PEEK-A-BOO IN THE FRONT PEW<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve become something of an underwear connoisseur since I took this gig. My bet\u2019s on baby blue cotton this morning, which is okay, but not as good as red satin.<\/p>\n
Even the best Catholic girls don\u2019t come to mass on a weekday, not unless there\u2019s a May Queen crowning or Wednesday night choir practice or their parents forced confession on them for one or another venial sin. Weekday masses are for ladies with blue hair and widows with moth-eaten wigs and people who think they\u2019re gonna die soon.<\/p>\n
But Anne-Marie\u2019s here in the front pew every Tuesday, seven sharp, that pleated plaid skirt rolled up at her waist, three inches of pink skin between knee socks and hemline screaming Hello, world! <\/em>before school starts. She\u2019s here because I\u2019m the early-riser altar boy; I\u2019m the early-riser altar boy because Anne Marie\u2019s mother hates crowds and switched Sunday for Tuesday. Also, Tuesday mass is a lot shorter.<\/p>\n We aren\u2019t actually dating, not in the strict sense of the word, not unless you count last summer\u2019s barbecue in the Wilsons\u2019 backyard when I walked up to Anne Marie with a hot dog and asked if she knew a good place to hide something about that size. Probably not my finest hour, since Anne Marie\u2019s dad was standing behind me. Since then, I don\u2019t get to see her much.<\/p>\n Which doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t get to see much of her on Tuesday mornings.<\/p>\n Right at that part when Father O\u2019Sullivan starts his frankincense parade down the aisle, up the aisle, back down the aisle, right when the blue-haired ladies and the people with cancer prayers start coughing up a lung, that\u2019s when she does it. Those pink knees open up like Moses\u2019 Red Sea. And speaking of red\u2014<\/p>\n Peek-a-boo-boo-baby<\/em>. It ain\u2019t no reflection from the stained glass. This is real red satin today. Satan\u2019s panties to the max.<\/p>\n The thing about a cassock, the preferred costume of all altar boys, is the convenience factor. Lean a little forward to minimize the tent-pole effect those red undies bring on, feint a reach for the bell on your right side, slide your left hand under and up. Like they say, the right hand doesn\u2019t need to know what the left is up to.<\/p>\n Anne Marie stares piously into her bible and closes up the peephole the second Father O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s done with his incense cloud business. That\u2019s all right. I got the mental picture down.<\/p>\n The only thing I don\u2019t like about Tuesday morning mass is that it\u2019s always over way too soon, even with the addition of that frankincense shit Father O\u2019Sullivan started\u2014at my suggestion, of course. Some of the congregation have to get to their doctor\u2019s appointments, Anne Marie\u2019s mother needs to get her hair done, and Anne Marie has to roll her skirt back to regulation length and high-tail it off to school.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n STUFF THAT MIGHT FIT IN A YARMULKA<\/p>\n Ruthie Steinbaum\u2019s right boob. Ruthie Steinbaum\u2019s left boob. Ruthie Steinbaum\u2019s sister\u2019s right boob. The freckled girl who works at the library\u2019s left boob. Sharon Stone\u2019s right boob.<\/p>\n Well, you get the idea. Who cares if Sharon Stone isn\u2019t Jewish?<\/p>\n Today\u2019s lesson at my yeshiva is on piety, which is a fancy word for tradition, which in turn is a fancy word for do whatever the fuck the Rabbi says and don\u2019t ask questions. We\u2019re rubbing our kippahs and fingering our prayer shawls and twirling our earlocks while we read from the Talmud about the fear of heaven and while Rabbi Moshkovsky rambles on about how many cubits some old fart would walk without his head covered. But everyone in the room is thinking the same thing: that night we caught a glimpse of Ruthie Steinbaum undressing.<\/p>\n Since then, it\u2019s real hard to consider a skull-cap without thinking about boobs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n MORE MAN!<\/p>\n Before those Southpark<\/em> guys took the Book of Mormon<\/em> to Broadway, we had other ways to entertain ourselves. Like the Book of Mormon Challenge. Great fun for the entire family.<\/p>\n Or families. This summer, the parents decided to open our living room to the Farnsworths from down the street. Which means that for the two months between graduation and flying off to Buenos Aires with Gid, I have the unenviable privilege of sharing every Saturday with Rachel Farnsworth.<\/p>\n \u201cAren\u2019t they sweet together?\u201d Mom says after depositing a tray of lemonade and cookies on the coffee table. What I wouldn\u2019t give for a brewski.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll have beautiful babies,\u201d Mrs. Farnsworth says, thinking Rachel and I are so engrossed in Joe Smith\u2019s lost dinner plates that we don\u2019t hear her.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly two years,\u201d Mom says.<\/p>\n Yeah. Two years until I\u2019m changing crap-crusted diapers. That\u2019s assuming hell freezes in the next fifteen months.<\/p>\n While Mom and Mrs. Farnsworth are lobbing baby names around like a fucking tennis ball, I\u2019m sitting next to Rachel on the chintz sofa, reading and passing and passing and reading. In between chapters of the good book, I burp. Rachel smiles at me. Could I fart, maybe? One noxious methane burst might do the trick, but knowing Rachel, she\u2019d find it endearing.<\/p>\n Look, I don\u2019t hate Rachel. She\u2019s got everything\u2014looks, tits, Clorox-white teeth, tits, nice feet, tits. The problem is the tits. And a few other pieces of her anatomy.<\/p>\n Terrific. Now she\u2019s trying extra hard to make sure our fingers touch when she\u2019s finished reading her chapter and passes the book back to me. I crack a weak smile; Rachel mistakes it for encouragement and shifts on the sofa, letting her skirt ride up another inch, giving me a peek at her Magic Mormon Undies. Be still my beating heart.<\/p>\n This is so not what I signed up for. It isn\u2019t what Gid signed up for, either.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve already started talking about it, about how when we get back from knocking on doors and riding bikes around BA we\u2019re gonna sit everyone down and spill it. Hi Mom and Dad, great to see you, guess what? Gideon and I are gay, and we\u2019ve decided to get married.<\/em><\/p>\n Sure. That\u2019ll work.<\/p>\n Rachel\u2019s in the middle of that Mosiah chapter, the bit about having your hearts knit together in unity and love, and I\u2019m as sweaty as my lemonade glass. Wait a sec, there\u2019s Mom\u2019s sewing basket in the corner and what\u2019s that thing they say about sticking needles in your eyes? I could dig that right now. Or, maybe, I\u2019ll take up knitting, learn how to can peaches and tomatoes, crimp the crust of pies. They\u2019d have to get the point then, right?<\/p>\n Nah. They wouldn\u2019t. So I\u2019ll send them a selfie of me and Gid kissing at the gates of the Casa Rosada instead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A SHORT LIST OF OTHER THINGS I COULD DO FIVE TIMES A DAY<\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying I don\u2019t want to pray anymore. Praying\u2019s cool, saves your soul, gets you eternity in the light. So I\u2019ll still pray, it\u2019s just that with all that time in between, there are a few activities I\u2019d like to try:<\/p>\n 1. Kiss each one of Naflah\u2019s toes.<\/p>\n 2. Lead Naflah into the desert so I can watch her make sand angels in what passes for snow.<\/p>\n 3. Monkey-scramble up a palm tree and shake shake shake until dates rain on Naflah like fat drops of sweetness.<\/p>\n 4. Transform myself into a tube of henna, a bottle of her nail lacquer, her comb.<\/p>\n 5. Not think about Naflah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, or Muslim–boys will be boys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1083,1312,1234,1089,863,115,263,140,221,505,14],"class_list":["post-13807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-adolescence","tag-christina-dalcher","tag-coming-of-age","tag-coming-out","tag-flash-fiction","tag-growing-up","tag-humor","tag-love","tag-obsession","tag-religion","tag-sex","writer-christina-dalcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14042,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13807\/revisions\/14042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}