I confess

Searching wikipedia cinema files today, I trawled through the I Confess file, film by Alfred Hitchcock, set in old Quebec. I saw it in my first year of high school; I’d been sent to a sacred heart seminary boarding school.

Last night’s episode of Big Bang Theory has Sheldon call his band of helpers C-men. “That doesn’t work for me.” says Howard. Seminary reminded me of it: the gospel injuction to spread the seed. We had two years of normal early high school education, I was privileged to be molded by superb teachers. The only privation, if it can be called that, was that silence was observed during evening meal, while someone read the first volume of Lord of the Rings. I had nightmares nightly as the company undertook its flight to the ford.

In chapel I observed the first year seminarians, who were secluded from the rest of the community. They observed complete silence; except that in chapel they sang, along with the rest of us, the hymns of even-song. During Passion Week, they swooned with a barely disguised erotic fervour, songs about the body of christ, some of which actually expressed the desire to merge with his beautiful body.

At the end of our lenten penances and privations we had a bit of an easter celebration. The treat was watching Hitchcock’s I Confess. For weeks thereafter, I was infatuated with Monty Cliff’s steely-sapphire blue eyes, though the film was B&W. I think I’d seen Raintree County, featuring that other pair of amazing oculars in contemporary cinema, Liz Taylor. But there was that Scorpionic magnetism of his gaze. The plot was complex; the topic was so sensitive for the catholic church, it was rewritten to the point of obfuscation.

At that time I was angelically PURE, with the burning intention to become a priest, despite the pedophillic attentions of the local catholic priest during primary school. For instance, I was unable to watch Cliff Richard’s squirmings in Summer Holiday.  BUT, once I’d succumbed to the sots and thralls of puberty the movie A Summer Place became my landmark icon of relationship lust. I managed, as all gay adolescents must, to transpose the MF dynamic into my own personal disposition. How life goes on.