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Monkish secrets | page 1, 2
Brother John says he fell in love with several girls in high school but never moved passed kissing, because touching a girl's breast, he explains, "would be a trespass." He and the other boys did their kissing in their cars. Did your feelings ever manifest themselves, uh, physically, I ask delicately. "You mean popping woodies?" Brother John barks in his cut-to-the-chase voice. "Oh sure. But that would be a sign that you needed to step back from the relationship." Brother John says his father made him feel guiltier about masturbation than his priest, though both warned him it could become a habit. He stopped when he was 14, "once I understood it was a sin. Remember, God hears all and sees all, and that's enough for teenagers in a little town." His erections dwindled over the years to less than once a month. The little town sold no pornographic magazines, books or movies, he says. He came to seminary in the big city when he was 19 and was shocked to see naked women splayed on video boxes and magazines in the stores. His distaste for such displays and what he's heard in counseling sessions have shaped his philosophy of what he calls "dog." "Dog," Brother John explains, drawing out the word contemptuously, is his word for sex without love. "Dog is very shallow, short-lived, it's akin to the drug addict needing that shot of heroin." He believes that dog is always exploitative, and it's generally the woman who gets abused. "The women who come in here say, 'That's it? That's all? Just slam, bam thank you ma'am?' They want more than temporal feelings. After their heart rate goes back down, they think, 'What is this relationship?'" Virginia Vitzthum Virginia Vitzthum's column appears every other Tuesday in the Urge edition of Health & Body + Archives
Brother John brings up his cousin with the bisexual girlfriend several times in disgust. The affair does sound crazy enough to be featured on Jerry Springer, but Brother John is most angered by how quickly they hopped in bed. "He knew what the inside of her vagina looked like before he knew her last name," he hisses. "That's sad. That's just dog sex. That's just release. That's just using each other and that's disrespectful of both parties." When I ask if masturbation is dog, he pauses, seeming to be stumped. "No," he concludes, "because that's not using someone. Dog is you don't care how that person feels." He says he doesn't fantasize because that's a sin of thought and that he sees representations of naked people soul-first, not through the fog of sex. "As people get older, they can appreciate a beautiful form without that dog, they can see to the core of someone." Brother John offers the unexpected example of the nude photo of JFK Jr. that ran in George in 1997. "It had a spiritual dimension to it that far outplayed the physical. It had an innocence." Brother John doesn't object to sex as part of a loving relationship, but he's clearly more enthusiastic about those who can love on a higher plane. "I love to see old people, like my mom and dad's age, come together and get married. They're fat and flabby, but they're human, they love each other. And the sex is nil!" he assumes happily. "It's beautiful and pure and as innocent as a child." But even romantic, committed love can lead to low self-esteem. "I believe there's an integrity and dignity right there next to your heart," Brother John says, pointing distractingly at my chest, "and that was given to you by God. A lot of us turn that over to someone that we love and then when they tell us we're a piece of shit, we believe them. We need to take that back, because it's not theirs, it's God's. Some people, usually women, come to counseling saying, 'I can't live without him.' I say, 'Yes you can. Needing him makes you dependent, not independent.'" That need seems almost as distasteful to Brother John as dog. "Being a married person wouldn't allow me to touch as many lives as I have," he says, echoing not only the church, but Karl Marx and all the others who blame nuclear families for draining away what people could give to the world. I ask if he feels married to God, and he looks shocked. "Well, no, for one thing, that would be being married to a man." He clearly prefers the light bonds of obligation to his flock and his strong tie to God over the snarled net of family. The monks' three basic vows are poverty, chastity and obedience. Most of us out here in the worldly world (including the ones who gaped at that picture of JFK Jr. with dog appreciation) assume those must be onerous restrictions. But at least one of the brothers is laughing back at us through the looking glass. "Celibacy is very freeing," says Brother John, "the most liberating thing I can think of."
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