Seminary Tales #5: Nescafe Shake

Today, I am posting one untold story of a friend who is not an ex-seminarian but an ex-con, meaning - - he was able to endure the rigorous and equally religious purgation of seminary formation in and outside The Hill - - a priest who at one day after singing the lauds and genuflecting infront of the constantly grimacing and suffering Jesus Christ in His Cross, received a miraculous ping inside his faculty and his constantly troubled heart, bolted his congregation whose sit of power is the now newly renovated and totally revered Fathers’ Palace at the eastern side of The Hill.

Here it goes...

Everytime I saw those CPs or DigiCams flashing, I could feel something is jerking inside me. I am being taunted by a ghost of a stolen photo shot while I was pissing on the floor and at the same time feeding some imaginary ducks at the seminary dorm hallway. Holy Goose, if those pictures will surface today, I will be laughing my way to hell.

Did you ever see those pictures?

Nope. I was grinning.

The Hill and to hell, I was caught patrolling the hallway with my Nescafe Shake in hand doing some kungfu dances and with hik, hik and hik as lyric of my too late for the night vespers.

And so…

That Nescafe Shake was full of booze concocted to the hilt, to the strongest combination of Gilbey’s Gin and a cola, by our fourth year senior named Rico.

This is how it happened. You knew so well that our dormitory rooms were spacious enough for 8 seminarians. We could even play short tennis in between the two rows of those beds and lockers.

One night, after our ten o’clock lights-off – when those memorable blue-dim lights were on in lieu of those power-eating 40 watts fluorescents and when everybody were expected to be pretending falling into wet dreams- - we, eight of us in the room and I was then the youngest, waited for the Prefect, Padre Amore, for his routine check up. We pretended to be sleeping, of course.

And then, what?

After Padre Amore’s soles silenced, Rico slipped his hand below his bed and, viola, a pint of Nescafe Shake glinted on the dim light. He sipped the booze and crawled towards the next bed. I could not remember now who was the second but I was the third one who did the same thing. Hands slipped below the bed, we sipped and we crawled, backed to the bed, lied and pretended to be sleeping with complete props of blanket covering our bodies. We did that routine of ingenuity continuously until we downed one bottle of Gilbey’s Gin.

After one more bottle and countless hands slipping below the bed, sipping, crawling, lying and pretending to be asleep, the heck of neophyte of me triggered the urge of feeding the imaginary ducks. I scrambled for the latrine.

And there, there at the hallway, I eased myself. Sucks!

And then, out of nowhere, flashes of camera caught my eyes.

I’ve seen those pictures later on and I laughed at my stupidity.

Guilty? No way! But, the offense was getting a juvenile drunk with a 16 years old boy pretending to be a man and striving to become a priest.

I was that boy (LOL).

Attending a seminary where some gross misconducts were done does not impute any guilt or guilt at all. However, it could be worth noting that some men who are now leading the church undergone through a system in which standards of behavior were less rigorous than some outsiders’ expectations.

One more glaring and de facto effect of this brotherhood of the cloaks is seeing how these men - - who formed and nurtured their brotherhood through clandestine and juvenile nights of drunkenness and occasionally, depending on their testosteronic level, stole time from their outreach programs to watch ST flicks - - being so patient with and oftentimes protective of their brothers who later go astray.

And I vaulted the congregation to be free, again.

And I laughed and laughed my way to RR.

Those ghostly pictures were neatly stacked inside my seminary albums and I am the undertaker who has the power to unleash the ghost. But, I will never do that to my friend. I could be patient with and protective of him.

I was the one who was at the second bed (laugh).

I snapped those pictures twenty years ago when we were both freshmen.