The Gathering (27 page)

Stanley Benson learned all this in an incoherent way. The elementary school he attended tiptoed around the subject. In the seminary the teaching was confusing and embarrassing, particularly to the priest-teacher whose lot it was to explain the subject.

Nor did he receive any enlightenment at home. His mother thought his father should be the author of one or more man-to-man talks. His father thought someone in Stan’s school would surely inform him about the birds and the bees. In fact, Stan’s dad was not even certain just how it worked for the birds and the bees.

The bottom line was that Stanley knew little outside of the obvious fact that boys and girls, men and women, were different from each other—and that, somehow, women had babies.

It was while he was in mid high school that Stanley had his first nocturnal emission, or wet dream.

Bewildered, he didn’t know what to make of it. He couldn’t recall ever having wet the bed. If he had, he’d been too young to remember it. He was most reluctant to ask any of his priest-professors. Not one gave any indication that he wanted to be of help with this type of problem.

So, in one of those walks around the playing field with Bob Koesler, Stan brought up the subject.

Fortunately, Bob’s experience with wet dreams was a year earlier than Stan’s. And that seemed natural, since Bob was a year older than Stan. Bob knew, from his own experience, that what bothered Stan most was the accompanying sense of guilt. That Stan had brought his problem to Bob was a rare blessing for the younger boy.

“Stan,” Bob said, as they rounded the turn, “I did some checking around and I asked some questions. What I can tell you is that it’s a natural occurrence. It happens to everybody. It’s natural. There’s nothing wrong. It is not a sin.”

“Girls too?”

“Girls too, what?”

“Girls have wet dreams?”

Koesler stopped walking. So, also, did Stan.

“I don’t know,” Bob confessed. “I honestly don’t know.”

“If you find out, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

“Sure. Of course.”

He did find out. And he did tell Stan.

Even in the face of opposition from every side—home, school, Commandments, rules—nonetheless sex was a force with which to contend.

One could suppress it, confine it under the surface—but, like a cork, it tended to resurface. And it continued to be mysterious and confusing.

Stan had what might be described as a natural curiosity about the feminine sex. He had few resources to satisfy that obsession. For studies of human anatomy, there was the
National Geographic—
particularly when the magazine featured an article such as a study of equatorial tribes. For inhabitants of such areas there was little covering of breasts or buttocks. There was not all that much, if any, complete nudity in those pages. But the
Geographic
came closer to displaying the unclothed body than any other general magazine of that time. And the seminary library did carry the
National Geographic
.

As copies of this magazine piled up, those issues that featured exploring the North or South Pole remained in pristine condition, while those that showed the state of undress in places too hot for clothing were dog-eared nearly to shreds.

Sex was a subject that fascinated adolescent boys. And they reacted adolescently.

However, it puzzled Stanley more than it aroused him. He seemed more interested in the near-nude males than the near-naked females.

He wondered if something was wrong here. He might not have known that his reaction would be termed “unnatural,” “gravely sinful,” “barbaric.” All he knew was that he was more physically aroused by males than by females. He didn’t know why. Nor did there seem to be anything he could do about it.

What was natural to him was unnatural to most others. Not knowing what was happening—or what had happened—to him was frightening. One thing he did know was that he had to fight this concern alone. This was not a case of lack of coordination, or awkwardness in athletics, or walking around that stupid circle.

The question of whether he was homosexual was vital not only to his presence in the seminary but to his entire lifestyle. Stan had been presented with a dilemma that defied a facile solution.

Granted that he would become a priest and that he would keep all the rules, he would never know exactly what his sexual orientation was.

He would never know what sexual preference was his since he would never lie with either male or female. The prospect of “never” was so final. The thought caused him to question again whether he belonged in the seminary much less in the priesthood.

Resolving the ultimate question, as it always did, as well as every correspondingly similar question, was the awareness of his mother, her joy in his vocation—and her bitter disappointment should her dream of his priesthood go down the drain.

So, the only practical question was the public stance he would assume with regard to what he felt. Should he sympathize with the plight of the homosexual? Should he glory in the religiously correct stance of the heterosexual?

But each time he pondered this, he came to the same conclusion: He must, he knew, straddle the fence, as he ended up doing in each and every case. He would take neither side.

Stan was getting so tired of exhibiting a slithering backbone. But he had to face the fact that this would be his life, courtesy of his loving mother and his meddlesome, officious priest, Father Simpson.

   
TWENTY
   

I
T WAS 1947.
Bob Koesler was entering the second year of college. Mike Smith, Manny Tocco, and Stanley Benson were entering their first year of college.

What was happening to them could not hold a candle to the changes experienced by Rose Smith and Alice McMann.

They had been accepted as postulants, probationary candidates for membership in the religious order of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They were seeking acceptance by the same order of nuns who had taught them from grade school through high school.

The postulants quickly learned that it would not be an easy life.

Symbolic of their “death” to the secular world, they dressed entirely in black, in the first of the habits they would wear on their progress toward final vows.

They would begin their academic study as college students, taking subjects such as English, history, and math. They would be affiliated with Marygrove College, while living full time at the Monroe Motherhouse. Academic success was of prime importance: They were seeking membership in a teaching order.

Alice, of course, knew this going in. She was not strong in the three R’s. That was why her first inclination had been to join an order with the option of nursing rather than teaching. In the end, though, she went along with Rose to Monroe and the teaching nuns.

In the early years in the convent, the postulant, and later the novice, would be testing this new life to learn whether this might be God’s will for a lifelong vocation. But much, much more than that, the IHM order would be testing these young women.

The administrators looked for strengths and weaknesses. They looked for fidelity and humility. The spirit of poverty, chastity, and obedience—the three vows that would bind the professed to God in a special way.

Having stood the test of all this scrutiny, entrants prepared to test their vocation as postulants—probationary candidates. If successful, the next two years they would be novices. The first of those years was termed a canonical year, during which they took no secular courses. Instead, they studied such Church-related subjects as theology, Scripture, and chant. After their second novitiate year they took the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, for a three-year period. This period was followed by temporary vows for another two years. Then came final vows—ostensibly forever.

It was a program tested over centuries that gradually led to a total gift of self to God. After being received into the order, on the ring finger of the right—not left—hand the professed wore a wedding ring. This signified that they were “brides of Christ.”

Where the priest on ordination became an “
alter Christus
”—another Christ—the professed nuns became brides of Christ.

Other Christs and brides of Christ; two groups who in theory might be presumed to be made for each other, yet who in actuality could not be further isolated as far as marriage was concerned.

Little by little, the IHM postulant was introduced to a swamp of rules and regulations.

In the beginning, for instance, postulants could entertain visitors. However, the nuns themselves, after final vows, were not allowed to attend the funeral of both parents, only one. Rules such as these could test one’s wholehearted submission to obedience.

Alice, Rose, and all the other young women, most of them fresh out of high school, walked through the doors of the motherhouse to study, to learn, to test, and to be studied and tested.

Once inside the motherhouse, the postulants saw—most of them for the first time—the marble staircase that everyone was forbidden to use.

Welcome to a mysterious life.

This was the final academic year that Bob Koesler would be commuting between home and school as a day student. This would also be the final academic year that he would wear exclusively lay clothing.

Beginning with their third year of college, seminarians would wear a cassock and clerical collar. As long as the young man was within the seminary property—and not engaging in athletic events—he would be expected to wear this uniform during all waking hours.

On vacation, at home, or for a special occasion, regular clothing could be worn—preferably a black suit, black shoes, black hat, white shirt, and a black tie. Ordinarily, there was no problem with this ensemble. But occasionally …

Some forty seminarians were going to a University of Michigan football game. They—all of them—wore the prescribed black suit and white shirt.

The problem began when their bus driver lost his way. The contingent arrived at the stadium approximately twenty minutes late. A block of tickets awaited them. In the otherwise packed stadium, a vacant section of forty seats stood out like a sore thumb. Then the black-and-white-attired group arrived and one by one filed into their seats.