During our last month of confirmation meetings, at a time when I was supposed to be drawing near to the numinous embrace of the Holy Trinity, he tried every time to grope me, and every time I swatted his hand away. It became as much a ritual as our three cans of Old Milwaukee apiece. During our last meeting, just before I was to be confirmed with my classmates in a ceremony before the whole church, he tried with particular insistence to cop a feel while simultaneously straining for a kiss in the manner of the French. It was a terrible thing to see, the purple, swollen tongue of an alcoholic old man; it made me ashamed to be human. I knocked him away with a punch to the chest, a punch as hard as I could throw. He slumped in a corner of the couch, wounded. There were tears in his eyes, whether from pain or thwarted longing I wasn’t sure.