Intercession

Callie S. Blackstone

St. Sebastian, saint of archers, persecuted Christians, saint of holy Christian death. The saint goes shirtless, his pale body exposed and penetrated over and over by arrows, his smile welcoming the pain. St. Sebastian, saint of the gays and the sexual weirdos. Sebastian, the name I chose for my confirmation. I would think of him every time I got on my knees and they placed the wafer in my mouth, followed by the wine. When I told my mother my choice of name, she held my eyes for several moments before turning away, murmuring it was fine, but why couldn’t I pick St. Michael or St. Christopher, like the other boys did. I remained silent, but I wish I was able to tell her that I would have gone by another name if I could have. I would have martyred myself with another name if I could have, if God made that possible for me.  

Choose a saint name based on shared traits or interests. I chose St. Sebastian because he reflected who I was on a spiritual level, the person that I had not been able to reveal to anyone else. I may have thought I was being clever. I was a fourteen-year-old boy choosing a name that was supposed to stay with me and inspire me for life. I didn’t know what I was doing. The name felt like a dangerous choice.  

Pope Francis asked, “How is it possible, if you believe in Jesus Christ, to go to a sorcerer, a fortune teller, those kinds of people? Magic is not Christian!” Yet I was surrounded by all kinds of magic, by the way my classmate’s milky thighs bulged in the locker room, by the way Kevin Bacon’s abs looked in Wild Things (forget about Neve Campbell and Denise Richards.) But there is white magic and there is black magic. My classmates’ bodies were enchanting; yet their minds were more powerful. I always made sure I kept my eyes lowered, that I agreed with them about what girl was hot in class or in the latest movie, but somehow they knew. Some satanic, psychic power. They knew that I was gay queer fag. They said as much, with their mouths, and with their fists. My eyes swelled up so much they wouldn’t have to worry about me looking anymore. Saint Lucy, saint of throat infections, saint of the blind.  

They took dates to prom, made out in backs of cars, pushed their hands up skirts. I had lost my sight. I could no longer see. I would not let myself speak. I sat in the back of class and no teacher called on me. The students forgot about me, but I guess I should consider that a blessing. I began to slowly collapse inward, an ancient relic that has not been properly preserved and is forgotten to time. St. John Joseph of the Cross, Master of Novices, saint of austerity.  

While everyone packed to go to college, I hid in my room. I dreamed of going to a school in New York City, a place where my saint name was so common no one would even make note of it. A place where I could lose myself between the milky thighs of any number of boys without a second glance. But the money wasn’t there so I was going to community college, working, promising myself I would save enough to eventually run away. I was so busy between school and work I only had time to eat one meal a day. I learned that hunger felt clean and beautiful and pure, that it made my body sing in ways it hadn’t before I murmured the word Sebastian to my mother. Even looking at food became unsafe. The few times I was forced to sit down at the dinner table I stared out the window, never meeting anyone else’s eyes. I moved food around my plate and grew nauseous with the smells and the hunger. No one seemed to notice my aversion or my diminishing size. I only trusted unsweetened applesauce cups and cans of Diet Coke and cigarettes. These things felt safe, they felt at home in my mouth. First, three cups a day. Then two. Then one. The human body can survive anything, any method of deprivation. Any starvation, any want. Saint Marie of Oignies, who refused to eat anything but holy bread, leaving behind an emaciated corpse.  

The world was dirty. Other students tried to talk to me after class; a tan boy with long, dark hair that licked his shoulders tried several times. I packed up my things and rushed by him, despite the images of peeling his clothes off running through my mind. Those muscular thighs, that—I would not let myself think about it anymore. The hunger ran clean and beautiful through me. I closed my eyes briefly, I pictured the applesauce I would allow myself when I got home. The only food that didn’t feel dirty anymore. The only thing that didn’t feel dirty anymore. Before I ate, I peeled off my own clothes in front of the mirror. All I saw were bones, my clavicle and ribs exposed, my thighs dwindling. I smiled and the scale smiled back at me. The dwindling number helped me push away any thoughts of the bronze boy.  I don’t know how it first happened that day, how the razor found the flesh of my skin, but it bit into me and the blood flowed and I was hurting and I was clean and I was pure and I was punished for my sins, the sins of Saint Sebastian, the sins of the thighs of men. I was cleansed through the blood. No thoughts ran through my mind as I ran the razor over and over my flesh. It was the first time I had smiled in a long time. Saint John Vianney, saint of self-flagellation. Saint John Vianney, saint of Confessors.  

I cut myself on the palms of my hands, the heels of my feet. I pushed the straight razor through the flesh slowly. The skin slit with ease and the blood came quickly. The handle of the razor became slippery with the hot liquid. I dropped the blade into a puddle it had created—just another way I would disappoint my mother. I picked it up again and placed it against my chest. Was this what being burdened felt like? To carry the weight of the world? My mother had always wanted to go wedding dress shopping with a daughter-in-law because she had only had a son. She had always wanted grandchildren. My tears spilled onto the blood on the floor, thinning out the blood. Gay queer fag gay queer fag gay queer fag. I held the razor against my heart and leaned in. Jesus Christ, please save me from my sins.  

Callie S. Blackstone writes poetry and prose. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Plainsongs, Lily Poetry Review, Rust+Moth, and others. Callie is a lifelong New Englander. She is lucky enough to wake up to the smell of saltwater and the call of seagulls everyday. You can find her online home at calliesblackstone.com.