Maddog & The Pope (Learning to fly on Broken Wings) - 2. Chapter 2 Inno

About two to three hours after Niki’s outburst of frustration at the shunting yard fence, another young boy was racing his bike like mad over Merligborn’s inner city ring.

He was seemingly impervious of other traffic around him, as he furiously stepped on his pedals as if he were being chased by the Devil himself and all of Hell’s hosts of demons. He behaved like he was frantically trying to escape some scene of a terrible accident. His long, ginger-blond curls were streaming in the wind, as he sped through the city.

A car nearly missed him, braking sharply with a screeching of tyres, horn blaring. The boy didn’t even notice it. Other near misses followed, but collisions only narrowly avoided, as the boy raced on like if he was blind to everything around him.

Fifteen minutes later the boy entered a rundown, almost derelict part of the city, filled with ugly drab apartment blocks. Built in the sixties, they all showed signs of neglect to one degree or another. The boy didn’t slow down until he reached one particular block, where he stopped. He threw his bike against the wall, entered the building, sprinted up the stairs and entered an apartment on the second floor.

“Is that you, Inno?” a voiced called from the kitchen.

“Si, mamma!” he yelled, having great difficulty to make his voice sound normal, “I’m going to my room. Want to do some reading for school.”

“OK,” his mother acknowledged from the kitchen, “I’ll call you when dinner is ready!”

Once in his room Inno stared out of the only window towards the equally desolate apartment block on the other side of the street. His mind was racing, trying to find out what actually happened to him. And most of all, what the consequences of it all would be!

The view of the opposite block didn’t provide him with any answers, so he sat down on his bed, trying hard not to understand what had happened. He just wanted to get away from it, because it had shocked him to his very core.

Now, safe in his own bedroom, he knew he had a huge problem. But how God judge it?

Of one thing he was absolutely certain, he was not the initiator, he had done nothing to provoke what happened. In the beginning he had stood there in shock, almost like a statue. He had wanted to cry out in panic, yell for someone to help him, but his voice refused to function. Besides, the conscious part of his brain knew there was nobody else around. And then, in the end he was cursed and doomed to Hell.

“Does that make me a sinner? My feelings must make me to blame, I’m a grave wrongdoer. I have committed a terrible sin.”

There was no other verdict possible and as a result he felt compelled to throw all his plans and dreams for the future overboard. That future that made it a sin even to have thoughts about the ways of the Satan. Of itself that would be unworthy for what he wanted to become. He had no right to be what he wanted to because he already broke his vow before he actually started. But leaving it all behind him, something he had prepared for since entering secondary school, was very hard to accept. His life had changed with his dreams ending on the scrap yard this very September Sunday!

This was a problem he could find no solution to. It was very personal and intimate, he had tried very hard, even suffered, to keep his purity. He knew he was extremely susceptible to falling into sin. He wanted to keep any desires he might have at bay by pursuing the path he had chosen. Now, with his purity gone, this path was no longer available. Being only human and young he was prone to succumb to these desires, which would find him where he was, when he had tried to escape. This neck-breaking bicycle tour home would bring him to hell!

But what could he do? He knew he was a deeply religious boy, but today he had discovered that he was a sexual human being, even a sexually attractive and desirable one. He hadn’t created himself. He was made in the image of God and apparently God had plans with him he didn’t comprehend. And it looked as if God’s plans included him becoming a sinner, no matter His reasons for that. Wouldn’t it be the best thing to do to make the best out of it? But how could he do that without sinning at all or perhaps as little as possible?

Anyway, his once white and pure soul was stained now. He remembered, when he was a child, he imagined the soul like a slice of pineapple brightly white in color and neatly divided in parts. For every sin one of these parts became black, but God was merciful. When he confessed his sins those black parts would be cleansed again and regain their original sparkling white color.

However, there were some sins which were called mortal sins, that made the whole slice black in one go and for which confession would give no relief from the guilt.

He had committed one of these sins. He had not only succumbed to the lusts of the flesh, but contrary to what the Catechism prescribed he had done it with another man!

It was more than a seventeen-year old boy could cope with. It was so much, he started to feel physically ill and he had to lay down on the bed. With his mind still in a full force gale he drifted into an uneasy nap.

It became a long nap and he only woke when his mother called him for dinner. He felt far from rested, but rose and splashed water in his face to make sure he was fully

awake. Then he scuffed listlessly to the kitchen where he sat down.

His mother smiled when she put the dinner on the table and Inno started to fill his plate. It smelt good, but the problem was, he was not hungry! He dabbled with his fork toying with the pasta for some time until his mother cried out, her voice full of hurt:

“Inno, why don’t you eat? Are you sick?”

Yes, it was a sure way to hurt the feelings of any righteous Italian mama. To not touch her own special version of the Bolognese sauce over the spaghetti. It was the recipe, forged over the ages in a kind of family tradition, handed down through the generations from their great-great-grandmother until it finally arrived in the present time.

He shrugged somewhat gruffly, but tried to mitigate his attitude by saying:

“I don’t know, mama. I guess when I was in town today I ate something that upset my stomach. Sorry, mama, I’m simply not feeling well and I’m not hungry.”

Her voice contained only a twinge of being insulted when his mother replied:

“Oh well, you’ll get over it soon. You can always eat it tomorrow. As a matter of fact I made enough for two days, so you won’t have to cook for yourself when I’m at work.”

“Mille grazie, mamma.” Inno said softly, a weak smile coming over his face.

That was exactly why he loved his mother, she was always concerned about the wellbeing of her only son and went to great pains to assure it, despite the financial constraints imposed on both of them. She went that far in safeguarding his happiness she even took on a third job to make sure her Inno could also have some cool clothes while being at high school. It was fair to say that Inno didn’t love his mother, he adored her! Despite that he didn’t touch his food and excused himself with a soft:

“Sorry, mama, I think it is better I try to sleep. Maybe it’ll be over by tomorrow.”

“Yes, you do that!” his mother said understandingly, “You can heat it up in the microwave tomorrow.”

Back in his room and with evening falling early, he undressed and crawled under the blankets, searching for oblivion from his meandering thoughts.

During the night he dreamed… or was it more a nightmare? Even asleep he wasn’t certain how he should view it. After some struggling, an initial token resistance, the whole dream centered on his recent experiences, such unimagined circumstances.

He had tried very, very hard to ignore his feelings when awake, but even then was not successful. Now unconscious he was thrown into reliving today’s memories in the tiniest detail.

“Oh, my God.” he heard himself moan for another time in his dream. And the dream ended… in a forceful explosion, a flash of light behind his closed eye lashes, an orgasm of an intensity he had never felt before.

He woke up with a shock and stared into the darkness. Gradually he recovered from the dream but was appalled when he found he was naked. In his sleep he had taken off his underpants and kicked back the blankets, as if he had wanted to expose his gracefully slim body to the fullest extent possible to the unknown explorer. And he found out the orgasm had not only been in his dream, but in real life and real time as well. His fingers touched the sticky spots of cum on his belly and breast with some of it managing to land on his chin.

Feeling fear he rose, went to the sink and cleaned himself up. Then he put his underpants back on, got into bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin. He was no longer able to sleep, but started to pray the Prayer of Repentance. In an endless chain of repetitions, continuing it until morning light seeped through the curtains. He had the vain hope that he could at least restore part of his purity in an ultimate effort to salvage as much of his stained soul as was humanly possible.

On a warm sunny summer day in the middle of the seventies the international train coming from Milan entered Munich central station and came to a noisy halt. Doors opened and people started to descend from the railway carriages. Among them was a young man who helped a woman of about the same age onto the platform. He also unloaded a large number of suitcases.

For a short while they stood side by side on the platform, their eyes burning with hope and anticipation. Then they embraced, making it obvious these two young people were actually a couple.

They had come from the province of Catania in Sicily having fled the poverty, the suffocating traditionalism and the iron claws of the Mafia, who ruled their home town. They decided to go to Germany since this country was continuously crying out for workers. There were insufficient numbers in its own population. Being diligent, both of them found a job soon enough.

They worked hard and saved to realize their dream. This they achieved in the third year of their stay in Germany, the same year in which their first child, a boy, was born. They had saved enough money to open their own small Italian restaurant in downtown Munich. This landmark was followed a year later by the birth of a daughter, who they named Daniela after her grandmother.

When Daniela was eighteen she got in such a Sicilian rage of passion, she managed to get pregnant from a German boy. He rapidly decided paternity was not to his liking, nor in his life plan for the time being. Her parents’ traditional Italian and catholic morals kicked in, especially the extremely strict Sicilian version.

It precluded any question of an abortion, something not negotiable! So, at the age of nineteen Daniela ended up as a young single mother with a small illegitimate boy. She named him Innocento, although everybody called him Inno right away. His mother had to fight to give him this name; his grandparents would have preferred Francesco after his grandfather. But Daniela insisted on giving expression to her point of view that the small new-born could not be held responsible for the mistakes of his mother and his unknown father. Only for this single time his grandparents relented.

For the rest they stuck to their old-fashioned attitudes during Daniela’s pregnancy and after Inno’s birth. Daniela was forced to hide her pregnancy by all available means, which she managed to do for quite a while, but it got harder when she was in her eighth and ninth month. Her parents made it clear to her on a daily basis that she had brought much shame on the family and that her presence in the house was only tolerated at best because the expected child needed a roof over his or her head. If it had been only for her, she might well have been kicked out on the street. Those were hard times for her, but she endured it by praying to the Holy Virgin and out of love for the growing treasure beneath her heart.

After the birth of Inno her parents kept terrorizing and harassing her until on a rainy November evening she made up her mind. She started looking for a job in some place somewhere that would put the greatest possible distance between her and her parents. She managed to find a low wage job in some medium size provincial town in the northwest of Germany. When she found a small, overpriced apartment as well, she took the job. The next day she packed her own and little Inno’s possessions in her small Fiat and drove to the north and a new life of her own and her son.

The arrival was a big disappointment, because the apartment proved to be in a poor and rundown part of the city, but with nothing better available within limited, very tight finances, she took it nevertheless and determined to make a real home out of it!

With his single mother working to put food on the table little Inno grew up as a kindergarten child out of necessity. When he entered primary school, he rapidly developed into a resourceful but typical latchkey kid. His mother kissed him goodbye in the morning when he went to school, but when he came home she was always at work. Either as a cleaning lady in a large office building or in her side job as a waitress in an Italian restaurant. Inno learned to take care for himself the hard way. He started by getting his own milk out of the refrigerator at the age of four and ended up cooking full meals at the age of thirteen. As a youngster he was well aware that his mother had to struggle for every euro and since he refused to ask her for pocket money, he solved it in his own way. He took a newspaper route to earn some money of his own and made extra by taking an advertisement route once a week.

When the time came to go to secondary school luck was on Inno’s side. Although German politicians claim higher education is possible for every child, the reality is different. Nowadays Germany is still an old-fashioned, rigid class society, in which the wealth of the parents determines the level of their child’s education. The wealthier the parents, the more chances the children have to enter university. But for the children of the proletariat who struggled on minimum wages doing several part time jobs at the same time, or even worse, those who try to survive on social security payments, possibilities are limited to the lowest possible level of secondary education. A certain road to finish like their parents in low pay jobs or in unemployment money. One in every five children in Germany lives under the poverty line and normally Inno would be one of them. But since his primary school teachers found him highly intelligent and full of possibilities, they put up a stiff fight for him, resulting in a grant from a private fund, making it possible to enter secondary school at the highest level.

Inno had the features of his father and the character of his mother. He grew into a quiet and unassuming boy who maintained a distance from his peers, reducing contact to only the necessary minimum. It was not that he was unsociable, he just liked to be on his own. Besides, he felt an outsider being the only poor kid in a school filled with rich parents’ kids.

This lack of contact bothered his mother. Inno never played football or went to the swimming pool with other kids and at high school he never hung out with them. He was always reading, something he loved to do.

When his mother once asked him after a warm and beautiful summer day if he had been outside and hung out with other kids he simply said “No!”

“But Inno, such a beautiful day. Honey, you have to become friends with some other kids. It’s not good for you to sit at home and read all the time.”

The next day, equally sunny and beautiful, his mother asked the same question. To her surprise Inno answered in the positive.

“Really?” she wanted to know, “What did you do? Did you meet some nice kids your own age?”

“No,” Inno replied matter-of-factly, “I went to the library because I was out of books.”

It was not surprising his Italian-origin mother was raised Catholic. Actually, she was raised in one of the most restrictive and merciless ways of Catholicism. Of course, Inno was baptized and as a toddler his mother took him with her to the cathedral each Sunday to attend High Mass.

There Inno encountered two things, that had an enormous impact on his development.

The first time his mother took him with her to church at the age of three, a long way before being allowed to go to Communion, little Inno was totally impressed with all the splendor his eyes absorbed. First, while holding his mother’s hand walking down the aisle, he looked with large, marveled grey eyes and open mouth at the arching Gothic vaults spanning the space high above him and was awed by the saint statues on the many pillars.

He hadn’t even recovered from this first surprise when the second came shortly after. He was enchanted by the colorful robes with gold thread all three priests wore. One of them also wore a funny hat, prompting him to ask his mom:

“Mamma, what’s that funny hat on that man’s head?”

His mother put her finger against her lips with a “Hush,” but then whispered:

“That is called a mitre. He wears it, because he is the archbishop.”

Inno had no idea what an archbishop was, but it sounded very important, because his mother had given the answer with a certain degree of reverence. He looked up at her and with innocent eyes he asked:

“Is he even more important than the Pope?”

“No, honey,” his mother replied softly, “the Pope is the most important man in the Church.”

“What is he then?” Inno pressed on.

With that patient mother-smile renowned the world over she answered:

“I’ll explain it to you when you are a big boy.”

Inno scowled. Even at his tender age he could get pretty annoyed by this, “I’ll explain it to you when you are a big boy.”

Apart from the priests there were four boys around the altar, all dressed in long red robes with something white over them.

“Mamma, those boys… what are they doing there?” he wanted to know.

“Inno…,” his mother said a bit irritated, “Not now. I’ll explain…”

“I know,” Inno muttered with a discontented and angry look on his little face, “you’ll explain it to me when I’m a big boy!”

Then the mighty voice of the organ added to his bewilderment filling the whole church so he felt his tiny chest vibrate from the low bass tones. He was thrilled by the exciting feeling. While enjoying it, his gleaming eyes stared around, drawn to the myriad small lights from hundreds of burning candles. Gradually he slipped into some kind of trance from the sonorous sound of the prayers, which were said in a certain cadence with deep, solemn voices. It was an overwhelming experience for the small boy and when he left the church again holding his mother’s hand, he was simply speechless.

In many more visits to the cathedral over the years to come he became absorbed in the rituals and truly fell under the spell of the mystic atmosphere. The smell of the incense, the kick out of the music, the sound of the organ, it weaved a magic that thrilled him. It was to be expected that he became an altar boy at the age of eight.

At primary school, of course a catholic one, he devoured the Biblical stories. One of his favorites was the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus says: “Let the children come to me…” His growing up did nothing to change this, his fascination for the religion and its liturgy only seemed to increase. Vaguely a plan for the future started to form in his mind.

This plan became more solid when, at the age of fifteen he realized that he didn’t fall in love with girls. His common sense told him it was what he was supposed to do. It was not that he disliked girls, but he liked them only as personalities. He didn’t shun them, he could chat with them for hours, funny enough mostly about girl-like things. But, sexual attraction, no! That was not his thing. He felt a different sexual attraction… towards boys. Especially towards Dieter, a kid in his class, strong, broad shouldered, blond, beautiful and funny. He was the kind of boy who had the girls lined up for him, something that was not given to Inno, nor did he want it to be that way. He would be eternally happy with his Dieter.

He knew what that meant, he was trespassing on dangerous and forbidden ground. The Catechism said it very clearly it was a grave sin! And he didn’t want to sin. It would break his mother’s heart.

Now another typical Italian trait became apparent, being raised by only his mother he respected her but more than that, he admired her for all her efforts to make a living for the both of them. Taking a third job to make sure she could pay for some cool clothing when he went to high school didn’t bother her. His mother… la mamma… he adored her! She understood him, she was always there for him, she forgave him his small mistakes and sins. She was put on a pedestal as his own real time Madre de Dio, the Holy Mother of God, in flesh and blood. He knew it was a daring and maybe even blasphemous thought, but it was the way he saw his mother. He couldn’t live with disappointing her or breaking her heart. It was impossibili!

He reacted in a way that he couldn’t have understood in his wildest imagination. It was unlikely that his grandparents and even less likely his mother knew about what happened in the past. But unconsciously he conformed to a centuries old Italian tradition: if a boy does not love girls, he is “intrinsically disordered” and he must be protected from his sinful longings by taking him in the womb of the Holy Church where he will become a priest. Living in celibacy, he will no longer pursue his immoral desires.

It had been that way for centuries, if a boy discovered he was homosexual, he became a priest, so he wouldn’t hurt la mamma. And with Inno it still worked that way in the twenty-first century.

Which meant his secret love for Dieter remained secret; it was restricted to day dreaming and to the squandering of gallons of young sperm in the toilet bowl while doing so!

Some weeks after he had more or less decided he would become a priest, there was a class on career information. The teacher asked what everybody was thinking of doing after school. Some wanted to be a doctor, others a lawyer, two or three engineers and even one who wanted to become an architect and yet another an artist. Inno was the only one who refrained from giving a reply, but the teacher noticed it and said:

“Inno? What are your plans for the future?”

He started to sweat profusely, considering his answer. He knew he should answer he wanted to be a pilot, a teacher, a fireman or a bus driver or any other thing that might pop up in his mind. But being raised on the principle of giving honest replies only, he answered:

“I want to be a priest.”

The whole class fell silent. Heads turned around, astonished eyes stared at him. He felt himself blushing with shame, not for his choice but for being the center of attention.

It took two full minutes before the first reaction came, when his adored Dieter called out:

“Hey guys, we’ve got the pope in our class!”

The whole class broke into roaring laughter. At that moment Inno would have preferred to die. It hurt him so much that it was Dieter who said it, but it hurt him even more that he was being ridiculed about something which really mattered to him. It brought him his nickname, from then on the whole school knew him as The Pope.

But he persevered! He was promised to the Almighty, if for no other reason than he could hide from his real desires. As a priest he would not hurt his mother.

Then that terrible September Sunday came!

It started like every other Sunday, like all the other fifty-one in a year. He had biked to church, did what he had to do as an acolyte during mass and by now he entered the vestry, changing and preparing to go home. Father Lechner, the priest who had celebrated the mass, said to him:

“Inno, can you stay for a short while? I want to talk to you.”

Frank, the second acolyte, grinned enigmatically at him and with a “See you next time, Inno!” he waived his hand and left them alone.

As soon as the door klick closed, the priest approached the skinny boy, taking three or four steps to end up standing right in front of him. Inno saw in the priest’s eyes an expression he couldn’t recognize nor comprehend, but it caused a slight feeling of unease and at the same time a feeling of anticipation.

But he found the voice even more alarming, because the tone was so different than when preaching the sermon not thirty minutes before. Then the man had solemnly and unctuously recited the prayers. Now he heard the man almost moan:

“You are so delicately feminine, Inno. You are so desirable!”

And next he felt the man’s lips kiss his neck, while the moaning softly continued. He didn’t move an inch, he stood stock still in shock.

A hand touched him through the rough material of his jeans.

His eyes were wide open with fear. He wanted to scream, but no sound came out of his mouth. He couldn’t move, his muscles simply refused to function. He wanted to run away but his legs were made of jelly! He was only able to stand there frozen, like a small rabbit facing imminent death by the teeth of a huge and hungry wolf

“He leads me into temptation! I don’t want to sin. He’s not allowed to do this… He’s a priest… He’s supposed to abstain from all this. Lord… please, explain it to me… He’s breaking his mother’s heart!”

His shock turned to blind panic when fingers opened his jeans, then quickly pulled them down, taking his underpants with them in one swift move. He was petrified, left fully exposed, when he felt lips kiss his neck again.

But he started to thaw, when the hands stroke over the soft skin of his buttock. A finger intruded gently searching for that one particular spot. To his dismay and confusion his penis reacted by growing hard.

“My God… no, I don’t want this. It will only encourage him!”

The gentle actions of the man’s hands and probing fingers made it obvious God’s local representative knew very well what he wanted and how to get it. In his mind Inno fought against it, but gradually he had to concede to the fact he actually liked it!

The priest kneeled, not in supplication as Inno imagined, but to allow his tongue to glide over the boy’s erection.

“Oh God… this is incredible!” Inno conceded despite himself.

It seemed he moaned while thinking that, because the priest showed he was encouraged. There was no rudeness, no dominance, there was only unbelievable gentleness in all the man did. Inno liked it so much, within a short while he lost all control and ejaculated.

The priest released him and moved back, without any anger about the white taches that stained his black frock. But then his facial expression changed abruptly, becoming cold and outraged, when he said in a menacing growl:

“You led me into temptation, boy. You are a grave sinner, an envoy of the Evil! You are a cursed boy!”

The spell was broken. With horror in his eyes he looked to the one who had done it to him and then condemned him for what he didn’t do.

He could not see himself as a victim, he knew he would be lying to himself, to his mother and to God. He had liked the stimulating stroking over his shaft, slow as a snail with his skin feeling the soft pressure on each square millimeter, the playing with his balls and all the rest.

Once the shock waves subsided, panting from the remnants of sexual arousal and a shattering fear he struggled to get dressed as quickly as possible. Then he tore out of the vestry, jumped on his bike and started his neck breaking race through the city.

When he woke up next morning, after a restless and uneasy sleep during which the same dream returned twice, he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“My soul must be ink-black after this. I must go to confession. But… what if I find Father Lechner in the confessional? It wouldn’t work…. He’s the one who led me into temptation. I must find another way to do penance to make it up with the Lord and with mamma. I hope I will find something, that will propitiate both to forgive me.”

He sighed, feeling hopeless, his brains racing, despite the early hour:

“I wonder what Frank’s funny grin meant when he left. Did he suspect what was coming? Was he subject to this treatment as well? Oh well, doesn’t matter… my acolyte days are finally over. I never want to see Father Lechner again. But… how to salvage my vocation? My God, how do I do that after this grievous sin?”

Listless and depressed he got out of bed before his mother shouted at him to hurry, because he would be late for school. While scurrying about with difficulty through his room he mused:

“I must not sin again. I can’t. It will make my soul even more black. I must control myself!”

He overlooked one thing in his reasoning. Like an addict is hooked on heroin after the first shot, he was hooked on sex.

Pandora’s box was opened!