Day 301
There are some things I just won't talk about publicly, but twist my arm in private, and maybe give me a cocktail or six, and just wait 'til you hear what stories I could tell. In my brief 4 years as a monk, I don't think any of the vows were completely safe, but for the most part, things were exactly as you'd expect them to be.
I could tell you stories of how poverty was easier than you'd think it was, or how obedience was worse than you'd ever guess at (you didn't think you had a right to open your own mail, did you?), but I suspect gossip about chastity is what you'd really want to hear.
So let me be very clear: I never broke my vow of chastity, but I did absolutely come close on multiple occasions. I was a kid, 18 to 22 while I was there, and I was gay, living in a house with only men. That's like throwing a straight college kid into a sorority and expecting him to be an angel. It's impossible. It was impossible for me at least. You better believe I tried very hard at first, and weeks went by before I...well, before I spent a particular kind of private time with myself. When I finally did, it felt both great and awful at the same time, and I understood what Adam must have felt when he bit into the forbidden fruit.
I don't know why, but I genuinely thought my attractions to guys would go away once I joined the monastery (which was not the reason I joined). I joined because I felt God called me to be there, and I still believe this to be true. Getting past my homosexuality was just a happy side effect, another impossibility, I quickly learned. Still, my affections for and attractions to other guys were thankfully rare, and my extremely busy school and monastic schedule were enough to keep me distracted.
By my senior year of college though, my fourth and final year as Brother Sean, my headspace was more and more confused. A good man I knew from college helped me very much, never pushing me in any way to leave the order, yet assuring me I was a good person despite my same-sex attractions. He helped me see that truth is not licensed out to only one person or church. For his grievous sin of being a genuinely good and loving human being to me, the brothers of my community tried to have his tenure revoked. Even worse, he was led to believe I had turned him in. My guess is, more of my personal mail was opened, and other invasions of my monastic space (all under the umbrella of obedience) led to this.
Between the small gay books' section at the Hofstra University Library and the Village Voice copies I'd occasionally pick up at the local 7-Eleven, I only had slight hints at a possible gay community that might welcome me one day. And this was 1997! The world was about to change in a very big way, yet for all I knew, my homosexuality might remain a secret even if I left the order. I had no hopes or dreams of a better tomorrow in or outside of religious life, and soon fell into the worst days of my clinical depression, which lasted until the fall of 1997, well after I was shown the other side of the monastery door.
