Foggy Father Ed McKinnon

When I was in the Jesuit Philosophate (1968-1969/70), which just meant fulfilling some canonical requirement for Thomistic philosophy, I lived with five other young Jesuits in a small house near Boston College. After being locked down in Shadowbrook for a bit more than two years with strict rules covering every aspect of life every hour of the day, we were enjoying some freedom. From time to time we’d sneak out to a well known art house in Kenmore Square near the Boston Red Socks ball park. I think it was called Kenmore Square but it might have been The Fine Arts Theater.. 

The reason that I mention art house movies is a very funny story that popped up about one of my Jesuit Philosophy teachers, Ed MacKinnon, or as we used to call him affectionately Foggy MacKinnon. 

One night we went to a forbidden movie, Pasolinin’s Teorema. It became the inspiration for Nick Nolte’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” another wonderful film. In Pasolini’s film a mysterious character shows up at an upper class family villa in Milan and begins by sleeping with the maid, then the son, then the mother, then the father. He was of course a Jesus figure. It was Pasolini, what do you expect? Anyway it was long enough for an intermission, and when we went for popcorn, there was Foggy MacKinnon standing in the lobby looking rather bemused.. Rather than a rebuke for sneaking out, he just said, “Thank God they don’t have any pets.”

https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/6460

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teorema

Ed MacKinnon, whom we affectionately called “Foggy,” was one of the promising young philosophy professors at Weston and Boston College. After my novitiate at Shadowbrook, I went to Philosophy and for reasons not altogether clear to me, I was also ready to pick a fight. Imagine. Ed had a Ph.D in physics from Saint Louis University, and had done several years of postdoc work at Yale in philosophy. He was supposed to form a bridge between science and faith. I had no idea what he was talking about. Of course I wouldn't admit it--actually was too busy doing art to spend enough time in class to ask any useful questions. So I missed that boat entirely. My loss

Once Ed went to the minister at Weston and asked for a car to drive to a conference, I think at McGill. What would be better preparation for delivering an important paper than a relaxing drive through the Adirondacks to Canada. He arrived, parked the car, delivered the paper, answered questions and then left quickly, grabbed a cab to the airport and boarded a flight back to Logan. The minister came to his room when he heard that Ed had returned to get the keys for the car. Ed said “What car?” I may have some of the details wrong but I think the story is basically correct. 

When I was in California I heard that Ed had gone to another conference about resolving the conflicting claims of science and theology, or as he says, “examines an influential argument that the intelligibility of the universe requires a creator.” (Why is There Something? Philosophia 51 (2): 835-855. 2023. He is still dealing with the problem today). We were told that he laid out the positions carefully, and then announced that after studying the problem for a number of years, he found the agnostic position persuasive and was going to leave the Jesuits.

I do not know if this story is correct, but it’s a great story. I did meet up with him one more time. I think it was at an event that Fred Tollini organized for New Englanders and Jesuit friends who had lived together at Virgil Barber House near the Yale campus. Ed had just taken a new position at Cal Hayward where he spent his entire career after BC. And he’d married. I am pretty sure that I asked about his current position regarding the Church, as I had just left and publicly said that I’d tossed out the whole shebang. He demurred, but offered that he was now very happy. He’d met a woman who had been a nun at a support group for former religious. He called it a “Religious Lonely Hearts Club.” I didn’t say that I had met one or two former Jesuits in gay bars so maybe I could borrow the designation. Maybe he was not so hung up on the conundrum between faith and science. Maybe he was just lonely and decided that he wanted to marry. 

End of story. Retelling them is how I pass long lonely nights in a remote Indian village.

https://philpeople.org/profiles/edward-mackinnon

Allen and Phil's last conversation

I can’t say that I had a front row seat, but I got as close as he allowed, even to his friends. I was present at all their meetings when Allen came to Hartford Street during the years that I lived with Phil. Perhaps a few others acted as his amanuensis, but I picked up the task whenever I could, knowing that it was a rare privilege. I answered the door and made the tea. It happened in what were our public room so it was appropriate to be there, but I was polite, kept my mouth shut and listened carefully. 

They were giants and yet in some ways they acted like kids on a sandlot. Of course they were older so the shouting was replaced with lots of pauses, keywords that brought a chuckle, “do you remember…” followed by the briefest notation said more than enough. They were old friends who never had enough time together, old friends at the end of their lives who realized that there was never enough time but what did remain was precious and had to be enough. They always seemed to pick up exactly where they left off. I sat trying to hear where there was perhaps new insight, but their love for one another, the appreciation and respect between them was so thick it didn’t matter.

Their meetings were like clockwork. Phil was always getting ready to go to the zendo as he did twice every day, and that took at least an hour. Allen would arrive at 3:30, 4 at the latest. It never went much past 5:30. Allen would always politely excuse himself saying that other friends were waiting. Allen was a creature of the night, and Phil only operated in daylight where he had a fighting chance of avoiding the sharp edges of furniture and the unexpected drop of steps. Dinner or lunch for some reason were never included. Perhaps it was the noise of a restaurant, or that they wanted to get to the part that mattered, being with one another.

Allen had become what he always wanted, a public figure whose opinion was sought after, a poet whose work was respected, a firebrand who fought for things he really believed in, even if it was Nambla. I cannot say if Phil was happy being a Zen monk with the same certainty. I never got the sense that he had really found a true vocation, but it was a job he relished, and he did it so thoroughly and thoughtfully that he appeared happy though there was always some dogged anger that would appear when you least expected it. There were other rewards for him, like really discovering his true nature which is not an insignificant prize. 

Phil had a small circle of devoted friends, and they were faithful. He was a great raconteur and lively companion. They would come and visit, Lou Hartman, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure,

but I only saw Phil cry twice. By the time that Issan took his last breath, it was the end of such a long difficult process that there were not many tears. Our breathing, all of us had been as hard as his as we sat by his bed. We were too worn out to cry. No tears.

But when Phil  told me the story of the search party for Lew; how Gary had organized a posse looking and hoping that he was not lost, his eyes filled with tears. He loved the guy. 

He loved the way he used words, and they had the same mistress, all words in the English dictionary. Phil is the only man I know who actually read the whole thing, page after page, line after line. 

There was no trace of Lew”s body. Maybe he’d jumped into a hidden car and escaped to Mexico. No, that was just wishful thinking  He had killed himself or fallen into a deep ravine. He and Gary had both known he was depressed. No words could help.

Tears. Just the memory and tears. It was still raw.

I was with Phil when Allen phoned to say that he was going to die. My memory says that we were sitting in the living room at Hartford Street, but I actually think we were in Phil’s small apartment in the basement of the hospice, in the small room that opened onto the garden. That is where Phil’s phone was, and I am certain that Allen used that number. Phil had been expecting a call. Allen was due to visit and Phil would have known the exact dates. Allen would have also known when was the best time to reach Phil whose schedule was almost set in stone. He smiled broadly when he said hello and then fell silent. His face lost all expression.

There were very few words, “”I’m so sorry. Yes I understand that you won’t be able to travel to the West Coast again. Give my love to Gregory. I love you. Good bye.” There are times when even words fail. They were both poets and both Buddhists so they’d pushed words’ limits. 

He put the receiver down and told me that Allen was going to die, that he had cancer and there was no hope. Then he started to cry and asked to be left alone. I knew that there were tears on both ends of the call. I told him that I was available to get anything he needed and shifted into the Maitri’s office which was in the adjacent room. At 5:30 he emerged from his bedroom in his robes and silently began up the stairs towards the zendo. Sitting was at 6.    

Lord Krishna comes to tea

 I knew that Allen was in town when there was a knock at the front door at 3:30 exactly. A young man, 21 but not a month more, clean shaven, holding a book, asked, “Is this the Philip Whalen Zendo?” I invited him into the living room where he sat down and quietly continued his reading.  Allen would be at the door shortly; I could hear Phil beginning to make his way up the stairs. He and Allen shared years of friendship. They were punctual. I began to prepare tea.

I loved when Phil’s friends came to visit. Phil was on his best behavior. Not that he was normally badly behaved though in private moments he could be angry, even insulting. Despite being one of the foremost leaders of a movement that questioned the very roots of believing and behaving what my parents taught me, when he was proper, he was extremely proper. But there was another quality to the conversations with his poet friends. Their language was careful and measured. It was literate. I was always looking for any innuendos, and I loved their laughter. It was poking fun without the slightest hint of slighting someone.

Phil of course knew Allen’s long time companion, Peter Orlovsky, and talked openly about Peter’s drug addiction. Phil joked to me about Allen being a follower of “the Cult of Boys,” but this was the first time that Allen had brought a young lover with him. Phil was not very interested in sex himself, reinforced or dictated by his isolated personal habits, but I knew I would be looking for Phil’s reaction. How would he treat a young lover?

The young man and I sat a short distance from Phil and Allen. There were barely pauses in their conversation. It doesn’t matter what it was about. It could have been Buddhism, Trungpa, Diane de Prima or other poets who passed through the Disembodied School at RMDC, or even where to get the best Chinese food in San Francisco. They were friends, and though we weren’t excluded, we were not included. What was clear is that his young companion admired Allen. He hung on every word, carefully listening to each line, laughing when it was appropriate. Allen for his part was attentive to the young man. Not condescending or at all lecherous, he was careful that his friend was treated like an invited guest

Yes I admit that I entertained the possibility that there was some kind of coercion behind the young man’s presence. The age gap was enormous, and there have always been rumors about Allen’s sexual exploits. I also had a distasteful experience of being manipulated by an older man. But at least that afternoon, I was not sitting with a boy-toy but a bright young man who genuinely liked older men.

I’d been reading Christopher Isherwood’s tribute to his guru, Swami Prabhavananda, My Guru and His Disciple. Isherwood asked the Swami a hesitant question about a new relationship with a young man. Isherwood confessed that, given his experience in the stiff Victorian world of English Catholicism, he was expecting a censorious pronouncement. Instead Prabhavananda told him to treat his lover like Lord Krishna.

Then it hit me. I’d been to tea with Lord Krishna.

A year later I was sitting with Phil when Allen called to tell him that he was dying. Phil cried. 

The Clang Birds

I was once the model for a rather unsympathetic character in a satirical novel. Most of the details have faded into distant memories before the Summer of Love, before Stonewall, and they will for the most part lie untrampled in the graveyard of failed friendships. However there are a few details that come to haunt me from time to time when I am feeling vulnerable or when I want to examine the way gay people were treated in religious life before Vatican 2, before the sexual revolution..

The novel was by John L’Heureux. I went looking for the opening passage. Here is the description of a Clang Bird. 

"The Clang Bird is a rare creature that flies in ever decreasing circles at ever increasing speeds until with a terrible clang it disappears up its own ass. It is only because of the will of God that the Clang Bird is not yet extinct.

— St. Gomer, O.S.T., Founder,

Order of St. Thomas, Novissima Verba, 1717”

This was John L’Heureux’s world. The absurd image of a bird flying up its own ass as recorded in the “newest words” of a totally fake 18th century Saint in a fictional religious order named after the disciple of Jesus who had some serious doubts. It was very clever, or pretended to be, toying with the imponderables of extinction and the will of the Force That Cannot Be Named. If it were clever enough to get a laugh, that somehow justified any cruelty. 

It was published in 1972, the year that John left the Jesuits. He’d left the Ph.D. program at Harvard and was working as an editor at the Atlantic. He had to have been writing “The Clang Birds” when we were both in graduate school at Harvard, he at John LaFarge House close to The Yard while I was living with six other Jesuits in a small house near Inman Square. Our address was 57 Oak Street. His fictional collection of “over-educated priest candidates” lived at 75 Oak Lane. 

This much was not made up. We were all to some degree involved in the Catholic resistance to the War in Vietnam as were his fictional seminarians. The most senior member of the collective was a young priest, John Galvani, who had been part of the recently closed Jesuit mission in Baghdad. He was involved in planning an anti-war action in Boston following the model of Philip and Dan Berrigan’s action in Catonsville. When the solemnly dressed men from the FBI really did knock on our door, I answered, and had been prepped what to say--nothing.  

Another scholastic, perhaps the one who’d already been selected for advancement in the Jesuit hierarchy, a bright handsome Irish kid from Queens was in the Harvard Med School. He had fallen in love with a very attractive African American nurse. There were endless conversations between his family, his New York superiors and our small living room which made for lots of real life drama. 

Another member of the group was a man from Maryland who was at the Divinity School and sang in the choir at Saint Paul’s. For some reason that was never made clear, his ordination had been postponed. Although I saw nothing overtly sexual at the time, he had a fascination about some of the adolescent boys in the choir school, and I am quite sure that his name later appeared on the list of Jesuits who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. 

A wonderful, first generation Hungarian whose family had fled Budapest in the Uprising of 1956 was the author of the “As Per Duck Cookbook.” When he told his dad that he was going to be cooking for several other Jesuits, the dad dictated some Hungarian homemade recipes, “The first thing you do is chop some onions, garlic, celery, carrot and gently saute them, then you brown the duck skin all over. For the goulash you start the same way as you did for the duck. For meatballs, you begin the same way as you did for the duck.” And in the young academic Jesuit’s notebook at the top of each recipe read “As per duck.”

I forget my character’s name--he didn’t play an important role in L’Heureux’s plot, but people who read it recognized me. I didn’t have to be told though I did have to be reminded it was satire. It was published by Macmillan, at that point still a publishing powerhouse, so it was not a fly by night hit job. Purporting to be about some of the most controversial aspects of the post Vatican 2 religious renewal, it was also in my view so unflattering I was happy when it was widely panned. Few people got the joke, and, given the situation, I certainly thought it unfair. I found nothing to like in the way I was portrayed so needless to say, I thought it was also cruel. Needless to say,, I also got on a high horse silently telling L’Heureux in the comfy Jesuit residence on Sumner Street to go fuck himself. He found it so easy to create satire using Jesuits who were actually putting themselves in danger of following Dan Berrigan to jail while he wrote his three page daily quota. It was abusive.

The young religious me was a rather inept caricature of a homosexual who was trying to live a celibate life. L’Heureux’s disdain for the man was palpable. Up until “The Clang Birds” I had considered myself his friend, not very close, but certainly a man whom I respected and admired and as Jesuits, assumed that we shared some common goals. 

In my Junior year at Fairfield Prep, L’Heureux had been my Latin, English, French and Religion teacher. I loved studying and working with him and, for the most part, excelled. He was creative and seemed very open-minded. He was certainly brilliant. I was star struck, even falling in love in the strained way that adolescent gays do as they discover and explore their attraction to men, but it was never returned. Thank god for that, but it was a factor in my deciding to become a Jesuit.

He attracted a following. He even gave a name to the clique, the BYP, the Bright Young People which was an actual group of blue blooded high flying hipsters who emerged in London’s Mayfair after the First War. Evelyn Waugh, one of John’s literary inspirations, wrote about them in Vile Bodies, which of course was assigned reading. 

There were some perks to identifying with the BYP and supporting them in the election for our class officers. L’Heureux organized Saturday excursions to New York City. I remember Tom Baker, Jan Wojcik and perhaps Jeff Connell were part of the group. And I was included until I wasn’t. I remember how much I loved those Saturdays. I grabbed the train in Bridgeport which was further east on the New York, New Haven and Hartford than the rest of the group joined. I remember seeing Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin the Sun, Camelot and Bye Bye Birdie as well as the beefcake magazines in Times Square. 

Now the painful memory. I am standing alone in the entrance to McAuliffe Hall on North Benson Road waiting for my mother to pick me up. My mind is a blur and I can barely keep from crying. I have just seen L’Heureux in his room. He told me that I would no longer be invited to join the New York group. Perhaps there was some attempt at using the occasion for helping me “grow” in some way, but if there were, it didn’t ease the pain. I could not understand why I had been singled out. Looking back it might have been that I was just too gay, but that is hard to pinpoint amid the raging hormones of puberty and being rejected by my first crush. He probably just said that I just didn’t fit in with the group. Of course what he would not admit is that he, L’Heureux, was a conflicted bisexual. 

I had three meetings with John after The Clang Birds. I remember two extremely well or at least certain parts of our conversation, or my version of it, has stuck in my mind. Once Tom B and I visited him in his apartment in Boston’s Back Bay when he was working as an editor at the Atlantic. It was on one the blocks closest to the Boston Commons on either Marlboro or Newberry Streets. It was also the cruising block of a growing gay neighborhood. A stream of cars would slowly circle the block pretending to be searching out a parking space while lots of sexily dressed young men would be walking their dogs or just hanging out by fire hydrants or inspecting the parking meters. Eventually a driver and street walker got lucky, and an empty parking spot opened up for a connection. When John looked out the window and saw right below a connection happening, he kind of chanted, “dance away you little queer, somebody’s going to love you.” I may not have the words exactly, but I know that I have caught their exact feeling and can still feel the chill.

Much later, probably in the late 1980’s, when I had a business making custom furniture, we got a contract to supply some furniture for a new Alumni Relations building on the Stanford campus. During the installation I called L’Heureux to see if he had time to meet. He held the prestigious position as director of the Stegner Creative Writing program. He was very cordial, even friendly. He showed me a spacious office in a very beautiful Stanford building. We talked a bit about the AIDS epidemic and he admitted to a friendship with a person with AIDS. Obliquely, he was also admitting to having sex with men. I say oblique because although there was never an outright admission, his words and gestures pointed to the pain of losing a lover, and for a brief second we entered the level field of being completely honest.

As I followed his work throughout his long and productive career, I began to suspect that it was his own bi-sexuality, or totally closeted gayness that short circuited all our attempts at friendship. Of course when he was a Jesuit, all discussion of sexuality was out of bounds, and I just might not have been his type. I do know that he had sex with one man who happened to be my friend.

“The glorious thing about literature,” L’Heureux told The Stanford Daily, “is that it allows you, as a reader, to experience vicariously what you never fortunately have to undergo in real life. The same is true with a writer. It allows you to purge yourself of all the worst kind of bedeviling thoughts or ideas or even temptations without ever having to go through with them.” John, darling, this is at least to some degree wishful thinking. I know that you wrote about a man arrested for sex abuse in front of his class, but I never read the book. One of your last stories in the New Yorker, “The Long Black Line,” was about a Jesuit novice who left Shadowbrook under a cloud and committed suicide shortly after. You were there in the novitiate in 1954 and you died in 2019. That is perhaps 65 years of experiencing vicariously. It was only 63 years ago that you excluded me from a nice group of creative young men and it still stings. Perhaps I am just not as good a writer as you were. I pray that you did find some relief from living a lie. If it helps at all, I forgive you and I pledge that I will never allow my sexuality to block another person’s creativity or happiness.