Cafeteria Catholic

                 My live-in girlfriend, Whitnee, and I came home from dinner at a sushi restaurant one Friday night.  We had ordered a large sake and were pretty drunk as a result.  Whitnee went straight to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of red wine from on top the fridge.  It was already opened, so she removed the replaced cork with her teeth. 

                “You are in a mood to drink tonight, I see.”  I went to the cabinet for two glasses, but she was already sipping from the bottle.

                “Forget the glasses.  I’m not going to wash them and you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“I don’t know why you can’t come for a few days, drinking out of the bottle, you’ll fit right in with my family.” 

                “What are you doing? Come to the bedroom.” I heard her say in her best seductive voice. 

“Ok, just let me pick up these leftovers.”  I must have lingered in the kitchen for a moment or two.

The wine bottle was sitting by the side of the mattress.  Whitnee was pulling her shirt over her head.  I sat up in bed over her as she took my shirt off.  When she got it all the way off, she tossed it carelessly to the side knocking over the bottle of wine. 

                “Let me clean that up,” I said, quickly standing the bottle back upright.

                “Leave it. Who cares?”  Whitnee grabbed the bottle out of my hand and took another sip.  She then laid down pulling me on top of her. 

                We carried on a conversation between cute little kisses.  “I can’t believe you are going to the beach for a whole week. I’m going to miss you.” She held my face.

                “I’m going to miss you more.” I always tried to turn our love into a competition.  “I told you. You could come for the weekend and I will bring you back early.”

                “You know I have to work, and besides . . . you wouldn’t go back to Pensacola once you were back here.”  Now the kisses were much more arousing. 

                “You’re right,” I said entranced by her bare breast. 

                “Shut up.”  I think that was the phrase I heard most from her, but all I did was comply and enjoy the intimacies involved in having a live-in girlfriend.  After having sex, we held each other until we fell asleep. 

                The next morning I could not depart without a final sex session.  We awoke naked and avoided the unwrapping process.  The rubbing of naked flesh was all I needed to really wake up.  When it was over, I finally looked down at the clock.  I realized I was late to meeting my sister who was going to drive to Pensacola.  I threw on some clothes and grabbed the bag I had already packed.  Whitnee walked me to the door with a sheet wrapped around her.  I reached inside the sheet for one last parting touch and kissed her on the lips.  “I’ll miss you.”

                “I’ll miss you more,” she responded.

                “Can you greet me in a week the way you’re sending me off.”  I meant naked.

                “We’ll see.” She knew what I meant. 

This was the first family vacation I could recall where I wasn’t completely excited about going.  My sister was mad at me for being so late to meet up with her.  Kate hardly spoke to me before we stopped at a Waffle House halfway between New Orleans and Pensacola.  After we ate, she was much more talkative and prying.  Kate wanted to know as much as she could about Whitnee and I.  I kept to the subject of our jobs and school. Meanwhile, all I could think about was the acts of the morning and the night before. 

“So things are good” Kate finished

“Things are great.”  I assured her.

                The conversation transitioned to the rest of the extended family who were going to meet us in Pensacola.  Kate was always aware of the latest family gossip, and shared without prompting. 

                When we arrived at our family’s condo, I made the rounds hugging and saying my hellos to everyone.  My mom and grandma stole kisses as well, and my dad’s hug lifted me off the ground cracking my back. 

                Once I had finished greeting everyone, I headed straight for the water.  I walked down the stairs of the boardwalk until my feet hit the sand.  I ran until I tripped awkwardly face-first into the two-foot surf.  I swam deeper and deeper and floated belly up where the waves wouldn’t choke off my air.  As I swam and floated and floated and swam, I thought about how my grandma had taught me how to do both.  The family matriarch was always hands-on with each of her grandchildren.  I think she taught all sixteen of us how to swim, now that I think about it.  I swam for about an hour giving the rest of the family time to load their ice chest or make cocktails, grab their chairs, and head to the beach.  When I was tired of swimming, I headed to the beach for a beer and a seat. 

                I sat in the sand because I wasn’t sure where the beach equipment was stored in this condo complex.  We seemed to change places year to year.  I grabbed a Busch beer.  My dad and grandpa had bought several cases.  I thought it was nothing special, but the way they shared a case made me think it was the only bond the two shared.  I imagined my dad paying a dowry of Busch to marry my mother.  Then I pictured my grandpa saying, “Don’t bring her back because you won’t get any beer back.”  I didn’t understand their love of Busch.  I much preferred a Corona or a Sol, something meant for the beach.  Busch tasted too much like suds, like you were punishing yourself for saying vulgarities.  My mother sat under her watermelon umbrella with her usual glass of red wine, although the beach had replaced the glass with a Mardi gras cup.  She cast a look at my dad and grandpa over her sunglasses.  I imagine she didn’t understand why they loved Busch either, or perhaps it was because my liberal mother hated the name.  My aunt and uncles were sitting around drinking various liquors with their under twenty-one children.  Even my grandma sat with her usual Tom Collins resting on her knee. 

                Years ago, the family used to raise hell about underage drinking.  I had just turned twenty-one and was glad I could no longer catch flak for drinking.  I was the third youngest, but the babies of the family were just a few years behind.  They were not kept from drinking.  It annoyed me a little that they were not held to the same standards, but I was glad they could partake in the first day’s happy hour with the rest of the family. 

                Catholics and alcohol always make an interesting combination.  I don’t know when the conversation turned to relationships.  Everyone was enjoying the sun, sand, and spirits, and the next thing I knew I was being called out for living with my girlfriend.  I sat next to my grandma who spearheaded the examination of my conscience.  Most of the family sat around listening intently to my grandma and I, but others engaged in their own topics of conversation. 

Catholicism and alcohol slammed together like atoms in a nuclear reactor creating a force known as gradma.  It created in her a force much stronger than any preconceived notions of Catholic morality.  She stared me right in the face.  “Pre-marital sex is a sin, Sean.”  She emphasized my name as if it was the sin itself.  Sean verb: sex without vows, noun: dirty, dirty grandson. 

“What are you talking about,” my instinct was to deny.

                “Your mother told me you were living with your girlfriend. I know you’re having sex.  Shame on you.”

                I didn’t notice it happening, but the entire family had put their chairs in a circle around us.  I felt like prey being circled by sharks in the open water.  I looked at my mom with distress, but found no reprieve.  “You told grandma I’ve been having sex.”

                “No, she isn’t dumb Sean.  She just put two and two together.” It was a weak defense for someone so amused by the situation.  My mother listened to the conversation with more interest than the rest.

                “That’s right, I’m no dummy.  And when am I going to meet this girl?”

                “She had to work, I—“

                “You are supposed to get married, then have sex.  I even had sex in my grandmother’s house, but I was married first.” 

                Everyone under the umbrellas laughed at that one, and most of the men threw looks in my grandpa’s direction that said, “You crazy old man.” 

                I quickly made a defensive joke.  “Grandma, I would never have sex in your house.”  That got some laughs from the family. My mother choked on a sip of wine, but my grandma was not amused and shot me a look of disgusts. 

                My sister and aunt tried to come to my defense, but my grandma cut them off.  “Don’t get me started on you two.”  They were forced to retreat or suffer a public examination of conscience themselves.  My grandma finished her Tom Collins, stood up, and announced, “I’m going to make dinner for all my little sinners.”

                I felt pretty low.  I always looked to my grandma for advice, especially the moral kind.  Having her call me out on my largest offense against the church, in front of the entire family, was a shock.  Suddenly, I could really feel the sand in my swimsuit rubbing me in all the wrong places.  I ran back to the water for another swim.  I had to wash off the sand.  The swim was beyond refreshing.  It was just the right amount of cool.  It was like running a race through the desert where the finish line is made of freezing snow.  It was like a cleansing or a baptism perhaps.  I had escaped the hell on the beach that was the conversation.  As I swam, I thought about how my grandma was still trying to teach me how to swim.  Only in her mind, I was barely treading water.

                When I took a shower that night, I noticed a small red rash in my places of sin.  I was convinced my grandma prayed for it to happen, but her dinner was so amazing it seemed like a greater sin than sex.  My grandma didn’t treat me like a grandchild again until the next day.  At the dinner table, I was still her little sinner.  She left a few pieces of French bread unbuttered.  She pointed her butter knife right at me and announced to everyone, “Those are for Sean; he can butter his own damn bread.”  Everyone laughed at that point, my grandma and I included. 

                When I got home from Pensacola, I told Whitnee the story.  I did not move out or stop having sex with her, even though I was pretty upset she didn’t greet me naked at the door.  The first few times Whitnee and I did have sex after the beach trip, my grandma popped into my head.  I think this was her actual goal that day on the beach.  “If he thinks of me every time, he will never have sex again.”  I imagine her thoughts, but my girlfriend’s bare shoulders peaking from under the blanket are enough to pull me back to my reality, my beautiful sinful reality. 

            I love my grandma, but I will continue to be one of her little sinners.  I no longer call myself a Catholic but a cafeteria Catholic.  I pick and choose what I like about my faith and leave the rest at the church.  Not that I have been to church anytime recently.  It is a good thing no one pointed that out on the beach.  Just as my family does not exercise much restraint when it comes to alcohol, I plan to ignore restraint when it comes to sex.  In the end, we will always be a family through thick and sin.