We were having a good time. No, we were having a great time, the kind that sort of falls into place naturally like the windshield wipers of two cars stopped next to each other in the rain. But just as those wipers fall into sync, they fall out.

This happened late in the night. I was sitting at a table with the older brother of my good friend. I had just met him, and was pleased to do so not because he seemed kind and welcoming, but because I love my girls. He was a large blonde man, very angry, with no front teeth. I asked him why he had no teeth, and he muttered, "Street fighting." He glared while he said this fragment.

We sat in the opposite of silence, the loud bar and trains and all. His anger was disconcerting. I wondered what he might say next. I must say I half expected frilly gills to pop out of his neck, and then a spew of that paralysis goo into my eyes, the shit that blinded Newman from Seinfeld in Jurassic Park. This dude was fucking angry.

He turned to me and said, "I need to talk to you about what you do with my sister."

Oh, those wipers fell so far out of sync, so fucking far. When you are bisexual and regularly fucking an Irish Catholic girl, hearing this sentence from her older brother is, well...terrifying. In fact, I blocked most of our chat out of my memory, thus the following conversation is condensed into a gist.

Me: "Um, okay."
Him: [annoying, self-righteous banter about the sacred union of man and woman]
Me: [gulp] "You're training to be a priest?"
Him: [sex is holy union sanctioned by God only-sex with his sister a sin-I am evil]
Me: "When is the last time you got laid?"
Him: [six years since he has had sex]
Me: "No wonder you're angry."
Him: [barrage of insults-stop fucking his sister-I am evil]

It did occur to me at this point to say something like "Yes sir, I'll leave your sister alone," but I stopped listening to Catholics decades ago. I wasn't going to start falling into line now. Not now, no way.

I think I told him that his sister was a consenting adult witha fine ass, and that I would fuck her whenever she wanted me to. This did not go over well. After he calmed down, I decided to question him about his motivations.

Me: "So you're training to be a priest eh? You're so interested you've gone six years without sex right? And why can't you have sex or get married?"
Him: [the usual...celibacy...blah blah blah...no love before God]

This is when it occurred to me that I should stop questioning. However, I have no self control, not even with street fighters who want to spit primordial goo into my eyes.

Me: "Nope. Believe me, nothing in Catholicism is enacted in reverence of God. You can't get married because, centuries ago, England began passing laws that gave widowed wives the claim to their husbands' land after they died. When Catholic priests passed away, the land wasn't going back to the church, but to their wives. The church began losing money."
Him: "Nuh uh!"
Me: "They made up some bullshit rule about celibacy, and centuries later, thousands of altar kids' lives ruined by sexual abuse, we have the current state of Catholicism. You're an angry man, who street fights instead of fucking, all because the church you revere lost some money. They worship money, dude, not God.

Him: "Are you serious?"
Me: "Yep. It's a matter of public record."
Him: "That's fucked up."
Me: "Yep."

Maybe he, like Vinyard, will reach a sexed peace and no longer want to street fight. There's hope for this boy yet.