Occasions of Sin

But finally the ordeal of my schooling was over and it was time for me to graduate. I received two academic scholarships to very expensive colleges, but we were too poor to pay the related expenses, so I turned them both down. Instead, with my father’s scornful permission, I applied to and was accepted at St. Augustine’s, a nearby North Carolina monastery and seminary, with a plan to become a Catholic monk in the Augustinian order. My father, unlike my mother, did not practice his Catholic religion, and in fact held it in contempt. Later, when I graduated from St. Augustine’s, he was barely civil to the administrators and priests who ran the graduation ceremony.
I spent mostly contented years at St. Augustine’s as a boarding student in the seminary. It was entirely free. The years were uneventful, and I liked most of my fellow seminarians and all of my teachers, who lectured on the usual liberal arts subjects and also administered to us a large dosing of theology. One teacher I especially loved was Father Marcus, an old Englishman who taught English literature and wrote plays and stories of his own that were, for a monk, an odd blend of Samuel Beckett and Noel Coward. They were very funny and dark. I also learned to play rugby at seminary, and found it much more to my liking than I would have thought.
Yet nothing stands out in my memory of those years more than my increasing problem with alcohol, which began after my second year at the seminary, when we were allowed to go into town on various occasions. I learned to appreciate beer, bourbon, scotch, and finally gin and vodka, which I eventually realized were less likely to get me caught. I really didn’t want to get caught, and for a long time I was successful at hiding my growing addiction, but I started having blackouts; eventually I blacked out in the streets of downtown Winston-Salem, in a bar not far from a church I frequented. Two of my classmates found me and brought me back to the monastery. I don’t remember how they accomplished that, but they did, and they never reported me, as far as I know.
But that was the beginning of the end of my days as a seminarian. Just before the end of our undergraduate studies the director of novices called me into his office and asked me if I still wanted to be a priest. He was Father Alfred, and was a very sweet old man. I told Father Alfred that I didn’t know whether I did or not. He asked me whether I would like some counseling for my various problems. I said what problems and he said, tactfully, the various ones I had. I asked him how he knew I had various problems and he said because he’d been around the block a few times, and he knew. Would I like some help, some counseling? I said no, I don’t think so, Father. Father Alfred was very kind and understanding, but he said I needed to leave the seminary immediately after graduation and find somewhere else to go to school. He suggested N.C. State.
Two weeks later my parents came to graduation and were very proud of me, because I received, as expected, two medals: the Theology Prize and the Psychology Prize. Father Alfred smoothed the path for me to get into N.C. State’s psychology doctoral program, and he urged me to give up drinking alcohol. I didn’t exactly follow his advice but I had fewer blackouts, or at least think I had. Yet my whole academic career as a graduate student seems like a complete dream to me, though I do have memories of the dances, football games, and parties. I saw quite a number of girls in those days. I hope they remember me more than I remember them, and remember me kindly.
Since taking the teaching jobs down here in Georgia, life has been very uneventful and pleasant.
I hope you’ll believe me. I didn’t kill that girl.
Margarita said, “If you didn’t kill her then why did the crazy lady say you did?”
“Because I stopped to help the girl -- but not kill her. I tried to help her.”
“By cutting her throat?”
“No, I did cut her throat -- just nicked it, actually -- when I used my sushi knife to remove the rope around her neck.”
“A sushi knife? Why a sushi knife?”
“My mother gave it to me because she knows how much I like sushi.”
“Your mother gave it to you?”
“Yes. My saintly mother.”
“Where is the rope now?”
“I don’t know.”
“And so you anointed the girl?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“Holy oil.”
“You carry holy oil around with you?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“What were you doing there that night?”
“I was coming home from Buckhead. I was talking to a girl there..”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t remember. I just met her that night.”
“But you took holy oil when you went on a date with a girl?”
“I always take holy oil with me wherever I go. I have some with me right now.”
“Just in case?”
“Just in case.”
“Just in case you find a dying girl on the side of the highway?”
“Or anywhere else, I guess.”
“You’re a little strange, Eric, even for a psychologist,” Margarita said. “But surely you know that.”
“Maybe strange, but I’m not stranger than the typical crazy psychologist.”
“I don’t know what to do about you,” Margarita wondered aloud.
“Neither do I,” was his answer.