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“No, Lachlan, carry on with the gala. It’s important that goes off without any problems. I must be going now.”
“Bye, Greg,” I say as he’s out my door.
Greg is clearly tense as soon as he steps out of my office to head back to his. Making him the second person to flee from here today.
There are a ton of decisions to make when planning a gala. Surprisingly, we have a good team in place to get it all done.
I am becoming more familiar with the team Patricia put together. The office staff is composed of mostly older women who were previously retired assistants or homemakers and mainly part-timers. Thankfully, we’re all on the same page as to what my role really is with this gala. I review their decisions to make sure they align with the community and approve the costs. Basically, the last confirmation of what they’ve planned.
It works for us all. They just want me to approve their ideas anyway. As long as their decisions will fit this crowd, I go along with it all. That’s the main concern that I look for when they pile up the paperwork I need to review. Something to ensure the gala impresses the congregation; this community is used to the finer things in life, just like Avery is.
Her long golden hair has haunted my dreams day and night. Seeing her twirl it between her long, thin fingers was arousing. I found myself getting lost watching her sitting before me, my Goldie girl.
After wrapping up the remaining internal procedures documents I had, I begin the short walk home. Taking in the final days of summertime before false fall begins.
In Charleston, there is some version of the four seasons, but the season Grayson keeps warning me about is the impending “false fall,” as he calls it. When the weather dips to a cool sixty-something degrees, and it feels like heaven outside. Then, a week later, it’s ninety degrees again, and the sweltering heat is back.
I’m thankful this church did provide me with housing on the property. Some of the smaller parishes don’t always have it available for their priests. It was a requirement of mine for whichever church I decided to go to when leaving Boston. Keeping it as simple as possible to move.
One of my requests for coming to this parish was being provided with an outside workspace. They gave me a small but useable shed space on what is considered my part of the property.
Thankfully, the church has enough land and common sense to build tall hedges around each property they keep for priests to live in. Nosy parishioners could be at any corner, waiting to talk your ear off or complain about the latest news in the weekly bulletin.
A passion of mine since high school has been woodworking. There is something peaceful about creating new pieces, from furniture to decorative objects; I enjoy putting in the hard work to get my desired outcome. You reap what you sow.
It’s the full process for me. From the act of shaping and smoothing out the wood and how much time and patience is required to craft the perfect piece. It all calms me. It’s one of the only ways I’ve found to clear my head without going numb.
A woodworking priest. I know. A little too on the nose with the Jesus Christ angle.
It was something I did with my da before he passed away. I grew up in a small seaside town outside Boston. There isn’t much to do there when you’re a teenager, and we didn’t have much either. That’s why making something out of myself was so important to me when I went to college.
My da had a select clientele that he would build custom pieces for to bring in money for the family. It never added up to much, but he always said we didn’t need more than what we had.
I didn’t fully value that time with my da until he was gone. The art he was teaching me and the time together that I didn’t know was slipping away. I was in college when he passed away. I kept on woodworking as my way of staying close to him even though he was no longer with us.
As the years passed, it eventually became a way for me to still feel anything at all. When you’re young and become successful too quickly, it does something to you. It sure as hell changed me for the worst. Something I am still trying to rectify.
I was the top earner at a Boston consulting firm before becoming a priest. I’d worked for this company since I graduated college and became the youngest executive they had before I packed up and left without a second thought. Making more money than you can imagine at twenty-three isn’t something I would recommend to anyone.
It sounds good in theory, but at that point in my life, I was wasting money on women, drugs, alcohol, and any other way I could slowly self-destruct.
My ma didn’t recognize me anymore. The shame of seeing sadness in her eyes every time I went back to my hometown was unbearable, so I stopped visiting as much. The disappointment that was written across her face was agonizing… but I couldn’t stop. I wanted more of everything.
Eventually, I stopped going back to visit my ma altogether and sent her money every month instead.
I don’t want to face the reality of how much I broke her heart with every check she received. She doesn’t even know that I moved to Charleston. Knowing her, she’d ask all the right questions, and I can’t have anyone following along with me on my trail of pain.
Almost all my friends were worried about me during those years. Concerned about the detrimental path I was on. They didn’t abandon me. At least the ones who did eventually end our friendship did it because of an entirely different reason. The same reason I became a priest in the first place.
Back when I was partying too much, Grayson was in Boston for a hockey game and found me snorting blow off a stripper’s tits—I mean breasts—in my penthouse while I was getting sucked off by another stripper. Stripper is a loose word—I paid them for their time.
These women were used to being bought by successful men for the night. Men like me. Apparently, I have a type, and that would be the self-destructive ones, like myself.
I didn’t care that I wasn’t special to them; they weren’t special to me. I didn’t have time for special in my life. I needed to keep making money. I never cared if I had more than what I needed in this lifetime; I always wanted more.
Grayson didn’t get it. The golden boy of my friend group looked at me, not with disgust but sadness. Sadness for whom I was becoming and seeing the friend he knew slip away.
He’s the only one who knows the truth of that fateful night that set me on the path to priesthood. He told me I needed to tell the truth to save my other friendships and relationships, but I couldn’t. I would take the blame, the lie. It’s what I deserved after everything else that had happened that night.
