The Fancy Dancer

disaster is a lot shorter.
    Father Vance was grudgingly edified at Vidal’s regular church attendance. He also noticed that Vidal frequently came to confession on Saturday nights. This was because the ten minutes spent together in the confessional was part of our cover, and it was one of the few chances that we got to talk.
    We didn’t want to be seen in public together any more frequently than before. So we started skipping breakfast together at Trina’s. My explanation to Father Vance was that I was trying to improve my spiritual life, and was staying after Mass to make a thanksgiving. And I did kneel at the prie-dieu awhile, torturing myself about my sins.
    Instead, I went to Vidal’s house for supper a couple of times a week. Since Father Vance was so edified, and since I wasn’t eating breakfast with Vidal anymore, my pastor didn’t have any objections to this. I drove publicly right up to Vidal’s house and parked. He, I and Patti Ann had supper in the brightly-lighted kitchen, with all the shades up so the neighbors could see. Then, for fifteen precious minutes, we would go in the bedroom, close the door, make sure the shades were down. We would throw ourselves down on that box spring and mattress in front of that poster, to make love. Then I would take a quick shower so I wouldn’t smell of semen, being careful not to wet my hair. An hour later I would be back at the rectory. No lingering anywhere was one of the keys of our tactic.
    Patti Ann could be counted on not to say a word about what was going on. Not even the CIA could have gotten information out of her.
    Vidal got himself further into Father Vance’s good graces by offering to take charge of St. Mary’s seedy lawn and hedges. For no charge at all, he came up once a week, and mowed and clipped and raked. The place looked neater than it had since I came there. He even offered to whack down the lilac bushes that were overrunning the grounds, but Father balked at that.
    Vidal’s greatest coup, however, came when Father Vance actually asked him to take a look at his car. My pastor had always had his ancient 1955 black
    Buick serviced at the other garage in town, Farrell’s. The car had developed a mysterious tendency to veer to the left, and the left front end was dropped. When Farrell’s told him the trouble was a bent axle and that the job would cost him $250, Father was horrified. He brought the car to Snow’s and Vidal put it up on the lift. After tinkering with it, he announced that the trouble was a bent torsion bar, which would cost only $110. Father was delighted, especially when the car came back to him driving perfectly again.
    After that, I was sure that if Mrs. Shoup had actually come to Father and whispered to him that his curate was having a homosexual relationship with the garage mechanic, Father might not have believed her. Any parishioner who did things for St. Mary’s for free couldn’t possibly be that wicked.
    In fact, I was discovering that—providing we were careful—I had a terrible freedom to violate the century-old sexual ethic of that town.
    Clergymen of all faiths are often suspected of many other things, from hitting the bottle to embezzling church funds. Nowadays Catholics in particular keep a sharp eye on their priests’ tendency to go roving o£E after girls. But homosexuality is seldom suspected, rooted though it is in the priest’s liturgical loneliness and his being bound in a brotherhood that is exclusively male.
    I learned how free I was in August when Jamie Ogilvie’s parents started pushing me at him. They had noticed their teen-age son’s doglike attentiveness to me, and they interpreted it in a way that suited them. They were sure that Jamie had a vocation for the priesthood.
    After Sunday mass, they always lay in wait for me. “Father, why don’t you take Jamie backpacking?” “Father, if you go on a trip, why don’t you take Jamie with you?” “Father, please pay some extra attention to Jamie, maybe he’ll get a vocation.”
    To Jamie himself, they must have said the same thing. “Try to get Father to take you on trips.” If he had been a girl, his parents would never in a million years have shoved him at me like that. I later learned that this was a common experience, and a very hair-raising one, for priests who are closet gays. The temptations that Satan rigged up for Jesus, taking him up on the mount and showing him all the cities in the world to rule, are as nothing compared to