The Thanatos Syndrome

white-lipped, blood pressure kiting over three hundred, of course said nothing. But after the ball both the queen and her mother received cards of acknowledgment from the Palatine Fathers of Fond du Lac that thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Simon R. Smith, thirty Masses were to be said for each, sixty Masses in all.
    Honor thy father and mother. I didn’t exactly. I am not proud of it. It sounds as if I’m saying that my father was a phony and my mother a shrew. Well, yes. On the other hand, no. To be truthful, I didn’t exactly honor my father and mother. But no, it was sadder than that. I felt sorry for them. How many other people, I wondered, were messed up for life? Most, I later discovered. But yes, it’s true, I was an ingrate. To tell the whole truth, I was a spiteful boy. I couldn’t stand what my mother called religion. I couldn’t stand my father’s fecklessness and his everlasting talk about the loftier things in life, Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Art, the Soaring of the Spirit in the Realm of Music. Would you believe I couldn’t stand all that Catholic business, holy cards, candles, rosaries, my mother’s flying novenas and Nine First Fridays. I couldn’t stand Holy Cross High School—except for football. I played tackle and we beat Jesuit, who thought they were the hottest stuff in town. I liked to hit, as they say. And I liked the science courses—no bull, just the facts and verifiable theory, no praying for anyone’s “intentions,” no swooning over Puccini. Actually, I couldn’t stand Louisiana, and New Orleans, with its self-conscious cultivation of being the Big Easy, its unbuttoned y’all-come bonhomie, good eats and phony French laissez le bon temps rouler, let the good times roll, which masked a cold-blooded marriage of moneymaking and social climbing, rotten politics and self-indulgence. Don’t misunderstand me. If I was anti-Catholic, I was also anti-Protestant. They were, if anything, worse. Actually there was not much left of Protestantism except a dislike for Catholics and a fondness for their festival. For, though they had nothing to do with Ash Wednesday, indeed had not the faintest notion of what it was about, they took to Fat Tuesday like ducks to water, in fact took it over. Worst of all were the local village atheists, professor-philosophers, ACLU zealots, educated Episcopal-type unbelievers, media types, NBC anchormen, New York Times pundits, show-biz gurus. If one can imagine anything worse than Jerry Falwell governing the country, how about Norman Lear? Love your fellow man, the Lord said. That’s asking a lot. Frankly, I found my fellow man, with few exceptions, either victims or assholes. I did not exclude myself. The only people I got along with were bums, outcasts, pariahs, family skeletons, and the dying.
    What a background for a priest-to-be, you say. You say charitably, Well, at least you changed, became a priest, and ran the hospice here. I didn’t change. Does anyone really change? I am still a spiteful man. The Lord puts up with all types. Look at his disciples. A sorry crew, mostly office seekers and social climbers. They could all have come from New Orleans’s Ninth Ward. Down there in the world I had no use for my fellow priests or parishioners. I had use for the bottle. As one alcoholic to another, I’m sure I’m not telling you a secret—the secret of all alcoholics—when I tell you that the bottle enabled me to enjoy my spite. I despised TV, stereo-V, yet I watched it by the hour. Do you know how I spent my evenings? Not exactly like St. Francis praising Brother Night. Watching reruns of Dallas, which I despised, despised every minute of it, despising myself, having six drinks and enjoying my spite. At every commercial I’d jump up and have a stiff drink—to stand Dallas and my fellow priests.
    You’re shaking your head: But you did run the hospice, you’re saying, didn’t you, and did a good job, before they took it away from you. You took in the dying and the unwanted, like Mother Teresa.
    Don’t kid yourself. I don’t know about Mother Teresa, but I did it because I liked it, not for love of the wretched. Didn’t your mentor Dr. Freud say that we all have our own peculiar ways of gratifying ourselves? Don’t knock it. Yes, I took in the dying. Do you want to know why? Because dying people were the only people I could stand. They were