Shortly after that night
– a sad night for it saw Una’s last visit with me – I had my third sexual
experience, and I knew when I realised what it was, that it had a name in the
lavatories and on the sports field and in the quad, and that it was pleasurable
and therefore Protestant and sinful and strictly un-Catholic, that it was as
close to the habit Mum was hinting at that I had ever been. I remember feeling
no guilt about this act, and couldn’t have cared less if God above us was
peeking through the sliver gap in the curtains, counting, tallying my sin as He
watched. The elders told us He was.
Sex was not something
The Elders of The Vatican discussed, nor were the obvious effects of
adolescence, growing hairs, developing breasts, menstruation, whatever. It was
easier for us boys than it was for our sisters. We joked with Dad about
learning to shave, and Mum would coo admiringly with every obvious drop in the
intonation of our voices, having us say over and over the words we dropped on,
should we ever have visitors.
If it had anything to do
with maturity or growth or sex then there was to be little or no discussion of
it in good Catholic households. The Pope had deemed such talk dirty, something
that only Protestants dared address in dark corners; the expectation was that
they speak of it only in whispers, and that they restricted this talk to such
an extent that they could discuss these matters only with those who shared
their faith. For many years a musty book on the teaching of sex in Catholic
households lay hidden under two unfolded Irish News broadsheet pages in
one of my bedroom drawers. I remember it as about eight pages thick, and dating
from the forties or the fifties, perhaps earlier. One day it disappeared. When
Martina came running into the crowded living room one winter’s evening, her
eyes flooded with tears and her hands flooded with blood, Mum stood up from her
Mum’s Chair and ordered her back out of the room. “Jesus, Mary, and Saint
Joseph!” she exclaimed, “Get out! You’re a woman now. Now go and get yourself
cleaned up.” That came from the chapter, “The Catholic Guide to the Menstrual
Child,” obviously. It was a short chapter indeed, but not as short as “A Seat
at The Table? - The Catholic Guide to Interdenominational Relationships,” or
the chapter about homosexuality entitled, “Not on My Fucking Watch, Boyo!”
During the years of our
puberty our parents developed an easy if clumsy method of getting round any
un-Catholic situation that arose in our midst, particularly when those
situations appeared before us on the TV. If there was a love scene, or a scene
with anything remotely sexual, impure or un-Catholic about it, Dad would turn
to Mum and ask, “Annie love, what are you thinking of making for the dinner
tomorrow night, then?” Mum would answer, and try to take our attentions from
the screen by getting us involved in the what’s-for-dinner distraction.
“I was thinking maybe I
could do those nice new spuds with that bit of ham I got at McManus’s the other
day, I was thinking. We haven’t had ham in a while, I was thinking, and I think
it would be nice for a wee change. What do you think? Maybe with some nice
cauliflower too, if they get anything decent into that bloody Crazy Prices down
there. Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?” She never answered Dad, and he rarely
listened to her answer – he was simply the catalyst for getting the discussion
started, and he and he alone could continue to watch the frolicking Protestants
in peace, which he did all too often. She addressed her response and her
questions to us, her children, those of us staring silently and saucer-eyed at
the lascivious scenes playing out on the screen. We waited patiently for the
clit-O-rises, whatever they were, wherever they were located, and with such a
fabulous name you would surely know one as soon as you saw one, I thought. Since
that day in class I had pictured clit-O-rises as something aglow, something
beautiful, a secret that was bright and luminescent, a secret that contradicted
itself so obvious was this entity. A clit-O-ris, I thought, must be like light
in the darkness, a secret, buzzing, scintillating city in a dark, dark desert.
Clit-O-rises are like Las Vegas, I thought. Excitement and evil.
“Eamonn! Brendan!” she
would shout, “What do you think? Some nice ham for tomorrow’s dinner then, and
maybe a bit of cauliflower or something? Wouldn’t that be nice for a change?”
“Uh, yeah. Sounds good,”
one of us might grunt, dismissive of the intrusion into our adventures on the
sultry edges of Protestantism. Another love scene later and Dad would ask, “And
what about the day after that then, love? That’ll be Friday. You could get some
nice fish at the market down there on Thursday, couldn’t you?”
“I could too, you know,
and I could make some nice chips to go with that, couldn’t I? Wouldn’t that be
nice?” She waited for one of us to break our concentration, to turn from the
action on the screen.
“Eamonn! Brendan! For God’s …! Okay...
So what do you think of some nice fish and chips with peas this Friday? I’ll
buy your favourite smoked fish if they have any down there at the market
tomorrow. What do you think boys?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
Protestantism in all its sultry excitement was really what we wanted served up
that Friday, not another variation on the holy Catholic Friday Fenian Fish-dish.
Another scene, the same
question, a different day’s dinner and Mum’s vain attempts at saving the souls
of her two sons from the impurities of lingering screen kisses, or tousled hair
and a bra strap, or a button opening. It was useless her employing her skilful
diversions into the gastronomic schedule of a good Irish Catholic family, for
her sons – even in those early days – were too far gone. But it stuck
somewhere. Before the credits rolled on a movie portraying a plethora of love
scenes, or those various other impurities The Elders felt worthy of posting on
their extensive list of Protestant indulgences, we would be sure to know what
we would be sitting down to for dinner a week from next Thursday. That
following Friday it would be fish. Again. Damn you, God, what with your
insistence on fish every Friday and your love of watching young boys and girls
explore their nether regions.
