A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Centipede

After this “lapse of faith” (as Dad called it), he acted a little more cold to me at church, sitting a couple of inches farther away and never looking my way. At one Sunday evening Mass, I suddenly started to feel warm and queasy. I was stuck between an older obese man on my right and Dad on my left. I told Dad that I needed to go to the bathroom, but he acted like he didn’t hear me. It was still early in the service and one of the third-string priests was monotoning some particular passage so heavy with ancient metaphor that it made my sickness speed up my throat. I threw up a little on my pant leg and Dad looked at it and shook his head, as if to say, You’d better not do that again. The obese man on my right had his eyes closed as if he were sleeping there. I looked at Dad and hoped he would let me out. When everyone finally stood up for the main gospel, Dad looked at me and said, “You stink. Go wait outside.”

I walked over to the bowling alley instead and played Centipede for twenty minutes, watching the clock carefully. A white smear of sick dried on the left leg of my black pants.