Four Guys in A Diner in Jersey…

It was a Sunday afternoon and four guys converged on a diner in New Jersey. No, this is not the final scene from “The Sopranos”

These were four guys who went to the same high school.  Okay, so where’s the big opening. Where’s the excitement. Well we  four went to a place called a junior seminary. For those of you who are not catholic, a junior seminary is a catholic high school for boys who are considering the priesthood. In our case, we lived there, it was a boarding school. The picture above is the chapel where we spent a good deal of time.  But more on that later. Let me tell you about the four guys in the diner, and the place. 

 

I was an odd kid, definitely not the dominant paradigm poster boy for the suburban New York 70s kind of kid. I had little use for Little League, Baseball Cards, Cub Scouts, Soccer or socializing. I did really weird things like go to the library, read books, make films with a Super 8mm camera and try to dream of a life that did not closely resemble hell. I was in Catholic grammar school at a time when the nuns were still very free with their hands and did not hesitate to beat your ass silly for the slightest infraction like dropping your pencil on the floor and forgetting to ask permission to pick it up. I was a square peg, and they didn’t deal with those too well.  Their method of making a square peg fit into a round hole was to pounce on it mercilessly through shame, torture and utter contempt. Funny enough, this square peg could not be beaten down. He kept popping out of that round hole much to the chagrin of the nuns, the priests, parents and other assorted authority figures. The beatings did not force me to conform; I just became numb to them and took a certain sadistic glee when I saw the look of utter frustration when I refused to tow the line.  It was the late 70s, and this was not the peace and love generation. Love ins became layoffs, Peace and Love became Punk Rock, but there was still a whiff of altruism in the air, Vatican II was making it’s mark in the Catholic Church. For a while it seemed totally tolerable. They started having guitar masses, with music you could actually get into. I grew up in a Catholic household and knew a lot of seminarians from Maryknoll, who use to come over to my house a lot. These guys were hippies, kind of cool. Played guitars, smoked herbal jazz cigarettes, gave the peace sign, I dug them. But it never dawned on me that I would want to become a priest.

 

Eighth grade rolled around and I went on a weekend retreat to this junior seminary, and it seemed like a cool idea at the time. A bunch of cool guys, playing guitars hanging out. They weren’t hippies, they wore suits and had somewhat of a Mormon missionary look about them, but hey, it was slowly becoming the 80s and everyone was wearing suits. And I have to admit it; I look good in a suit, even if I have gone more jeans and t shirt kind of guy today. So I decided I wanted to go. Give it a shot.  It was my ticket out of suburban boredom, and I would not have faired well at public high school, and my grades stunk, so I probably could not get into a good Catholic high school. But the seminary would take me. They needed more bodies, minds to shape, souls to mold, future prospects for the order. They love bombed me and I bought the whole party line hook, line and sinker, and happily jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

 

So today at the diner, us four took our turns telling our stories about the place we call the junior seminary.  We talked about the so-called Superiors (Cue the Imperial March Music from Star Wars). These were the men in charge. Then there was the regimen. Up in the morning really early, suits and ties, beds made with hospital corners at a perfect 45 degree angle. If it was 44 or 46 degrees, there would be hell to pay. No, they did not hit us, they had other methods of torture. Then we prayed, Morning Prayer, which took place in that chapel above. I honestly can’t remember much about morning prayer because you see, at the time I had undiagnosed ADD and Bipolar disorder, so this was my special time to check out, you know, think about things, play movies in my head, you know, like me making out with that girl with the big tits that came to mass on Sunday or replaying the “Hungry Like the Wolf” video in my head over and over again. We did chores, oh did we do chores. Mop floors, mow lawns, scrub toilets, serve dinner, do dishes, we were basically slave labor. You see, basically the place was like a Catholic Jonestown, without the cyanide laced Kool Aid. We even had our very own cult like leader whom we all worshipped, at least for the first year I was there. For the sake of anonymity and to avoid lawsuits, I will just refer to him as Father Melodramatico. Father Melodramtico could put on a good show for the parents and the benefactors, the people who ponied up big bucks to keep the doors open. When he gave mass on Sundays, he would gaze at the communion host with a face that could be described either as angelic or orgasmic. They dragged all of us nice boys out in our suits and ties and the money just kept a rolling in. Basically, Sunday mass was like Up with People with a cover charge, and not all of the cast members were that eager to participate.

 

The Superiors were on us like stink on shit. I was scared so I basically did whatever I was told my first year there. You see in a house of formation, that’s fancy church parlance for places that train clergy, scrutiny, criticism, perfectionism, and mind-fucking were the order of the day. Remember, all four of us sitting around that diner table were teenagers when we went there, but we were expected to act like adults, and like adult clergy no less.  Problem is, the adult clergy sent to run this place were a little long on dry wall and a little short on nails. The place was kind of an “Island of Misfit Toys” for members of the order that needed a little drying out from the booze, or a little rest after a complete mental collapse. There were some of them there that I could easily see today in a locked psychiatric ward sitting in a corner with a hockey helmet on, mumbling to themselves. You also had a lot of old geezers that were sent there because the order was too cheap to invest in a retirement home, and every community had to have its quota of sick, aged clergy. I would like to say they were respected and admired members of the community, but looking back on it, they were just kind of shunted to the side and marginalized. Then there were people called Brothers who were recent graduates of the college seminary and they were sent there to teach for practical training. They were the ones that had to get our ass up in the morning, organize work periods, teach, supervise study halls, and get our asses to bed. Keep in mind they were 22 years old at the time. When I was twenty two, the only ass I wanted to get into bed was blonde, with big tits and preferably gone by the time morning came.

 

So between all this work, praying, more work, studying, trying to be perfect, not having a clue as to what was happening, we maybe got a few hours a week to form independent thoughts.  That was something that was not encouraged.  You see, the more time you spent alone with your thoughts, the more dangerous it could become.  You could start thinking that maybe all of this religion stuff was bullshit. You could start thinking hey, I don’t want to be a priest, I want to be a doctor. Or when that priest was touching me like that, he was just being friendly, he really wasn’t trying to have sex with me, was he? Dangerous thoughts. And not allowed. When I got older, I got more responsibility. I had keys to everything in the place – the cars, the liquor cabinets, the supply closets.  My senior year I started hopping the wall at night to meet this girl from the Public Defenders Office at a bar not far away. Imagine my surprise when I saw one of my superiors in there one night.  He told me to get my ass back to school, but he did not rat me out.

 

The four guys at the diner went through a lot of this at the junior seminary. Some of us were emotionally, psychologically and spiritually tormented by Father Melodramatico. He was a classic love-bomber one moment and self-esteem deflator the next. You never knew what twisted bullshit this guy was going to throw at you next.  Thankfully after my first year, he was being groomed for a top spot in the corporation and went elsewhere. Some of us were asked to leave. Two of the crazy bastards actually went onto to the Major Seminary and took vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience. Crazy motherfuckers, here they were, in their prime, good looking guys, giving up some serious humpage time, earning potential and freedom. Sorry, that was the deal breaker for me. Poverty I never liked, I like making money, and I say make as much as you can and share as much as you can. Chastity???? You have got to be kidding me. I am 43 and I am still as horny as I was when I was 14. When it’s springtime, I want to pollinate. I want to get me some. Call me a whore, I don’t care. As long as it’s legal, safe and nobody gets hurt, the mattress mambo is just too good a thing to pass up. Obedience. This is really tricky.  Basically they can tell you what to do and you can’t say dick about it. You have to go work in this shithole parish. Under obedience, I order you to not talk to this person. No you can’t get an advanced degree in theater or communications, we need teachers.  As we discovered earlier in this article, I was never obedient. If I didn’t obey my parents, and they at least commanded obedience by virtue of having raised me, educated me, put up with my crap, taken care of me when I was sick, taking me on cool vacations and building a pool in my backyard, I was not about to obey the “Superiors” who were far from.

 

The four guys sitting around this table in this diner in Jersey at one time or another felt a betrayal, were hurt by this experience, and had to fend for themselves and reconcile what had happened to them, sometimes much later down the road. This was not a high school reunion, as much as it was a reunion of the survivors from the last lifeboat of the Titanic. The four of us speak each others unspoken language fluently. Our heads are bloodied but unbowed. We are not victims, we are survivors. It was fun hearing the stories and reconnecting again after all these years. Only the four of us, and anyone else who had gone through this experience could really understand what we were talking about.  Beneath the humorous anecdotes were years of struggle, pain and anguish that even now some of us as adults are trying to sort out.  We are still here. The seminary is long gone. It closed due to a decline in enrollment. The only thing that remains is the cemetery, where members of the order who die are buried. I am sure that when death came for some of them, it was the happiest moment of their lives. The religious life is a lonely one, filled with struggle, isolation, scrutiny and frustration. It’s as every bit as political as the Senate cloak room.  The chapel in the above photo lies abandoned, but still holds the prayers of the hundreds of boys now men who passed through there.  I am not talking about the monotonous prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours or the Rosary, but the silent prayers of anguished souls crying out “God, please help me”.

 

If I had to do it over again, would I? Perhaps I would. It was a unique experienced that has molded me, shaped me and ultimately led me to become the writer that I am today. The pain and anguish and betrayal from that period in my life took me down a dark path that led me to seek help and get a proper diagnosis and treatment. It led me to make friendships that are deep and last to this very day. I did not realize until today how strong I have become, and how much esteem I have for myself. Having spent time with the guys today helped me realize I needed to be where I was then, and I am right where I want to be right now. That’s a gift.  So Fred, Joe, and Jorge, thanks for lunch.  But more than that, thank you for the gift. You guys are great!