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These days, Sonny Carisi has perfected sex without feeling— a healthy, detachment from the “physical” aspect of a relationship; discomfort and pain replaced with mind-numbing images of greying hair and tinted skin.
He blames the time on stamina and his reluctance on inexperience, and all in all, it works OK; but all he has to do is close his eyes and watch as a myriad of different images flash across his eyes and he’s free to disconnect— to see and feel whatever he wants.
He can almost hear Rafael’s whispered words and feel his calloused hands as they trail along the outskirts of his chest down to his inner thigh; almost admire the feeling of Rafael filling him to the brim in drawn-out spurts; almost imagine the 2nd round.
Almost.
Regardless, it’s enough to appease his company, enough to get him through consenting to an act he needs to complete— for his sake and the woman he’s picked up. If it’s enough to appease God, it’s enough to appease him.
But after all is said and done, Sonny still finds himself replaying those images— trying to clasp onto a feeling he knows can only be replicated with a man. His nights are filled with flashbacks and fantasies of what he wish he had— what he could have had.
~~~
His night with Rafael is a fluke; a result of one too many shots on both sides, and perhaps some persuasion on Sonny’s part. But 6 shots in and Sonny’s not thinking about God, he’s thinking about Rafael’s mussed hair and flushed cheeks and remaining composed before he reaches Rafael’s apartment. 5 steps in and they’re already disheveled, Sonny’s hand halfway up Rafael’s shirt as he toys with the buckle of Sonny’s belt. For once, Sonny feels something besides discomfort as he grinds against Rafael’s leg, something like satisfaction.
When he wakes up, it’s 3:12 a.m. and his stomach clenches: nausea from the realization and nausea from the excess of alcohol. Rafael’s arm is splayed across his chest, but he manages to remove himself from his grasp and tiptoe to the bathroom. He almost doesn’t leave as he glances back at Rafael, at the loose, soft expression on his face. But it’s 3:00 a.m. and Sonny is thinking about God, so he tries his best not to wake him as he leaves.
When he gets home, he scrubs until blood is trickling from his fingers to the tile. He goes to bed, wondering how long it is before he can go to confession and confess his sins— confess Rafael.
~~~
Rafael is revamped memories of Church basements and swollen knees; a veneer of bodega coffee, Marlboro cigarettes and $2,000 suits. He’s a narcotic: pleasure that costs God’s flushed cheeks and flared nostrils, a burnt and pungent taste that curls around his tongue and distracts from the acid that settles in his stomach, the Yellow Brick Road to Satan’s doorstep. Sonny remembers his bedsheets— wonders if the thin, veiled bedclothes smeared with the product of a one-night-stand were enough to earn him his ticket; an all-expenses paid trip to Hell.
Beneath the Staten Island accent and St. Dominic pendant, Sonny almost hopes it does; that trading Heaven for Rafael Barba’s scotch-stained lips and a little less heartache would mean nothing; that he could have 50 years of love and bliss without confessing his sex-life to word-for-word priests and traditional parents.
Sonny doesn’t want God telling him who to love— he’s not sure God is telling him who to love.
But Sonny’s hands ghost over Rafael’s contact and his fingers miss the buttons and after 5 minutes he’s on the phone with a journalist he met through a mutual friend at a bar in Time Square, planning to meet at a place too vegetarian for Sonny’s taste.
This is what he needs.
He needs the wife and the 2.5 kids and the white-picket fence.
It’s been 36 years and Sonny still needs to fit the definition of marriage in the Roman Catholic Church to see possibilities— a future that ends in grasslands instead of barren fields.
Sex with a male colleague after drinks at Forlini’s is a fun, do-it-once-and-never-again type of deal. It’s a want, and God… Sonny knows he’d kill for a minute to want, a minute to love someone physically without this neverending numbness and discomfort seeping into his skin and into his bloodstream, but he can’t make himself want in love.
That isn’t taught in the Catholic Church.
Everywhere Sonny looks someone’s counting on him to fulfill this standard of what it means to be a Man— what it means to reflect The Bible and the words that have been ingrained into his head since he was born, all 10 fingers and toes, and his mother couldn’t help but mutter a “Thank God…” under her breath. He spent nights at Churches when his friends spent nights at parties. He prayed and listened to sermons when his sisters fought and giggled in the pews; not a care in the world— he had a care in the world when no one else had a care in the world.
And he still does.
Sonny Carisi is 36 years old and Catholicism is still his life.
But sometimes… sometimes he wishes he didn’t believe in God.