Falling Backwards. James Quinn
was Tuesday prayer group again. Donna had arrived early with another batch of scones and had taken a seat second from the front. That was always a worry. It meant that she had a bee in her bonnet. Tuesday prayer group was a great place for vexation. Being vexatious, I mean. Sixty seconds after the two Carolines had finished the first session of sing-songs Donna had quoted the Bible on homosexuality, choosing to skip the parts that touch on love and forgiveness so as not to be distracted.
I watched Donna, over-rouged and thin-lipped. Face like a smacked arse. Her head was bowed over her Bible, a monster of a thing, as big as a telephone book and leather bound. She was flicking the pages with speed, pausing brief moments to bring her index finger and thumb up to her mouth where a reptile tongue darted out and moistened the tips. She was looking for more damning Biblical evidence. Poor Donna. I was tired and I tried telling myself that I was being hard on her, that she was not so bad. I’d seen her with her teenaged children. She loved them. The perfect mother and a devoted wife. You could always count on her to bake more scones than there was call for. She didn’t have to do that, she was only trying to help, but she’d have died if she knew that every Wednesday the leftovers made their way down to The Cross, where they were consumed by fallen women who only charged an extra $60 for Greek.
That evening though, Donna was very unattractive. She called on the lexicon of hate. She used her most toxic words. Perverts. Aberrations. Deviants. Sodomites. They tumbled from her mouth like jagged little pieces of glass. I looked across at Sister Patti and Sister Pru who knew more about homosexuality than any of us. They listened to Donna with a look that is difficult to define. It may be that they had reached an age where the opinions of a Donna had ceased to have value to them. Or it may have been forgiveness. Later over nibblies I saw Patti and Pru standing with Donna, arm in arm for support, chatting cheerfully about scone mix.
* * *
Mister Theory dropped by The Mission a few days later for a chin wag. Mister Theory owned a bar-cum-brothel up the way named ‘Cherry Pop’. He was very proud of the name and so he ought to have been. It’s hard to come up with a new double entendre in the sex industry. That day, like every day, Mister Theory was dressed all in black which must have gotten hot in summer but I think he believed it set off his gold nicely. He probably wore a touch too much gold come to think of it. Bracelet, necklace, another necklace, ring. It was a case of conspicuous consumption, a bling fixation picked up after a year working as a bouncer in Las Vegas. He was with his off-sider Ed, a small man who used to hang on, and agree unreservedly with, Mister Theory’s every word. That day Mister Theory told us how it is with people because, he assured us confidently, he had them all worked out. I had told him about the girl on the bus with anorexia. Nodding sagely he instructed us both (me and Ed, who was nodding his agreement even before the theory had been uttered) to take a look around us next time we were on the bus. Thirty people riding home from work. Thirty people all looking normal. Some go home to wives and children, others to friends and fun. But, he counselled us, on every single bus in every city in this country there are people who look as normal as you and me but when they get off the bus, put that key in the door and walk into their homes, they kick off their shoes and crawl into bed where they curl into the foetal position and await the coming night with clammy dread.
He could have been right but that seems like a lot of people and, as Ed pointed out, surely some of them just have a wank. Mister Theory wasn’t convinced by Ed’s helpful suggestion. Wanking would be treating the symptom not the disease he told us. But who am I to disagree with the theory? I think back on Mister Theory. He drove an expensive car. His clothes, though a little monotone, were of the expensive variety. He’d never finished school. He’d never read a book. But the money that paid for those expensive things demonstrated that he did know people or, at least, the weaknesses of a certain brand of them.
* * *
Another two Sundays of sermons passed after that which saw me treading water at the pulpit and going home to restless sleep. I’d been struggling for days when Patti and Pru diagnosed my problem: I needed crumbed lamb cutlets. They may not have been far from the truth. I arrived at their place in the early evening and could smell the lamb before I even got to the front door. I wafted in on old-fashioned aromas. Frying meat. Stuffy armchairs. Linoleum. Pot pourri. The two old ladies fussed around me all evening and I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, it was lovely. Every pause in the conversation was interpreted as a cry for food. Slabs of meat were thrust onto my plate to fill the silences, all my no-thank-yous dismissed out of hand with impatient tsks. At the end of the main meal we launched into a bowl of homemade trifle, then a brandy big enough to kill a horse. And another one. Patti and Pru sedated me with booze, matching each of my brandies with a sweet sherry of their own. We were all tipsy when the conversation turned to my work at the Cross. Alone amongst my parishioners, they knew how I was spending the church’s money there, and they approved.
In fact, Patti surprised me. She told us that she thought it would be quite exciting to be a prostitute. For a while, that is. She wished that she was young enough to experiment the way the young kids do today. I was sitting on a big round armchair sipping my brandy. The ladies sat opposite me, sharing a lounge. The arms of the chair were frayed and the stuffing was peeking out. It looked like they had bought it new about fifty years ago and they probably had. I must have seemed shocked by Patti’s admission. ‘Oh don’t look so surprised,’ Patti scolded me. ‘I’m not dead yet’. Pru chuckled. ‘We did our share of experimenting, Patti-babe.’ They both laughed out loud, Pru leaning forward to slap the thigh of the only man in the world to have ever shared their secret.
Patti reminisced about her life with Pru. She said, ‘Simon, I remember the first time that I made love to Pru. We had been taught that it was disgusting but when it actually happened it was lovely. Lovely! The next morning I remember feeling anger. I was genuinely angry with the world of finger-wagging, tut-tutting, God-bothering liars. That’s how I saw them: as liars, as people hiding a glorious truth from me. But I’ve mellowed a lot with time. I actually feel sorry for the Gregorys and Donnas now. They are tormented. They want the world exactly as they want it and anything else is an affront. Christianity has become a blunt instrument to them. They have deluded themselves into believing that shame and embarrassment can be bludgeoned into people, and love bludgeoned out. Christ has become an excuse for blaming. Blaming gay men. Blaming lesbians. Blaming, blaming, blaming. They think that they can use their mean and nasty version of Christ to impose their will. They’re really little children screaming “do it my way”. Throwing their tantrums. But I can tell you this much. They can preach of God from now till the cows come home, they’ll never stop the fucking in Kings Cross.’
Pru slapped Patti on her arm. ‘That’s enough of that language,’ she muttered tersely. Patti apologised. ‘I just get so upset sometimes,’ she told us. Pru rested a comforting hand on Patti’s leg and finished her thinking for her. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘the Gregorys and Donnas have never really understood sex. I think they see it as a kind of violence. In the Cross I am sure it often is. But not in our bedroom. Not in a loving bedroom. No matter what we do.’
Patti nodded her head in agreement. She concluded, ‘Gregory and Donna over-simplify sex. They think that it can be tamed with prayer, controlled with strength of will and faith. But all this self-denial is so misguided. God gave you a prick, Simon, so why not use it! Just don’t hurt anyone. That’s where the sin is. The sin lies in hurting the ones who have shared themselves with you, not in hurting some God who surely has bigger things on his mind than which hole you choose to put your pecker into.’ Pru gave Patti another cross look but didn’t pull her up on the swearing. They offered me another glass of brandy but I’d had my share. I asked why, if they felt that way, they had stayed with the church. Pru shrugged as if it was obvious. ‘Because we love God,’ she told me.
We chatted quietly for a little longer and then I made my excuses and strolled home. As I left, Patti passed me a handful of crumbed cutlets wrapped in aluminium foil ‘in case you get hungry’. Strolling home I reflected that my life at that time was dominated by women. I was with the Kings Cross working girls most days and most nights. I counselled dozens of frustrated, depressed, unfulfilled wives in my role as preacher-cum-marriage guidance counsellor. There were my two lovers. And Patti and Pru. Women of all ages and backgrounds. Those with lax moral standards