The Peacock 85

 

"His name was Cosme?"

"His name was Cosme," Carl says.

"But that was my name.  Today, it was my name, anyway."  I am back in that place again, that realm where anything could and probably will happen.  I am trembling.  This is really too much.

"How are you, right now, Christopher?"

"Frightened.  Really scared.  The illness has returned.  I feel so ashamed."

"There is nothing to be ashamed about," Carl says, cradling the battered old journal in his hands.  "This isn't illness, Christopher.  This is your gift."

"I hope you're right.  Only, what does this mean?"

"I think it means, that it is a very good thing that you are here. We need you here."

"Have you read Cosme's journal?"

"I can't."

"Why can't you?"

"It´s written in Spanish.  All of it."

"It's written in Spanish."

"That is what I said, Christopher.  That is exactly what I said."

"Well, you know what that means." 

"Tomorrow, let's make an appointment with Jesús.  We are going to need his help."

"Yes, we are."

"Hey, Carl, can I ask you something please?"

"Ask away."

"I know it's late.  It's what, ten thirty, already.  But please, can you stay a bit longer, please. I feel dreadfully afraid right now of being left alone."

"That sits well with me.  Listen, how about Kenny's journal."

"Would you like me to start reading it to you?"

"Yes.  please."

    

The Peacock 84

 Carl gently hands me my backpack.  I'm sure I didn't forget it.  I always carry this with me.  It's become like a talisman, and I never tire of reading his words.  Yes, it's in the very bottom, the familiar texture of the book cover caresses my fingers in friendship.  It's a small diary, or sketchbook, worn black cover and filled with yellowing white pages, all scrawled to the very final page with the ink scribblings of my dead friend.  

"This is Kenny's diary."  Carl seems to be awaiting my next sentence.

"He started keeping it during his final year."  Carl still hasn't changed that look of silent expectancy.

"I didn't know he was keeping a diary.  Kenny never told me.  And neither did we find it when we were clearing his earthly possessions out of his bedroom."  Carl is clearly waiting for the next shoe to drop.  Why should I be surprised?

"During Kenny's final visitation with me, he told me where to look for his diary.  It was in a corner in the closet I had never thought of looking in.  There was a set of canvas pockets hanging in the far wall of his closet  He said it would be at the very bottom, the pocket second from the left.  And there it was."

Carl says, "You mean to tell me that only after he died, and had been appearing to you for a while, then Kenny revealed to you where he kept his diary?"

"You don't have to believe me, you know."

Carl is smiling.  "But I do believe you."

"You're not being merely ironical?"

"Not even remotely."  Carl gets up and goes to the desk.  He pulls open the middle drawer and pulls out a rather similar, but much older and more battered diary.  He returns to his chair with it, letting it rest on his knee. 

"Do you know how I found it?"

"How?"

"The night before my dad shot himself, I was sleeping in this room.  I had a dream.  This young man with brown hair and brown eyes, he looked rather like you, Christopher, appeared to me in a dream.  He told me to open that same drawer.  I had never rummaged through that desk before.  There was something about it that frightened me.  But this man insisted.  So, the next morning, I pulled open the drawer, and there it was.  Can you guess his name?"

"No."

Carl's smile flickers on his lip, vanishes, then reappears.  

"His name was Cosme."

The Peacock 83

 "Even though he was dead, Kenny long remained for me a constant presence.  I didn't see him every day, I mean in visions or dreams, but for a while it was going on two or three times a week.  In our dreams, and I think they were his dreams as well as my own, we were having these interminable conversations.  I could never remember any of what was} being said, but it didn't seem to matter.  We could have been talking about anything, be it his favourite high heels when he was a sex worker, or the weather, or the menu in his favourite restaurant, it all would have meant the same.  He was present with me, and I made the mistake of revealing this to my therapist, so I was put on meds even if I didn't need or want them, and they didn't change the dreams.  But they did leave me feeling dull and heavy.  The only thing that changed for me was that I  simply lied whenever my psychiatrist asked me about the dreams.  I didn't want to ruin it for him, you know."

"You talk", says Carl, "As if Kenny really was there, and you really were having those conversations with him."

"Because he was really there, and we really were having those conversations.  He said he didn't feel ready to leave me, not till I could help him get out of that awful place he was in.  Simply, he told me that killing himself was the worst thing he could have done.  It put him in a really bad pace, and so I worked with him.  I would go into that place with him, and then take him by the hand and lead him towards the light, and each time, he made a little bit of progress.  And I could always feel his presence with me."

"You're really sure of this?"

"As sure as I am talking to you, Carl." He does look perturbed, disconcerted, as though now I have really thrown him a curveball.  "I have evidence."

"Evidence?  How could something like that possibly be proven?"

"About two years after his death, Kenny told me he was almost where he needed to be.  In our sessions together the light had been getting a lot closer.  He felt he was on the verge of his eternal redemption, and he even told me that soon the dreams would stop, but I would always feel his presence with me.  And, you know, I do.  He is even here in this room with us."

"But you said you have evidence" Carl says.

"Carl, on your left, against the wall, you will find my backpack.  Could you pass it to me please...?"

The Peacock 82

 "I was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder and schizotypal personality."

"You mentioned that downstairs," Carl says.

"It's all bogus.  I am not sick.  But they think I am.  The psychiatrists, I mean." 

"How would you explain that?"

"They like to pathologize everything."

"I would imagine that they have a very narrow view of what is normal."

"They're all atheists, or they're scientific materialists, which is essentially the same thing."

"It's like none of them ever heard of Carl Jung", Carl says.

"Or would even want to. They treat us like clinical, medical cases.  Networks of symptoms.  Absolutely no humanity in that kind of approach."

"What do you think led to the diagnosis"?

"I told them way too much.  I have always been rather a trusting soul, and this gets me into a lot of trouble."

"Me too, I would say", says Carl.

"I told the psychiatrist about the dreams, the visions--he preferred to call them hallucinations--and of course the emotional impact.  So..."

"A needle pulling thread", says Carl.

"And what a thread being pulled by what a needle!"

"Do you still take meds?"

"I was transferred to a more open-minded therapist, who weaned me off my meds, so now I'm not taking anything."

"Are you sure that's wise?"

"You mean after my meltdown at dinner.  Yes, you do have a point.  I am so sorry about what happened."

"Don't worry about it.  I think we were all caught off guard."

"Especially me. you know, I did not remember any of what happened around my mother's death in that fire or of me being pulled from the car in time."

"Do you think the medications kept you from remembering?"

"The medications are only good for three things", say I, "Controlling symptoms.  Causing side effects. And making us manageable."

The Peacock 81

 "Everything changed for me with the death of my father.  Both my uncles and their young adult children were present for the funeral.  But something noticeable had changed between us.  You see, Carl, when Dad became Anglican, and then a priest, that impacted the rest of his family, because for them the Anglicans were the church of compromise with the world, even if their individual lives could hardly be held up as paragons of Christian discipleship.  Plus, to them I was already a purported homosexual, and for them that simply was not forgivable.  My only real connection to them was through my father.  I was not invited to any of their homes for Christmas.  They made excuses, saying they would be away, or wrapped up with in-laws or what have you.  And that is when things really began to slide for me.  You see, I already had a mental health diagnosis. This actually happened while I was mourning Kenny's death."

"Tell me what happened", Carl says, clearly intrigued,

"When Kenny went and killed himself, I became inconsolable.  I was crying nonstop, and hiding in my bedroom sometimes for days, if I could get away with it.  Dad arranged with the family physician for me to see one of the psychiatrists in the local mental health team.  That was also when the hallucinations began."

"Hallucinations?"

 "About Kenny.  They began as dreams.  He would appear to me in the early dawn, shortly before awaking.  He looked really frightened.  I think he was in a bad place, and he would simply look like he was trying to tell me something while waving his arms frantically.  One morning, during this dream, I actually entered into wherever he was.  It seemed a dark place, and the vibe was cold and menacing, but I took him by both his hands, then tried to direct him towards the light.  I was raising my voice because he didn't seem to hear me.  Dad came into my bedroom. He had just showered and dressed.  He looked very worried.  I saw him, but now Kenny was seated on the edge of my bed and we were talking to each other.

"Needless to say, Dad saw and heard only me in the room. After this went on for another three weeks, I was booked an appointment with the psychiatrist..."

The Peacock 80

 Carl doesn't appear to quite know what to do with what I just told him.  His look isn't quite skeptical, but still...Questioning?  For me this can be a critical juncture in any conversation.  Especially with someone new, but even worse, with someone you have known for quite a while, and we have had plenty of time to build the kind of mutual illusion that makes any friendship sustainable.  But with Carl, this is a luxury I am not going to allow myself.  He has to know me, in all my naked and pale vulnerability, just as he has exposed to me already his inner soul.  We may never see each other again once I am ready to leave this magical house, or we could become lifelong friends, partners even who can't go a single day without talking or at least writing to each other.  

"Russell, as he lay dying, was being haunted by demons.  I could see them.  If you have seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, the orcs, well, they were like orcs but more frightening.  I began to quietly pray and that is when I went into a trance.  Then they were all gone and there was my dad, all clad in shining white.  He looked at me and smiled so sweetly.  And that's when I knew.  Following my shift, I went straight to his house.  Even though I had lived in my own apartment for several years already, I still had a key to the family home.  I went in through the back door, and there he was, slumped over the kitchen table.  He must have already been dead a couple of hours."

"That is really amazing", Carl says.  "I've heard of this, but you're the first person who has actually told me about it."

"That was just the beginning of the downward spiral that brought me here to your house", say I.  

The Peacock 79

 "You say he died from a heart attack?" Carl asks.  "What exactly happened?"

"I was at work when it happened."

"You worked in a hospice, I understand. "Still there?"

"I'm on a lengthy leave of absence.  Medical leave.  It was Dad's passing that really pushed me over the edge."

"What happened?"

"I was sitting with a new patient in his room.  He was in stage four colon cancer, and didn't look as if he would be lasting more than a couple of days, max. His name was Russell, eighty years old, and even if he was already a bit delirious, we seemed to have acquired an instant rapport, which happens quite a bit in my field."

"Tell me about the hospice."

"It´s really a beautiful place.  Kind of a rambling, vintage character house situated in a park near the Burrard Inlet in East Vancouver.  It was started by the social services agency that started out of St. James during the early sixties."

"How did you get into palliative care?"

"It kind of happened shortly after I lost Greta and Eric.  I was helping out in the palliative unit at Vancouver General, and they kept telling me that I seem to have a gift with the dying.  I don't know how to explain it, but if someone was in a lot of fear, discomfort or anxiety, I seemed able to somehow help them rally."

"I can sure see that in you.  How do you do it?"

 "I don't really do anything, if that makes any sense.  Nothing.  Or almost nothing.  I do give them medication for pain management, but otherwise, I just sit there with them, sometimes, if they seem to be reaching out, I will hold their hand, but not always.   But what often happens is I go into a kind of a trance state.  And that's when I see the entities."

"Entities?"

"Spirits, if you will.  Ugly, evil spirits, like the Orcs from Lord of the Rings.  Often, but not always. Sometimes they are the spirits of other people.  Sometimes, there is a shining being and that's when peace falls upon us and the patient becomes relaxed and reassured..."

The Peacock 78

 "I never actually heard him come out in favour of same sex marriage..."

"Lovely play on words", says Carl.  "Did your father ever suspect you?"

"Oh, I dare say, as Carol says.  After Greta and Eric, her brother, returned to Sweden, one morning at breakfast--we always seemed to have our most interesting conversations during breakfast--Dad stared up at me between sips of coffee.  Very rarely did he ever look directly at me.  This time he was impaling me with those blue eyes of his.  So he simply asked me, who do you miss more, sister or brother?

"Your father met Eric?"

"A couple of times.  They seemed wary of each other.  Dad never probed any further."

"But how did you answer him?"

"I didn't.  I didn't know how to answer.  And anyway, coming from Dad, that was going to be meant to be taken more as a declaration than a question."

"Your father knew that you married Greta more for him, than for yourself?  What were you trying to hide?"

"I wasn't trying to hide anything.  I just wanted to please him.  I loved him.  I adored him.  I owed him everything.  I still owe him everything."

"You lived in your father's shadow."

And I see the shadow cast by the lamp from Carl's reclining body.  He seems to have become truly relaxed in that armchair.  I want him to stay.  He is even welcome to sleep in the bed with me, not for sex, but just to have him there next to me.  I know that is something I am not going to ask.  Not because I fear his refusal, but instead I fear his acceptance.  This feels decidedly dangerous, this sudden and precipitous intensity and intimacy we have thrown ourselves into.

"I still do, I think.  I still live in my father's shadow..."

The Peacock 77

 "What was your dad's position on same-sex marriage?"

"I'm not sure if he ever completely resolved it for himself.  For a while he seemed to side with the old guard at St. Mark´s, and together they resisted the move the Anglican Church was taking towards validating same-sex marriage.  I was not happy about what he was doing, but I was afraid of raising the subject with him, Kenny had already been dead for six years, and on several occasions I thought of invoking his memory in order to persuade dad to carefully rethink what he was doing but I always felt  really nervous about coming out to my dad, especially by accident. We were both very careful to not talk about it.  In the meantime, things were getting acrimonious.  The bishop ordered all the parishes in the diocese to comply with offering and upholding same sex blessings.   St. Mark's was one of six rebel holdouts.  They had to lock them out of the church, and everyone was talking to their lawyers.  Yes, I know, such Christian love."

"We even heard about it in Switzerland", Carl says.  

"The upshot was that we were forced to leave St. Mark's.  With other rebel parishes we formed a new coalition called the Anglican Network, and since no bishop in Canada or the US wanted to touch us with a barge pole, we were taken under the wing of a bishop in Argentina."

"We also heard about that."

"It was only a couple of weeks later when he actually came to himself.  One morning at breakfast, I told him that I had just had a dream about Kenny.  It turns out, that so did Dad.  It was a very simple dream.  We both saw him, at the same time, looking very sad, very indignant, almost ready to scold us.  That same day, Dad resigned from the rebels, and returned, crestfallen and repentant, to St. Mark's, now fully under the complete control of Bishop Michael..."

The Peacock 76

 "I met Greta at church.  There were a lot of university students attending Sunday evenings at St. Mark's.  Greta was not a Christian, but she was already starting her PhD at UBC and there was a girl there who was almost desperate to see people saved, so she befriended Greta, who obliged her by visiting church with her.  By that time I was working in the palliative care unit at Vancouver General Hospital.  Dad, as he often did, invited everyone home for coffee.  Before she left, Greta asked about seeing me again.  I didn't know what to make of her.  She was a bit on the small side, intense, and very very pale.  Her eyes could just hold you, and hold you, and dissect and examine and scrutinize you then leave you with the onerous job of having to reassemble yourself long after she had lost interest in you and left.  For some reason she seemed to hit it off with my dad, who seemed extremely interested in her work and research in shoreline habitats.

Greta lived in a small one bedroom apartment with a short-term boyfriend, who after a major blow up bailed on her, leaving her stuck with the rent.  By this time I had become a regular visitor there, all very innocent, the priest's son popping in for an afternoon cup of coffee.

Carl says, smiling, "I don't suppose it would take a genius to guess just why her short-term boyfriend became even more short-term."

I ignore the quip.  "Greta asked if I would like to live with her for a while, to help her pay the rent.  She also did seem to rather like me.  Dad and I talked about it, and as dim a view as he had on men and women cohabiting outside of matrimony, gave his reluctant blessing.  It turns out that his paternal and very heterosexist desire to see his son engage in a normal relationship held more weight with him than his progeny shunning the appearance of evil..."  

The Peacock 75

 "Your father was homophobic."

"No, not exactly."

"Were you out to him?  Did he know you were gay?"

"Well, he was my father.   And even I don't know that I'm gay."

"But you like men."

"Kind of."

"Have you ever had a boyfriend?"

"I can't say that I have.  How about you?"

"Likewise.  For me" says Carl, "It was all casual sex or gay for pay."

"But you had a girlfriend.  Tell me something Carl, please..."

"Katrina and I never slept together, that's what you were going to ask, right?"

"Because..."

"I wanted to be faithful to Christ as I understood him at the time, and also to the community.  Even if I was living alone, I was still part of what was going on there.  And my mother even to this day seems to have quite a strong say in how I am going to live my life.  Which is why I'm living here in this ridiculous palace out in the wilderness.  The choice was here or Switzerland.  Here at least I have autonomy and some distance from the old girl.  And as far as women are concerned, I'm still a virgin."

"But you're attracted to women."

"Decidedly", Carl says.

"But you still prefer men."

"Most decidedly, I'm afraid." Carl says, looking a little bit uneasy.  "But Cosme, or, Christopher, what about you and, what was her name, Greta?"

"What about us?"

"Tell me how you both met."

The Peacock 74

 "When Aaron returned from Costa Rica he looked like a new man.  I had not seen him so refreshed and joyful.  He spoke glowingly of his time there, his adventures, the people and the incredible nature and wildlife.  He was an exotic adventurer, and with his cachet for caring for the most vulnerable and caring and praying for the dying while fielding outrage and contempt from the likes of Griffin and his friends, I could not help but love him.  I was too shy to say or ask him anything, I felt so in awe of him.  Others didn't seem to know quite what to make of him.  He was always a wild card at St. James.  But I wasn't about to stick around either, because with Kenny gone and my own fragile emotional state, I simply could not face any more time at St Jude's, being so vulnerable and undefended again to Griffin's depredations.  

"And Dad was needing my support, as he was feeling the loss of Kenny probably even more keenly than I was.  I returned to St. Mark's, and enrolled in nursing school, and I didn't want to further disrupt my stability.  We spent a lot of time together, and I did everything I could think of to help out at church.  I was also enjoying the rest from having to avoid Griffin and his fellow vultures.  Besides, after such an incredibly rich spiritual diet of the high church excesses of St. Jude's, it was so comforting and refreshing returning to the simple plain low church ordinariness of St. John's.  It was like going from a steady diet of English trifle, to simple homemade whole wheat bread smothered with homemade strawberry jam.  

"Life took on a certain ordinariness.  I even started dating, women, but always good wholesome Christian young ladies, nothing leading to the bedchamber, no embarrassing mishaps that perhaps their courting young swain was really trying to flee from his attraction to men.  And I wanted to keep dad happy, because he had more than once hinted that his one regret of all the time I had spent with Kenny was my complete lack of role modelling for any kind of wholesome sexuality."

The Peacock 73

 "I was just twenty when Kenny died.  I never felt so vulnerable, so utterly despoiled, alone and empty.  I was also no longer safe at St. James.  Griffin was still marauding, and Aaron was there sometimes, but the parish gossip about him was never favourable."

"He was talked about."

"We had certain privilege in the server's guild.  In exchange for helping out during mass we were also privy to all kinds of talk and chatter that would best have been unheard and unsaid.  And if Griffin were presiding, there would be no end to his lamentations.  Should Aaron show up for one of the weekday masses, it was all we could do to not bodily restrain him from physically expulsing the poor guy from the church.  And his only crime, so far as I could understand, was that he had the courage to stand up to him.  I secretly admired him.  We rarely crossed paths, except on a couple of occasions"

"Tell me", Carl says.  

"The first time was in early June, 94.  We were all seated at the same table in the upper hall following high mass on a Sunday.  Aaron announced that he was about to spend a couple of weeks in Costa Rica.  People seemed very happy for him, and I think because he was very poor and at that time very dedicated to serving and ministering to the most poor and most marginalized in society.  Despite Griffin and other detractors, Aaron also had friends, and those who didn't hate him seemed to love him all the more fiercely.  And he was admired all the more because he'd just sold a bunch of his paintings and that was how he was funding the trip.  He actually showed me some photos of his work. Tropical birds really beautifully and powerfully rendered.  And this hotel in Richmond had commissioned from him a bunch of huge parrot paintings.  

"I found myself really liking Aaron, even though we inhabited rather different worlds.  I really admired him.  In fact, for a while, I had a huge crush on him."

"I still do", Carl says, grinning shyly.

"No, really?  Oh!  You're blushing!"

"Oh stop!  I'm going to die from embarrassment."

And now, we are both really laughing!

The Peacock 72

 Before Carl can interject something, I continue, "In order to understand the kind of role that Kenny had in my life, it might be of value to explain a bit about my father.  First of all, Kenny was almost halfway between our ages.  Not exactly like a second son to my father, not exactly a brother, but kind of both.  And for me, yes, very much a brother, but almost like a second father.  He took this incredible interest in me, in my life and my wellbeing, and Dad, instead of getting all jealous and threatened, encouraged this and simply jumped on for the ride.  My father was a very accommodating and very generous man.   He seemed to know whom to trust, and Kenny he trusted completely and absolutely.  I think that's why he did so well with us, at least as far as he was able."

"You really love him, your  father, I mean."

"I really miss him."

"How did he die?"

"Heart attack.  It was really sudden.  He was a bit overweight, but also had really high cholesterol.   I suffer a bit from this too.  It runs in the family."

"You know", says Carl, "I find it interesting the way so many people seem to have to really state that dying isn't the victim's fault."

"Am I doing that?"

"Ever hear of the fascism of fitness? That's a term of Aaron's coinage.  He'll explain it to you later."

"Dad was just seventy-three."

"Not that old."

"How do you stay fit?"

"Tons of work to do around here, I don't have time to sit around and get fat."  Carl smiles and looks out at the black rectangle in the window. "But please, don't let me interrupt your narrative..."

The Peacock 71

 "How did Kenny view himself in terms of his gender?" Carl wants to know.

"That became kind of a long standing joke between us.  He really didn't seem to know, or care.  His drag name was Cassandra, but once he left the sex trade, as he said, he was happy to leave Cassandra hanging in the closet."

"He never considered changing his gender?"

"He said he enjoyed peeing while standing.  But also that Cassandra was a real and essential part of him."

"Was he androgynous?"

"Very.  It was almost creepy the way he could smoothly transition from one to the other in one single breath.  It was astounding."

"Like having a brother and sister both."

"Yes, exactly.  But he didn't seem to think much about it.  He just seemed to accept, I don't know, his gender fluidity?  But I don't think he ever would have got hung up on pronouns.  He seemed happy as he, him or his.  But I also suspect that if anyone talked to him as Cassandra, he still wouldn't bat an eye."

"But you described him as your brother."

"And best friend."

"Your father was never concerned about his influence, I mean with his background in prostitution and drugs."

"Oh, there you go again", I reply with a hint of boredom, because I really am finished with overreacting to this kind of trigger.  "And yes, I was so young and vulnerable and impressionable.  Of course Kenny influenced me. But it was really very subtle and in ways that were pretty positive..."

  

70 The Peacock

 "Kenny was really eager to please everyone.  I think frantic is the word."  He seemed so overwhelmed by gratitude to my dad, and so wanted to make something worthwhile of his life. I couldn't get away from him.  He always wanted to help me with my homework, or hang out and watch TV with me, but most of all, we went tramping in the woods together.  He was like an encyclopedia of nature.  Dad arranged financial assistance for his return to university, and he also had a part time job..."

"With the florist?" asks Carl.

"Yes.  It was like he was wearing magic dancing shoes, the kind that make you keep dancing and dancing and dancing till you drop dead from exhaustion.  He worked, he studied, he played, he prayed, he hung out, he helped out.  He was nonstop.  And then he would get hit by depression and ...Bang!... for four days he couldn't get out of bed.  He did manage to stay clean, but he kept shunning any kind of psychiatric or counselling support. He didn't trust anyone in any official capacity, except maybe my dad, as a priest, but he was the one and single exception.  I sometimes wanted him to go away for a while, just to give me a moment's rest.  So, I started to look forward to his depressive episodes, if only to give me a couple of days respite.

"But I would always get restless and bored...and lonely.  I didn't make friends easy, being a shy introvert, and Kenny was not at all an introvert and when he wasn't being too manic, he was actually a complete delight to be with.  And he protected me from Griffin."

"Speaking of Griffin, I'm still curious about his influence over you.  I mean, you were just seventeen, presumably innocent, when you managed to extort that hundred bucks from Griffin.  Wherever did you learn to be streetwise..."

"Except from Kenny. Yes, he taught me a lot.  And, yes, he gave me the idea..."

The Peacock 69

 "I am so sorry to hear that," Carl says.  "You must have been very close."

"He was my brother.  Kenny was the closest I ever had to having a real brother."

"There was quite an age difference?"

"Fifteen years.  But really, Kenny was like a big kid.  I think he would have been found to be emotionally immature, and I suppose he was.  But he was one of the realest, most transparent people I ever knew.  You always knew where you stood with him.  And once he trusted you, once you won his friendship, you were his forever."

 "But tell me something, please, Cosme..."

"Might as well start calling me Christopher.  All this remembering and telling, since my mom, seems to have made me comfortable again with Christopher..."

"Okay.  Christopher, tell me something, please..." and Carl seems to be really trying to work at measuring his words, "Weren't any concerns being raised, I mean, about Kenny's influence.  I mean, you were very young, and vulnerable..."

"And I'm not dignifying THAT with a reply!"

Carl winces at the sharpness of my tone and the pitch of my voice.

"I'm sorry", he says, clearly repentant.  "I was being crass."

"No worries.  I really should be used to it by now, but you know, I'm not feeling my best right now."

"Do you want to wrap things up now, maybe give yourself some rest?"

"Nah. I´m still good to go, unless I'm keeping you up unnecessarily late,

"Brother, we have only just begun..."

The Peacock 68

 "So, what became of Kenny?"

"That was one of the saddest chapters in my life."

"What happened?"

"Kenny seemed all set to succeed.  Finally.  But apparently, no one really knew, or guessed, just how much pain he was really in.  No one, during or after his treatment, ever began to address his mental health."

"What about his mental health?"

"During the nineties, they still weren't addressing the connections between mental illness and addictions.  They still weren't really grasping the concept of addiction as an illness.  In fact, some people are still wrapping their minds around it."

"Kenny was mentally ill?"

"He seemed to be bipolar.  Really up and really down.  But he wasn't being treated by medication.  In fact, he still hadn't been through a mental health assessment, which back in the day wasn't yet mandatory for treatment of addictions."

"What happened?"

He was sleeping a lot, which usually happened when he was depressed.  This time it cost him his job. He was an assistant manager in a florist shop, and also starting to take part time classes in the university.  His life was really moving forward nicely, but every couple of weeks, he seemed unable to function.  Then, one night, he went missing.  Two days later his body was washed up on the shore of English Bay.  He had apparently jumped off one of the bridges..."

The Peacock 67

 "You just did", say I .

"Did what?" Carl is grinning like a boy with his hand in the cookie jar.

"You just dignified it with a reply."

"Oh stop!" Now he is giggling almost uncontrollably, "Oh behave!"

"But you should see me when I'm really bad", and now I am starting to laugh.

"Oh you flirt!"

"Takes one to know one, Griselda!"  And now neither one of us is even trying to hold back our peals of laughter.  We are both finally beginning to relax a bit with this venting of nervous energy.  We are also flirting with each other, but what else is new?  Carl is an attractive man who appears to also find me attractive.  But I think we also know better, both of us, than to carry it much further.  And really, one of the last things I need right now is for the guest master of the house where I am on spiritual retreat and working through trauma, to start jumping my bones.

"So, anyway, for about two years Griffin and I had established a workable state of detente with each other.  Kenny was beginning to really thrive following his rehab, had already integrated well into our household, and became, with me, a regular presence at St. Jude's.  He became like my pit bull, my guardian rottweiler and even when we became servers during some of the high masses, the good father knew to keep a safe and respectful distance.  Unfortunately, we lost our archbishop, who retired, and then he was succeeded by a politically correct, socially progressive idiot named Michael Ingham.  And so began but the very beginning of sorrows..."

The Peacock 66

 "What did the archbishop say?" Carl says.

"Well, he refused to comment on the Deacon's inappropriate behaviour, but he did mention to Dad that from time to time, every generation it seems, there appears a priest who actually seems to really know and respond to God, and that he, my dad. was that priest for our generation.  He went so far as to tell him that his was a prophetic voice.  He also thanked him for doing Christ's work with Kenny, and that if there were any more problems, to just send them to him and he would speak in my father's defense.  

"Dad continued what seemed would always be an uneasy relationship with St. Mark's.  Even though we lived in a nice well-heeled neighbourhood, we were not wealthy, and in fact, my dad was rather looked down upon by his better stationed peers.  Kenny was also given an ultimatum, because his addictions were making him unmanageable.  His mood became erratic, he would easily lose it and have meltdowns, plus he started lying and stealing.  It was after our microwave disappeared when Kenny disappeared along with it.  He stayed away for another year or so, then, showed up at church one Sunday, looking much the worse for wear.  He had lost weight and appeared to have aged ten years.  With help and encouragement from Dad and the parish he went in for treatment and rehab.  It was an uneven trajectory for him, and he only began to stabilize after a few false tries and starts.  Finally, he came to live with us  That was when at seventeen I started visiting St. Jude's.  Given my problems with Father Griffin, Kenny actually began to accompany me.  Apparently he knew Griffin rather well.  They had never had sex or anything, since Father Griffin didn't like drag queens, but he was well known in those circles and quite disliked and hated.  But Kenny was enough to put the fear of god in him, literally, and if Kenny was with me, he avoided me completely. 

"But surely, knowing who your father was, and after humiliating him with the one hundred dollars, Robert would have respected you anyway?"

"Oh, don't make me laugh.  Back in the day that idiot thought only with his dick.  In fact, when God was handing out brains, I'm pretty sure that Griffin mistook it for his penis.  Plus, it turns out he enjoys being humiliated."

Carl, with a wry smile and leaning back in the chair says only, "I am not dignifying that with a reply!"

The Peacock 65

 "Kenny began to visit us again.  Twice a week he was over for dinner, often sharing space with people from the church at our table.  He actually made himself very charming and became quite well-liked by everyone.  If the subject of occupation arose at dinner, he would simply get evasive, and mumble something about being between jobs.   It was already well into spring, and we lived very close to the forest, so he would take me out for short walks on the trails.  We didn't talk very much, but he seemed to know a lot about the various trees and plants, and about forest ecology itself.  It turned out that he was a university drop out, that he had majored in environmental sciences, but had to leave school because he couldn't keep up with tuition, being much on his own with only a few paltry government loans to help keep him alive.  Later, it came out that he started doing sex work then to help pay for things, but then he fell on drugs and addictions, which only made everything worse.  

"Well, it turns out that one of our dinner guests from the church was a deacon.  Who already knew Kenny.  I don't suppose you have to work too hard in order to guess why..."

"Let's see," Carl says, trying not too hard not to smile, "Could he have been one of Kenny's johns?"

"Brilliant deduction.  Of course, Kenny did tell me all this when we went for our walk after in the forest.  Seeing his regular there at table, he suddenly lost his appetite, and I wasn't always that fond of Dad's cooking, so we made a quick and easy exit.

"At the church, the shit really started to hit the fan. Apparently, the deacon ratted us out to the rector, who went to the regional dean, who went to the archbishop.  That filthy little hypocrite of a dean, you know, paying Kenny in drag to suck his dick for him, then getting all sanctimonious and righteous and basically calling for burning at the stake for my father as a morally loose heretic and Kenny as a corruptor of clergy.  And especially squealing foul about the corrupting and trauma of poor innocent little old me.  

"But the archbishop saw through the deacon's little game, and decided to play on our side..."

The Peacock 64

 "It was a year later, when Dad finally could tell me what Kenny was doing for a living.  It was inescapable, since there was no way it could be hidden from me.  We had been for dinner at my uncle and aunt's in the West End, when young boys and girls were plying their survival sex trade on the streets in that neighbourhood.  My uncle, a faithful Christian himself, was also intolerably righteous.  Or maybe righteously intolerant.  He and his wife were part of a coalition of concerned neighbourhood citizens called Shame the Johns and their goal was to get all the sex workers and their clients out of their neighbourhood.  For understandable reasons, of course.  But this became quite a bone of contention between the two brothers, especially given my father's fondness for Kenny.  Of course, my Uncle Bob really tried to empathize, but also emphasized to my dad that if it were happening on his own doorstep, then how much fondness would he still have for Kenny or anyone else involved in the trade?  Even though I wasn't yet eight years old, I already had a pretty good grasp on what they were talking about. 

"We were just leaving my uncle's apartment, and walking towards the car.  There were a couple of sex workers out, a boy on our side, and a tall woman on the other.  Then I heard a man's voice, Kenny's, shouting out, "Jim!"  Kenny, whom we hadn't seen in a few months, came bounding across the street on his stiletto heels.  I was awestruck and mesmerized.  Here was this elegantly attired, Hollywood glamourous woman, tall, gracious and so beautiful, and she was talking to us, she was talking to me, warmly, but in Kenny's deep male voice.  Of course I knew it was Kenny, and over the months of his dinner visits we had really grown to love each other, and I really wanted us to take him back with us in the car to our sheltered little home in that prestigious Westside neighbourhood where we lived protected from all those horrors.  Dad was warm, very friendly with Kenny, then gave him a big hug before we left him there on the corner.  Dad didn't have to explain to me a single thing, and I even said, when he tried to speak to me from behind the steering wheel, that yes, I know.  Yes, I already know, Dad..."

 

The Peacock 63

 "So, anyway.  Your father had quite a ministry of hospitality."

"Nonstop.  Everyone was welcome to our home.  Dad was a very good cook, and there was always a big pot of something on the stove or in the oven.  He didn't exactly invite folks for dinner.  They would drop by for coffee and be invited to stay. We were dubbed the ministry of the revolving door.  We didn't get a lot of support from the church, unfortunately.  This was seen by Dad's colleagues as rather an eccentric hobby of his than real ministry.  But it was real ministry."

"You must have had some memorable guests."

"Oh, we did.  actually, I must have been just six years old (Dad was already in his theological training), when for a while we had this guy in his twenties coming around.  I didn't know this at the time, but he worked in the survival sex trade, as a transvestite prostitute.   I didn't really understand what his situation was, and Dad tended to shelter me from some of the more brutal realities of some of our frequent visitors  I found him rather strange looking.  He had a very handsome face, film star handsome, but he plucked his eyebrows, giving his face quite an odd look.  He seemed kind of shy and withdrawn, but he also seemed to like me, and used to enjoy talking to me, asking me about how I liked school, what my favourite games were, and he talked a lot about his mom and his aunt, and I was just fascinated because I no longer had a mom, and had  never had an aunt."

"How did he find your place?"

"Dad always had an interesting set of contacts.  One of his friends in seminary had a friend attending the evangelical theological campus nearby.  Apparently Aaron, our Aaron, even back then was involved in a kind of street ministry to gay people on the street and sex workers, and Dad was invited along with some others to join him on a few tours downtown.  That is how Dad met Kenny, the transvestite hooker..."  

The Peacock 62

 I suddenly can't speak.  The image of my mother, engulfed in flames, it isn't soon going to leave me.  I can feel the tears coming again.  This time they are gentle, no embarrassing sobs, no paroxysms of inconsolable grief.  Carl is looking at me, his face all concern and gentle care.

"How are you?"

"Mom tried to kill me.  She wanted to take me with her."

"She didn't want you to suffer as she was suffering."

"Well, she didn't try hard enough, did she?"

"What has your dad told you?"

"About my mother?  Very little.  That is one cupboard door he was never too eager to open.

"What do you remember?"

"Nothing.  I only remembered her death just tonight."

It is now completely, totally dark outside.  The window next to Carl's head is but a black rectangle opening out onto the eternal void.

I continue my narrative: "My grandparents helped dad remortgage the house so he could go to theological seminary.  He was going to become an Anglican priest."

"Did he ever remarry?"

"No.  He raised me alone.  He took on almost a monastic kind of life and discipline, for an Anglican something very unusual.  But I don't think my father, in his heart, really totally converted to Anglicanism.  He didn't like the idea of compromising his faith with the world.  He always saw himself as a bit of an outsider, or kind of an outpost, a connector between a church that is so ignorant of anything that isn't middle class status quo, and the marginalized and despised of the earth.  He always had the most incredible love for people who suffered, for the hurting, the unwanted.  Our home became for many a perpetually open door.  I did become a bit embarrassed with his clinging to the evangelical wing of the church, but even if he never bought into their fundamentalism, for him, they were the Anglicans who were the least theologically impure.  And then he got into that stupid conflagration about same sex marriage.  I almost disowned him..."

The Peacock 61

 "Dad would have been twenty-one or twenty-two when he met my mother in Mexico..."

"First tell me a bit more about that church he was in."

"He hasn't told me a lot.  In fact, I probably learned more in my forty minute chat last night with Aaron.  Dad never mentioned it, for some reason.  But it was quite a phenomenon, where people really sensed and lived in the presence of God's love and power.  The place attracted huge crowds from all walks of life, and the way he described it, the air was always electric with grace and joy."

"Any idea why Aaron changed his name?"

"He has promised to tell us all about it in the next couple of days."

"So your father met your mom in Mexico."

"She was attending the Pentecostal church they were visiting.    She wanted to improver her English so they became pen pals.  Dad went back on his own to visit her a couple of times.  Then, on visit number three, they married each other and he brought her back to Canada.  At that time he was starting his career as a social worker.  I was born a year later.  With help from my grandparents they bought the house at UBC where I grew up.  It seemed like a happy marriage, but no one was accounting for my mom's terrible sense of culture shock and dislocation and loneliness.  Around that time, Dad had left the charismatics and become an Anglican.  Anglicans, in those days, were not the world's friendliest Christians.  Now they are more welcoming, but they still tend to hold all outsiders at arms length.  This, for my mother, became intolerable.  According to Dad, her mental health began to spiral downward, she became depressed and delusional.  And paranoid. 

The Peacock 57

 "Dad wasn't quite so proud of me as I would have hoped. We sat at the kitchen table, the five twenties a centrepiece between us.  He said that as much as he appreciated my initiative, that we must never stoop to extortion.  So, he phoned Griffin.  And he invited him over for afternoon tea, emphasizing that there was something he was wanting to return to him.  Now, keep in mind here, that Father Griffin still did not know that my father was not only a priest, but one of his diocesan colleagues in the deanery.  Griffin of course wanted to know just what this was all about.  My father simply replied that this was a very urgent matter, and he would find out soon enough.

"Father Griffin arrived in just twenty minutes.  He must have been driving very fast.  I stayed in the kitchen while they exchanged niceties in the entrance hall.  Oh, the look on his face when he saw me sitting at the kitchen table.  But then he covered it.  But it was too late.  He knew he was busted.  So, Robert, my father was saying to him as they sat at the table with me, here is the money that my son received from you.  You can have it all back.  Father Griffin said nothing. He simply picked up the bills and restored them to his wallet.  You will of course want to stay for tea, my father asked.  He mumbled something about having another engagement, forced a smile at me, then saw his way to the door."

"What happened next", Carl asks, leaning forward, both his hands resting palms down on his knees.

"Father Stephen knew better than go to the rector, who was determined to die being Father Griffin's protector before handing him over for diocesan discipline.  So he took our concerns to the archbishop, who gave them a good and careful hearing.  But he didn't do anything.  He didn't say why, but we already knew why. Just then, the Anglican Church was grappling with the theme of full acceptance and inclusion for gays and lesbians in the church, including sanctioning marriage equality.  There couldn't be a worse or less opportune time for censuring a homosexual priest, even if he was sexually preying on teenage boys and trading in the services of male prostitutes.  

"Not that my father was much help either.  He was, as I mentioned, a conservative evangelical.  My father did not believe in gay marriage.  He believed homosexuality to be, if not a sin, then something inherently disordered and anti-biblical.  Indeed that was also the tone of his parish church. And so began but the very beginning of sorrows..."

.

The Peacock 60

 "Yes, my dear father.  He basically raised me.  He never remarried, you know, after my mother's death."

"Your mother.  What is the story about your mother?"

"My father met her in Mexico.  They were on a missionary trip there, I mean people from his church.  She lived in Sonora State in the northwest.  It would have been in the early seventies, or so.  

"An Anglican priest doing missionary work in Mexico?  That is news to me."

"Dad wasn't an Anglican back in the day."

"What denomination was he then?"

"This is going to be a bit of a story.  Ready?"

"Ready."

"First of all, my dad and our friend here, Aaron, actually knew each other.  They were both kids in the early seventies, and involved in the same church.  Have you ever heard of the charismatic movement? This church, St. Margaret's they were called, was pivotal to the charismatic renewal in Vancouver during the early seventies."

"St. Margaret's?  Not Anglican?"

"Reformed Episcopal, which was like a breakaway evangelical wing of the Anglican church, from what Dad told me, but because of all the charismatic irregularities, like speaking in tongues and  healings and prophecies and stuff like that, they were kicked out of the denomination as dangerous radical extremists. Dad would have been maybe around nineteen or so, and he and my two uncles, his brothers with my grandparents were all faithful members there.  They lived in Burnaby.  Well, Aaron was a bit younger, around sixteen, but they all took a liking to him and he was often sleeping over on weekends."

"Does Aaron know you?"

"A little bit.   I now remember him from around St. Jude's.  We even chatted a bit, but funny, I didn't even know it was him until  he mentioned that he'd changed his name.  You see, I knew him before as Greg.  But we chatted a bit last night and he told me a bit about his history.  Had he not revealed to us that he had changed his name in 1995, I would have lost the trail.  But then he told me his original name, Greg Greenlaw, which was how we knew him.  What a small world."

"It is a thousand pities, Cosme, that you are not an investigative journalist.  You have talent!"  

The Peacock 59

 "Could you tell me a bit about your dad, please?"

"What is this, an interview?"

"Sorry.  Hey, I am a journalist, you know."

"Okay, where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"Your hidden digital recorder."

"The room is bugged."  Carl starts laughing.

"That isn't funny, you know!"

"Hey, take it easy.  I'm just playing with you"

"You do that rather well." I have actually just conquered a desire to tell him to leave, especially given how much I am enjoying having Carl in here with me.  And there is something special about this being his old bedroom we are visiting in, where now I am sleeping.

"What time is it, anyway?" he asks.

I glance at the clock radio.  "Nine-thirty."

"Are you getting tired?"

"No, are you?"

"No.  Want me to stay longer?"

"Please.  I'm really enjoying our talk"

"Me too."

"Okay, now, about my father..."

The Peacock 58

"That was a particularly acrimonious debate", Carl says.

"And I was caught right in the middle of it.  By the way, Carl, can I ask you a personal question, please?"

"Well, you may ask, anyway."

"You had some experience as a gay male prostitute.  You also said you  had a girlfriend.  How would you identify yourself sexually?"

"I´m quite decidedly bisexual.  I have a slight preference for men, but when I was a teenager I was in denial, so I figured that if I got paid for having sex with guys, I could still call myself straight.  A lot of rent boys are like that.  And it's pathetic, really, because even if they have girlfriends or female partners, they are still in denial.  They really want and need sexual and emotional contact with men, but they feel shame and stigma about it, so they think that by selling sex, that will make them straight, de facto heterosexuals, if you will."

He looks at me, with an expectant smile.  Then he says, "Your turn."

"I think I'm gay."

"You think you're gay."

"I'm not really interested in having sex with men.  Even less with women."

"But you went ahead and married Greta."

"It kept Dad quiet, anyway, I guess."

"Are you asexual?"

"Not specifically.  But maybe.  I don't know."

Carl seems to know that this is making me uncomfortable, and appears to be backing off from the subject. 

 

"Did your father have a role in the gay marriage debate?"

"More than he wanted.  Way more than he wanted..."