OpEd: What I did with that boy doesn’t really count as “sex”, so I’m not a sodomite and I’m still a virgin until marriage

I’m a devout Catholic. I go to Mass every morning. Every school I went to was in some way parochial. I’m proud to have grown up as a part of the Church, seeing the choir boys today stand where I once stood at the side of our Father fills me as my lord does with unimaginable joy. I’m proud to be a Christian, and to be an American; and most of all, I’m proud to be a virgin until marriage.

However, there is a part of my life I’m not so proud of.

I have experienced, at one time or another, feelings and urges that no God-loving man should feel. Does that make me a sinner?

No, of course not, I confessed and did penance. I’m going to heaven for sure.

But when I talk about that part of my life with other Catholics, they don’t think so at all.

So I’m gonna clear things up.

First, I am not a homosexual.

Being gay? That’s great, just fine really. 

I have nothing against being gay. Am I gay though? No. Not at all. 

I may have felt things that could be construed as gay, but it would require a bad-faith reading of me by a snivvling Protestant. (*Cough Cough* Carl).

However, I know that many of you will not take my word in good faith. I will present all the facts and allow for you, the reader, to decide.

I had gone to college for theology, but I ended up with a job for a Catholic paper in my hometown when I graduated. It was my first “real job”.

I stayed with them for a while, and there grew to love journalism.

But, being young, I wanted to see the world outside of rural Massachusetts. I submitted essays and job applications to all sorts of publications all over the world.

When I got the letter back asking me to come to the city to interview for a popular magazine, I was hollering and yelling for everyone in that stuffy cedar and coffee scented office on the second floor of the newspaper building to come see.

I took the bus to the city early in the morning, it was raining, but the interview went well. I was told I would get a call in a week or so. Things were moving so fast. I returned home, shaking with nerve and anticipation.

When that phone rang my heart jumped out of my chest.

They told me I started next week.

A year later, I discovered I was now in my late twenties, I had just moved to a new city for a job at a magazine and was volunteering at the local parish. (I was made to sign an NDA after some unrelated circumstances, so the name of the city and the magazine at which I was employed shall remain undisclosed.)

Getting used to the city was hard at first, I grew up in a small town, farms all around. I knew everybody by name and they knew me too.

But here, I lived out of a nice studio apartment, just down the street from an elegant cathedral built over a hundred years before. It dwarfed the church in my hometown. The streets were a parade of new faces I would never see again, faces that tacitly agreed we’d be polite for the few seconds we would know one another.

It was a dark and snowy winter night, I was at the cathedral, the pastor had retired and I was left alone in the nave staring at the city lights shining through the stained glass.

I was so taken in by the eye-watering glory, the echoing ambiance of the distant sirens, helicopters, heaters, and car engines, the cacophony of this new larger life, I didn’t hear the timid footfalls tapping up behind me.

Once again, I am not a homosexual.

A weak cough interrupted my stargazing. I turned around, surprised. I had more or less forgotten other people existed in a physical present capacity during my “meditation”. But when I laid eyes on the source of the demure exclamation my surprise grew further.

It is not wrong to say the Lord is beautiful, but the sight before me was not beautiful in that same way.

In fact, he reminded me of that painting of Lucifer in tears at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The fallen angel, with a certain redness along the eyelids that excited me for reasons I could never understand, spoke.

His smooth supple lips, (God, why was I looking at his lips?) parted, and to me Moses may as well have parted the Red Sea before me. My heart was racing. I couldn’t look him in the eye. His white teeth, his pink tongue, his thin pale neck peeking from under that warm looking scarf, my eyes darted lower and lower.

Why was it so hard to look at this boy?

It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a word he said. Shit.

I smiled, and looked at his nose instead of his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

The adorable nose replied, dejectedly, “Oh, It’s okay. Sorry to have bothered you.”

His chin-length hair lifted up a little as he turned around and proceeded towards the exit.

“Wait!” Before I knew it I had caught up to the angel, my body moved without my command, as if by God’s own grace.

He turned around, and our eyes met for the first time. His pupils were small for the dark of the cathedral, he must have been frightened. His eyelashes were lush, his eyebrows clean and thin, and his irises caught perfectly the millions of tiny lights I had been so enamored with but a moment ago.

“Don’t run off, please. I really didn’t hear you, God’s honest truth!”

He bowed his head, now it was his turn I suppose. His hair had a bit of snow still melting atop it, and it took every fiber of my strength to not brush it off with a quick tussle.

“I… Just wanted to ask you if you could let me borrow fare for the train,” the angel squeaked.

I couldn’t help but smile.

“Where are you headed?” I asked, and I reached for my wallet.

He told me he needed to go home, he’d had a long day full of mishaps and had parted with his money somewhere along the way. I empathized, it was hard for me to stay on top of the intricacies of the city.

“Let me walk you to the station,”

Why did I say that…

He could hardly respond, “N-n-no it’s completely alright you’re too–

I cut him off, “It’s snowing like crazy out there! There’s ice too, I’d feel terrible if something happened to you…”

I think I was coming on a little too strong; I had just met him but something compelled me to stay by his side.

He relented, “Well, thanks, it means a lot to me.”

I smiled more warmly than before, as if I could somehow melt the snow off him if I smiled enough.

As we exited the Cathedral we were hit by the freezing winter air.

Swirling snow spiraled on the wind, glittering in the streetlights. I looked at my angel and watched him as we walked down the street to the subway station. Each gust fluffed his hair as he trudged through the sidewalk snow.

As we neared the station, I discovered the source of those sirens which comprised the melody of the soundtrack to my metropolitan contemplation. A police officer stood, clad in wool greatcoat and fur hat, before a barricade peeking from the snow blocking the entrance to the station. Snowdrift submerged one side of his cruiser entirely.

“Sorry, the subway’s out of service. Pipe burst and flooded half the north tunnel, it’s not safe. There’s a weather advisory too, so the two of you are going to have to find some other way to get home.”

The little thing was dismayed at this news, another hiccup in his day. However, I couldn’t help but to allow yet another smile to work its way across my face.

I felt so relieved. This must have been what God pushed me after this angel for.

Thank the Lord I had accompanied him! The thought of this poor creature stranded cold and alone tugged at my heart like the sight of Christ on the cross!

The muscles between those rosy cheeks and his glittering eyes tensed ever so slightly as if he were about to cry. Those thin brows quivered, though only a bit. Again, he reminded me of that painting of Lucifer in tears.

“There’s no way I can get home at this rate…”, the poor thing whimpered.

The winds began to pick up, a gust battered and toyed with the corners of the officer’s greatcoat as it did the angel’s hair. The boy held his arms closer to himself as he shivered. My heart began to beat.

The police officer gestured as if he was about to suggest something; but it was then I grabbed my angel by the elegant, slender, white wrist hidden beneath the slightly too large sleeves of his coat and tugged him away quickly.

This was God’s plan, and I was to follow it. I felt a sureness in my soul. Coursing through my blood: Pure conviction.

I needed to keep this boy safe.

He had a bad day today, but I could change that.

I could have waited for the officer to speak, though I would risk being parted from my angel, who surely would reach yet another obstacle alone. No. He didn’t deserve that. I trudged hard and fast back down the sidewalk, the way we came.

The howling wind buffeted my uncovered face, the melting snow it carried along stung my skin. What did it matter? What could snow do to thwart the work of the Lord?

We made it halfway down the street before I was pulled out of my focus by a weak cry.

I realized in my determination I had neglected to inform him what I was doing.

“Please… let me go!”

I snapped back to the present.

We were mid-stride; just past the cathedral where we had met. As I dragged us forward, I looked back to see snow whipping and whirling his hair as his quivering eyes stared up at me.

Mortification gripped me as I saw the absolute terror in that beautiful face. Terror caused by me.

I released him as fast as I could. How could I frighten him like this? I meant him no harm.

Alas, I had released him off balance.

A pathetic yelp escaped his lips as he pitched forward.

His weight had been on the arm in order to remove it from my grip, it seems.

As he crumbled towards the snow, I once again felt the hand of God guiding me.

My pause had brought him nothing but more trouble. How could I fail him like this?

I shot down like lightning sent from the heavens above. I desperately wanted nothing more than to help him. To place my hands onto his body and support his weak frame.

I managed to catch him under the shoulders. Everything was in slow motion now. His eyes, that nose, those lips… He was right there in front of me. In my hands. I wanted to pull him in, closer.

Instead, I stayed my hand, knowing it would only frighten him more.

“My apartment!”, I blurted my explanation as quickly as I had remembered its necessity.

“It’s just at the end of this street. We can stay there until the sn–”

I stopped myself the moment he opened his mouth. For now, the red from the white angel’s rosy cheeks seemed to have spilled out over the rest of his face.

“I-I-I couldn’t do that! It’s going to snow all night. Staying at a stranger’s overnight is…”

I offered him a smile, unsure if it was even visible in this weather, and gently placed my gloved hand on his shoulder. “It’s the Christian thing to do.”

As we entered my modest apartment, I quickly locked the door behind the boy. This boy was under my roof, and I wanted to protect him more than anything. I snuck a glance over my shoulder as he shook the snow from his clothes. Snowflakes lazed their way, gliding down from where they were dislodged by a gingerly pat, to the wheat-colored rug beneath his feet. I couldn’t look away as he undid the fasteners of his coat. He took one and a half steps towards the coatrack, and as he reached up his weight shifted to the front of his feet as his heels lifted –ever so slightly– from the ground.

I forced myself to look away, and began the ritual myself, though more halfheartedly. After I placed my coat on the rack beside his I saw he had missed a spot on himself.

More consciously than the last times, I placed my hands on him. This time it wasn’t God’s will. It was mine.

I drew the courage to move my hand toward his hair and brushed the snow off of it, my hand lingering perhaps a second longer than necessary… 

Just to be sure…

The boy looked up at me sadly afterwards, his perfect eyes cutting down the courage I summoned just a second ago.

What was it about him that shattered my usual composure…?

Once more, I wish to make it abundantly clear, I am not a homosexual.

My home was a modest one. For one, I had only just moved there. That aside, in accordance with my faith I do not like to live in unnecessary excess. As a result, my home only had furniture to accommodate myself. It felt cold and harsh at times, like the city itself, not at all like my home in the countryside. 

However, seeing this small timid creature slightly sink into my large recliner brought back the familiarity and comfort of my real home back in rural Massachusetts.

I felt like myself before him as truly as I did before the lord.

Though earlier the city was a symphony of noise, it was quiet now but for the wind and snow. Perhaps those harsh edges and corners of the city which had so easily served as a metropolitan megaphone before were now filled with porous snow.

He turned his head to gaze towards the window, which showed nothing but pitch blackness. I gazed as well, though the subject of my focus was from where I was standing just a bit to the right of the window. Without the coat it was plain to see just how meagre he was. My guest was little more than skin and bones, with only enough muscle and fat to pad out his features and make them look soft.

It was no wonder then, that despite the shelter, my guest’s slender frame still quivered and shook.

That aside, there was no heating in my apartment. I had thought it unnecessary for my pious life of temperance, but now I cursed my short sightedness. My selfishness. I had only been thinking of myself and my needs when I made that decision.

Realizing I needed to correct my mistake, I fetched a quilt my mother had made me from my wardrobe. Perhaps I took longer than necessary, if only to hear a few more small gasps as my angel shuddered in the cold. Guilt quickly struck, knowing that my selfish earthliness was causing him suffering, I returned with the quilt.

I sat down next to him, throwing the quilt over his small shoulders.

They were not quite as wide as mine, I noticed.

I placed firm yet delicate pressure on his arms in an attempt to instill some heat into him, his weak figure seemingly going limp like prey from the combination of the cold and the force of my hands.

Such meekness… So blessed… I felt the holy spirit compel me to look after this young man. To stay by his side. It was my blessed duty. I drew closer reflexively, attempting to allay the clear anxiety in this boy’s soul.  It was too much. 

“I-I’m sorry I need something warm…”, the creature said,

suddenly pressing on my chest to get up. His touch caught me off guard. I couldn’t brace myself and fell into the seat, instinctively grabbing onto the boy’s wrists. The old red recliner opened up, knocking both our feet up, sending the boy’s weight onto my chest, his beautiful body pressing up against mine.

My lungs suddenly fought desperately to breathe. Not because of the new weight. He was too small to feel significant, rather, his additional weight pressing down against me felt quite natural. But I am not an intimate person. I had never been so close to someone else before, aside from my mother and my parish’s priest.

He, however, seemed to finally relax a bit. My comparably warm body balanced his noticeably cold temperature. As new as this was, witnessing his small, soft face relax alleviated the stress in my lungs.

I took a breath. Vanilla, lavender, and irises met my nose. God.

I managed to steal a glance at his eyes as they slowly closed, his head resting against my chest. His eyes brought such a peace to me. A peace I had known as no other. They lulled my own eyes shut too…

By the time they opened, it was a fresh, bright morning.

Sun poured in from the once-black windows.

No haunting nightmares like usual. Just blissful, uninterrupted sleep.

I glanced down but the comfortable weight had vanished. In a flurry, I shot up, short of breath, but quickly felt relief as I caught sight of the young man, donning the coat he had removed last night. 

I scurried over to him, panicked at the thought of him leaving. “Where are you going? You won’t make it home without me!”, I yelled as quickly as I could. He seemed startled and somewhat panicked, almost as if he were about to cry. “T-the snow stopped, and I still have the train fare you gave me so…”, the boy managed to explain.

My body relaxed somewhat in attempt to reassure him, realizing I was the reason he was so tense.

But my mind was racing. I needed to keep an eye on him. To look after him. To see him again. Something. I needed to think of something. 

“Y-your number!”, I quickly blurted out, “Give me your telephone number. That way I can make sure you’ve gotten home safely.’

“I lost my phone along with my wallet yesterday…”, the creature replied. 

No… I did something wrong. He was lying. He just hated me. I could feel a tear desperately attempting to break free from its duct and run across my face. How could he ever have faith in a lonely creep?

“B-but if you give me yours, I can call you! Then you’ll know I made it home okay… So… please don’t be sad…”, the boy’s words shone over my trembling soul like God’s love.

I tore out the back page of a copy of the New Testament a worthless protestant co-worker had given me and jotted down my telephone number onto both sides. The boy smiled and zipped the number into its own individual pocket by his breast. I was so speechless at his acceptance that by the time I realized I had forgotten to ask his name, he had already disappeared behind the door. 

“Next time. I’ll ask his name next time…” 

But I never heard from him again. I hope he made it home safely.

For weeks after, I scoured newspapers for photos of accidents for him but he never turned up.

I wonder what happened.

I hope my poor little angel is safe, wherever he is…

As you can see, you would need to take some extreme and disingenuous liberties to possibly construe that as anything other than a Christian act of kindness towards a stranger. Only the mind of an evil pervert could mistakenly think that story to be in any way homosexual at all.

I hope we can finally lay these rumors to rest and move on from this whole ridiculous chapter.

But if you’re still out there…