I said to Gina, The school I went to in Manila was called St. Jude. It was next to the church, also called St. Jude, where hundreds of people went for Mass. St. Jude is a very popular saint with the Filipinos, I added. Although, if Gina hadn’t asked and Alice hadn’t told her, I would not have been hip to this figure’s identity. It had been a long time since I’d given any thought to my boyhood, devoutness, obedience, my family.
Allen was, in some ways, a kindred spirit. His one-word self-description, at our first book-group gathering, was “lapsed.” What did he mean? You name it, I’ve lapsed. To much laughter, he enumerated: lapsed Christian, lapsed Korean, lapsed middle-class person, lapsed heterosexual. He was an unusual gay man, but maybe I was relying on stereotypes: he was young but chubby, unstylish, un prepossessing in appearance and manner. He wasn’t the most talkative of the bunch of us, and he had a fondness for upspeak, like a teenager.
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