Boy Crucified Read Online Free PDF Page A

just after 5:00 a.m., my injured arm sending bolts of pain up and down my shoulder. The painkiller had worn off. I put on a bathrobe and went downstairs through the dark house.
    Daniel was asleep on the couch, clothes draped on the back of my easy chair, his dark hair tousled in sleep. For some reason, the sight of him made me horny. That’s just what I needed, a crush on a younger man. As if my life wasn’t enough of a mess as it was.
    In the kitchen, I put on a pot of coffee.
    My shoulder ached dully, and a nice bruise spread around the area where I’d been stabbed. I discovered this by removing the bandage, which was annoying me. As I stared at the bruise, I thought about other needles and other encounters with my mother, and a darkness spread itself over my mind. It wasn’t the darkness of depression. It was more like fear and dread and exhaustion, all mixed together and forming a sort of ominous cloud that hung inside me, full of thunder and turmoil, ready to let loose with its burdens at any moment.
    While waiting for the coffee to brew, I went into the downstairs bedroom I had turned into a combination library and chapel. The room was lined with bookcases, for the most part, housing my rather unusual reading selections that ranged from religion to science to Stephen King and Patricia Cornwell. It was all there: Krishnamurti, Osho, Inayat Khan, Swami Prabupada, St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, the documents of Vatican II, various translations of the Koran, Buddhist sutras, books by the Dalai Lama and more, nestling with A Brief History of Time, Cosmos, The Ascent of Man, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Cujo, The Tommyknockers, The Grapes of Wrath, Postmortem.
    In front of the room’s one window, I had erected a shrine that featured a large statue of the Lord Buddha, standing up, with his right hand held out in the “stop fighting” position, along with a variety of candles and an incense holder.
    As I did every morning, I lit three incense sticks to offer homage to the Triple Gem: The Lord Buddha, his teachings, and the community of monks and nuns he had left behind, the Sangha. After offering homage, I put the sticks in the holder, watching their smoky plumes rise in the faint light coming in from the street outside, the small room immediately filled with the smell of jasmine.
    I looked at the Buddha and he looked back at me. As always, there was nothing but silence.
    After leaving the priesthood, I had tried hard to be an atheist, but couldn’t manage it. Instead, I drifted from one religion to the next, exploring, experimenting. Islam, Buddhism, the Quakers, Zen, the Tibetans, the Sufis—I hadn’t been able to find a spiritual home. I even spent time going to a Hare Krishna temple and reading the Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is, and had come very close to shaving my head and becoming an initiated devotee.
    In the end, I had retreated into Buddhism, the only “religion” that had actually proved helpful to me, the only one whose teachings I was free to question and experiment with until I could see for myself the truth of them.
    I stared at the Buddha’s serene face and wondered, not for the first time, if he was really as happy as he claimed to be. He’d found the end of suffering. How would it feel to not suffer anymore? To not feel the stirrings of craving and desire and lust? To be serenely indifferent to the world and its charms and terrors?
    If there were any answers to those questions, the Buddha was not about to reveal them to me, not this morning. He only stared at me, his hand out: Stop fighting!
    I had been struggling my whole life to do that.
    “Easier said than done, big guy,” I said softly.
     
     
    II
     
    “Y OU feeling better, man?” Daniel asked.
    I nodded.
    He looked sexy in my pajama bottoms, his hair messed up. He had heard me in the kitchen and gotten up to join me.
    “You get the paper?” he asked, a bundle of energy.
    I nodded again. I was not exactly communicative in the