FICTION: "Try the Priest"
A new piece I read last Thursday in Brooklyn
Last Thursday, I read a new fiction piece in progress at Limousine Readings, hosted by Heather Akumiah and Leah Abrams, at Berry Park. I’m currently writing a novel, so I decided to challenge myself to write something new to exercise my brain a bit. What resulted was a story inspired by a real-life encounter I had at a party in Brooklyn.
I’m not sure where this piece will lead in the future, but here it is (slightly edited), as read at Limousine Readings on 12/4.
Try the Priest
“Oh, you read The Bible? I don’t usually find people into God at Bushwick parties. God is whichever dealer can get here with mephedrone in under half an hour.”
It’s Bushwick, and it’s winter, but no one is discontent.
It’s 8 AM on Sunday, and the afters is only getting started. I haven’t been to this house before, but it’s shared by one person I’ve seen out before and three other roommates I’ve never heard of in my life. “Oh, you know Heathcliff,” my friends insisted in our Uber ride from Basement, referring to one of the roommates. We file into the two-story house with other people I recognize from tonight at Basement to find the house nearly one-third full already, while a doll who used to live in Bushwick but has since moved to Berlin, or maybe it’s Amsterdam, spins a Toni Braxton remix on the decks. Actually, I think she lives in Madrid now, but she’s selling ketamine from Turkey, which sends me into space with Gayle King and Katy Perry. Now I’m on the floor in the living room, nestled between my best friend Tony and some guy named Hopkins that he met ten minutes ago, who sit on the couch rubbing one another’s legs.
I, however, am in a fierce k-hole. The last one this strong was the night Biden was declared victor in the Presidential race against Trump, and my friends and I did nearly every snortable drug in Bushwick, which left me at one point trapped in a bathroom giving myself a pep talk in a mirror. You can leave the bathroom whenever you want, you just need to believe in yourself! The door, as it turns out, was unlocked, as I discovered when I finally left the bathroom thirty minutes later. For my latest k-hole, I instead opt to scroll Letterboxd. My narcissism always leads me to read the comments on my own reviews, which tend to be popular thanks to my former career as a film critic for Paper and current alleged career as an author, with a recently published, terminally underselling essay collection titled Try the Priest, about my gay coming-of-age, juxtaposed with the pop culture moments that became my religion, juxtaposed with my actual religious upbringing which became my cause for agnosticism.
My ADD-addled friend Justin, who nevertheless finds the time to sit with quiet arthouse pieces and obscure foreign films, gave five stars to Todo modo, a 1976 Italian political satire that was banned and largely disposed of until it was restored by the National Museum of Cinema in 2014. The original print has been missing for decades. I make a mental note to ask Justin where he even found a copy of the film, most likely a bootleg found in a film Discord while he shopped for Adderall and FDA-unapproved GLPs. The Adderall often leads Justin to write reviews longer than a text message from a passive-aggressive Cancer you’ve finally pissed off enough times.
“Dude, that’s a long ass Letterboxd review,” Hopkins says, peering over my shoulder.
I’m startled and vexed by the interruption, but when I turn to look at his face, he ceases to be the annoying stranger who’s trying to fuck my friend. The morning light seeping through the home’s stained-glass windows bathes him in bright yellow light. I normally hate a yellow tint in films, an overused sepia filter known as the Mexican filter for short, which began innocuously enough in Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film Traffic, before it turned up in every episode of TV set in Mexico. Fuck, like why was it on The O.C.? But this warm lighting, combined with Hopkins’ piercing blue eyes, wry smile, and either the ketamine or a sudden possession by the spirit of Pocahontas, begat an attraction to him strong enough to make me reconsider a decade of agnosticism.
“No, it’s my friend’s review of this obscure Italian film,” I say, stumbling through my words. That was definitely the ketamine. When I speak, it feels like molasses is dripping out my mouth. “You probably haven’t heard of it.”
“Try me.”
“Todo modo.”
“Gave it five stars a year ago when it screened at the Metograph,” Hopkins says.
“Oh. You’re… a film gay.”
“You’re shocked?” He asks.
I consider this for a moment. No, I’m not truly shocked. I’d found that I often interacted with the hottest guys at parties when I lulled them into a conversation about films. Guys usually approached on a dance floor because of their six-packs and huge biceps were often caught off-guard when you engaged them about the latest Joachim Trier film. “No,” I respond. “Just pleasantly surprised.”
Hopkins slides off the couch, plopping next to me, much to my best friend’s irritation. I can’t compete with Tony when it came to abs, but movies are my combat skill. “Let’s trade accounts?”
I hand over my phone for Hopkins to follow himself, which prompts an even wider grin from him. “You just watched one of my favorite movies,” he says. “The Sandpiper.”
“Oh. An Elizabeth Taylor classic,” I say of the melodrama I’d watched the previous night about Elizabeth Taylor falling in love with a priest played by her real-life husband, Richard Burton. “I kinda hate that I went on an Elizabeth Taylor binge after that Taylor Swift song came out, but also, I don’t think she’s ever seen a single Elizabeth Taylor film.”
“I’m sure she’s seen… The Flintstones,” Hopkins says sardonically. “What did you love about The Sandpiper? Wait, lemme read your review first.” He taps on my review of the film, then frowns at my one-line review: “the lost Big Little Lies pilot.”
“You hate my review.”
“You’re one of those pithy, one-line review gays who always clog the top reviews on every film,” he says.
“First of all, not all of my reviews are one-liners. I used to be a film critic, btw.”
“I know,” he says. “I’ve read your work. I keep meaning to get around to your book, I’m sorry about that.”
“Please, don’t be sorry,” I say. In that moment, I could have forgiven him for leaking the location of the Underground Railroad, so much so that I was overcome with euphoria from the fact that he knew who I was. There was nothing hotter than a man who’d not only read my writing, but also enjoyed it. “I mean, you’ve done enough community service reading my work.”
“Stop, you’re a great writer,” Hopkins says. “But I’m a firm believer that jokes have no place in film criticism.”
I laugh. “Yes, Letterboxd is serious film criticism.”
“It can be,” Hopkins says. “I mean, if they got rid of that fucking five-star rating system. Do you know, I find five-star ratings useless. Leonard Maltin, author of my second Bible — Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide — used a four-star rating system for a reason. A five-star movie rating allows too much equivocation in reviewing a film. Either you like it, or you don’t.”
I nod, not sure if I agreed with him, but stunned by the amount of conviction he has at 8 AM at an afters after snorting lines of mind-altering drugs only minutes prior. “Wait,” I say. “Second Bible? What’s the first?”
“Uh… the Bible?” He looks at me as if I’d just asked if the Earth was flat.
“Oh, you read that thing? I don’t usually find people into God at Bushwick parties. God is whichever dealer can get here with mephedrone in under half an hour.”
“I’ll share a secret with you. I trained to be a Jesuit for two years,” Hopkins says, then, in response to my bewitched, bothered, and wide-open mouth: “I’m not one now, obviously.”
“No shit,” I say. “Okay, this is getting surreal. I just finished this new book about a black guy falling in love with a former Jesuit.”
“I think I know the one. I’ve been meaning to read that.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I say. “I love a story about a forbidden romance with a priest. But I think the book’s lead falls in love with the Jesuit just because he looks like Joe Alwyn, not because he’s turned on by clerical collars. He could’ve been a barista.”
“Wow, did not realize I was talking to an expert on Catholophilia.”
“I’m not a religious person. Years of Jesuit school cured me of that. But, and maybe it’s a little Lady Gaga of me, I do have this fascination with religious aesthetics. It’s all theatre.”
“I had the same thing, perhaps.”
“That’s what led you to become a Jesuit.”
“Among many things.”
“And what led you to being an ex-Jesuit?”
“The aforementioned many things,” Hopkins says, taking my hand. “But I find you infinitely more interesting.” He leans in and kisses me. A brief makeout that feels longer than waiting for Jesus to get the fuck out of that cave. “Tell me more about this priest fetish you have.”
I scoff, but his expression tells me he’s being flippant. “Well, I actually cover it in my book — ”
“I get it, I suck,” Hopkins cuts in. “I’ll order it now.”
“I’ll send you a copy,” I say. “I only mention it because I did write an essay about a crush I had on my English teacher in high school. He was a Jesuit. He was probably about 25 and from Texas. He had this sexy twang in his voice that felt like tasting top-shelf bourbon. And he wore cowboy boots every day. To my dismay, we did not have one of those epic, headline news romances. But I would have welcomed it. Been his willing Vili Fualaau.”
“Okay, that’s wild, bro,” Hopkins says, laughing. “But he must have had some other effect on you besides just being hot. I mean, for you to write about him.”
“Well, yeah, it was that… among other things,” I say, volleying his furtiveness back at him. “Julian Tomasetti was the first love of my life.”
Hopkins’s eyes enlarged in apparent shock.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I know Julian Tomasetti. From my novitiate.”
“I… absolutely need to know more about this,” I say.
“I might need ketamine for that,” Hopkins responds, his tone of voice not indicating the nature of his history with the Jesuit I’d fallen for as a teenager and immortalized in print. “If you don’t mind?”
“I don’t.”
The doll on the decks spins a Nine Inch Nails song, “Head Like a Hole,” and I cut this former Jesuit and myself lines as Trent Reznor’s voice intones, “Bow down before the one you serve.”
This is amazing...and I really need Part 2 now!
Wake Up Dead Man, but gay in Brooklyn.