The Fifty-Seventh Night – and a Sunday

Last Saturday, during our weekly meeting, Nick was more like his usual self.

Still, I could notice in tiny details that his mind was not entirely at ease.

Our conversations on previous Saturdays had brought to his awareness so many sad and ugly things from his past! That desperate race for love (or what he thought was love).

From childhood through his youth, all in one single rush, had only dragged him into a terrible swamp that had nearly killed him by a hair’s breadth.

(And me, the great fool, thinking I had problems with love!)

Be that as it may, the evening went well. Light, calm conversation.

His struggle with God seemed either resolved or forgotten.

On Sunday morning, as always, I took my bicycle and headed to church, about a mile from home.

I was praying, waiting for the Mass to begin, when someone sat down next to me. Very close. So close that I turned and saw Nick staring straight ahead at the altar.

Before I could say anything, he whispered:

— Hey, not a word! I’m not even here!

I could barely hold back a laugh, but I restrained myself and we did not speak during Mass.

Afterwards, we went to have lunch at a small restaurant owned by the mother of a former hotel colleague of ours.

— I think I’m tired of fighting, he told me. My therapist doesn’t quite know what to make of this “spiritual crisis” of mine. I think I’ve wandered into an area that’s not really hers.

— Probably. After all, she came from a university in Paris, poor thing… and what would they have taught her there about God? Ah, French rationalism! — I said with a smile. — I fear today’s universities only teach slogans.

— Just slogans?

— Not only that. They also teach techniques and ideologies. Truth and Knowledge, poor things, are left begging for attention outside.

— Okay, but I don’t want to talk about that.

— And what do you want to talk about?

— About that sit-down-stand-up thing and the back-and-forth chant of someone speaking and us responding that we just did. What’s the point of that?

I laughed at my friend’s confusion and answered:

— You know very well that going to church and doing the sit-down-stand-up and responding to the chant can just be a formality. A person can, for any reason, do all that every Sunday, every day even, and still be a complete scoundrel.

— I know.

— Being Catholic isn’t about coming to Mass, you know?

I took a breath and continued, choosing my words:

— It’s about meeting a man called Ieshuá ben Iosip, whom we call Jesus. We know Him through what His disciples told us: that this man is also God, the same God who created you, who died for you, so you could be freed from the slavery Satan imposed on you when you were born.

— But where did that slavery come from?

I held back my impulse to answer immediately and, touching his hand, I said:

— One thing at a time, Nick.

I took a bite of the delicious fish that had been served to us and went on:

— It’s this relationship between you and this God-Man that gives meaning to everything. It’s the difference between being in the middle of a desert with a compass, or without one.

Nick ate in silence, eyes down.

— Who knows, I continued, maybe you’re more Catholic—and more of a saint—than I am?

He lifted his eyes and broke his silence:

— That line kinda contradicts everything you just said, Nick replied. I don’t even know or love this Jesus.

— You know something about Him, yes. And besides, knowing and loving is a two-way road: you have to know and be known; you have to love and be loved back. From your side, it’s very little—maybe nothing—but God already knew you and loved you before you were even born.

I paused, looked at him as he looked at me, and smiled.

I squeezed his left hand resting on the table and said:

— But now enough of this. Let’s focus on the food… and on this turquoise sea around us.

White seagulls were flewing above us.

 

 

The Fifty-Sixth Night

 

At our last meeting, Nick told me:

“You’re impossible. Seriously.”

“Am I?”

“I’ve had our last conversation stuck in my head all week. I’ve got no reason to believe in God. You know what my life’s been like—the filth I had to crawl through. Where was God then? Where is God in the poverty of the people on this island? In hospitals? In wars? I’m not an idiot or irrational, like you said.”

“Where is God in your life?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“And when you were crawling in the mud, where was God?”

“He wasn’t there! The guy who messed me up used to go to Mass every Sunday. Did God help him ruin me?”

He noticed me moving and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Going with you to the garden—let’s sit under the moonlight and listen to the waves. Dinner can wait.”

We went and sat down on the loungers, side by side, wrapped in the beautiful, warm night. Nick’s tension was so strong it almost felt like you could touch it.

“So? What are you gonna say?” my friend asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You always have something to say.”

“I was thinking about everything you’ve been through. You were abused as a kid, turned into an object most of your life, you got into drugs to numb the pain—and that only brought more, heavier pain, until it led you to an overdose that almost killed you. You barely made it out alive, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice tight with held-back tears. “Where are you going with this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Man…” he said, exasperated.

“I’m trying to understand your mind. Putting together the pieces of this puzzle.”

I took a breath and went on:

“God was a big part of your family—they were Catholic, right?”

“A bunch of hypocrites.”

“Your sister too?”

“No. She’s… she’s good. She never knew what was going on in that house.”

“She really is good. There are good people in the world, right? And not everyone who swears eternal love to God will enter the kingdom of Heaven. A lot of people say they belong to God, but will end up in hell, because their love is false. The only way someone can enter heaven is by being holy as God is—and that’s incredibly hard. So hard that anyone who’s convinced they’re saved is probably already lost.”

“What does that have to do with me? Are you talking about those monsters?”

“I’m thinking that even without God—through all the bitter tears—you don’t have AIDS, and by the narrowest margin, you were given a chance to start over. It would’ve been easier to go back to drugs, wouldn’t it? To prostitution, to your old friends. Instead, you came to this island—and ended up having to put up with me.”

Nick’s face lit up with a brief smile.

“I don’t think you’re irrational or an idiot. Maybe you were just a kid carrying a burden way too heavy for you. And in all that confusion, you lost sight of what mattered. You thought it was love—but it was abuse. Who can blame a kid for getting that wrong? But the question remains: where was love? Weren’t you told that God is love? Where was love? Because if there’s no love, there can’t be God.”

Nick ran his hands over his face, wiping away his tears. He stood up and said:

“Make some room for me on that chair, will you? I could really use a hug.”

I shifted as best I could, he did the same—and somehow, the chair didn’t break.

 

 

The Fifty-Fifth Night

 

We were having dinner that last Saturday when Nick, without lifting his eyes from his plate, said:

“Y’know, the other day I was thinking about how life sometimes seems to lead us—not to what we want, but to what we need.”

“Do you feel… guided, then?”

“I don’t know if I’d say guided just yet, but yeah—at least led somewhere.”

“Either way, it sounds as though you’re suggesting that some hand, from outside your life, arranges it for your good.”

Nick paused, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth, and said:

“Oh, no—don’t come at me with that Catholic spiel, man. I’m not even talking about God.”

“When Pier Paolo Pasolini began making films, he came to the conclusion that the director of that great film called ‘life’ was God. Just think: a communist, compelled by the force of logic to accept the existence of God.”

“I don’t know who that guy was, and I’m not here to judge him. But yeah, it does seem like he and I noticed the same thing—and I’ll give you that: it is a fact that we feel guided, or led. But are we, really? And if we are, why does it have to be God? What if it’s the Matrix?”

“Oh, come on…” I said, with a theatrical sigh of dismay.

“But why not? Or maybe it’s extraterrestrials who put us on this planet.”

“The ones who created us in some genetic experiment?”

“Maybe. I don’t rule that out. They put us here—and didn’t just abandon us.”

“I see…”

“So why do you reject these other possibilities so easily?”

“Because I take no pleasure in answers that do not answer—answers that merely sweep the problem further down the road.”

“Everything that exists has a beginning and an end. Everything is subject to time—beginning on one day and ending on another. That includes us, the Matrix, extraterrestrials, whatever else you might imagine. There was a time without them; there may be a time with them; and there will be a time without them. From where did all of them come—and we ourselves?”

“I can see where you’re going with this.”

“Good. Then we can move on. All these possibilities you’ve raised sprang from a human mind that perceived what you perceived and, like you, refused to relinquish its… independence from God. So it devised a number of theories, placing something—anything—in God’s stead. And yet reality continues to cry out that God exists. The universe must have an author, an uncreated origin. That origin is neither an abstract concept, nor an irrational entity, nor a mere mechanical force. We know it is endowed with intelligence because it created a universe whose parts relate to one another in order and hierarchy. How do we know this? We discover these laws and hierarchies, we make use of them—and our applications work. Notice that, up to this point, I have spoken only of things we reach through the natural use of reason; I have not even begun to preach any god.”

“Are you saying I’m irrational if I don’t believe in God?”

“I don’t know who wrote it in one of the Psalms: ‘The fool says in his heart: there is no God.’”

“So I’m irrational—and a fool?”

“What I mean is this: you are contending against God, and there is no overcoming Him. It is possible to lose Him—but never to defeat Him.”

Nick remained out of sorts with me for the rest of the evening.

When we parted, I embraced him and kissed him.

With eyes wide, he asked, “Whoa—what was that?”

“That was proof that I love you. I love you as you are—with what you believe, and what you do not.”

“How could I stay mad at you and not love you?” he replied, returning the kiss before getting into his car and driving away.

 

 

The Fifty-Fourth Night

This Easter was special. Very, very happy.

I had resigned myself to spending it alone when, on Holy Wednesday, Nick returned from America.

What joy!

He came back with good business in his suitcase, promising prospects—and, most importantly, he put my name on the map. True, a very small name, the kind one needs a magnifying glass to read, but it is there.

I had already noticed the results of his visits to galleries through the requests and traffic on my studio’s website.

But the best—the truly best part of it all—was in Nick himself. How that exposure, that challenge, had done him good. His body, reflecting his spirit, stood more upright, stronger. There was a bright happiness in his eyes.

Yet the cherry on top had been his reunion with his family. That was an even greater, more meaningful universe to explore than the galleries of New York or Boston. Seeing his sister again and meeting his nephews, his grandnephews—even those of his other sister, now deceased—moved him to tears just to tell me about them.

He told me about a nephew who was also homosexual, and how they differed in their understanding of what it meant to be so.

That Saturday, I took more care than ever with dinner—and dessert.

As on Wednesday, when I welcomed him at the airport singing the island’s song of greeting, Nick came into the house and wrapped me in the embrace of an infatuated teenager.

Georges cried out, fidgeting on his perch, “Nick! Nick!” while Cão spun and leapt about us, eager for a share of that embrace.

“Man, it feels so good to be back here,” he said. “Even Georges is calling me by my name!”

“I always told you he liked you—he’s just too grumpy to admit it.”

“There’s nothing in the world like the smell of your house.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, it definitely is. Kind of a mix of anise and flowers. Just… one of a kind.”

“Still suffering from jet lag?”

“Big time. Always wanting to sleep through the day and wide awake all night.”

He took breath and said:

“So I’ll have to send you back to America, won’t I?”

“Unless you don’t want me playing your ambassador anymore.”

“That will be difficult, you know? I like it better here—but my family…”

“How I wished for this meeting of yours with your roots, your family. You know, it’s as if I had become a father to all of them. And I kept remembering your words—words that always seemed a bit absurd to me, but now… I think I understand them.”

“What words?”

“When you said that a man is only truly a man when he becomes a father to someone.”

“And a woman, when she becomes a mother to someone. And it doesn’t count to be a ‘mother’ or ‘father’ to animals. It has to be to people. Real people.”

“I understand you now. I feel responsible for every one of the twelve relatives I met. Especially that one…”

“The little queer?”

He laughed, nodding.

“I’d really like to talk to you about him sometime.”

“We will—but for now, just look at what I’ve put together for dinner!”

“Whoa—man! Anyone who can pull this off is ready to get married!”

“Not even in your wildest dreams!”

And we laughed—richly, warmly.