One Good Reason by Séan McCann

Author:Séan McCann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nimbus
Published: 2020-04-07T18:33:54+00:00

ROAD TRIP

Séan called me on October 2, 2002, a little over a week after I sent my letter, and thirty-one days after that I drove the 2,200 kilometres from Vail, Colorado, to London, Ontario, to see him again.

The most vivid memory I have of seeing Séan that first time after our moment in Vail (and subsequent misfiring in Minnesota) is of him opening the door to his hotel room in London, looking me square in the eye, and saying with a wickedly sexy grin on his face, “Hello, sweetheart.” He then grabbed me and hugged me like his life depended on it. He followed that up with the most searing kiss I’ve ever had. To this day it is most definitely the best kiss I’ve ever received.

After five days on the road with Séan (when I was only supposed to stay with him for the weekend), he said to me, “I’m madly in love with you. I’ve changed my entire world after Vail, after that letter.” Followed with, “I need to be alone in the end, though.” Of course all of this was said as we were a couple bottles of wine and whiskey in. That was the night we also started talking a lot about our histories. Family, work, previous lives. Séan was trying to describe Newfoundland to me because I knew absolutely nothing about it. As he did most times he was drinking (I would find out later in our relationship), Séan brought up the Church and the role it had played in Newfoundland and in his life specifically. All he ever said, until much later, was how fucked up the Church was, how he almost became a priest, how disappointed his mom was when he walked away from that path, and about the crazy priest who became a family friend who emotionally messed with his fifteen-year-old brain. I specifically remember thinking, during this particular conversation, how odd the entire scenario seemed. Having gone to a Catholic school, and having been raised Catholic, it was weird to me that Séan’s family would have been so close with a priest. I knew my priests, but I would never have considered them family friends. I found it so odd that I ended up telling my sister about it when I called her from the road the next day, asking her out loud, “Do you think he was physically abused and just doesn’t remember?’”

I should have listened to my instincts. I should have asked more questions. Or maybe it all went down the only way it could have in order for Séan to finally come to terms with it all those years later. But I do regret not pressing it more. I think, as with most things in life, you can’t force someone to live their truth. They have to acknowledge it first, then want to walk through the fire of what that truth means in order to get to the other side. This is what Vail was for me, so I was intimately familiar with the struggle and pain of it all.

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