PEN/O.Henry 2011: Adam Foulds, “The Rules Are The Rules” originally published in Granta

Peter didn’t particularly like Jack….He looked too much like the cinema’s idea of a boy, too much like everybody’s idea of a boy, and this made him vain. He was vain of his footballing skills in particular….He was strong and petty and cruel, at least in his careless mastery. Peter’s sympathy was elsewhere. It was his natural Christianity perhaps; he felt himself with the boys who weren’t as fit or as sure of themselves, the frightened ones. Those boys, however, lit up when Jack joined them.

I’m afraid this story was lost on me. First, I was totally confused by the initial soccer match. I didn’t even realize it was a soccer match for a page or so, it just seemed like streaming gibberish to me except for the passage above. I didn’t realize the story was set in England for a while. I didn’t realize Peter was clergy, and I still don’t know if he’s a Catholic priest or Anglican. At one point Peter admits he would have prefered a church with a more medieval look, “something with the ghost of its Catholic past hovering just under the whitewash,” and I’m not sure if that means a Catholic or a Catholic-turned-Anglican church. Are there Catholic churches in England? Yes, I am that ignorant! Are gay Anglican priests allowed? Are they allowed to marry? It makes a difference. The Random House blurb (yes, I cheated, but how do you read a story without understanding the context?) refers to his “closeted homosexuality.” I don’t see how a priest could live with another man and still be closeted. Most clergy find their lives are constantly scrutinized in excruciating detail by their parishioners. I’m very confused.

But enough of that. Peter tests the limits of my sympathy. If he’s a closeted gay priest in a church that abhors homosexuality, he’s got a tough row to hoe. I try to remember that as the running soccer practice continues throughout the story, and, as shown above, he comes down hard on perfect Jack over the slightest suspected foul: “If he hadn’t been guilty at that precise moment, he had been at others and would be again. He was selfish and superb, a greedy player. The boy needed punishing.” In the meantime Peter is living with Steve, also selfish and superb and greedy, Steve who “stepped in and out of Peter’s cage like it didn’t exist, who argued that it didn’t exist”, who runs the bars at night and only comes home to Peter when he’s had enough of what he finds there. Gee, I wonder if there’s a connection.

I try to remember the tough row he hoes when he internally sneers about a couple of new parishioners. He assumes they’re bumpkins, and is worried they don’t take the upcoming christening of their daughter seriously – to them, it’s a pageant. He’s probably right about this. Most people don’t take religious rituals or holidays as more than social events. He seems suspicious as well, as if he thinks maybe they’re checking him out. He gets a little officious with them at a meeting to discuss the christening of their about-to-be-born baby, and at the christening, he gets a little bitchy:

But for the rest of them, this was a day out, a souvenir experience, and he couldn’t reasonably ask more of them. He reminded himself of that and his anger flared during the service only once when, with the godparents, they smirked at having to repeat that they rejected the Devil. Christianity: good for horror films, good for a laugh. He stared them down.

The baby girl in his arms brings to the front his deep desire to be a father, a real father of a baby, not titular Father to a bunch of people who see church as a mildly unpleasant duty. He hurts her. Not seriously, of course; he chills her with an excess of water and a bit more pressure than necessary when making the sign of the cross on her forehead. But he hurts the baby. Deliberately. She cries, and when the parents react as parents do, he reassures them and continues without relinquishing the baby.

Peter the Passive-Aggressive Priest finds many ways to punish others, so it’s hard for me to have sympathy for him. I suppose that’s the point, one of the points. That he’s in this cage of rules he’s made himself or volunteered for, and yet he resents those who don’t similarly restrict and torture themselves. And I wonder, is this what the entire clergy, the church, organized religion is about? People setting impossible standards and then lashing out when they can’t meet them? Maybe that’s where the story has been trying to lead me, after all.

In his Contributor Note, Foulds said this started with the image of a priest holding a baby for baptism and longing for fatherhood: “It was this predicament, this public moment crowded with private feelings and detailed physical experience, that compelled my attention.” He wrote a bit then put it aside until Granta commissioned this piece for their “Sex” issue, when it morphed a bit into the a study of how sex and personality are interrelated. I’m not sure where I missed that, but I’m sorry I did, it sounds wonderful. The Random House blurb: “The intensity in the story derives from the awful sense that there is no escape from the rules because they are the only ones Peter accepts.” I don’t see this either; there’s no religious fervor in him anywhere in the story; soccer is more of a draw than theology or devotion to any deity. I think my problem is that I really don’t understand why he stays in a system that denies and despises who he is, and this story doesn’t shed much light on that; it just outlines once again how destructive it is.