Sweetmeats (ROUND 9)
Let’s workshop this prose poem (which comes from the story "Mario Mangione") that details the step-by-step grooming tactics of priest salivating over an obese and vulnerable altar boy.
scent of the day: Heritage EDP, by Guerlain.—Opening with a barbershop-inspired fizzy bergamot and juniper berry (a nod, albeit with the lavender-tonka-rich echoes of Jicky, to Habit Rouge’s citrusy-elegance), Heritage EDP—whose subtle throughline of smoke and dirtiness, loudest at first blast, distantly resembles the pickly skank we get in Nishane’s Afrika Olifant or Bortnikoff’s Mysterious Oud)—deepens after the first few minutes into a sandalwood-cedarwood interplay with a patchouli so opulent that it sets a benchmark (exuding ambery warmth with an almost creamy chocolate effect from its synergy with vanilla that almost seems like a watercolor ode to Shalimar)—the overall effect being a spicey woods classic that, however non-appealing this might sound, smells to me like the powdered skin of old man and brings to mind images of earth-tone cardigans and loafers (even if worn not by those doddering in nursing homes but rather, as a sort of the performative uniform, by woke effeminate hipsters pushing “antiracist”-DEI agendas against “the scourge of whiteness,” agendas that serve to setback black dignity and keep black people on a plantation of dependency and grievance where excellence gets reduced to (1) shaking down the white world and (2) reinforcing the regressive and self-fulfilling lie on which the shakedowns are predicated: that white supremacy, baked into the DNA of this country, has only grown).
Sweetmeats
From the bearded seal bloodbaths of the Arctic ice drifts, we shift now to our own human world. For all our pretensions to civilization, tooth-and-claw instincts—undiminished, if not riled all the more, by the self-shame frenzy to conceal them—tinge the private nooks of even our most tranquil sanctuaries. Observe the delicate genesis of a chilling predation neither whose familiarity, nor whose stretches of boredom (too vast for real-time coverage), detract from its spectacularity. Rarely successful absent the foresight of a cunning mind (whose willpower must be rigid enough to plod onward for the long haul and yet nimble enough to course correct for the inevitable curveballs), it is a calculated hunt that pushes delayed gratification to limits never before seen on our planet—limits surpassed perhaps only in the algorithmic wake of our AI progeny.
Light-hearted interaction marks the first tentative taps on the sphincter-tight jar lid of trust. The boy—for Father Peady no more than a cherry-glazed sweetmeat in a confectioner’s pick-me window—stands out, his sleepless eyebags dark as Halloween, due to the very trifecta of vulnerability that has his peers pointing the way, through bullying, for the needy priest: (1) broken home pickled in enough alcoholic neglect for more than one cigarette mattress fire; (2) only child starved as much for attention and belonging as for the confidence and the skill boosts of sibling competition; (3) fat as all honeybun hell. Best-foot-forward compliments spill organically from Father Peady’s lips—bridled, of course, from love-bombing extremes (this is not, after all, amateur hour). “Oh wow, a true artist in the making!” he murmurs, the click of his loafers coming to an abrupt stop, in mock study of the boy’s colored-pen drawings of ninja combat, their school-counselor-worthy volumes of blood (warping and bleeding through the paper) enough to make Father Peady glance over his shoulder for rival sharks circling among the clergy—chief among them Father Phiely, whose dozens-of-deaf-ears nickname (“Touchy”) both adolescent and adult gossipers alike tuck with a chef’s kiss between the “Father” and the “Phiely.”
Such verbal nudges evolve to shooting netless hoops behind the rectory in what outwardly appears an overdue intervention to get the boy more physically active. Only a few bounces into their first game, however, the world beyond our man reveals itself as a co-conspirator, thwacking an already entrapping dessert with a sloppy-toppy of fortune so catastrophic to long-con restraint, so ruinous to the delicate dance of edging foreplay, that—by the too-good-to-be-true scrunch of his brow (pure candid-camera incredulity)—it is a miracle Father Peady does not yell out (as if to some Truman Show audience) “What’s the goddamn catch here?” Repeatedly defaulting—like a one-trick pony (but one hell of a trick it is!)—to the post-up play that would send even hesitant priests into game-on mode (clerical collar tightening with each carotid thump), look who becomes temptress Eve incarnate on the court. With an instinctive flair for courtship all his own (akin perhaps, but only perhaps, to the songbird flaring its plumage without conscious aim), the boy himself twerks an otherwise Hallmark scenario into something just shy of afternoon delight: ram-ramming his jiggly ass (back arched like a pro) into a bulging, but best believe unbudging (even slightly prodding), wall of pelvis jutted forward beneath hands high in hook-shot defense—the whole sweaty tango, the lip bites and the heartening affirmations, torn right out of an Atlanta nightclub (were not, of course, each promising flicker of synchronization ruined by the rhythm of Caucasoid hips). “There you go!” Only loosely paralleled in the nonhuman world (like when cleaner fish venture into the mouths that eat them), where else—sea or savannah, jungle or sky—does one witness prey offering themselves up like this? Such asking-for-it ass thrusts (which have Father Peady ever on the verge of going skins, no matter his flab)—thrusts violent enough to make any other defender reach for the jockstrap; hardcore enough to make a Goebbels out of any mother who suggests her daughter’s self-administered cocktail of molly and crotchless jeans were to blame for the bar-bathroom rape—nearly place the boy in the pantheon of nature’s most haunting oddities: a female serial killer videotaping each rape-decapitation; a black American in a suicide cult guzzling colloidal silver each day before the salvation comet; a giraffe stomping its own calf into a pulp of death on the just-in-case chance of injury after a brush with a lion. “Ooh, there you go! Yeah, drive it in!”
Then comes the flow of golden handcuffs. Augustus-Gloop chocolate bars (insurance, lest exercise stir any notions of escaping the loner shell), mega nougat-filled fuckers, slipped from cassock pockets (that worm-tongue incantation “KING SIZE” girthy and lurid with the weight of double entendre) and landing like a sly drug deal in the chunky little hand well below the neck-craning hyperbole of look-both-ways theatrics, unnecessary but precedent-setting, to ensure no one sees—eyes, always the eyes (groping eyes that really take you in), heavy with the weight of conspiracy as the middle finger of the hand-off hand strokes the sweaty palm of the recipient hand (the universal sign). Against such a calorie-dense baseline marquee gifts shine: a paperback version of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, a little nudge from Father Peady’s favorite author to prime the boy to enter Joseph Campbell’s heroic cycle (where answering the call of adventure requires status-quo-breaking bravery, not to mention a wise mentor to guide the hand down into the nether regions); a “sacred” rosary, talisman on the hero’s journey (kissed and handed over with a mysterious, because unwarranted, smile of conspiracy—a foreboding smile of stringy salivation, as if some covenant had just been made). Although not preplanned in fiddle-crab finger deliberation at some drawing board (but rather—like how God, too perfect to need any prior blueprint, created everything in an eternal instant of impromptu—simply an organic matter of tried-and-true instinct), so unbroken becomes the procession of courtship offerings over the months that anyone could predict the effect of its sudden cessation: agitation if not downright panic, the once-showered recipient driven from an inner need—a self-fueled furnace sparked into life like a nebula condensed at the protostar cusp of nuclear fusion—to figure out what he can do to return to the fold of good graces.
Ambush patience rivaling that of Sauron (a self-control conjured by some alchemy beyond just age-amplified phronesis and age-dampened gonads), soon enough one-on-one time extends beyond lap-twerk b-ball (where the cock-blocking eyes of nuns and rival suitors never seem to quit) and the occasional rec-room ping pong (where the maladroit boy, in what amounts to an erection-killer of frustration, cannot sustain a volley to save his life). Private Latin tutoring (thick with honeyed praise—honeyed, though, in the skanky-civet way of YSL Kouros—when it comes to “handsome” penmanship), that becomes “[their] thing” in the sanctum of the backroom (under the staged presence of wine bottles) where no one can bother them, “alone together”—shoulder to shoulder, the connection much harder and hotter and heavier than pre-mass preparation of sacred vessels (where fingertips merely graze). But even here, however much the temperature rises watching the boy with the tip of his tongue teasing out just so (sometimes even curling upon surprise corner chocolate) as he concentrates on small translations (“Puer est dulcis” and “Corpus est dulce” and writes out the gender-mismatch reason why it is wrong to say “Puer est dulce”), one must be disciplined enough not to veer just yet too far from mere verbal affirmation. Father Peady’s reliability in that regard, his composure in not toppling the under-construction tower of trust (however erotic—Dionysian—it sometimes feels to demolish what we work so hard for), stands among the best in the Rushmore echelon.
Kids are perceptive, though. They can sense, if only preverbally, whether the praise is all talk. Dumb as they so often appear (blushing and stuttering when the math teacher calls upon them), one must especially watch out for kids made insecure by homes of dysfunction. Those are the ones, as in the case at hand, who see the clinamen-spoiling hidden variables, flinching at phantom warnings—yes, even through slack-jaw meditation in the glow of the nanny tube—long before the Newport sets the mattress on fire or the vomit drowns the mother in sleep or—from what would seem to unweathered minds but a random swerve out of some Lucretian nowhere—the bottle shatters against the wall. Our boy turns his mother’s chin each night to the side (his own psyche still scarred from the gurgles of drowning) and puts the lighter out of reach (his own blanket still charred from putting out the last fire). Our boy cleans up the shattered bottles, one eye on cartoons as he squats with his makeshift dustpan of junk mail (plumber ass crack only deepening the maternal grimace). He has taken to squeezing a shard in these moments and, in the micro-privacy of a centering zoom-in, beholding the flow of his own blood—a focus-nuzzling behavior (the candle flame and mantra of the meditator) completely understandable, just as is his chronic nail-biting (the asymmetrical ravage of his front teeth telling a similar story, vivid even for the quick glance of a stranger, to the dog’s ever-wet bald spot). But just as intrusive thoughts still render the meditator’s “single-point” focus more like the flatness of a table (that is, strictly-speaking untrue), the concentration on gathering up every rogue shard—even coupled with the cutter-game of redirection—never fully tunes out the tired barrage of introspection-spurring slurs: “Shoulda neva had yo’ fat ass.” More often than not accompanied by another work-undoing bottle (dig-a-hole-only-to-fill-that-hole logic straight out of Dostoyevsky’s nightmares), these taunting slurs—superfluous guarantors of the boy’s baseline mania of hypervigilance—only further accelerate that neurotic feedback loop where headiness hypertrophies as confidence atrophies; where the lower the confidence drops the lower the threat threshold drops, which ramps up hypervigilance to such hectic proportions that eventually even what well-adjusted people take in stride as normal opportunities for growth become threats to avoid (but whose avoidance, of course, only ensures the lack of skills that corroborate the lack of confidence, perpetuating the cycle).
Testifying to what—like the magic of the wandering eye itself or, perhaps better here, like the unsettling genius of the spider’s web—renders divine design difficult to deny, in Father Peady even the most sensitive and skittish of such high-strung boys meet their match. Actually walking the walk, Father Peady elevates his prey through “duties for the select few.” Beyond helping count weekly donations—again among the wine bottles—in the backroom (where the boy once innocently thought they burned all the money), the boy even gets to assist in the blessing of holy oils—commanded, as if by a stage director in a theater of audio pornography, to “blow” over the oils: “Blow it good. Don’t be afraid. . . . Harder! Make ripples, like the holy spirit over the sea”). Rougher knife taps of edging foreplay escalate through compliments on how well these duties—these “well-earned privileges”—are being carried out, how the boy has “defied all expectation.” Sure, all this talk of being “special” is straight out of the groomer’s guidebook. But there is good reason why it appears in every edition. Whispered benedictions of chosenness—no doubt coupled, if only we could take a peek behind the priest’s skull (especially with the benefit of hindsight), with the fantasies that would curdle holy water—slide like communion wine down the throat of a drunk parched for divine approval: “Such natural grace must make the archangels blush”; “God himself must have guided such a pure servant's heart to our parish.”
Ingratiation with the boy’s family (mother, dog with countable ribs) is a chore, but a must. Ecce homo as he chokes down dinners of hamburger helper, dinners of desiccated meatloaf hit with a cold line of generic ketchup on top—the mother’s attempt, wasted (and to a net-loss degree, like the air freshener that only puts a sickly spin on the shit-hard carpet), to pretend that this is not a daily dollar-menu home. Behold his smile, strained with every forkful, as he showers the single-mother with applause for the “remarkable parenting of this special boy.” Offering to tinker with the fritzing furnace (“As long as my little helper’s willing to get dirty with me”) and even dipping into donation pots to pay up their back rent (“Oh it’s nothing, but I do expect”—he shoots the boy a wink—“this young man here to work off at least some of the debt”)—all the investment of time and energy, every brick in the wall of trust (or at least silence), proves worthwhile (hard work paying off, as if the world really were run by a grand justice). Extra-ecclesiastical one-on-one time of unfettered access—bowling and pizza, even Star Wars movie nights stretching past midnight—soon raises no eyebrows. At the very worst, any family members would feel weird enough about finding it weird that they would never open their mouths. And what family members were there anyway, aside from the mom who cannot afford to hear any warnings from within; who, even if her intuition has not been drowned by gratitude (easily washed down with his regular host gift of jug wine), definitely does not want to bite the hand that feeds her?
So much depends (just like that red wheelbarrow glazed with rain) on the priest’s finesse, of course. But provided we are dealing with a talented hunter, the wedge of isolation can be hammered down after enough of these special outings (these, so the priest more and more starts to call them, “date nights”): a glut of duties and even manufactured emergencies, like altar preparation and cleanup before morning mass because of “overnight vandalism” (vandalism conveniently sexual in orientation, like penises painted on saints statues)—demands on time that keep the prey distant from the already thin flocks of family and friends.
And what would a good grooming story be without the encouragement of secret-keeping activities, each shared transgression a thread in the spider's web: sneaking an extra slice of pizza, watching a movie few parents would allow, whispered jokes lacing scripture with innuendo? Sips of sacramental zinfandel shared behind the drawn blinds of private chambers is the paradigm example, a maneuver tried-and-true—the locking of the door beforehand, one bolt two bolt, carried out with loud theatrics to test where the boy is at in regards to fight or flight (as if testing were even needed, the way the boy has only gotten more aggressive with his posting up in the paint).
And speaking of testing, the physical boundaries must be tested: hands lingering too long under the pretense of adjusting altar robes, extra hugs (and of lifting proportion), roughhousing that only gets rougher (and that culminates in tickle sadism and even a few nipple twists), shoulder massages, compliments shifting more toward physical features—and also, the best priests taking care not to let the direction of touch become too lopsided, lubing the boy’s hands with blessing oil (a breaking point for young lions still clumsy with their game, but not for our man) and then guiding those hands over the priest’s fantasy-wrinkled forehead until the boy gets the hint (reciprocation becoming self-driven) and the priest can let go to grip the boy’s shoulders in false prayer (tightening just enough to make resistance feel unholy).
Backing off from physical contact (“I’m sorry Georgie, but Father Peady’s just too busy for basketball”) has long proven a solid tactic at this point to keep the boy squirming in hunger for redemptive contact: combing through memories to discern what sin might have cost him his special status, wondering what other boy might have the man’s attention, until perhaps—granted sufficient drawing out of touch denial—the desperation to put and end to the withdrawal himself becomes too much. During this calculated distance, the priest—if there is anything to nominative determinism (and assuming, of course, he has the courage to pursue his prize beyond fantasy)—will be adding even stickier threads to the web of dependency. Confidant for every locker room anxiety, every struggle at home, every—you can bet your bottom dollar—pubescent dream, the priest will position himself—with the help of double-entendre endcaps on each confession (“I’ll always try to get you, Georgie” and “You’re safe with me, no matter how dirty it gets” and “You can always open yourself for me, even if it hurts”)—as (and soon Georgie will be saying the line himself) “the only one who truly understands.”
All the while the sexual undertow will strengthen, dragging even the strongest swimmers into mature needs. Bawdy jokes ramp up in graphic detail. The most pornographic parts of the Bible take centerstage. The most graphic Latin epigrams from Catullus and Martial become the material to translate. Movie-night nudity begins with the quick topless scene in Airplane (1980), which Father Peady suggests was a vetting oversight on his part: “Didn’t know that was there”—adding after the apology, “But you’re okay with that kinda stuff, right?” Soon, always with veneer of education legitimacy, the rustle of popcorn fingers suddenly settles in the glow of bush and shaft in Quest for Fire (1982): “an unfiltered depiction of early human life.” In what no doubt results in Father Peady’s internal homunculus performing a Tiger Woods fist pump (driving the elbow down to his side in a victory celebration), the popcorn bowl—despite being buttered to all fat-kid hell—is forgotten altogether, on the verge of spilling even, during the on and on of violent clit-suckling and cum-shooting orgies in Caligula (1979): “an unfiltered depiction of paganism run amok.” Then suddenly, in “a film that illustrates the disastrous consequences of not turning the other cheek,” the two “couch buddies” find themselves—at least one of them does—swept in a vortex of titillation and revulsion (a mild approximation perhaps to the emotional confusion sexual assault victims feel as nauseating orgasms gush forth “involuntarily” from their bodies: “Ooh, you wet now bitch!”): Monica Bellucci’s drawn-out anal rape in Irreversible (2002), a ten-minute sequence that—especially with the moans and tears coupled with the punches and taunts of the assailant (“I’m gonna blast your ass” and “If you get shit on my dick, you're dead”)—would have the response needle on any penile plethysmograph jammed at the upper limits of red.
Discussion of sexual topics, disguised as guidance (or just “talking through some of the heavy stuff” of movie night), is crucial here. It feeds right into the priest taking that leap (relatively small if he put in that work) of getting the boy to expose his genitals and, as a show of good faith (if there is reluctance), pulling his out first in what is packaged as a “return to the shamelessness of Eden, the way God intended us.” “Look,” the priest (Father Peady) will say, “wet dreams are completely normal. Liquid comes out even in daytime. The process is automatic. It’s nothing to feel shame about.” He will then at that point take the boy’s hand to his balls. “I want you to feel how it all just spasms. Watch.” And then as Father Peady reaches the edge (quickly, no doubt, after all these months of foreplay”), he will convey—in a tone that ever so sightly crosses the line (from clinical distance into oohing-aahing surrender)—one hell of a command in the form of a question: “How you gonna feel it if you don’t squeeze? Really get in there. There we go. Squeeze. Ooh, here’s where you squeeze hard”—his tone here, restrained by nothing but whisper, shifting momentarily deep into oohing-aahing surrender—“hard as can be.” And in the wake of the wild eruptions, whose correlated moans and taunting mumbles he holds back with a composure meant to show that this is just as normal as eating, he will say “See how you helped Father Peady? You got it all out. That’s a big big help. It helps me focus—.” He will give a post-cum exhale: “pfhhhhhooo,” savoring what he just received. “It helps me focus,” he will point up at the crucifix, “on what matters. . . . Just as we have to eat to focus on our studies, we gotta get this all out. Otherwise we find ourselves distracted. . . . So now you’re gonna let Father Peady help you. . . . No, watch. Just a few kisses should be good enough. I don’t think you’re ready for any of that squeezing! Here take the oil and go back and forth and I’ll just kiss down here. Right here, see?”
It cannot be all “See, how we can help each other?” In an ideal world maybe, but not here. Guilt and fear need to be instilled: from the old “We’re both sinners but we at least have each other” and “You wouldn’t want to disappoint God or me, would you?” to the equally old “No one would believe you over me anyway” and “I’ll make sure your family knows just how dirty their little boy can be”). Every case is different just like every child: some require drugs, others just a lot of camaraderie and heartfelt discussion. Regardless, it is often good to intersperse confusing counternarrative—saying something like: “In a way, as long as we ask to be forgiven, it can’t be so wrong. It’s love in the end, right?” The procedure is not fully linear. The priest often needs to circle back to earlier steps. He does so expertly, for example, by asking the boy “right?” at this point. Who would not feel special when an ordained priest looks to you for answers?
But however much the path might involve loop-de-loops, the jar—in what seems, depending on one’s perspective, no time—is fully pried open if the hunt is successful. We find Father Peady in the anechoic vestry, lit by flickering votive candles. Only this evening he is not changing into ceremonial garbs but rather naked on his back demanding another baby arm be driven up the pipe (“Ooh yeah, little piggy gonna play in that slop”) and demanding (on threat of violence implied by the snarl of teeth) that there be no disruption in the sadistic rhythm of hard headbutts and stretchy slurps of the shitty scrotum—headbutt to slurp, headbutt to slurp (“Fuck those bad balls up good, little pig”). Closing in on the point of no return, he clutches the boy’s hair—the scalp-locked stuff of dark-web rape porn—and uses the little mouth as a headbanging stroker. “Stretch it boy. Stretch it way the fuck out.” The command here, hissed with the rare curse from Father Peady’s mouth (indicative of serious business, of go time), is for the boy to drive his palms and forearms outward, his fingers pressed together inside for fulcrum leverage, against the various contractile and puckering and speculum-fighting structures from the anus on up. This half-a-minute fury—and all the priestly taunts (“Ooh you’re going to fucking hell for this, pig”)—we can assume, at the point, the boy is already well familiar with. The bar of depravity does, however, tend to recede. And on this particular occasion, so we might assume, those peach-fuzz lips are smooshed in the final stroke so deep into middle-aged mons pubis hair and unguent fatty tissue that Father Peady’s love effluvia—over a week in the building, we can also assume given the tremendous patience show hitherto—burst from the boy’s nostrils. Held down without breath, a surprise chucks up and out as well from those same gasping nostrils: the mandarin oranges and grade-B beef of Taco Tuesday.
Such an ecstatic crescendo, cleaned up with low-capillary-action chalice linen by the boy himself (ashamed for losing his stomach), will likely have—for a tango team that has gone this far already—two big downstream implications. First, the pinching closed of those nostrils—that will be a thing from here on: “I want my love swallowed, pig!” Second, the dawning of a new kink expectation: vomit-filled grand finales of chef’s-kiss throat convulsion (the same penis-milking panic contractions that, to cite the old Parisian brothel move, come from the cloaca of the neck-wrung hen)—that will also be a thing. And guess what? The non-appearance of vomit, once an aberration and now a norm, will be framed by Father Peady as disloyalty and so as grounds for ramping everything way up: forcing the shattered relic of a boy to keep a Mary figurine up his ass throughout the school day (a sort of modern twist on hairshirt asceticism), or holding the boys face in the bird bath of bubbling holy water while Father Peady pumps out anal vinegar strokes that on one occurrence, so let us assume, draw out so on and on that the boy needs CPR rescue breaths—Father Peady becoming more of an earthly savior than ever before!
And yes, all of it will be caught on video: starting from the first mutual masturbation session, which almost seems sweet in comparison to the wood-creaking shit and blood fuck sessions to come (where Father Peady, like clockwork whenever “that fat back” is arched just right, will start mumble-singing in sync with his rhythm (as sweat drips from his forehead) “♪Something tells me I’m into something good♪” from the Harmans Hermits’s classic hit “I'm into Something Good")—all of it. In the grand impermanence (and now that footage is no longer grainy), who could resist? Father Peady, this way, gets later spank-bank material that doubles as blackmail material: “What would mom think, what would your buddies think, seeing this little cum-drinking, shit-eating, piggy?”
https://www.celebritymoviearchive.com/tour/source.php/5205/p
https://forcedcinema.net/video/irreversibles-rape-scene/