An excerpt from “The Altar Boy” in Is Nothing Sacred? (Exterminating Angel Press, Spring 2013)
by Mike Madrid
I’m from Erie, Pennsylvania. Right on Lake Erie. It was either Polish, Italian, Irish. That was life. I never saw a Jew, or knew what a Jew was, until I was in high school.
I was Polish and Irish, and I was a Catholic. But Catholic came first. Catholicism was the one true religion, and we owned the one true God. We had in my family one uncle who was a cardinal at the Vatican. We had two bishops. [My] life was Catholic grade school, all-male catholic high school run by Jesuits, and Jesuit college. You’re defined by your religion. How you thought, how you breathed, what you read.
My little Catholic school was four classes on the first floor, and four classes upstairs. And you stayed in one room—first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. There were twenty-two people in our class. It was [nuns] who raised you from first to eighth [grades]. I wanted to please the nuns like nobody’s business. If you pleased them, you got to do special things. Like clean the statues. You were in good favor if the nun would let you clean the chalkboard erasers.
You think of Al Pacino, the Scent of a Woman? My life was “The Scent of a Nun”. They had a smell to them. Not bad. All you saw was their faces. You have no idea what they looked like. You think of them and they’re all bald. [The Josephite nuns] had the pyramid, the flattop. With so many veils. The clink of that seven-foot rosary on their left hip. Big swingin’ cross in the middle. And those sensible shoes, that just had a little bit of a squeak to them. And they laced up. I would look at those shoes…boy, could you ever tell I was gay. Let’s face it, every nun was Sister Sado-Masochisita.
They were such powerful women. Those women were pissed. They were pissed! They put up with nothing. Nothing. You were there to learn. You were there to obey. And you were there to shut your mouth. You sat with them in the lunchroom. One of my little milk cartons was spoiled. I asked the nun if I could get another, and she said, “Give it up to the Lord.” And she made me drink it.
Today they would all be in jail, because you got paddled. Remember, this was 1962. I got paddled so many frigging times it’s not funny. Half the time in front of the class. Other times you went to the principal’s office, and Sister M__ would paddle you. You grabbed your ankles and she’d swat ya five times. And it hurt like hell. But you never did it again.
I was so afraid to go to school, I peed my pants. Now that I think of it, I peed a lot in inappropriate places. I actually peed in the confessional booth once. And I remember because my mother let me buy Beatle boots. I had Beatle boots on, and I thought I was the shit. But then we all had to go to confession. And I didn’t go to the boy’s room. I was sitting there dying, I had to pee so bad. But I was scared to death to ask could I go pee, especially in church. This was the power those nuns had. So I made it into the confessional. I knelt down. And just as I doing the Act of Contrition, I was a Kentucky racehorse who could not wait anymore. I peed my pants. Thank the church is so dark you can’t see. I thought, “I smell like pee. If I sit down everyone’s going to smell me.” I went to Sister V___ and I said, “I don’t feel good.” She said, “Come with me…” She took me to the steps in the church nave. (Laughs) I can remember this to the day. She said,” Spread your legs and put your head between your legs.” I smelled my pee for five minutes. I kept looking at my Beatle boots thinking, “Wow, these are sharp. These are sharp!” And then they let me go home. But again, you pee your pants before you ask a nun if you can get out.
I gave the nuns such terror. They always said, "You cannot pray directly to God. You petition your prayers to the saints. They take it to the Blessed Virgin, and then she will take it to Jesus, because it’s her son. And she’d say, “You know, my son’s busy. Let me think about this…” And I was just not up with that. I said, “Why should I use somebody to intercede when I can just pray to him directly?” And then whap, I’d get hit in the back of the head.
I remember First Holy Communion. You take the host in your mouth, and you let it dissolve. And the first thing that would always happen is it would get stuck on the roof of your mouth. So, you’d tongue it forever until it came down. But Sister V___ would say, “If your teeth come in contact with that host, it will bleed.” And that freaked me out. That my mouth would be full of Christ’s blood. I must have sat there and just let that thing dissolve as if there was no tomorrow. But I was so afraid I would bite it somehow, and there would be a mouth full of blood.
I was an altar boy. You used to put the gold round platter under people’s necks. And with friends you’d jab them in the neck a little. It would be funny. If that host didn’t land on the platter, if it fell off the platter—wherever it landed, it stayed there. After mass, the priest would come, take the host. A nun would be called. And the nun and I would get on the ground and scrub that spot. You scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. That was the body of Christ on the broadloom. And you had to get every single solitary thing out.
We used to do constant devotion during Holy Week. Altar boys would have to sign up, and for two solid hours you’d be kneeling. In front of the tabernacle was the ciborium, with the big host in it. And nuns would say to us, “You will know when you are at your complete devotion. Because when you stare at that host and are in pure prayer, Christ’s face will appear.” And to me it was just always Lucille Ball. Never did I get to see Christ’s face.
The thing that scared me was the nuns said when you die you will live for eternity. And that’s forever, and ever, and ever… I used to sit as a kid in bed and roll “forever, and ever, and ever…” It put me in therapy. Because I thought, “What am I going to do for that long?” And then you had all your different grades of limbo, purgatory, the whole nine yards. But that hierarchy didn’t bother me. Eternity did. Eternity freaked me out.
To this day I write straight up and down. I don’t slant. Everything was taught the Palmer Method. The Palmer Method was slanted. I didn’t do it. I was in the fourth grade. Sister N___ took me by the collar. This woman must have been WWF (World Wrestling Federation) in the 60’s. She must have had such strength in her arm and bicep. She lifted me up and pushed me into the wall, and said, “If you don’t slant your letters, I’m gonna put ya through this wall…” And then slid me back down. And for the next three years, I faked it. And the minute I went into high school, I wrote straight up and down.
They were power. That was it. To this day, if any woman walked in with that Josephite outfit, I’m done. Whatever you want, ma’am. I’ll wash your car. I don’t care. Just tell me what you want me to do.