The Fancy Dancer

Montana.”
    When he said those words, the smells and sights of that awful little bedroom rushed in on me like an implosion. I felt panicked, for no reason that I could think of. Probably it was because, in my single year-plus of counseling, I had never run into this problem yet. Cottonwood had officially presented to me just about every facet of human behavior but that.
    I tried frantically to think through what the Church’s teachings on homosexuality were. But I knew very little in depth about either the teachings or the condition.
    “Well,” I said numbly, “I guess the first question is, Do you want to change?”
    “There was the time I did. But now I like the way I - » am.
    “But do you want to want to change?”
    “No.”
    “Then I don’t see what I can do for you,” I said.
    “You can talk to me,” he said. “There’s a lot I want to know about the Church’s attitudes. Let’s leave it for next Monday, okay? Patti Ann should have those tamales about ready.”
    As we sat down at the kitchen table, I was a little dazed, partly by the shock of what he’d told me, partly by whiskey, partly because of the surreal impact the house had had on me.
    Patti Ann had managed to clear the table off and
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    set out four paper plates and a handful of cheap stainless ware. Who the fourth plate was for was anybody’s guess. While she dreamily poured some steaming canned creamed com onto the plates, Vidal fished a bunch of frozen supermarket tamales from a pot of boiling water.
    We ate in silence, rolling the steaming tamales out of their paper wrappings and their com shucks. If only Father Vance could see this, I kept thinking, he’d never let me set foot off the premises of St. Mary’s for as long as he lives.
    “You’re shocked, aren’t you?” Vidal suddenly asked, “And you told me you weren’t going to be shocked.”
    “Not exacdy.” After a minute I added, “I’ll be honest with you. It’s something I’m pretty green at I haven’t counseled a homosexual before.”
    “Look,” said Vidal, “call me gay. Don’t use that awful word homosexual. It’s so goddam clinical.”
    “But you called yourself a queer.”    i
    “Oh, hell, I can do that.”
    “Gay,” I said. “What a funny word for something so ...” I caught myself before I said the word sad. At this stage, it was probably better not to insult him.
    But Vidal had read my mind with uncanny precision.
    “You think it’s sad? I guess I have to educate you.” Suddenly there was fire in his eyes. “You explain to me the Church’s attitudes and I’ll explain to you about faggots. That’s another good word, Father. Do you know why they call us faggots? It means the firewood they used to pile up around us, when they burned us at the stake back in the Middle Ages.”
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    By the time supper was over, Vidal was pretty drunk. It was nearly nine anyway, so I told him I had to get back to St. Mary’s.
    He walked me out to my car. The rain had stopped. The town was very still—we could hear the rushing of the river, the sound of a TV from a nearby house, a car honking over on Main Street “So you don’t want me to come next Monday,” he said.
    “Did I say that?”
    “You’re scared of me.”
    “Did I say that? Or is that what you’re scared of?”
    He reeled a little, leaning against my car. “Oh . . . I'm not scared to be me. But I’d be scared to be open around this town. Let’s face it, Cottonwood is ready for McDonald’s, but it ain’t ready for gay liberation yet. Cruising around L.A. is different, nobody remembers your, name, you’re just one of a million humpy numbers. But around here ...”
    “Well, people won’t hear about it from me,” I said. “I’ll see you Monday at seven-thirty. And try to get there sober.”
    To show I wasn’t repelled by him, I slapped him gently on the arm. His skin was hot, as if he had a fever from anxiety.
    He grinned and punched me back on the shoulder.
    “Sober as a judge, Father,” he said.
    I drove back to the rectory with my head reeling. The smells and the images of that house haunted me. The smell of dirty diapers and old bones and menstrual blood, and a half-breed fancy-dancer jailbird who talked of the cruelties of the Middle Ages.
    The rectory seemed eerily normal after Vidal’s house. Mrs. Bircher was rattling dishes in the kitchen. The air smelled of vanilla, lemon detergent and Father Vance’s cigarette smoke.
    Father Vance was in his office. The