April 10, 2010; On puppies and popes

Yesterday, I was just snoozing in the kitchen, pretty much minding my own business. Boo-Boo was away at a meeting, Skeeter was at the clinic. I was alone and I liked it. Then Skeet came home, grabbed me up, threw himself into the La-Z-Boy and started sobbing into my fur.

I was feeling really itchy, didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say, and he was starting to knock the wind out of me he was holding me so tightly so I burbled, "So! Pope Benedict! He's a nut, eh!"

He laughed and—thank Keerist!—loosened the death hold he had on me. He was still giggling, though wiping his eyes, and all this meant I would have to say something else. (I so missed being alone, snoozing, in the kitchen.) "So what happened? Did some burly male nurse violate your personhood?"

"I wish."

"Well, what then?"

He sighed deeply and said, "Somehow another deep wound has opened up."

"Deep?"

"Four centimeters."

I snerfed angrily and said, "Could you forget the commie measurements and tell me in American, please!"

"About an inch, an inch and a half."

"That doesn't sound so bad," I said.

"Well, it ain't good!"

"Granted," I said lamely. Finally he just sighed. "Shall we talk about something other than your rotting, quasi-cadaver?" He agree laughing and it was a real laugh and I was deeply relieved. This touchy-feely stuff, especially between two males, makes me profoundly uncomfortable. So we did talk about the pope. "Why are Catholics so retarded?"

"It's in our genes," he said.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't know."

"I don't brag about it," he said, "and besides, I'm actually an undeclared apostate."

"Undeclared?"

"Too lazy to do the paperwork."

"Tell me," I went on, "the sick sex...is it because you consider it so wrong that you all want it so badly?"

"Hey! It's not like they're all diddling altar boys!"

"But management is!" I snorted. "Sort of makes it official, wouldn't you say? Sanctioned, almost. Nearly a ritual! Like communion. 'Would you like some jizz on that wafer?'"

"Oh...my...FUCK!" he said, horrified and delighted at once. Sort of the same noise you'd get from a schoolgirl who's just learned you can't get pregnant giving a blow job. I went on, "What I don't get is why the true story...the bigger story...is ignored, so far."

"Bigger?" he asked.

"Bigger as in broader, not more important. Let's face it: if pedophilia is a part of the clerical culture—even if it's taboo and spoken of in hushed tones—then surely homosexuality has to be a much bigger part. All those seminaries full of young, healthy and horny men! It must feel absolutely normal to fool around with Brother Tom's Harry Dick. You get what I'm saying?"

"Not sure..." Skeeter mumbled and added, "I'm not sure I like where you're taking this," and then, à propos of not much, said, "I nearly went into the priesthood."

I snerfed at this as it was sort of making my point, but I went on. "If the pervy parish priest is boinking die kinder, so to speak, and, I'll cede, even the queerest of queer boys knows that's wrong, wrong, wrong and is not vaguely interested in doing it—then, don't you think that in an all-male, youthful and fairly virile community being a fag—

"—gay—"

"—gay would be seen as absolutely okay?"

"But the Bible," he said.

"Bible Schmible! Find me the part that says fucking deaf kids is fine, yet somehowa whole bunch of them got cornholed."

"Hm," he said, smiling strangely. It looked like he wasn't listening to me at all and was instead imagining what his life would have been like had he become a semanarian, the dink.

"Blessed are the chicken hawks, for they shall inherit the preschools," I mumbled. Again he shriek/laughed with horror/delight and hugged me hard. I grunted uncomfortably.

"You know," he said, "back when there were actually very out queer popes."

"Nothing surprises me. The minute you take something personal like spirituality—and I mean the-colour-of-the-inside-of-your-foreskin personal—and try to organize it, give it rules, leaders and call it a religion—something is bound to go terribly wrong; men in dresses in charge and women in burkas being called nuns, f'r'instance."

"So dogs don't believe?"

"Oh! We believe! But we never, ever, talk about it!"

He said, "Hm," and then there was a long, long silence.

Finally I said, "The soul's not made for Facebook or Twitter."

"Thus spaketh Pope Leo," he said and soon we nodded off to sleep and all was good.