The Fancy Dancer

life they had shared in the milestone experiences: baptism, birthdays, first communion, high-school commencement my engagement to Jean, my announcement that I wanted to be a priest, my ordination when I lay fiat on my face before the altar and the Bishop of Helena made me a priest forever.
    “Maybe you should get out a little more,” said my mother. “Socialize a little. You’re allowed to do that, aren’t you? Maybe you should take a little vacation?” That evening, before I drove back to Cottonwood, I called Father Matt. It felt safer to talk to him over the telephone.
    “Sorry I got hung up today,” I told him. “We’ll just have to leave it for next month.”
    “How are you, my boy? Everything okay?” Father Matt asked.
    I wondered if he’d picked up any strange vibes from my voice. “Well,” I said, “I’m trying to pray.” “Prayer isn’t always sweetness and light. Sometimes it’s like throwing a pebble at God’s window and wondering when the hell He’ll ever hear you and get out of bed and open it.”
    The memory of that feeling of genesis came over me again, and I wondered how I could have possibly felt that way. It was a sacrilege to think of Vidal as my own private Word.
    “Have you heard any news about the secretary thing with the Bishop?” I asked.
    “I saw him the other day. He said he might call you in for an interview sometime soon.”
    As I hung up the phone, I wondered what exotic lies I would have to tell the Bishop. On the other hand, maybe that job would be my salvation. It would take me away from Vidal without my making any effort of my own. This was a very unspiritual thought of course. A serious Christian was supposed to be willing to make efforts.
    On my own, I knew, I would never be able to give up my lover. I’d drag him straight into hell with me, and we’d flutter forever through the flaming murk, clutching each other like Paolo and Francesca. I tried to remember if Dante had put any homosexuals into his Inferno, but I couldn’t
    9
    The -church behind me was full of rustlings and creakings of pews and the soft flipping of missal pages. The usual hundred-odd Sunday regulars were there, plus one new face. The church reeked with incense, and the stained glass glowed in the hght of a hot August morning.
    Usually I saw only the backs of the Sunday high-mass-goers, since I played the organ and saw those backs in the mirror over the keyboards. Father Vance had always jealously guarded his celebrating that high mass. But today he was down in bed with a rotten summer cold, so I was saying the Mass. Since there was no one to play the organ, the congregation was just singing the responses a capella. They must feel that their voices sounded thin and off-key without the rich chords of the organ.
    At the altar I was coming down to the Consecration.
    The vestments I wore were the white ones, from the set made by Clare Faux and Missy Oldenberg. Amid the liturgical symbols, the two old ladies had worked a graceful tracery of native summer wildflowers and birds: meadowlarks and mountain bluebirds, Indian paintbrush, larkspur and wild geranium. But there was no joy in wearing those vestments—they felt like they were going to choke me.
    Behind me, everyone was on their knees, waiting for that moment when, at my words, the thin wafer of bread on the paten before me would become the real and present body of Our Lord. They were behind me because in Cottonwood we still said Mass facing the walls, thanks partly to the church’s layout and partly to Father Vance’s hatred of modernism.
    I bent over the wafer, holding it in those hands of mine that had fondled Vidal’s face, explored his body, touched his genitals. The liturgical words, as they came from my mouth, seemed to be a terrible secret affirmation of my guilt
    “This is my body,” I said.
    I slowly raised the wafer so that the people could see it. Sometimes I was sure that through some kind of inverted miracle, they could see Vidal in the wafer instead of Jesus.
    Bending again, I said the words over the chalice.
    “This is my blood.”
    Behind me, soft footsteps shuffled up to the altar rail, as people came forward to receive Holy Communion. In the silence, off down the hill, we could hear the deep echoing blast of the Amtrak train as it barreled through the Cottonwood station without stopping.
    Now I was coming down the altar steps to that row of my unsuspecting parishioners, holding the cibo-rium of consecrated