The Honorian Patriarch

I decided to post this story because it is about something that happened to a graduate of Philip Peabody Horton University and a former student of mine. I have tried to reproduce his account of the queer events of July last as he told it one Sunday morning to a group of us gathered over coffee and bagels at the Café du Canard Bizarre across from campus.

George King woke with a hangover and the phone buzzing in his ear like an angry rattlesnake. He kicked at Jackson to get the phone, which was on that side of the bed, but Jackson was not there.  He was out jogging as usual in the early morning.  George belched, tasted sour mango and grimaced. 

“Okay, George. No more fruity drinks, no matter how cute the fruit mixing them.” 

By the time he groped his way through tangled sheets to the phone, it had stopped buzzing and the flashing blue light alerted him to a message. “1 missed call 9:03 AM”  He pushed the call-back button. 

“Who the hell is calling at 9:03 AM on Sunday, for God’s sake?”

“Mr. George Basilarion?” a hesitant voice asked. 

It had been five years since anyone had called him that. George’s mumble was apparently affirmative enough.

The voice continued, “Your Holiness, it is with profound sorrow that I tell you that His Holiness, Patriarch Honorius, Twenty-third of that blessed name, Episkopos Apostolicos of the One Church of the One God, One Son and One Will, has passed into the glory of the One Kingdom he has so long desired, ahead of all human expectation, but in accord with the One All-Knowing and All-Merciful Will of God.  The Patriarch is dead.  Long live the Patriarch, Your Holiness.” 

Silence.

George’s mind blurred even more.

“No,” he thought, “ that can’t be right.”   

Images flashed through his vodka-fogged mind: plumes of incense, dots of candlelight reflecting off black satin robes, tall veiled hats, chains dangling jeweled crosses and enameled images of the Virgin, gold staff. 

“Now that’s drag!” he had once announced to his aunt.  The Patriarcha was famously not amused. 

George King, 23 and gay, was called Peach by his friends because he had been born in Buford, Georgia, when his mother unexpectedly went into labor while on the way to Florida to visit Epcot Center. He competed in drag contests as Miss Peachy Keene, twirling the fire baton, which he considered a lost art.  In the real world he was a clerk at a vintage/used clothing store called “Been There, Worn That” on Clark Street on the border of Boystown and Girlstown.  The store had originally been called “OUT-Worn”, but that soon described how people felt about the place, so the owners, vegetarian Orthodox  lesbians, changed it.

George’s real family name was Basilarion, but he anglicized it when he hit 18. His slender build, olive skin, hazel eyes, full lips, lean face and scruffy beard got him attention in the bars.  He had a nervous tic of running his fingers through his short, thick, curls.  He smoked constantly, his fingers stained from the tobacco.

He was also the unlikely nephew of the Honorian Patriarch, an anomaly he either hid or used as a pickup line.  No one even knew what he meant, most of the time – “Hi, I’m George.  My uncle is the Honorian Patriarch.”   It didn’t matter that they didn’t understand. For a couple of years before he met Jackson, it usually got him at least a second look, sometimes a drink and a chance to hook up.

The last time George had attended the Sacred Liturgy was at Easter, and he did so only because he chanced to stagger by the tiny Cathedral on his way home from a champagne brunch in Boystown.  Brunch was perhaps the wrong word – it was actually an exceptionally late Saturday supper.  His uncle-the-Honorian-Patriarch, surrounded by lesser luminaries adorned as seraphim or cherubim, had calmly ignored him, although the Patriarcha had glared.  She had been saddled with the disturbing name of Livia by her own bishop-father, and she cultivated that deadly empress’s least charming characteristics.  Jackson adored and fawned over her because he knew it drove both George and Livia mad.

After another moment of silence, the voice on the phone explained what had happened, but George couldn’t make sense of it.  Patiently the messenger repeated the story.  His version sounded like a press release. 

What had actually happened, as George was to learn later, was this: The Patriarch (Honorius  XXIII) and his son, Athanasius, who should have succeeded him, had died in an automobile explosion.  At first it was reported as an assassination, and this was the version that George received on the initial call.  Careful police investigation,  however, indicated that Athanasius had flipped a lit Havana cigar – a gift from the mayor –  out of the window,  and it rolled into a drain filled with sewer gas, setting off the blast.  This was at the corner of Michigan and Van Buren.  The Patriarch’s gold chain flew through the air and landed on the outstretched arm of one of the horse-mounted-Indian statues that  faced one another across the street.  The sirens were whining before the chain stopped spinning. 

Two blocks away, crowds of children playing in the fountain at Millennium Park looked up to see the fire reflected in the giant jellybean sculpture (which the creator insisted  on calling “Cloud Gate,” a name no one else used), bursting into cheers and applause at the spectacle, thinking it was a movie or a fireworks exhibition.  Parents scurried into the fountain, ignoring for once their fine shoes and slacks, scooping up their babies and heading for shelter under the aluminum waves of the Frank Gehry-designed performance space.  The car had passed the Park moments before, the stout chauffeur hidden behind his sunglasses, the enormous Patriarch munching on a square of pastry layers filled with honey, nuts and soaked in orange liqueur.  It was the Patriarch’s  complaints that his son’s cigar smoke was spoiling the taste of the sweet that led to the disaster.

“Oh. Thank you, ” George said, reflexively polite and completely inappropriate. He hung up and fell back onto the pillows. 

“What a weird dream!” 

The phone rang again in two minutes, but this time he buried his head under the covers and ignored it.  He wasn’t falling for that again.

It was 10:40 when George finally came into the kitchen. Jackson was sitting on the chair in his blue blazer, grey (not gray-with-an-a, but grey-with-an-e) slacks, $70 haircut, perfect nails.  Hidden were the tribal tattoo on his left arm and the gold ring that pierced his left nipple. He had a text from Augustine propped up in front of him, but he was reading Friday’s Red Eye, the Chicago Tribune’s tabloid aimed at college students and twenty-somethings. 

“J. Lo’s engaged again”

Jackson Taylor, George’s live-in boyfriend, was stunningly blond and blue-eyed.  He taught Latin at an Anglican boys’ school, Pendragon Prep.  Originally from Gay Hill, Texas, Jackson was very straight-looking except for lavender toenail polish under his silk stockings and shoes, and the aforementioned tattoo and nipple ring.  He was a graduate of St. John’s College in Annapolis, where he spent most of his spare time picking up sailors and learning enough naval jargon and gossip to drop hints that he himself had been a midshipman. This fantasy went over well at his school. Even the Headmaster who had reviewed Mr. Taylor’s academic records was confused by the vaguely nautical air Jackson cultivated.  The Headmaster and some board members occasionally boasted that their Latin Master was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, believing this reflected a masculine glory badly needed at a rich Christian boys school.

The smell of hazelnut coffee filled the room.  George jerked open the refrigerator and took out a bottle of nearly flat club soda.  As he swallowed half of it, he wondered if it was just “club”, the soda having pretty much disappeared.  He must ask someone.  But who would know something like that? He fell back onto the yellow plastic cover of a retro aluminum dinette chair.

“The Patriarcha called,” Taylor said, cutting a piece of perfectly toasted English muffin.  He applied a dollop of clotted cream, eyed it from under an arched brow and popped it into his mouth. It was really Breyer’s Sour Cream Lite, but he put it in a small crockery pot with a lid so no one would know,

“The Patriarcha?” George wrinkled his own unarched brow.

“Mm.” Taylor patted his lips with an incongruous white bar towel.  “She seemed more outraged than usual.  I suspect the incense had too much myrrh and not enough cardamom.”

 George ran his hands through his hair.  Why would the Patriarcha call?  She never called.  Something nagged at his memory, submerged under the fumes.  Like an annoying bee, it buzzed around, and he half-swatted his head before he realized that the noise was the doorbell.  He glared at Jackson who calmly turned the page of his paper and took another sip of coffee.

            “I’ll get it,” George growled, lifting himself up and stumbling toward the door in his leather flip flops. “Who the hell could be visiting at this hour?  And didn’t the phone ring earlier? That must have been the Patriarcha.  Christ almighty! Didn’t people realize it was Sunday.  Why weren’t they in Church?  No wonder the Patriarcha was outraged.”

He swung the door open and peered out into the light.  The sun in his face made him sneeze, and he cupped one hand over his mouth and nose while the other scratched his butt through his orange and green boxers.  There appeared to be a small crowd outside.

            Someone snickered and pushed a microphone in his face. 

“Are you George Basilarion?” the waxy-faced young man asked.

Things began to register.  Peering at ID badges and reading little signs on microphones and video cams, George realized there were reporters from PBS, NPR, FOX and a couple of local affiliates. 

            “My name is George … King,” he said.

            The reporters looked at one another. 

            “Did he say George King?”  someone whispered.

        With a sense of noblesse oblige, the PBS representative stepped into the breach. “Look, buddy, the Honorian Chancery said this is the residence of the new Patriarch, George Basilarion.  If you aren’t that George, could we see the one who is?”

            The phone call dream came rushing back. 

         George tried to back away and push the door closed, but a skinny religious reporter from FOX News pushed forward and asked him his position on pressing moral issues, such as abortion and gay marriage. 

Bleary eyes stared back at the woman and George blurted, with a hint of southern drawl, “You’re kiddin’, right?”  

This time he got the door shut.

            The night before George and Jackson had been dancing late at Roscoe’s.  It had been a typical Saturday night. The usual skinny boys who thought they were auditioning for a remake of Queer as Folk were dancing shirtless at one end of the room.  The fat old Asian was shining his laser pointer around on a self-appointed mission to provide a light show.  Yet another obscure fruit-flavored vodka drink had been pressed on them.  Too many fruit-flavored fruits pickled in cheap vodka!   What was it this time? 

“Go-Man Mango.  Christ!” 

George went back to the kitchen, ignoring the renewed buzzing of the bell.

            Jackson looked up.  “And who is that violating the peace of the Lord’s Day, pray tell?”

            “You don’t want to know,” George answered. He picked at the bar towel and grabbed at the Red Eye, which Jackson deftly pulled out of reach.

             “Did the Patriarcha say why she was calling?” 

            George tried to sound casual, but his voice rose two notes higher than usual at the end of the question.  Fortunately Jackson was back to reading two-day-old celebrity gossip and didn’t notice.

            “She just said it was important.  I didn’t really hear the words, you know. I hardly ever pay attention to what she actually says.  I just enjoy the tone and drama. “ 

             He finally looked up.  “Why?”

            “Hi, I’m George.  My uncle is the Honorian Patriarch,” George intoned.

            Jackson rolled his eyes.  “Okayyyy…”

“You probably weren’t actually listening when I explained this either, but…”

Jackson leaned back, but he held onto the paper in case this story wasn’t that interesting.  George launched into an ecclesiastical history lesson.  As he talked, Jackson forgot about the newspaper.  

The Honorian heresy, George explained, was also known as Monothelitism.  It consisted of a small group of Christians who followed the teaching of Archbishop Paphnutius, (+676 in eastern Turkey), that Jesus had no human will.  Denounced in 681 by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, Constantinople III, they went into schism.  They took the name Honorian after Pope Honorius, the only Bishop of Rome anathematized by a recognized Ecumenical Council, who had written an indiscreet letter in which he apparently supported the Archbishop’s position. Historians generally agreed that the pontiff simply did not understand Greek and failed to grasp the nuances of the esoteric debate.

Despite taking the name of a Western Latin bishop, the Honorians maintained many of the most ancient Eastern Christian traditions and had a married clergy.  Over the years, the positions of the handful of bishops, even of the Patriarch since 915, had become hereditary or dynastic, partly because there were so few adherents.  The small remnant was driven from Turkey in the late nineteenth century, eventually moving to Chicago.  Church business took little time and produced little income. Being a prudent steward, the Patriarch also headed a construction firm, PP Enterprises, Inc., which shared office space with the Honorian Chancery at 681 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 787a.  It was the construction company’s political connections combined with the Patriarch’s ability to deliver a small but important number of votes in a swing precinct that made this Sunday morning tragedy more than a blip on obscure religious radars.  That was also why the police investigation to come would be prompt and efficient.

“Well, your family is so much more interesting than I realized,” yawned Jackson, picking up his paper again.

            “Listen, asshole,” George shouted, “can’t you add?  Uncle Honorius is dead, Cousin Athanasius is dead.  There are no other sons.  I am the nearest male relative.  I think I’m the new Honorian Patriarch.”

            That got Jackson’s attention.  Down went the paper, up went the eyebrows, and a slow smile split his face.

            “Darling, all that gold!  All the smells and bells!  It’ll be fabulous!” 

             He smirked for a moment and then his mouth fell open.

            “OH MY GOD!  Does this mean I’m the Patriarcha?”

            “Shit!” George jumped up and ran for the phone and started punching numbers penciled on the wall next to it.  “This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be… Hello?”

            “Thank you for calling.  Your call is important to us, so please listen to this entire message before making your selection. To reach PP Enterprises, please press 1 now… To reach the Honorian Patriarch’s office, please press 2 now…  Our offices are open Monday through Saturday from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM.  To leave a message….” George slammed the phone and screamed, heading for the bedroom.

            “Why do they tell you to listen to the entire message and then say ‘Press 1 now’?”

            Jackson strolled to the bedroom.

            “Something wrong, Your Holiness?”

            George glared from the unmade bed, clutching a rainbow-hued stuffed dragon Jackson had given him for Christmas. 

“I don’t frigging need this.  I don’t frigging need this.” 

The fingers of his left hand ran through his hair while those of his right compulsively squeezed the dragon, which squeaked in commiseration. 

            Jackson smiled. “You know, Holiness sweetie, you’re going to have to stop that whole hair routine.  It’s very cute and all, but I don’t think it will work too well with that tall hat you’re going to be wearing.”

            He reached over and plucked the dragon from George’s grasp. 

            “And stuffed toys reminiscent of the Ancient Enemy will never do.”

            George fell back on the bed and put both hands over his mouth.  The doorbell was buzzing again and the telephone chimed in.  He looked out the window and a white pigeon landed on the windowsill and stared into his eyes.  At least, he thought it was a pigeon.

            It was going to be a long day.  And how was he ever going to explain to the vegetarian Orthodox lesbians?

As for that final question, none of us had a clue.