Finks I Have Known

 

One day in seventh grade at Blessed Sacrament School, we were told that one of our priests was coming to visit us. The father arrived, as expected. It was Father Rogan and he threw out a question. He asked us, “What does the word ‘catholic’ mean”? Various students attempted to answer the question. None of their answers were accepted. As they were shot down, one after the other, I became very intrigued. I wondered, hard, what could the answer be?

 

In the end, none of us students were able to give him the definition of “catholic.” When we had all given up, Fr. Rogan finally told us. He said that it meant “universal.” It meant what?—I thought—if it means universal, then why not just use the word “universal”? But I don’t think I said anything.

 

The appearance of Fr. Rogan in our class, all-of-a-sudden-like, was kind of weird in itself. And then, to come with only this one question (with its elusive-yet-seemingly-simple answer) was also weird. It was just the weirdness of the whole episode that must have cemented it in my memory.

 

I was in seventh grade in 1966-1967.  I was 12-/13-years old. It was the psychedelic era in pop music. I remember that I often wore Levi corduroy jeans back then, and of course, they had to be tight or they weren’t cool. I had a crush on my teacher, Miss DeSantis—a big-breasted Amazon who wore tight skirts and tops that accentuated her Playboy bunny figure.

 

This was also the year that our principal, Sister Paschal, suddenly came to the class door asking to speak with me in the hall. Surprised, I got up from my desk and went out to meet with her. She said, “These tight pants you wear—they show everything you have. You’re a leader, and whatever you do, the rest of the boys are going to follow. So maybe it is best that you don’t wear this style of pants here in school. OK?”

 

Dumbfounded, I sort of shook my head, yes, and meekly accepted her directive-couched-as-a-request. I walked back into the classroom with my mind swirling. And I don’t recall, exactly, but the other kids must have been curious about what the principal wanted with me. Being the naively truthful lad that I am, I must have told them outright that Sr. Paschal asked me not to wear Levis to class anymore. I doubt I went into much more detail than that.

 

This was the second incident from that same time period. It has remained in my mind ever since. It was weird because it forever melded together (1) a perceived quality of me as a leader with (2) something I should be ashamed of, viz., “tight pants showing everything I have.” (It wasn’t that I was going around with a cucumber stuffed down my pants or anything.) But the weirdest part of all was the way in which Sr. Paschal had gone about her “mission”; she intentionally made this into a dramatic act of pulling me out of class so that, whether I liked it or not, the curiosity of the other students would certainly make them ask me outright what was so important that she had to  pull me out of class(?) In other words, it was a one/two punch combining an embarrassing confrontation, sure to be followed by an awkward admission I would need to make before my peers.

 

Seventh grade was a milestone for me, comparable to the major catharsis society was experiencing in ’66-’67.

 

Next was my teacher in eighth grade. She was the polar opposite of Miss DeSantis—a nun, the type of nun who is very deferent to authority. She was formerly known as “Sister Maris” who had changed her name to Sr. Evelyn Bonnet. This woman had a peculiar way about her. Her face would redden at the drop of a hat; she seemed full of unresolved complexes that revealed themselves in hard-to-hide emotions, surfacing from time-to-time and leaving me (and other students I’m sure) feeling oddly disconcerted. This was when the Vatican II changes were upon us, and this nun seemed very enthusiastic about all of that. I ran into her years later at the centennial celebration of the church and school. She didn’t remember me, even though I had been the president of the class and, I thought, had been a part of (what I imagined, at least to be) some dramas of memorable proportion. I recall thinking that she’s just as much of a dry, cheerleading and clueless functionary now as she had been then, maybe more so!  

 

Shortly before this time we had moved to a different parish, Little Flower in Bethesda, MD. Blessed Sacrament School was in D.C., just on the other side of the Chevy Chase, MD line. But, with special permission, my siblings and I were allowed to stay at Blessed Sacrament to finish there and to graduate.

 

Strangely, Fr. Rogan was transferred to the parish of Little Flower shortly afterwards. It was he who responded when I asked my father to find a parish priest to bless my bedroom.

 

This was about five years later during a sort of “spiritual emergency” I was having (characterized by mental anxiety and delusions). It was during the work week, in the early evening. Distraught, I approached my father with my urgent request. He could see that I was suffering and, being the strong believer that he was, he took my request very seriously. He said he would go just as soon as he got rid of his “five o’clock shadow.”

 

Soon after he departed our home, he returned with Fr. Rogan. My bedroom was downstairs, separate and apart from my brothers’ and sisters’ bedrooms. I had painted flames in yellow and orange day glow paint on the red wall by my bed, with stylistic, hippie flowers of many colors on the ceiling above. In the dark, the flames and all of the colors would come alive using an ultra-violet “black” light.

 

Fr. Rogan entered my bedroom (in all its glory) with my father accompanying him. In one hand he held an aspersorium (bowl containing holy water) and grasped an aspergillum (silver ball on a stick) with the other hand. Fr. Rogan briefly  looked around to see what sort of a deranged place my bedroom might be, and then began some prayers while dispensing sprinkles of holy water all about the room. He made no attempt to counsel me, as I recall, or even talk to me much. I guessed that my father may have told him I was a bit unbalanced and maybe the priest felt he should stick to his religious task and leave my confusion to another type of professional. In any event, it seemed like a kind of pro forma holy water blessing because he performed as requested and promptly departed.

 

I remember my father saying how he felt funny, wondering what the priest must have thought about “all those flames painted on my wall” (as in” the flames of hell,” thought I). Actually, when I painted those flames I was thinking more along the lines of the flames popularized by hot rods from that era, usually painted on front fenders—or the illustrations by funny car aficionado Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, with his “Rat Fink” and “The Gasser.” I definitely was not (consciously) trying to depict myself as “lying on my bed in hell as an offering to Satan.”

 

I don’t know, maybe the Roman Catholic Church was covertly trying to look out for me. I say this because of another strange coincidence. Between 1968 and 1970 I attended Gonzaga College Preparatory High School near the Capitol in D.C. The headmaster at that time was one Fr. John Keating, S.J. Completely dispirited, I left Gonzaga after my sophomore year. Instead, I opted to attend a Montgomery County Public School in Bethesda called Walt Whitman High School. The funny thing is, the headmaster must also have been “dispirited” because he also left Gonzaga at about the same time. And where did he end up?—you guessed it: at Walt Whitman. Fr. Keating, as rumor had it, had left his vocation and run off with some woman. He was now “Mister” Keating and a counselor. He was not my counselor (maybe that would have been too obvious). Regardless, he was there, just as Fr. Rogan was passively “there” at Little Flower.

Neither "Mister" Keating nor Fr. Rogan ever made another appearance in my life; nor did Sr. Paschal (Sr. Evelyn Bonnet always was "out to lunch"). I suppose I was too much a part of the  hip, new counter-culture for them to bother about me. (Or, as I wrote about in my previous book (Soul Enticed, Vol. 2) by then I was already a long-gone, unwitting Manchurian Candidate—quite the antithesis of conservative Catholicism, even with its glossy new Vatican II veneer.) One thing seemed certain to me then and now: they all shared a hard-to-pin-down, "uncaring schmaltziness"; we used to call such people "finks". And though I may seem a bit harsh in saying so, maybe there's a fink lurking in just about all of us; maybe it takes one (rather it "took" one) to know one. Basta!