Answer To His Prayers

ADULT: Cultivating a gay relationship with a devout religious man has its challenges, as one friend confides to Barry Lowe. 

I’ve made it a rule that a relationship with a god botherer of any persuasion is not on the cards for me. Occasionally I’ve woken the next morning to my trade putting on a dog collar to go to work but that person never received my phone number or a return visit. Anyone who felt the need to espouse religious dogma of any persuasion was told, “keep it in your pants with your dick”. Closest I ever came was Remo who loved to attend Mass at Easter and Christmas. But that was as far as it went with him.

Unlike poor Vince. We’d turned our one-night stand, which was mostly horizontal rather than vertical, into a friendship, so when he came to visit to tell me about his gorgeous new boyfriend, I was pleased for him. The BF had everything Vince was looking for in a life partner: monogamy, big dick, smokin’ hot sex, wonderful personality – the list went on forever. And is there anything that gets more boring faster than a friend in love?

Vince introduced his friends to Tamblyn who was, if anything, more luscious than he’d described. Vince and I drifted apart as he became more stay at home and our interests diverged. For starters, I didn’t like Tam.

I remember one day running into him on Oxford Street a year or so after we’d last seen each other. He looked haggard, worn out, ill. He asked me if I had time for a coffee and a chat to which I readily agreed. Over a soy latte or some such concoction – I only drink tea – he spilled his guts. Seems Tamblyn was not the answer to his prayers after all. In fact, it was prayers that got in the way.

“He’s Catholic,” Vince sighed.

I knew Tam had placed a crucifix on the wall in their bedroom.

“He prays to it every night before he comes to bed. Acts as a sort of early warning system. I know if I’m going to get sex that night. He asks God’s forgiveness for what he is about to do. He knows it’s wrong, his word, and begs that Jesus take the sin from him. Then he covers the crucifix and we go at it like rabbits. It’s as if once he asks forgiveness he’s free to have the most debauched sex imaginable, but when it’s all over he’s down on his knees again weeping and begging for forgiveness. Then he heads off to confession the next day. The priest is trying to get him to leave me but he says he won’t.”

I wondered at Vince’s self-esteem though I know all about those tentacles love wraps around you, making you break your most solemn vows.

“I’ve just come from the clinic,” he said.

My heart sank.

“Because he’s a good Catholic boy, he won’t wear a condom. We had the test in the beginning and we were both fine. We swore monogamy because we knew one slip could be fatal. I’ve never played around but now I have the clap. In my arse.”

Not a nice way to find out your boyfriend has been unfaithful, unless he picked it up from a toilet seat.

Seems Tamblyn did try that excuse. It didn’t wash.

Being of a nosy disposition I arranged to meet Vince at the end of his penicillin diet to find out what had transpired with Tamblyn. It wasn’t pretty.

“Oh, he denied everything,” Vince said. “At first. He admitted he’d played around with the priest he made confession to. That shook me up enough. Then he added he couldn’t possibly have given me the clap because he prayed to God not to catch anything and he knew God would never let him down. He blamed me for giving it to him.”

“Basic self-denial.”

“He left me. He’s thinking of joining the priesthood.”