Love & Other Curses, 1985 | bxb | ONC 2024

CHAPTER 6 - I'm so Going to Hell

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.

Adam removed his arm from Thomas's shoulders after leaving the cafeteria and walked next to the musing boy, who stared at the floor the entire hallway. Passing students craned their necks and stopped conversations to check out the new kid with Thomas.

"How much did you hear?" Thomas finally asked.

Adam pushed him into an empty classroom and shut the door. "You're a priest?"

"What?" Thomas scratched his head. "Um, yes."

Adam hurled a piece of chalk against the cinder block wall, shattering it into a cloud of white dust. "You're a fucking priest." Adam shook his head in disbelief, pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard. "Shit. That's great." He splintered another piece of chalk against the back wall and then another. "That's just fucking great."

Thomas stood in shock, wide-eyed.

"When were you going to tell me?" Adam pressed the green-eyed boy against the chalkboard and held him there. "Before or after I kissed you?"

"I, um..." Thomas couldn't speak with Adam's red, angry lips so close. His legs felt like Jello, ready to collapse the instant Adam let go of him. "I, um, wait...you want to kiss me?" The honest question matched the innocence of his eyes: why did a boy like Adam want to be with a boy like Thomas?

Adam tilted his head until his brow rested against Thomas, letting their noses touch. He whispered into Thomas's ear, his cheek brushing against Mud Boy's smooth skin, "You have no idea what I want to do to you."

Thomas' breath hitched as he shivered.

"But I can't," Adam said.

Thomas opened his eyes, suddenly feeling exposed and cold. Adam had let go of him and moved away, but he could still feel the hot breath and deep resonance from Adam's voice tickling his ear and the strength of Adam's hands wrapped around his arms. Thomas took a deep breath as if getting oxygen for the first time since they'd entered the classroom. He leaned his dirty blond head against the blackboard, unable to move his shaky legs. "Because I'm a priest."

"Because you're a priest," Adam repeated.

"And I'm going on a mission." This time, Thomas couldn't stop the tears from falling as a primary song from Church played in his head, a song he had grown up singing from the time he could walk: I Hope They Call Me on a Mission.

"I won't ruin that for you." Adam stepped backward. "This has to be your choice."

Thomas closed his eyes.

By the time he opened them, Adam was gone.

~~~

Thumbing the pages of Frankenstein without intent, Adam sat in the back of the class, sweat trickling down his back and legs bouncing below the desk. How he arrived in his seat remained a mystery because the Monster dominated his thoughts. Abandoned. Alone. Miserable. Oppressed. Fiend. Murderous. The breathless horror of adjectives Mary Shelley commanded plagued his mind as truth.

How could he expect Thomas to love a monster?

Like the Appalachian Mountains carved into his arms on a miniature scale but no less secluded, Adam wanted to get lost in creating another fleshy ridge. Because attachments never ended well, and his skin never lied.