Read Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time for Free Online

all the campers were Italian kids from East Boston who also attended Salesian vocational schools. Others, including me, were from the suburbs or other parts of New England. A tiny minority were local country boys who kept to themselves. There were three cabins: St. Pat’s for little kids; Savio for medium kids; Magone for us big kids.
    Brother Larry, in charge of Magone, was a gentle soul, always willing to discuss religious problems at the drop of a hat. He walked around for an hour every night after lights-out to make sure nobody was committing self-pollution. He taught me to shoot a rifle; I still have a couple of NRA “Advanced Marksman” certificates in my parents’ attic.
    Brother Jim was a biker who’d done time. He was in charge of Savio cabin, which meant scaring the shit out of any Magone kids who tried to pick on Savio kids. There was a rumor he had a switchblade on him.
    Brother Jim loved to talk about how Jesus wasn’t a pussy.
    “You see the guy crucified up there?” he yelled. “You see him? Are his hands closed? NO! Is he making a fist? NO! What does that mean to you?”
    We sat there, cowering.
    “It means something to
me.
”
    More cowering.
    “It means he could have just gotten down off the cross anytime he liked, and come down and WASTED all those Roman gladiator motherfuckers. But he kept his hands OPEN! He let it go! For YOU! And you sit here and look at that dead guy up there and
you don’t even notice!
”
    Brother Jim was seriously cool.
    Brother Dave, the folksinger, wore a Jesus beard and sandals. At Mass, he strummed an acoustic guitar and sang his original compositions, like “Dare to Be Different.” There was a vague sense that the other brothers did not fully accept him as an equal.
    Brother Al was a jovial Polish guy with a Gabe Kaplan mustache. He once literally washed out a kid’s mouth with soap. I saw it happen. Crandall took the Lord’s name in vain, and Brother Al flew off the handle and dragged him to the sink at the back of the cabin with a bar of Irish Spring.
    Salesians have their own icons and folklore—when they get mad, they yell, “Mother Cabrini!” They were always telling magical tales about Don Bosco, who had visions, and St. Dominic Savio, a fifteen-year-old who died of consumption because he was sleeping naked to catch cold and do penance for his sins. Sex and death and Italian mystagogy were in the air!
    There was a stigma against admitting you were trained as an altar boy, because it meant admitting you dressed up in a cassock and surplice. I was the only kid at Camp Don Bosco who would admit he was an altar boy back home, so I served two Masses a day all summer. But I loved the cassock and surplice, ringing the bells, lighting the candles—it was like being a glam-rock roadie for God. It might have earned me the contempt of my fellow campers, but it gave me a chance to bond with Sister Veronica and Sister Catherine, the nuns who took care of the chapel. While the other guys were riding horses or shooting hoops, I was working the cassock, swishing the surplice. Back home, my favorite part of Mass was during communion, when I’d stand at the rail and hold a little gold platter under people’s chins. The pretty girls would line up for communion (
I confess to Almighty God
). They’d kneel (
and to you my brothers and sisters
), cast their eyes demurely down (
I have sinned through my own fault
), and stick out their tongues (
in my thoughts and in my words
). Their tongues would shine, reflected in the gold platter, and since the wafer was dry, the girls would maybe lick their lips (
and I ask Blessed Mary ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you my brothers and sisters
) before they swallowed (
to pray for me to the Lord our God
). It was all I could do not to pass out.
    I was a little psycho about religion. My teen malaise found a language in the blood and glory of Catholic angst. All kids lead a secret double life, and this was mine. I slept