Inclination (3 page)

It sounds like a
joke, but it’s all true. Every student who volunteers his or her time on a
weekly basis at an animal shelter, a hospital, or a home for the elderly
receives a free lunch on the last Monday of the month, putting to rest the
veracity (got that word on the last SAT practice test I took at my desk in my
bedroom the other day) of the old idiom, “There’s no such thing as a free
lunch.” And as I spend every Sunday
afternoon patting and playing with cats at the
Centerton
Humane Society, I qualify. If nothing else, it gives Mom a day off from making
me lunch.

“It was
so
disgusting.”

I drop down into
my usual seat in the cafeteria beside
Laz
, my tray
with the bowl of free macaroni and cheese, a slice of bread, and milk, sliding
onto the lunch table in front of me. “The mac and cheese?” I ask. “Last time I
had it the stuff wasn’t too bad.” It’s not one of Mom’s gourmet lunches, but it
gets the job done.

“No, Anthony.”
Emma Gillis rolls her eyes and swallows her bite of free mac and cheese she
earned by reading classics to the elderly on Saturday mornings at the New
Horizons Elderly Center. She gulps in a breath and informs me with her usual
haughtiness, “I was telling everybody about these two old men I read to last
Saturday who think they are some kind of couple. They actually
kissed
each other.” She fake-gags.

“I threw up a
little bit in my mouth when I saw that!”

For my own
personal reasons, I gasp, while everybody else snickers.

“Those old dudes
must be losing it, as in, they could have Alzheimer’s or something, and they
forgot that dudes belong with
ladies
,
not other dudes.” I glance over at Lazarus, who abruptly stops babbling to suck
down the first of three cartons of chocolate milk. “But seriously, that’s
messed up.”
Laz
wrinkles his nose in distaste and
runs his hands through his shaggy dark hair, before moving on to carton number
two.

I’m basically
frozen, my hand still hovering over the slice of wheat bread on the corner of my
tray, my mouth hanging open. I might even be drooling.

“It’s not their
fault, Emma.” Elizabeth-the-devout always takes the case of the underdog. It’s
how she’s wired. “They’re merely sick in their minds.” She sends Emma a
you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of yourself sort of frown. “We, as Catholics, are
called to compassion.”

Everyday single
day at lunch since freshman year, I’ve sat with the kids from the Our Way youth
group. In fact, the other kids in my grade have long referred to our lunch
table as “Our Way to Survive Cafeteria Food”, which somewhere along the line
got shortened to the “OWSCF Table”, which eventually morphed into “awe-scoff”.
I have always felt safe and secure sitting at the awe-scoff table. These are
the kids I’ve prayed with three times a week at Our Way, and the ones who I was confirmed with in ninth grade.
I’ve collected toys for the poor with these kids—in fact, for three years
running we’ve made sure that no child in Wedgewood missed out on having a small
stack of Christmas gifts, and that brings about major bonding. We’ve shared
weekends camping in the Maine woods, singing and holding hands and sometimes
crying when the Spirit moved us.

This is my safe
spot at school, like my tiny room is my alone spot at home.

“If you ask me,
all fags deserve to die for going against Christ and everything that’s natural.
They should be forced to drink poison Kool-Aid, like those cultists had to do
down in Jonestown…’member that?” Is that
Rinaldo
Vera
who just suggested mass murder as the “final solution” to the gay problem?

Sweet, passive
Rinaldo
—the gentle giant.
Um, not so much.

“I saw a TV movie
called the Jonestown Massacre.”

“I caught that
too…those people were warped.”

The conversation
drifts away from the vileness of homosexuality, toward the disturbing personal
stories of the few survivors of the Jim Jones Cult Kool-Aid Massacre. But I’ve
heard enough, in terms of stuff that pertains to me.

Feeling as if I’m
going to lose what little lunch I ate, I jump up off my chair and race toward
the boys’ room in the hall near the cafeteria.

Maybe there
really is no such thing as a free lunch.

I stand there and
profess it, like I mean every word. My voice is loud and (SAT Critical Reading)
resonant,
despite the fact I’m a
pretty quiet guy. A guy who keeps to himself, who only speaks when spoken to,
who flies stealthily under the radar at all times.

“We believe
in one God, the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven
and earth,

of all that is
seen and unseen…”

My mind, as it
tends to do so often, wanders to “The Problem”, but my voice chants on. A full
minute later, when I come to my senses, I’m still professing.

“We believe in
one holy catholic

and apostolic
Church.

We acknowledge
one baptism

for the
forgiveness of sins.

We look for the
resurrection of the dead,

and the life of
the world to come.

Amen.”

I sigh, probably a
bit too loudly, and Dad glances over at me. “You okay, son?” he whispers, also a
bit too loudly to be appropriate in Sunday Mass.

“Yeah, Dad. I’m fine.”
I blink at him once.

He continues to
stare at me with a funny expression on his face until Lulu’s antics draw his
attention to his other side. I’m relieved when he finally looks away. I know
that I’m allowing this whole homosexuality thing to get under my skin, enough
that Mom, Dad, and Elizabeth have noticed my melancholy. Even Lazarus, a guy
who is usually so consumed with controlling his own excess energy that he
barely notices if it’s snowing outside, has questioned me to the tune of,
“What’s up with the whole
emo
-thing, dude?”

I need to get my
act together before people start to suspect that I’m not the perfect image of a
Catholic school boy I’ve impersonated so well for so long.

I feel
uncomfortable passing the sign of peace with my family as well as with my
neighbors because the sign of peace is a sign of my recognition of God in those
around me, and their recognition of God in me. If they knew how disordered I
am, they’d refuse to shake my hand, I’m sure. And at this point, receiving
communion is close to impossible for me to do, but as I make my way to the
front of the church, trailing behind three of my sisters and my parents, I
remind myself that according to my online search, it’s not my homosexual
inclination
that is sinful, but acting
upon it, which I have yet to do. I swallow deeply as I stand before Father
Joseph, who blinks twice in a friendly “I know you” manner, and then holds out
the Holy Eucharist to me.

“Body of Christ.”

“Uh…Amen.” He
places the Eucharist in my left hand, and I bless myself after I lay it on my
tongue and then I make my way back to our family’s pew. My parents have always
told me that God hears my prayers the best right after I receive communion, as
at that moment God’s body is alive inside of mine. So I kneel, close my eyes
almost involuntarily, fold my hands, but instead of praying passively, I
silently call out to God.

Please, Jesus,
take these feelings away from me! I don’t want to be gay and evil and
condemned. Please, God, make me normal.

When I open my
eyes, Mom and Dad are staring at me with worried eyes down the length of the
pew. They’ve noticed that my eyes are full of tears, I’m certain of it. I do my
best to blink them away.

I fit the
physical stereotype for a gay guy to a tee.

I stand there in
the tiny bathroom that my father installed downstairs beside my tiny bedroom,
gazing into the tiny mirror over the sink at my reflection.

I’m actually kind
of pretty.

A heart-shaped
face; wide, almond eyes; tan, creamy skin; a nose as perfect as any China doll;
and not to forget, my pouty lips.

Watch out
Angelina Jolie—you’ve got some serious competition in the pouty lips department
in yours truly—Anthony Duck-Young Del
Vecchio
.

Maybe I was
supposed to have been born a girl. Maybe I was born with the wrong body. The
problem with that theory is, I
feel
like a guy. I want to be a guy, not a girl. I
like
being a guy…. It’s just that I also
like guys
.

My hair’s too
long.

I wear it cut
straight across at about the length of my chin.

Mom always says I
have the prettiest, silkiest hair in the family. Great….

And at 5’6”, I’m
not much taller than my thirteen-year-old sister, Mary. She definitely
outweighs me by a good fifteen pounds.

Mom also says
that my build is very typical of a South Korean male of my age.

I squeeze a line
of toothpaste on my toothbrush and start to brush.

Even my teeth are
tiny and perfect like a row of little pearls…but they are straight, and I am
not.

I have a plan.
And I think it might just work.

I got the idea
from my psychology class when we learned about classic conditioning. In
specific, we learned about Pavlov’s dog experiment, where through strengthening
behavior, or positive reinforcement, Pavlov got his dogs to salivate at the
mere ringing of a bell. Well, my idea is also classic conditioning, but it’s
like a Pavlov’s dog training in reverse.

My plan is
foolproof. And it’s extraordinarily
simple at the same time. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of it eons ago.

Here it is: every
time I entertain an inappropriate thought or feeling—in plainer words, when I
feel attracted to a guy—I’ll pinch myself hard on the arm. And I mean really
hard.
Bring-a-guy-to-tears kind of
pinching.
If I find that I’m becoming immune to the pain of arm-pinching,
I’ll move on to biting down on the inside of my lip. Maybe even until I taste
blood.

It seems
reasonable to assume that after a period of time, my mind and body, in an
attempt to avoid the pain, will refuse to feel attraction to boys.

My plan is not
effective in deterring (note for vocab list) me from reacting in a sexually…um,
alert
manner…to the sight of a buff
guy. But it
is
effective in getting
my mother all worked up. When she catches a glimpse of the rows of purple
bruises running up and down my left arm and my swollen bottom lip, she becomes
convinced that I’m being bullied at school. She wants to make an appointment
with Principal
Craigson
in an effort to put a stop to
this harassment, which I am fortunately able to talk her out of. But it’s tough
to explain to her that I’ve been inflicting this torture on myself. I make up
an off the wall story about pinching myself to help me stay awake when I’m
studying for my Calculus mid-term late at night. Mom hugs me and tells me that
getting all A’s is not
that
important
and to do the best I can.

I’m so lame.

The Wednesday
night Candlelight Our Way Meeting is one of my favorite times of the week. And
although we aren’t allowed to use
actual
candles because they require
actual
matches to light them, which involves
actual
fire in the church basement, we simulate the experience of praying by
candlelight with these little battery operated, or “flameless”, candles. They
are even run by remote control, which is kind of cool.

There we are,
about fifteen of us sitting in a tight circle with our hands clasped, and we’re
sharing. Not just praying, and not simply discussing Bible verses, but we’re
actually doing some of each, as well as telling each other about the joys and
hardships of our weeks. And talking
about
God. Mrs. Martine, the parishioner who monitors the youth group—a stocky,
stern-faced woman, who wears her hair long and gray and straight and even
I
know her clothes are outdated—sits in
the corner of the big basement room, always knitting while listening carefully
to ensure that everyone who wants to share has ample opportunity.

Elizabeth
normally has a lot to say at Wednesday Candlelight Meetings. She rarely holds
anything back, which annoys some kids, but
I
am glad that she speaks candidly because it makes opening up slightly easier
for me. “I like this one a lot, you guys. God tells us in Matthew 28:20,
‘And surely I am with you always, to the
very end of the age.’”

“What does that
mean to you, Elizabeth?” Mrs. Martine pipes up from the corner.

“Well, to me it
means that even if I’m having the worst day imaginable—every time I think it’s
gonna
get better, it gets worse—I know that God is with
me.”

“I had a day like
that today,” Kerry says softly. “I call those days ‘downer days’.”

“How do you
handle ‘downer days’, Kerry?” Elizabeth is truly a born leader, and I admire
her for that. She knows what to ask and when to ask it.

“I know I can
come to Jesus with all of my problems and He’ll hear me and do whatever He
knows is best for me.”

We’re all quiet
for a few minutes after hearing Kerry’s profound expression of faith. Everybody
finds it touching.

This
matter-of-fact boy, Eric Lundquist, is eager to speak next. “I think the
biggest comfort I get from God is knowing where I’ll go when I die. I mean, I
know that Jesus saved me by dying on the cross, and I know that if I follow His
way, I’ll go to heaven and be with Him when I die.” He stops talking and glances
around at us. “It takes away a lot of my fear of death.”

Everybody nods in
agreement. All of us can relate to the fear of dying.

“He’s my friend.”
That comes from a boy who always sits outside the circle, cross-legged in the
corner, and whose name I’m not one hundred per cent certain of because he keeps
himself mostly separate from us. Nobody else knows him from Wedgewood High,
either, so we all assume he’s homeschooled. And he’s consistently the last to
arrive to youth group and the first to leave, and because of that, we never
stand get to stand around and talk about general stuff with him. He runs his
fingers over his black buzz-cut hair and looks away. I almost miss his mumbled,
“Jesus is my companion.” I can relate to that, as well.

Emma is the next
to contribute. “Like, everybody knows that He is the Way and the Truth and the
Life, right?” She snaps her bright pink gum. “So that’s what He is to me.”

Almost everyone
takes a turn expressing what Jesus means in his/her life. I absorb it all, but
since I’ve recently started feeling like a spiritual fraud, I keep my mouth
shut. I have nothing good and pure and worthwhile to offer these devout
Catholics.

“Anthony, it’s
been a while since you’ve contributed in a meaningful way to the Our Way
discussion.” Mrs. Martine’s sharp voice cuts into my thoughts. “Why don’t you
share the role Christ plays in your life?” I look up and across the candlelit
room to where Mrs. Martine sits at a chair behind a student’s desk. The light
is dim, but her expression, as she stares at me, is still easy for me to read:
all business.

I take in a deep
breath, clear my throat, and throw a measure of my usual caution to the wind.
“Um…well, all I can say is that Christ is my rock, my Savior, and… well,
without him, I’m pretty much nothing.”

I think maybe
Mrs. Martine smiles at me, but it’s very brief, which makes it hard to tell if
I only wish I saw it. She moves to sit in front of the piano. “Tonight’s
closing hymn is ‘Just as I Am’.” Before we have a chance to fully drag the song
out of our memory files, she starts to play, and as if programmed, the Our Way
youth group breaks into song.

I love the way my
voice blends so perfectly with those of my friends. I can’t even hear the
unique sound of my own tenor ringing in my ears.

And I’m glad.