Aaron continues,"I was warned by another friend, also a priest, and also gay, and living with his younger boyfriend, which for me was not at all a big deal, since I really like to meet people where they are at and not put expectations on them, even if they are clergy. I only draw the line at using the clerical office as a cover for sexually exploiting others, and my friend was not doing this, very unlike Father Griffin. But he warned me about Griffin´s inherent talent at kneecapping his enemies. My friend even had the nerve to suggest that I seek out Father Griffin as a spiritual director. If only you could see his face once I stopped laughing!
"Well, I found out soon enough. In February of 1997, we had suffered almost a decade of this nonsense. And I was not having the best of times either. The little Christian community I had been part of had broken up two years before, and I was feeling quite rudderless. I was living on my own again, in a small apartment in East Vancouver, and working in health care as a home care worker. But rents were already getting high, and my employers were very parsimonious about hours, so I could barely eat and pay the rent. But I was also going through a creatively fecund period in my life. I was writing and publicly reading epic poem cycles that were receiving widening acclaim, as well as painting and marketing my art, even if it never was quite enough to make a living.
"A fellow artist invited me to a party in his house that he shared with his wife. To my shock and horror, I re-encountered more than twenty years worth of my rather twisted and complex personal history as represented in at least a dozen different people I had known, worked with, been friends with and had fought with, and loved at different periods, but it was so surreal that I left the party traumatized.
"It was during this period of peak vulnerability when Griffin finally struck back at me, and with deadly force..."
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