carved their own unique path through the male-dominated world of rock music; shattering the bodice-tight image of female-as-ornament, and proving – along with a handful of similar contemporaries – that women can be both assertive and feminine.
But it also describes how emotions are often stretched in a relationship – a common theme in any genre of music – and the reality that true love, albeit subtle, is eternal.
Oh, my Lady Rock n’ Roll,
I know so many secrets that you hold.
By chance, you remember me?
I’m the man who cut you free.
I loved every ounce of your soul until you stood on your own.
Then you dropped me like a crinkled bone.
Now I’ve returned to set myself back into your mind.
And I can see that small light of love still shines.
Oh, my Lady Rock n’ Roll,
I recall a time when you weren’t so bold.
Wordless memories that were no mere charity.
Now that love has warped into a sense of disparity.
A split between your mind and your voice,
A painful note of distrust and noise.
I cried when I saw your spangled skin.
I felt you’d charred yourself with sordid sin.
Oh, my Lady Rock n’ Roll,
I pray your emotions are not forever cold.
Why you’ve slipped into a neon aura is beyond my thoughts.
