RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,376
(where am I going, where have I been - Ending, pt. 8)
Ok, so let's open it up. I'll widen the
playing field with a few new stories.
The first October, Freshman year, when
they had 'movie' nights (yeah beats me),
we'd go into the auditorium/theater, where
a big movie screen was dropped down.
Everyone filed in, and, taking seats, the
room was darkened and a movie began.
I was never a big movie kid, and, at home,
as a youngster, maybe a few a month
Kenny Kaisen and myself would go
down to the Woodbridge Theater, by the
hall, and watch whatever Saturday noon
drivel was being played. Invaders From
Mars; Journey To the Center Of the Earth;
Around the World in Eighty Days; and
others. Nothing like today, with big-deal
space bullshit movies, sequels and tie-ins.
This old 1959 crap was just filler. We'd
sit there like fools, squirming.
-
Something about these seminary movies
bothered me, and at first I couldn't figure it
out - only after time did I realize what was
underway. They were all Westerns, and -
like the best of the motley lot, 'Shane' they
were all about older cowboy kinds of
western men, and young boys; young
boys who they supposedly saved from
some horrid fate, had adventures with,
trials and tribulation great on the dusty
western plains, and then abandoned! I
will always remember that plaintive boy's
voice, at the end of Shane (the kid is about
12 or 13), yelling out, 'Shane! Shane' to a
departing figure on horseback.
-
Something bothered me about all that, and it
was only much later that I realized it as what
it was. A clinical auto-eroticism. Somewhere
these priests and brothers kept selecting movies
based on man/boy hidden lust. I know I never
enjoyed it, and I didn't know about anyone else,
though they all seemed raptured! A total waste
of my time, and I just stopped attending, which
usually meant a fake trip to the bathroom but
out the door instead. I'd go into the dark and
chronic night, maybe down to the small pond
and dam'd lake with the water-wheel, and just
sit there, until I saw others leaving, as it all
ended. The cool cook's house and the kitchen
staff's quarters were there, sometime lit up
and frolicsome; other time just quiet and
dark.
-
I had a different mindset right then; 1964/65
was merely an introductory marking to my
entry into real life and I knew I sure as Hell
didn't want it spent there, or as a priest or as
an acknowledging witness to what I was
detecting going on within the confines of
that. Putting any ideas of a 'Roman Collar'
behind me, I knew it to be more like a
steel, well-locked, collar around me neck.
I'm not going to dwell, but it wasn't for me.
I was gone by mid-'66, and the entire place
was closed up by end of '67. To add bafflement
to wonder, last-ditch efforts were tried, I was
told, to keep it open. They even brought
girls in! People were expelled for girl
infractions, the 'solution' compounding the
problem. They ran out of funding, and the
'Class of 67' was the last. It became Camden
County Community College a few years
later. The hopeless effort to forestall close-up
was futile and, in a few further years, different
developments had changed the place entirely.
The last of the old buildings, all of them, were
torn down in 2022, and the current place looks
more like the Pentagon than any country-school
stand-out far. For all I know, next, the way
education is cheapened in this country, it will
be calling itself Camden University. Just more
stupidity from the same old fetid, sour well.
At that particular stage of my life I didn't
have time for even thinking about this
stuff. Sometimes I'd detect some odd goings
on, but I kept away. I knew there was, out
along my way to the pig field, an odd white,
old, house where it seemed only certain kids,
and the occasional Priest-Master would go.
I went in once, by a sort of invite, but
wasn't interested. It was a very nice little
house, chairs, two bedrooms, and beds,
and a bumper-pool table too. I never liked
bumper pool: undersized table, and those
bumper pads disrupting the pool table's
surface. But these guys seemed to like it.
I left, and never followed up on the clues.
Once I was gone, that place, the entire
seminary experience, was out of my head,
immediately. It was easy to leave, and
easier for me to forget.
-
I had a different mindset, and I knew it. Back
at home again, I was considered troubled, if
not crazy. I painted my 'bedroom' oddly, and
kept weird things around. At one point it got
to the point that my mother called in the local
St. Andrew's priest to check in on me. It turned
out to be a sort of really lame psychological
chat by a priest who didn't know squat about
what he was talking, or delving after. He was
a fey, and creepy, guy himself, and easy to
move on from. Father Genecki never held a
hammer over my head. No one ever did, and
no one ever will. THE END
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