*wanders through the darkest halls, into the wings no longer even visited by spiders or rats...moving by memory, since the dim candlelight can do nothing to penetrate the blackness that binds itself here...a locked room, a rusty key...a windowless room...a magical bed surrounded by the thickest velvet curtains whose blood-red stains seem to ripple through the darkness...i cocoon myself within the blankets to remember*
the alter boy
i awoke from a dream about you that was quickly replaced by memories untouched in years...were you dreaming of me?
when all the world was catholic and the church, while holding the keys to my salvation, stood witness to my crimes, i remember watching you, in pure white vested garments, moving with all the funereal solemnity only a church so grand could pound into one so young...you knew your part by heart, as all good catholics did, and i tried not to stare as you did the small things for the priest, each time stepping back to your place to stand and wait...you appeared as we all did in church, innocent, beyond reproach, but i knew you had a girlfriend, and i could only imagine the things you did when alone with her...yet you appeared angelic, perhaps cleansed through the rituals of confession and pennance, your blond hair bright against your evenly tanned skin...and i lusted...there beneath the eyes of our tortured savior forever damned upon the cross...there between the stained glass windows that showed the twelve passions of our dying christ...i had my own passions...i wanted you
but you were as far from me as limosine seats were to any who grew up in the projects...you became just another object of my endless fascination...the younger brother of one girl i'd never been able to call friend, separated as we were by financial stations...
could you have imagined my surprise when your sister called and asked me if i were available to babysit you? no...you were fourteen...i was seventeen...i'm sure whatever you felt about my being called was nothing less than an attack on your independence...and i was scared...not that i would do anything to get myself into trouble...but how i would manage to get what i wanted without doing just that...i thought myself devious and coniving before i ever arrived at your doorstep...i was doing penance before i ever spoke to you
i can't now remember where it was your parents took your sister...out of town, i believe, which is why they wanted someone to stay with you...there is much i cannot remember about that night, so many nights, but what i do recall is haunting me now...in the way it haunted me later
i don't know what i said to you that made you let me lie down with you...or let me kiss you...or touch your bare skin...because of our ages and my trusted position, i could barely enjoy the taste i'd so longed for, yet it did not stop me...you didn't stop me...i could feel your heart racing beneath my heated palm, and i know i asked if you were afraid, if you wanted me to stop...it was only the slight nod of your head that told me no...and i dared not question further
and you did kiss back...i kept telling myself that under the circumstances, of course, you did...you pressed yourself to me, and i restrained myself from removing my clothes to feel the contact i so desperately wanted...i only used my hands to quicken you...and i could feel myself wet with each breath i produced from you...there were many nights after that when the mere memory of your breathing was enough to push me to climax...
and i waited, while you washed, cleansed once again, before returning to my arms, where you nestled yourself to me before falling asleep
the shame i felt was equal to the amount of unrequited passion i held for you, yet it wouldn't always be that way
a part of me feared that you would tell...how did you explain the hickeys? did you blame them on your girlfriend? and how did you explain them to her? i saw you a few days later, when i happened to be in the high school gym while your class was there...you were wearing the tank top that was the school uniform for basketball, and the marks i'd left on your neck and shoulder were easy to spot at a distance...
we never spoke after that, and i never had ocassion to be called to sit with you, again...the mother in me wonders just what your parents did know...we did say hello, passing one another in the school's halls...at my insistence...i didn't want to be alone in my guilt...
and now you come to me in my dreams...still fourteen and angelic, yet with a stain upon your heart, put there by me? it would have been different ten years later, twenty years later...now...did you come to remind me i had yet to deal with that crime? an old nearly-forgotten crime...
i could easily say it was my youth...but i'd be lying...i knew what i was doing as much as i knew i wouldn't stop myself from taking whatever advantage you offered me...
are you sorry? i'm sorry...if you are...i did know better, as you did, back in the day when everyone was catholic and even thoughts were cause for everlasting hell...i'd been living that sin long before i touched you, and probably much longer than you, afterwards
i do not beat myself up for that transgression any longer...the memory of guilt is enough to make my mouth sour...even now, my thoughts only want to linger on the feel of your sunbleached hair, the smoothness of your skin, the hot taste of your eager mouth...
if i am damned then so be it...but i am damned with the heart of one who only wanted to taste the purity i did not own
and i did | 
