The Holy Trinity

Recently I learned that a onetime priest with whom I was acquainted as a youth had been afflicted with either Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. The person telling me wasn't sure. After some digging, I discovered that he had died and that his last few years proved difficult because of the Alzheimer's.
As a 6th, 7th and 8th grader, and into high school, he alternated between being an antagonist and an ostensible friend. He once told me that if he had a son, he would want that son to be like me and that the greatest gift he could give me would be for me to recognize my own potential. He eventually had two daughters after leaving the priesthood, and a divorce, and I doubt the girls are much like me. As for recognizing my own potential, I think he went 0-for-2.
Had my father not created a vacuum by his departure, perhaps the opportunity would not have existed for this man to step into the void. He also had God in his corner. To people of a certain mind-set, God can open a lot of doors, therefore he had a level of access conferred upon him by virtue of his being a priest.
This priest took me to see the Knicks and drank a bunch of beer and yelled at their coach. "Hubie, you bum." Hubie Brown didn't appear rattled, but who knows? Alternatively, he excluded me from a 76ers game at which two of my friends got to meet Julius Erving. Why he excluded me I'm not sure, but I thought then that he did it to hurt me. It worked. Manipulation and passive aggression and retaliation. The extent to which that stung still resonates. Alas, he helped to cement the notion that adults lacked trustworthiness. But boys being who they are, or were, I retained the capacity to resurrect at least some of my faith in him.
Since he was an Army chaplain, he took us to the local base, where I had the opportunity to fire rifles at the range. Had I turned the rifle on him, or myself, life's course would have been altered for us both. I might have been able to spare us subsequent distress, especially him, apparently, in his waning years. He plied me with beer one night at the base and allowed me to articulate my perspective on the high school in which I was matriculated.
"I don't want to be there," I explained. "It's a pre-college. I want high school."
And so it followed that I pulled out of that high school after only a few weeks and enrolled in one of the local Catholic high schools. All was well on that front. Except my mother shunned me. So, I had no father at home and the priest pulled me in his preferred direction, while my mother sulked and withheld affection and wore on me with her own passive aggression. At that point, I think she perceived a tug of war between her and him, with my 13-year-old emotions as the rope.
During this stretch, thoughts of suicide intensified. I couldn't live with my mother under those circumstances, so I asked the other school if I could come back. Yes, as it turned out. I told the priest, who, clearly distracted, cut short his sermon at mass later that afternoon. My mother took note and seemed pleased. I had worked my way back into my mother's good graces but alienated the priest. Our interaction subsequently dwindled.
He shouldn't have become a priest. I suspect family pressure influenced his decision; his sister the nun was principal of our school. Before the fallout, he and I regularly took my dog swimming. He used to step on the clutch and have me shift the manual transmission in his burgundy Datsun B210. We once rode nearly the length of the Garden State Parkway in that car, and at each toll booth I would hook a shot from the passenger seat over the roof and into the basket.
At least he eventually rectified his decision to become a priest, but not before inflicting damage. While still a member of the clergy, he would intimate that someone from our crowd of hormone-driven lads should become a priest, probably because he wanted to spread the misery. Like all things Catholic, it would have been perfectly reasonable to have committed to the priesthood while in 7th grade, despite having to conceal erections several times daily with textbooks, or even Bibles, when we had to stand in class. The Adidas logo on our book bags stood for All Day I Dream About Sex, and we all wanted to end up in the bushes behind the church with a companion during the Friday-night basketball games.
This priest did recruit us as altar boys. We ate the host and drank the wine, and not just at mass. Levels existed within the altar boys and I eventually reached the pinnacle, the altar-boy captain, so to speak, only to quit in protest of his behavior.
My universe revolved around sports then, and he once summoned me to the rectory and seated me in front of the desk behind which he sat.
"Before I throw you off the team...." he began.
I don't recall my perceived offense. Probably just general attitude and obstinacy. But those traits had gotten me that far, so I saw no need to change. Panic and betrayal descended upon me rapidly, but I got recovered enough over the course of this meeting to basically tell him to go fuck himself. I left there thinking I no longer would be on the basketball team, the fallen captain, but it never came to pass. At the very least, I would end up in Hell for telling God's representative here on Earth to fuck off.
He comforted me when I arrived at a Sunday-afternoon basketball game, fresh with the knowledge that an assailant had attacked my mother in the Bahamas. I couldn't hold it together, and as we sat on steps in a part of the school separate from the gym, my tears poured forth and my back heaved with each sob. I always had feared that I would lose my mother, and the world seemed as if it might make it happen. Then the trauma transformed into anger, and I played the game with a certain vigor, and we beat our archrivals. What a triumph.
Part of his frustration with me derived from the strained relationship he had with a younger priest who had come to our parish. The younger priest and I became friends, and Priest No. 1 went to the school psychologist and complained that Priest No. 2 was stealing his friends. Or at least that's what Priest No. 2 told me. Once when I was particularly exasperated with Priest No. 1 (let's call him Bill, since that was his name), Priest No. 2 (Dennis) said to me: "The difference between him and me is that he jerks off and I go out and get fucked." We suspected he was doing Miss Williams, and we marveled at her breasts. While we considered becoming priests. Two priests and a boy, not to be confused with "Three Men and a Baby" or "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place." I think Dennis, who eventually became jaded and with whom I drank while I was in high school, had my interests at heart, as opposed to my mother and Priest No. 1.
So unfolded the saga of Bill and Tom. He left an impression.