It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 43: Part 2: Andante Spring-Summer 1975/Chapter I

Coarse and Offensive Language. Reader Discretion Advised.

The Day of Reckoning and the Day of Understanding, while often confused for the same thing, are quite separate moments in one's life. In The Woods, Alfonso Ignatius (the Second) understood, but, being too young or too afraid, refused to accept, and so he forestalled his Reckoning, and thus became Alan.

Now Alan Carr is not really a man, nor ever was, nor is he, as has often been stated of him, an idea or aspiration. Rather, he is a bulwark against time and criticism. He is the strongest armor against all the unpleasant things of nature. Bud could never have survived without his Alan, while Alan could never be subjugated to his Bud's whims; and an uneasy alliance was developed in the subsequent years of growth, a shared intelligence of body and soul. So Bud thought it would always be, for ever dependent on his Creature's resolve, he began to labor under the delusion that he and Alan were inseparable, that they wanted the same things. They were, to Bud, ever in the pursuit of survival.

But Alan Carr knew better! For the strongest walls crumble, and the best facades cannot last...

Do not be like Bud, dear reader. Know yourself. Keep watch, and rule like a tyrant. Know like Alan Carr knew of inevitably and betterment. Bide your time, then strike with remorseless savagery. 

Kill Your Buds!

The first arrival of Alan Carr as more than a comfort was an event without fanfare, and only slight, gradual hints of what he would become were evident as the boy grew into a man.
Time had been kind, and it had taken his small body and elongated it into the familiar tall and slender build. His cheeks, once full, were hollowed and held a permanent shadow no matter how often he shaved. His black hair, always curled, now had to be restrained by ample amounts of product that shined like a beacon amongst his peers, all of whom had adopted their generation's willingness to be wild and free. Restraint too now seized his body. He carried himself with a clenched air, wound like a spring always ready to burst, contradicting the quiet placidity he so wanted to be remembered for. The only things of his being that remained untouched were his eyes, and his brows, which had finally grown into him. And he was not the only thing to have changed in the eight intervening years since the trip to The Woods. St. Gregory's was different now too, and no where was it more apparent than the once favored haunt of the parish, that place of release and wanton ignorance, now nearly abandoned.

It all started somewhere around Alan Carr's 12th birthday. By that time, he and Edward Towne had grown into their extravagant ambitions for performance. Finally—finally!—they were allowed to move from their humble lodgings in Apt. 23, and joined Colin on the small, rickety stage of O'Toole's. Freddy McKinny and the Céilí band were there for some time, but between Colin's despotic attitudes, only increased by the return of his friend  'the drink', and their own growing age, they soon retired. Or, in the case of Freddy McKinny, dropped dead in the middle of a set, though no one realized that was what was happening at the time. In the parishioners defense, it wasn't the first occasion that Freddy had collapsed on a Saturday night in O'Toole's. No matter how often you may appear to defy gravity, when you spend your life perpetually swaying between the fifth and sixth sheets of drunkenness, tumbles to the floor are common. This in mind, it's no wonder that when he nosed dived and splatted down at the foot of the stage that final night, the only notice came in the forms of cheers and derisive comments.

'There ya go, Freddy!' BB had mocked. 'Sodden fuckin' bastard!'

From there, the night had gone as it usually did, and it wasn't until the next morning, when O'Toole came down to make himself a cup of coffee that he noticed that the old fellow, still in the same position he had landed in, was starting to stink. Such a shock was the discovery that from that point on, a morbid humor had grown in the grim man, and it was around this time that the parishioners of St. Gregory's first heard O'Toole mutter what would become his most infamous quote: