In the Beginning

The following passages are excerpted from the chapter.

". . .After you received your First Communion, you were expected to attend mass regularly, go to confession and receive communion. Either the pastor of St. Gregory's or his assistant said mass every morning before school. And before mass whoever had the duty that day would hold forth in the anonymity of the confessional to hear all the sins of the children, to impose their sentences on them, and to declare them good again. It was the pastor's turn that day.

I moved the heavy velvet curtain aside and entered the confessional stall. It was dark when the curtain fell shut, and I was alone to contemplate the ritual. The priest was busy with another customer. I could hear the voices, but the words were not much above a whisper and they were muffled by the material of the confessional. Then the little window in front of me slid aside, and I could see the silhouette of the priest through the fabric screen.

'Father forgive me; it has been one week since my last confession.'

'How have you sinned, my son?'

'Since my last confession, I disobeyed my mother twice, I said 'hell' three times, and I ate before receiving communion.'

'You mean you ate breakfast?'

'Yes Father, I was hungry and I just ate my egg sandwich.'

'This morning?' 'Yes, Father. My mother gave me an egg sandwich to bring to school to eat after mass. I was real hungry, so I ate it.'

'But mass hasn't started, so you haven't gone to communion yet.'

'I was going to go to communion, though.'

'Son, it's not a sin unless you actually receive communion. So if you don't go, then you won't commit a sin. Do you understand?'

'Yes, Father.'

'For your penance, say three Hail Marys.'

'Thank you, Father.'

I had turned myself in for attempted eating-then-receiving-communion. Guilt is really important to a good Catholic."

". . .It was my freshman year at UCLA and a typical Friday afternoon on fraternity row. Beer busts had broken out at all the fraternity houses, and no one cared if you were a member. As we tended to do almost every Friday, my roommate and I spent the afternoon exploring one house after another, moving from one fresh keg to the next.

Finally, tiring of it all, my roommate decided that we should rip off the rest of a keg he had become fond of. That made a lot of sense to me, so we grabbed the thing and ran out the front door of the fraternity house. In retrospect, it seems impossible, but we carried that keg across the street and up the hill to our dormitory, Dykstra Hall. Up the elevator and down the hall to our room. Safe from whoever was certainly chasing us, aching from laughter, we managed to finish off the remaining beer. It was quite warm, though it was late in the day. By then I couldn't see well, and my feet didn't want to go where I wanted them to. My roommate wanted to walk down to Santa Monica, but that seemed beyond me by then. So I decided to sit in the dormitory lounge and watch girls.

There was this special girl I always used to look for. Long, straight blonde hair, short shorts. An icon for California beach girls. But what fascinated me was her feet. She was always barefoot in the dorm, and it was hard to keep from staring. She had these little feet with extraordinary arches. I have never since seen arches like those beauties. They were so high you could see the light shining through under them. Amazing. I couldn't find her.

But I did find my good buddy Autrey. (We never used first names. Why was that?) 'Why aren't you at church, asshole?' he greeted me.

'What are you talking about, Autrey, it's Friday, not Sunday.' 'It's Good Friday, you dumb fuck.' Autrey was an atheist, but he knew well the sins of Catholics.

I looked at my watch and saw that mass was scheduled to start soon. It had to be three or four miles to the church which was on the other side of campus, through Westwood Village, and several blocks beyond Wilshire Boulevard.

I took off as fast as I could manage without falling over myself. By the time I got there, the church was nearly full of normal people and mass was, of course, already in progress. As I maneuvered my way into a rear pew, it occurred to me that I was the only one in sight in stained and disheveled shirt and chinos. I was still fairly incoherent from spending the afternoon sucking beer, and I smelled a lot like a rhino after walking and running from the dorm. But I figured I sat through enough of the mass for it to count, and I wouldn't have to confess that one.

". . .The infantry battalion that my battery was assigned to support just happened to be designated then as the 'ready battalion,' the first to be shipped out of Camp Pendleton should an emergency occur. My battery was to accompany them and would be the first artillery unit to leave. For the next several days, we were given the pick of the other batteries' staff and supplies to get us to our authorized personnel and materiel strength.

I had a few other things to attend to. Only a few weeks earlier, the woman I had been dating had agreed, for reasons still not clear to me, to be my wife. Angela and I had already started making plans to get married in a few months. But now nobody thought my battery would be in Camp Pendleton in a few months; at best it probably would be only a few weeks before the unit left. So we decided to get married as soon as we could. We were not alone; suddenly, there were quite a few couples rushing to get married.

In a few days I was allowed to leave the base. I drove into Oceanside to the apartment I shared with another officer, changed into civilian clothes, then drove to Laguna Beach where Angela lived. The plans had been made. A very good friend of mine from college had arrived earlier with his mother; they were to be our witnesses. We went to the church, the priest married us, and there we were.

After the grand ceremony, we visited the little bar in Laguna Beach where we had first seen each other. The Sandpiper was then a favorite haunt for marines from El Toro and Camp Pendleton. It was a friendly place for marine officers to drink a little beer, to cook a steak over the open flames in the bar1s fireplace, and to throw a few darts. The bar was well supported by the marines, and that day the owner, hearing the story of our quickly orchestrated wedding, offered to pay us back a little by picking up the cost of our long distance phone calls to our parents. . . ."

". . .The battery left from the barracks in the black of early morning. My wife of ten days had dropped me off earlier, and we had said our final good-byes. I'll never forget the sight of Angela then, or the loneliness I felt as my newly wedded happiness was sucked from me and swallowed by the darkness that consumed her as she drove away."