Thirteen Crucifixions 33

Halfway through yet another beer, Bryan was beginning to realize that he must make a decision.  He hadn’t spoken to Rochelle since before she’d had her surgery last year.  In more ways than he could imagine, Bryan had helped her.  They always turned on him eventually.  Or they abandoned him.  He had passed the day drinking.  Margery with those staring pale eyes of hers had truly frightened him back in the Pitstop Café.  That stupid fool of a psychiatrist of hers should never have permitted Margery to go off her meds.  She had far too soon left the House of Unconditional Love.  She had done very well under his tutelage.  One year after Margery had abandoned Bryan, Love House was no more.  The funding had been withdrawn  There had been complaints.  Not exactly scandals.  One or two younger male residents had complained that Bryan was showing them an excess of attention.  But he had done as much for Margery, who’d complained that he was using her as a decoy, since his heart really lay with the boys who were under his care.

            Margery had become strong, powerful.  She frightened him.  He felt somehow answerable to her, which made him feel rather creepy.  And that boyfriend of hers, Dwight.  What kind of power did he have over her?  Glen was becoming distant.  Dear sweet Glen.  Bryan’s protegee, whose mind, whose very worldview Bryan had done so much to form and develop.  Poor boy, he had been so lost after surviving that fire, so needful of a helpful hand for rebuilding his life.  He had needed religion, and St. Jude’s and the high church liturgy had surely been of service to Glen, who no longer seemed interested in attending mass.  And what now the condition of his soul as he kept missing the nourishing Blessed Sacrament?  They no longer had their weekly coffee chats. Glen had shown forth very well the fruit of Bryan’s labour.  Unlike Margery, who was now an extreme disappointment.  They were friends now, Glen and Margery.  She had led him astray.  They were conspiring against him?  Certainly not Glen’s idea, who was pliable, easily led.  Margery had control over him.  You could never win with a woman.

            A most unpleasant spectacle, her going on like that this evening, publicly airing their dirty linen. He blamed this on Margery’s lack of religion.  She had always resisted going to St. Jude’s, she above the other residents of Love House.  She had seemed entirely oblivious to her need of religion.  Margery was like—a witch?  More like an ancient priestess, perhaps a Delphic Oracle.  During her single and only visit to St. Jude’s Margery protested that contrary to Anglican policy there were no woman priests at St. Jude’s.  Not at St. Jude’s, Bryan had replied, never at St. Jude’s.  She was a casualty of radical lesbianism feminism.  Ungrateful, like so many people these days.  They had no moral values.  Bryan, at least, contrary to the gossip that had circulated about him, had never once taken sexual advantage of the young men in his charge.  He had remained faithfully and obstinately celibate.  In spite of his alcoholism.  He had never entered a Twelve Step Program.  Drink was his single weakness. He did try to control it.  At least he had values, having grown up with the best of religious traditions, being a fourth-generation Anglo-Catholic.  To his horror, he had watched an entire generation of young people ruined by godless secular humanism.  He only wanted to do his part, however small, to heal the damage.  If only the House of Unconditional Love had not been sacrificed to the funding rollbacks.  He could have helped save so many casualties of post-modern godlessness.

            From the handsome young waiter Bryan ordered another beer.  In contrast to his pretty bum, he seemed to have rather a surly disposition.  Like so many young homosexuals.  He thought he might see Rochelle in here.  He had lived with Bryan from before his surgery.  A breathtakingly beautiful young hustler whom Bryan had swept off the street and into his beneficent care.  He had always been there for him—and even though he’d often seen him fully naked, Bryan had still taken the utmost care to lay not a finger on him.  Then Donny began to wear make-up and dresses, eventually going in for not quite the full surgery, from which he emerged armed simultaneously with 38D breasts and an eight-inch cock.  And an evil disposition.  Brutally, Donny, now Rochelle, turned on Bryan.  Tonight, Bryan was going to track her down and teach her a lesson she would never forget.