RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,069
(a bowlful of 'Go')
I never really knew why I left
home, at age 11, other than
to just get away and do some
'destiny' stuff that had gotten
into my head somehow. Africa.
Missionary work. Salvatorians.
They were a German order of
priests and monks, out of
Wisconsin somewhere. Their
main work was African mission
stuff, long ago, and then it dribbled
downward to just running a few
Wisconsin High Schools and
a seminary or two. A rough
summation. The place was
way down into South Jersey,
Pinelands, a kind of location
I'd never known. I'd never
known land like that - not
dirt at all, more just an odd
kind of sandy loam, a real
porous soil that just ate up the
rain, and dwarfed all the trees,
mostly pines, but not only. In
the midst of it all, the air was
always different, and the quiet
was real quiet, as if all that too
was soaking up the sound; as if
it was the rain, just taking it
right out of the air. I never
knew if that was better. If it
was more pure. Or even if
it deserved that kind of
consideration or judgment.
It was more like - thinking now,
from what I've experienced all
since then - it was more like one
of those old, neglected cemeteries
you run across. I've run across
anyhow - got all the right
things, all the markers and all,
but none of it really fits; the
grass grows a little too high,
and the place is weedy, sticker
bushes maybe, and those old,
crooked stones that tell you so
little. They started out telling
a lot, maybe 250 years ago.
But now, nothing. Some old,
creased date, and an antique
name, the likes of which no one
uses now; say 'Jedidiah.' It was like
that, a big lot of nothing. They
used to tell us to listen carefully
to that silence because that was
God. That was the voice or the
sound of God - which to me
always premised somehow the
opposite : If that was the voice
of God it was an absence, a void.
And by that my faith was over
before it even started, and I was
supposed to be bolstering it by
being there - not losing it. Even
at 12, I was a mixed-up confusion,
And I hadn't even gotten started.
Silence ain't ever no voice.
-
And all that Africa stuff, that
fell flat too - politics and
communists and all the rest
of that crap broke it all down
to nothing at all. Tanganyika,
and Zanzibar, one day they just
no longer existed. Nor did the
Missionaries. The new place
was called Tanzania, and I wasn't
going there. So what did I do?
Stayed too long at the fair,
I guess.
-
Flagrant dereliction: "The
member of a male community,
such as a seminary, or a monastery,
who lives in it for a long time or
even for his entire life, is generally
sadistic, narcissistic, obsessed with
the powers that he exercises and
submits to on a daily basis, and
homosexual, either practicing or
latent. Otherwise, he's not be
able to hold out." I still shudder
to think of what magisterial
offshoots of closed communities
the world is run by, and to which
the world grants authority and
validity.
-
'At. St. Peter's it was taken for
granted that some priests had a
sexual interest in the students...an
elderly priest with a thin, nasally
voice would scrutinize each of
us with a gaze that seemed to
physically palpate the face
and grope the body.' [Since
the brothers or priests in such
schools devote themselves to
teaching academic subjects to
boys of some means, instead of
visiting the sick and spreading
the word of God, it is hard to
understand precisely what their
function as clergy is]. Fair to say
that I do know I was both
perplexed, and ruined. At the
same time. What was removed
from me, it seems, was the
understanding of how the
broader effects of the world
operate. Upon getting myself
out of there, upon taking myself
away, I was immediately adrift
and directionless, yet with ten
thousand echoes still resounding
in my head. Where to go, and
what to turn towards? How to
finesse these newer ways of
the world? I had half-finished
problems, the logistics of knowledge,
and the unbaked dough-moldings
of quandaries un-solved. That's
how bums and creeps are formed!
My fall to Earth was greater than
even that of Icarus, because I had
been steered to believe foolishly in
a Hand of God that would control
the melting and the heat, and the
distance, to the Sun, if I only did
my part and believed the drivel.
Errant Evil. So many pushes in the
wrong direction. 'Brother Matthias
used to deny us; he'd say 'you'll never
think anything new'...' That was what
I wrote once, after listening to him.
That thought nearly got me crucified,
once it too was found out : oh the
jig-rams of the defiant! It was
all so medieval.
-
The male student 'holds out' through
the intensity of their response to
women. 'For the males, the simplest
way of proving that they are, in
fact, male is to hold femininity in
contempt. Through their fear the
true opposite of masculinity wasn't
femininity but homosexuality : a
perilous border. The masculine
ideal could be defined as a negation.
The exact opposite of a man wasn't
a woman, it was a queer. Males are
monotonous, and monotony tends
to evolve into frustration, and
frustration in its turn splits into
melancholy or aggression. The
abstract ideal of virility is almost
impossible to nail - the vast
majority of men fail to come even
close to it in the course of a lifetime.
Instead, there is a 'fragility,' a sense
of inadequacy, anxiety, fear of
judgment, of being unable to satisfy
the expectations of others, fear or
failure.'
-
Now, I no longer know much about
any of that and there are gay people
everywhere, mostly, and I no longer
care. They can be doing whatever
they want. But it's different now too,
there's all sorts of fluff and flamboyance
in all that, of a kind I never saw with
the priest guys. Except maybe the
theater guy we got, at the end, my
last year or two. He was a black
guy, not that it mattered, a Brother
or a Father, or something, I forget.
He was kind of NY fluffy, and I
saw that right away and, of course
and wouldn't you know, he was all
about theater and the stage plays
and he acted himself sometimes
like Ethel Merman or someone.
Way too close to that other edge.
I didn't want t get near that, yet I
got a series of one or two good
roles in plays and theater, and then
with all that oratorical contest stuff,
I got him as my 'coach,' or whatever
it was. I did most of my own stuff,
so it didn't matter - making my
own selections and doing my own
practice regimen. I didn't really
need help from any approved
Moderator, mayve. Anyhow, I
won the contest, all South Jersey
wide, finals and semi-finals, the
other high schools and all. All
of a sudden I was in tht mix -
local newsguys, local south Jersey
school personnel, other students.
Acclimation, and applause. Being
a seminay kid, I was kind of
limited. I couldn't go around,
as I wanted to, reading from
selections of LeRoi Jones, or
Ferlinghetti, or Ginsberg, or
even Whitman - though he
would have been apt. I ended up
reading weird stuff, from memory -
Martin Luther, some speech at
a place called Wurms, in old
Germany in the 1500's; and
then the clincher - some erratic
and sort of overwrought piece
by Robert Frost, of all people,
called 'The Fear.' It was a big
waste, really, a crummy piece.
But I won with it. Got this
oddball ribboned medallion,
with red, white, and blue
ribboning that it hung from,
like one of those Olympic
prizes or something. Governor
Hughes presented it to me at
some weird assembly somewhere;
15-year-old girls all screaming
for me like I was Ringo Starr
or somebody. It was funny.
Like, just before that, the previous
theater season, I had a big role
in one of the plays we performed,
and busloads of kids, from all the
different schools and all, from
Burlington to Camden and back,
all those bizarre South Jersey
places and towns, kept coming
in, and screaming too, for me.
It was mind-numbing and 1965
bizarre. If I walked or just
stepped outside, there'd be a
bunch. The priest guys told
me later - much later - that
they kept getting love letters
and notes addressed to me from
soome crazy girl in Tuckerton
who never let up. It was a big
joke to them, and I guess they
read 'em all too, because they
got all ginned up over them
but never showed me a'one.
Too bad, Tuckerton girls were
my favorite. (I was just joking).
I still often think about her, to
wonder who she may have been,
and what I meant to her and how
all that went on and it's sad now
too. She's hopefully, alive as
some near 70 year old female
somewhere, and we never
even touched base. I'd have
talked to her, sure; and would
have treasured the contact.
instead, all I got was a
bowlful of 'Go' and they
told me to leave.
