Alter Boys (5 page)

2

At some point in a young man’s life a spiritual awakening occurs, triggering the desire to pursue a career in the priesthood.  Gustavus Milliken had experienced a calling.  But it was a calling of a different nature.  The fact that he was a priest was a matter of convenience not of calling.  For him the vestments of priesthood were an effective cloak to his real calling as a pedophile.

As a young boy Gus had been repeatedly abused and molested by the steady stream of men who did their own calling on his alcoholic mother.  Many times little Gus had been lured by the promise of an ice cream treat or something special from the candy store, only to be driven to a secluded area and savagely raped by yet another gristly ogre.  His mother may or may not have known.  She cared little, save for the fresh bottle of vermouth delivered upon their return.  Once refreshed, she would head to the bedroom and spread her legs as the boyfriend of the week labored furiously to fire off yet a second load within the course of 20 minutes.

Little Gus learned quickly to bury these experiences (and his feelings) deep, deep inside.  His only attempt to tell his mother occurred shortly after an especially vicious encounter with one of the ogres.  With teary eyes and a small voice he began to tell her about the indignity and then; WHAAPP!  A vicious backhand caught him across the face and sent him tumbling over the coffee
table.  A snifter of vodka shattered on the floor.  His mother screamed in anguish and unleashed kick after brutal kick to his midsection.  “Don’t you ever!”  -Kick-  “Ever say anything!”  -Kick-  -Kick-  “Ever let me hear you say anything like that again!”  -Kick-  Finally, she kneeled to the floor; not to comfort her broken son, but to lament the loss of her elixir. 

And so Gus spoke of it to no one. 

As he approached puberty Gus followed the lead of the friends he hung with.  He participated in the juvenile and vastly uninformed discussions that young boys engage in about virility, pube hairs and training bras.  He learned about fags and queers and shared in the vocalized disdain of such activity while in the presence of his buddies.  To suggest that he felt otherwise would have been suicide.  But as he grew and as his body developed, Gus could no longer ignore the wiring within his brain.  His wet dreams were not of Julie Lawry the buxom high-school cheerleader who lived across the street.  He dreamed of boys.  Naked little boys.  One night as he played pocket pool in an attempt to bring on sleep, his mind brought up imag
es
of Dondi
,
the orphan boy from the Sunday comic pages.  He imagined that it was Dondi’s hand stroking his pecker, that Dondi was lowering his head to have a taste of his throbbing member.  That Dondi was bare-assed, and lowering his bottom to receive a good thrusting.  There came a fantastic sensation.  His balls contracted and suddenly there was a jet of hot fluid.  Gus panicked.  He had rubbed too hard and the sticky substance on his hand was blood.  He threw off the bedding and held his hand before the glow of the alarm clock.  No, not blood, but jizz.  His jizz.  The jizz that his cretin friends at school had talked about
.  I
t had been brought on by the innocent face of the orphan boy Dondi.  And in the months and years ahead it would be the face of this comic strip caricature that would become his go-to image for achieving a successful session of whacking off. 

For a long time Gus coped with his socially awkward dilemma quite adequately.  He kept his mouth shut about his affinity for little boys.  And he kept his right hand active, masturbating
furiously each night to mental images he retained from reading magazines or going to the movies.  He did not date.  And for that he took a lot of shit from his buddies.  Even to the point of joking about his sexuality.  But he did well in school and played sports, always averting his eyes in the shower room for fear of springing a testosterone induced boner.  

Fundamentally he knew that something was amiss.  The entire rest of the world could not be wrong.  That left only one answer…it was him.  And the summer after his senior year in high school as his friends and his life as he knew it began to drift away, Gustavus Milliken did some hard thinking about his dilemma and his future.

Sure it was odd that he had never dated a girl; that had raised a few suspicions.  But to go the rest of his life as a single guy?  Now that would be weird.  There was the army of course, he could become a lifer in the military and the lack of female companionship may go a little less unnoticed.  But living exclusively with men (albeit in uniform) would test his willpower.  And being found out while living exclusively with men… well best we not go there. 

Eventually Gus decided on the priesthood.  After all, maybe that was why God designed him the way he was.  He would never have to get married, never have to explain why he had no interest in women.  He would only have to work on Sundays (or so he thought at the time).  And maybe he could even find some serenity from all of the shit that the ogres had put him through. 

And with no more consideration than being an effective means to hide his dirty little secret,
Gustavus
Milliken sent a letter of application to
Saint Thomas
seminary in
Duluth
and was immediately accepted.

3

Moments like this always brought Father Milliken a moment of trepidation.  As the door snicked closed behind him the cherub face of – of – Corky, that’s it, Corky, looked up to him in awe. 

The thought of the act he was about to perform (hoped to perform) wrestled with the sacred tenets of the cloth he had vowed to uphold.  And it was the cloth; the drab charcoal vestment that he wore day in and day out, the garment that offered a sense of security to impressionable altar boys (six of them by his current count), that now hid his engorged member.   But with each new boy the cloth became secondary to the driving force in his brain.  A force that was created in secluded woods and parks decades ago.  A force that refused to be denied despite his noble effort to cloak it in the career of the clergy. 

He had not premeditated the encounter with the first boy.  Not at all.  It had—Well it had just happened.  Timmy Svenson was one of St. Mark’s altar boys.  A mousy lad if ever there was one.  Small for his age, elfish hair and features, but most strikingly, and truly a sad thing for Timmy, a crop of mottled pigment birthmarks covered most of his right cheek.  These weren’t the subtle marks that could be characterized as ‘cute’ or ‘distinguished’ by the nosy women who had once peered into his baby carriage.  This kid was downright ugly.  A first-time glance at the newborn Timmy would draw a hiss of breath from the curious hen with a ‘well, you can hope that he grows out of it’ followed by a hasty departure. 

Timmy did not ‘grow out of it.’  He had to learn the hard way how to grow into it.  The awkward comments from cousins who came to visit.  The points and stares from townsfolk who saw him at the park or in the aisles of the Red Owl grocery store.  The taunts from the school kids:  “Hey mud face.  Take a bath!”  “Timmy, too bad the fireman didn’t rescue you sooner!”   And worst of all:  “Nigga!  Nigga!  Your momma’s a Jigga!”  Timmy’s mom was not a nigga or a jigga for that matter.  But she was a bitter woman.  Mrs. Svenson had little love for her
unemployed bat-shit crazy husband and even less love for her blemished son who had been conceived by accident.    Yes, premarital sex was a sin but an abortion would put her at two strikes.  So she married the father, had the ugly kid and now was repenting in leisure.     

Father Milliken first took interest in Timmy and his intentions were completely honorable.  He knew of the points and stares, had even overheard some of the barbaric taunts directed toward the poor boy.  But it was in the confessional that
Gustavus
Milliken gathered his most compelling reasons to reach out to the youngster. 

To the average parishioner the confessional with its private doors and mesh windows is strictly confidential.  Fat chance.  In reality the confessional is a wonderful tool for priests to gather information about their flock and then make some things happen behind the scenes to better their lot.  The same bad breath, beer breath, hair spray, body odor, after shave, perfume bath that priests experience during the distribution of communion is a dead giveaway in the confessional.  For Mr. Svenson it was Schell’s beer.  Mrs. Svenson was au de toilet.  So yes, Father Milliken knew first hand of the turmoil in the Svenson household, and he really thought that by befriending the child he could do him some good. 

And what better way than altar boy training.

Gus dismissed most of his cleric duties as little more than tedious obligations.  But altar boy training was different.  He found some type of unique satisfaction (or was it something else?) in grooming these young men for…for what?...well, for the priesthood of course. 

Being an altar boy took sacrifice.  Many a young boy accepted the duty of attending altar boy training at their parents strong urging, knowing all too well that it meant several months of foregoing noon recess. 

And while St. Mark’s was too small to have a parochial school of their own, the local public school board was more than happy to cooperate, allowing pre-teens to cross the street from public school to private church to fulfill their sacred obligation.  It made for good public relations.  In a town that was nearly 70 percent catholic taxpaying citizens, the city elders knew that keeping the mackerel-snackers happy was a wise philosophy.

Thanks to parental coercion and school board backing, Gus rarely had to recruit his new bell ringers.  And with Timmy, it had been an especially easy sell.  Timmy embraced the offer as an opportunity to escape the daily playground taunts and tortures.  This was not a sacrifice, it was a blessing. 

He was a quick study, and early on Father Milliken labeled him as a prime contender for one of the spots on the important 11:00 a.m. Sunday service.  He further determined that Timmy should be granted the duty of carrying the cross at the opening and the closing of each service.  Exploitation never crossed his mind.  At least not consciously.  The sight of this disfigured youth bearing the cross would give the parishioners a little something to think about and set the tone nicely for his sermon and who knew…maybe even the collection plate would get a little padding via pity. 

And because it was the 11:00 a.m. service, the last service of the day, there were extra duties for the crew of 4 altar boys.  Without fail, the 3 other members of the quartet were anxious to be rid of their robes and off to enjoy what was left of the weekend.  Timmy didn’t mind staying behind.  In fact he preferred it.  The longer he waited the less chance there was that some cretin was laying in wait for him during his walk home. 

One such Sunday, the ushers, the other altar boys, the organist and even the nuns had departed the sacristy.  Timmy and Father Milliken were hanging up the vestments when the Father gently offered:  “Timmy, if you have a little time there are a few things that need to be done in the rectory.  Is that okay?”  Timmy quietly acceded that it was okay and the two of them crossed
between buildings.  When they arrived in his quarters Father Milliken dispensed with the charade and poignantly addressed the youngster.  “Timmy, sometimes I feel like you’re not happy.  Are you not happy Timmy?”  This met with a shrug.  “You know I do hear what the other boys say.  What they say about your birthmark. And I know that it must be hurtful.”  Timmy’s hands had come together in his lap.  He worked them over like an arthritic after three games of canasta.  “I also wonder if things are not so easy at home.”  He was careful not to use any of the terms he had heard in the confessional.  “So if you would like to talk about it, I want you to know that you can talk to me.  I won’t make fun, and I won’t tell your folks.”  With a look of consternation mixed with something that almost resembled relief Timmy said flatly:  “They don’t love me.  My folks that is.  They think I’m ugly.”  He paused while looking at his hands and then in a subconscious gesture that he had learned at a very young age, he turned his head to the right, effectively blocking the view of the monstrous blemish that haunted his face.        

“But that’s not true.  All parents love their children.”  The words would have been more sincere had he not known otherwise thanks to the confessional.  “I’m sure your parents care for you very much.  They may just have a hard time expressing it.  Now if it’s the other kids and what they say…”  Timmy was looking down again, shaking his head slowly but deliberately.  “No.  They don’t matter.  They’re just stupid.  The kids that is.  My folks though…”  The waver in the voice held, hitched, and totally collapsed.  The tears fell.  They fell hard.

Gus consoled the boy that Sunday and again the next and the next.  It became a routine that after the weekly service the two, man and boy, father and son, would gather at the pastor’s room in the rectory.  It was an odd departure for Father Milliken.  Of all of his priestly duties, ongoing sessions of consolation were by far his least favorite.  When he tired of listening to a parishioner’s lamentation of worldly concerns he would cut them short with a “Let the holy spirit guide you.’ ‘Put your faith in Jesus.’ Or ‘let God be your guide.’  ‘Now let us finish with a
brief prayer.’  The holy trinity could always be counted upon to send a penitent packing.