I<\/p>\n
The bedroom is dark. There\u2019s a Red Dead Redemption poster in that darkness that he had hung up, some pictures of his family that his mom had hung up, too, and a picture of Amanda and him at last month\u2019s Eighth Grade formal. He can\u2019t see any of them from where he lies in his bed, he sees only his phone against whose bright screen the bedroom darkness is black. All that light and then nothing.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s messaging someone on Instagram. “You little loser,” she\u2019s written. “You know you want to fuck me so bad but you can\u2019t and you never will.” She sends a laughing face and “you little faggot.” He reads that and keeps reading. “So just give me $20 because even though you\u2019ll never fuck me you need my attention. That\u2019s how bad you want mommy\u2019s attention, loser. So go ahead and pay me and jerk off thinking of me like the fucking pathetic loser that you are.”<\/p>\n
He does. Through CashApp he pays her twenty dollars and starts stroking while he thinks of her breasts which she\u2019s shown him only once, her tits that are bigger than Mandy\u2019s ever could be. He tries not to think of her or of his parents, of the missing allowance money he\u2019ll have to explain again. He\u2019s running out of excuses. He tries to think of nothing save the stranger\u2019s tits and how much of a loser he is, jerking off to her in the dark, paying her because she said he\u2019s a loser and he knows he will still be a loser when he comes and puts the phone down and can see nothing, can think only of who he\u2019ll pay next. When his parents will find out what he\u2019s doing. What Amanda will think. Poor Mandy who\u2019ll never fuck him because he\u2019s a loser and she\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
The bedroom is dark. He can\u2019t see his Redemption poster or his family or his girlfriend in that darkness. Only the white light of the phone he\u2019d put down two hours ago and the words he\u2019d read there. He can see nothing else. He doesn\u2019t know if he wants to.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
II<\/p>\n
At two in the morning he is still awake and stiff with arousal so he starts stroking, slow and then faster, moaning low and then louder in the darkness. He isn\u2019t sure that he wants to do this, because sixteen-year-old boys are men and men don\u2019t masturbate, Fr. Goering had said to him in confession last Sunday, because they have self-control and self-control is what Saints are made from. Anthony wants to be a man because he wants to be a Saint. He\u2019d told Fr. Goering so. The priest had said sure, Anthony could do it, he\u2019d just need to control himself. “Remember that, Tony,” Fr. Goering had said, “whenever you\u2019re tempted a certain way: self-control is what makes a man and a man is what makes a saint.”<\/p>\n
Now Anthony is tempted in a certain way and though he keeps thinking about self-control and saints, he is thinking harder about a girl, girls, girls who are so delicious and whose tits and pussies so soft and their lips and tongues so talented that he is now very sure that he does want to do this and so he comes. He shoots off and then lays there sweating, panting animal-like in the sheets where his sperm, his manhood, dries and shrivels into a stain. He feels it shriveling on his skin too and instead of his sperm he tries to think of the girls again but they are already gone, they have slipped out the back door of his psyche. christ is there instead. christ says nothing. Anthony turns over in the sheets.<\/p>\n
“Fuck,” he says, “fuck, I know, self-control.”<\/p>\n
christ speaks. “You don\u2019t know, or you wouldn\u2019t have jerked off. Real men control themselves, Tony, and you do not.” christ sounds a lot like Fr. Goering. “And if you\u2019re not a man, then you\u2019ll never be a Saint.”<\/p>\n
Anthony turns over again, grimaces, clenches his pillow. “Look, I know I don\u2019t control myself, I don\u2019t even know if I can, and I\u2014look\u2014don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever be a saint.” His stomach is a vacuum, he feels sick, he squeezes his eyes shut. “But I do know I\u2019m a real man.” He breathes hard, slow and then faster, waits before with a tight fist striking himself on the temple. “Goddamn you,” he says to christ, “I don\u2019t have to be perfect to be a man.”<\/p>\n
But christ is already gone, he\u2019s slipped out the back door too, and Anthony doesn\u2019t know if christ heard him. He hits his temple again, plants his head deep into his pillow, tries to sleep but can\u2019t. Through teeth clenched he says, “Goddamn you,” again but he\u2019s alone in his psyche and his room. There\u2019s only a brass figure of Christ hanging on a cross over his doorway. Anthony can\u2019t see Him in the darkness and doesn\u2019t even remember He\u2019s there, hanging with His head bowed toward him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anthony wants to be a man because he wants to be a Saint. He\u2019d told Fr. Goering so. The priest had said sure, Anthony could do it, he\u2019d just need to control himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-corin-michael-mellone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20467","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\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20595,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20467\/revisions\/20595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}