Huts57

I left it to the very last minute and sprinted, looking behind me to see if anyone had spotted me. Huffing and puffing like an old man, I tried not to catch anyone’s eye, when I got inside. I might have known that Brian Reilly would already be sitting waiting for something, or nothing, or some kind of miracle. It didn’t really matter to him. Nature had given him a monk’s tonsure. He was always at holy Mass and walked about with his head down, mumbling as if he was praying, or looking for fag doubts. He was an elderly patient in Ailsa ward, and a bit old to be an altar boy, but nobody seemed to mind, because he always gave you a bug eyed smile and spoke with a lot of ttttths, that he spat out. ‘Rettttember that time…’ because if there was one thing that Brain Reilly was good at was remembering: who your mother was, where you lived, when you were born, when you’re birthday was and whose birthday it was next in your family.

But I just wanted Brian to forget that he’d seen me. Though he didn’t know how to do that I could do it for both of us as I skulked down behind him and prayed that he hadn’t seen me. Just to prove there was no God Brian turned round and said

‘ttthow are you? and how’s your mottther? I’ve not seen her for a while, it’s ttther birthday thllee weeks on Thhhliiday’.

The farting priest was always first in the confessional box, waiting, that was the nature of the job.

‘Bless me father for I have sinned…’ I was sure he recognized my voice. When I got to the part about my sins I stopped, I knew he couldn’t see me through the lattice grill, but I got a red face anyway. I didn’t know how to start. The priest waited patiently, chewing, his Polo mints, clicking away like rosary beads on his teeth.

‘Just when you’re ready,’ the priest said, his words reassuringly banal enough to hide their forked-hurry up and get on with it- meaning, but they also worked, like a bats’ sonar pulse, to reassure him that there was still somebody in the confessional box, bouncing off my too thick head and back to him.

‘Emm, I get a lot of bad thoughts,’ I said.

‘Bad thoughts?’ the priest said and waited and waited, until I had to tell him.

‘About girls.’

‘Ah, girls,’ the priest said, as if he was sifting through a box of such thoughts and knew about such things. I heard him shifting in his chair, which made me wonder what other kinds of bad thoughts there were.

‘Yes, girls,’ I said again, just to reassure him that I was one of the good guys as far as the bad thought guys were concerned.

‘Any girl in particular?’ the farting priest said in an upbeat way.

‘No…not really,’ I said lying. But I’d keep that sin stashed, like an ace, until later, when I’d need it… ‘I’ve told lies…’

‘Well, maybe one,’ I said, testing it out on my tongue.

‘And she’s what? Your girlfriend?’ asked the priest, sounding as if he was genuinely interested.

‘No!’ I said, shocked that anybody could think such a thing.

‘Then what is she?’ said the priest, so gently I could hardly hear him. He sounded mystified, even though he was meant to know about such things and be able to tell me.

‘Well she’s kinda like my girlfriend,’ I said, starting again, ... I wasn’t sure.

‘It’s not a sin to have a girlfriend,’ I could hear the priest crossing over his polyester trousers as if he’d crossed, not himself, but his legs.

‘Well, she’s not really my girlfriend,’ I admitted, ‘but I can’t keep myself from thinking about her. I think about her all the time.’

I heard the priest breathing in and out; a mighty breath, so that I knew that I’d said the right thing. ‘Have you slept with her?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t mean to and I never done anything.’

My face was like a red light, but him not being able to see me, gave me courage, ‘We slept on the same bed, but never had sex, although I did look at her bare breasts’. It was all out of me, like a tumour, for him to excise and tell me what to do next.

‘You showed great restraint,’ said the priest. And there was a tinge of admiration in his voice.

I felt better now, as if I’d ran up the steepest hill and I never knew how steep it was until the priest had told me, and now it was all, one little thing after another, downhill. Yes. I had showed great restraint. So I was obviously a good person. I wondered if there any room in the church for people like me. I could see small birds landing on my shoulder, crowning my head with their little feet, feeding from my outstretched hand.

‘Yes,’ I said, as if he’d asked a question, ‘but I keep getting these dreams and I don't know what to do about them’.

‘That’s normal,’ said the priest, in lecture mode, ‘that’s the devil testing you. Do you get involuntary ejaculations,’ asked the priest.

‘Yes,’ I said excitedly.

I got them all the time, maybe about 20 times that day. The priest knew exactly what was wrong.

I could hear the click of his Polos as the priest moved in closer to the screen. ‘If the body is overworked it can wear out. If the spirit is underused it gets exhausted. Temptation, that’s the first stage. We can invite the devil in then, but then we become obsessive about sex and the last stage is possession, but this might not happen all at the one time’ the priest said knowingly.

Jesus, that was all I needed, the devil following me about with a dirty Mac on. I no longer wanted to feed the birds of the air. I just wanted to keep a low profile so that the devil wouldn’t notice me, as much, and go and pick on the bigger, holier guys.

‘And I tell lies,’ I said forcibly.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the priest, pushing back on his chair, away from the latticed aperture and me at the prie-dieu, ‘Three Hail Mary’s’ he said, like a rote learner. When I was leaving the confessional box, he added, ‘remember me in your prayers.’

‘Yes Father,’ I said, looking about me, to see if the devil was still listening. It was every man for themselves.