Aquinas' Story - 5. Aquinas Remembers

Sunlight streaming through the window woke me. Did I remember what had happened? In that moment of waking, I was powerfully aware of being in someone else's bed.

"What a beautiful day," I murmured to myself.

And I remembered.

Mine is a simple, if extra long, mattress, on a bare metal frame. The bed I woke in was a queen, and I sprawled diagonally across one of the most comfortable mattresses I have ever slept on, buried under a thick down duvet.

I smiled.

And as my mouth curved upwards, my analytical mind kickstarted itself. It reminded me that I had never spent an entire night in another man's bed before, let alone luxuriated in such a bed until well after dawn.

Earlier in dark hours of morning, I came to consciousness, partially entwined with my bedmate. I was startled, but not unhappy. No howls of guilt or conscience kept me awake. I sighed softly, planted a soft kiss on my lover, and drifted back to sleep.

But now I was fully awake.

This was not my first trip to another man's bedroom. However, none of my few bedmates in those distant, furtive encounters had ever encouraged me to stay. And honestly, I hadn't wanted to, either. It had been – how long? – I tried to count. Over a decade, at least.

I burrowed into the soft pillow, and closed my eyes against the memories. They weren't very good ones.

Not one of my experiences, all of them either or unhappy or unsatisfying, had prepared me for last night. Until last night, it had gotten so bad that I had given up on sex altogether, except for what I could do for myself. I withdrew, choosing a kind of celibacy in preference to the intellectual torture of sex. I threw myself into my studies, becoming a scholar. I bounced from graduate schools to fellowships to postdoctoral studies, to short term teaching contracts as assistant professor here or there. I avoided all but superficial and casual friendships.

Until now. Until Fletcher.

No voices, no shadows from my earlier years marred this perfect morning. In that moment, I actually heard church bells ringing distantly.

I stretched.

I was alone. Where was Fletcher?

It took a few moments for the rest of my senses to catch up. Faint kitchen noises sounded downstairs. The unmistakable scent of cooking bacon asserted itself. I could guess where he was.

Fletcher, the man who had become a close colleague, and then a close friend. Fletcher, a man for whom I had harbored a suppressed longing, wanting something more than friendship. Fletcher, who reignited a fire within me I thought long extinguished.

Last night after supper, he had led me to his bedroom. In the clear morning light, I tried, but failed, to recall every detail. I remember a switch illuminating a single bedside lamp; I remember tender, tentative kisses swiftly turning passionate; one moment Fletcher was fully clothed, the next, mostly undressed.

I seem to recall us grappling on the bed. And I remember distinctly Fletcher's frustration in getting my own clothes off my frame. "Jesus, Tomás, how many layers do you have on?"

How long we spent exploring one another, lips tracing the contours of shoulders and chests, tongues exploring valleys and rounded hills, I can't say.

I remember Fletcher glancing up at me before he took me in his mouth.

"You don't have to do this," I told him. I still had trouble believing it was happening. I still do.

He just smiled and wrapped his lips around me.

I remember my fingers in Fletcher's unexpectedly fine hair, my body arching with delight, my senses awhirl with electricity, racing toward a finish all too soon.

"Stop, stop," I nearly cried, pulling him off me.

Fletcher's face looked puzzled, unhappy. "What's wrong? Did I hurt you?"

"No, but if you keep that up, I'm going to explode," I panted.

Fletcher crawled up and looked down into my face with a grin. "And the problem with that would be?"

"I haven't had my turn yet." And now I smiled, too.

Later on, I remember glimpsing the titles of the books piled on Fletcher's bedside table. False Mating Patterns in Autumnal Migrants; Carolina Biodiversity Studies.

I closed my eyes and remembered Fletcher, his face inwardly focused, as he lowered himself on to me, my own head a maelstrom of astonishment, anticipation and pleasure.

And now he was making breakfast.

I stirred.

What had I done? What had we done?

We had made love. And I remember weeping afterwards.

"Tomas, what's wrong?" I heard Fletcher ask.

"Nothing. Everything. It was so…wonderful." The adjective seemed so inadequate. I felt gloriously high, and emotionally wrung out. "I can't believe this is what I've missed. That this is how it should have been all along." I sniffled a little.

Fletcher kissed me, gently. "It was good, wasn't it?" He still sounded a little breathless.

I nodded, a smile breaking out.

"So, nothing wrong?" Fletcher was still concerned.

"You don't understand," I turned my head, nuzzling into Fletcher's shoulder, "the other times, with other men…it wasn't…"

Fletcher waited patiently for me to collect my words into something intelligible.

"Look, Fletcher, I…" I began haltingly. I turned to my side, our faces quite close on the pillow.

Fletcher stroked my cheek with his hand. The bedside lamp shone softly over us, both naked. How had the bedcovers and blankets gotten so messy? I couldn't think how that had happened.

Fletcher seemed to understand I was struggling. "Take your time," he soothed.

I tried again. "In my teens, I knew I was gay. I had trouble dealing with it. It felt like disloyalty to my family. And I felt like I was betraying my religion, and my heritage. But I knew what I felt was real, even so."

Fletcher looked back at me with deep, understanding eyes.

"I went to a good Catholic high school, you know? St. John Bosco High School. Well, I was smart enough to know my male classmates at St. John Bosco's were off limits. Really, every boy was off limits. I found ways to deal with it. I tried to suppress my sexuality with a layer of Catholicism. I made friends with older men, teachers and priests. I graduated from St. JB's with honors. I know my mother was thrilled when I was accepted to a seminary in Western Pennsylvania. I'd be the child who took holy orders."

I couldn't believe I was lying there in our afterglow, telling Fletcher my life story. But that's the way he is; Fletcher listens.

My hand rested on his flank as I went on."You're not Catholic, right?"

Fletcher shook his head, "No."

"Well, it's unheard of today for students to go directly from high school to seminary; it was merely very unusual back then." I took a deep breath. "I thought I would be a priest; that if I could get ordained, somehow the holy spirit would come down and stop making me want to have sex. That holy orders would make me reconcile to the way I needed to be."

And still Fletcher listened. It was painful for me to remember how stupid I had been.

"It all came apart in my second year. It was Brother Dominic who…" I stopped.

Fletcher waited for a long minute, then finally spoke, his voice a near whisper. "Brother Dominic who did what?" He stroked my cheek again, like one might stroke the feathers of a frightened bird.

I found my voice, and resumed. "Brother Dominic was my first. He started by offering to be my confessor, my spiritual director, in September of my second year. I never noticed the gleam in his eyes. By midwinter, he invited me to his room after Compline. I remember it was early February, Groundhog's Day. He convinced me to suck him."

The words sounded plain and flat, marring the soft golden glow of the bedroom where we lay.

I hated myself for what had happened in Brother Dominic's cell all those years ago. I, poor fool, eagerly kneeling before the older man, doing what I had only imagined I might do in high school, trying my post-adolescent best to please him. Somehow, I had hoped he might give me the same pleasure.

Instead, as soon as he was sated, Brother Dom brought to mind my sin and guilt. The evidence was present on my face. What had I done? Wretched and confused, I felt unable to say that he'd been just as responsible. The good Brother pounced on my uncertainty and whipped up my sense of remorse and self-reproach. He cast me out of his room before midnight to reflect on the heinous nature of my error, for leading him astray.

"I felt wretched afterwards," I continued, "and Brother Dom did his best to make it worse, not better. He really knew how to lay on the guilt. He was a professional in that way," I tried to joke, lamely.

Fletcher didn't return my chuckle. His face registered empathy, as if he understood my heartache.

I had to confess. Not for what I had done, but for my idiocy. "But Brother Dominic's laying on of guilt didn’t stop me from accepting his invitation again two weeks later." I took another breath. "Four times I went back to him. Four times. And each episode marked me with so much guilt and shame." I shook my head, and closed my eyes. "I was such a stupid, naïve child, even at age twenty. Clever, bright boys without any experience of the real world are often the best victims, they say."

"What did you wind up doing?" Fletcher asked.

"It took a weekend of contemplation and reflection. But after the last encounter, I mustered the courage to walk into the Dean's office on a Monday morning and withdrew from the seminary. I didn't explain. I should have told them why, but I felt my shame and remorse and responsibility keenly. I was young and doubly foolish. And worst of all, my mother was horribly disappointed."

There was silence for a moment.

"Fortunately, I was able to transfer to a Catholic university in Pittsburgh – Duquesne – and continued my religious studies there. I realized I had no wish to deal with the mechanics of being a priest, but the culture of the religious and of religious writers fascinated me," I tried to smile.

"But you never came out." Fletcher simply stated this as fact.

"No. I just…" Truthfully, I did not want to remember what happened after transferring out of seminary.

Over the years, I had sordid trysts with other men – usually a blowjob in a quiet corner of the library men's rooms, or a covert encounter in some shabby apartment complex. All too easily, I allowed myself to be picked up at a bar and fucked for the first time nearly two years to the day after Brother Dominic initiated me.

Practice did not make perfect; it never seemed to get better. After every assignation, Brother Dominic's pitiless voice demanded my remorse and repentance, echoing in my ears. The vision of his face inevitably hovered in front of my eyes.

I picked up the thread of my thoughts briefly. "Everything sexual brought back the guilt and the shame. I had a few experiences after that, but they were just…awful."

How could I tell Fletcher that after every encounter with another man, I invariably retreated immediately to the church? Guilt, the gift of Brother Dominic and the whole of my childhood, impelled me. One time, I actually found a church open at midnight and spent two hours on my knees, praying for some kind of absolution, some kind of mercy, some release from the self I had become.

When the parish priest tapped me on the shoulder, I nearly screamed in surprise. He thought I was homeless, and was offering me a place to sleep.

"Until tonight." Fletcher smiled at me.

And in that moment, I felt a wholeness and a rightness that transcended the past twenty four hours, the past few months, and the whole of the past few decades. I was content, perfectly content.

"Until tonight," I agreed, and kissed him.

Sometime after that, we fell asleep, but I don't exactly remember that.

Now, in the morning sunlight that flooded over me, I examined my mind, in the same way one might explore oneself after falling hard, exploring the body for injury or pain. I found no injury. Only contentment.

I had spent the night with Fletcher. Making love. And for the first time, I felt at peace. Perfectly right.

No, you weren't making love. You were having sex.

A tiny, cranky voice inside my head strove to make itself heard. But it was overwhelmed by a vast wave of serenity. What we had done was wonderful, not evil.

Nonsense. It's love.

My grouchy guilt voice could go to hell, where it belonged.

I heard the sound of feet softly padding into the room. I turned my body to face Fletcher, dressed in sweats and a frighteningly green t-shirt claiming to memorialize the 2007 Conference on Riparian Species.

"Wow, what a beautiful morning," he grinned, looking directly at me, sprawled out on his bed. How could he look at me that way?

I tried to pull up the blanket, but he wouldn’t let me.

"No, no, leave it, sunlight becomes you," Fletcher said, sitting down on the bed and putting his hand on my chest.

There must be some scientific term for the paradox I experienced in that moment; my inner being at peace, but my heart beating swiftly and insistently. But I had a more common, spiritual name for it.

I was in love.

And it was like nothing I could remember.