Monkish Secrets

I went to the monastery to find out how, not why. I already knew that the monk's vow of chastity was the brainchild of the same body-hating dualists who brought you the virgin birth. I wanted to hear about the methods and tricks: hair shirts and self-flagellation and monk-to-monk pep talks. Brother John spoke openly with me about his celibacy, but the closest he came to a purity tip was the revelation that the monks generally wear underwear and long pants under their brown robes. What he did reveal is that his "how" can't be extricated from his "why." His why is his how.

Brother John has internalized the church's teaching about sex so completely that his lust ebbed to almost nothing over the years. He's like a vegetarian who gets sick if he eats meat. He says he last masturbated when he was 14, and he has never had sex with another person. I believe him. A greater challenge than conquering lust, he says, is to provide humane counseling, part of the order's mission, to people whose problems include the carnal. At 38, Brother John is the youngest of the 30 or so brothers living there, and he sees all kinds of couples, including some gay men and at least one pair of S/M practitioners. (Brother John is not his real name, and he asked that the order and monastery not be identified either.)

On the hot Saturday of our interview, the formal gardens around the monastery are silent except for the bees cruising the huge red, purple and yellow blossoms. It's even quieter inside the high-ceilinged, un-air-conditioned building, and 20 degrees colder. Brother John escorts me to a plain, square parlor dominated by a portrait of the Virgin Mary where he's set up a tray of vending machine snacks.

He tells me I'm lucky I stumbled upon him on my first visit. "Most of the brothers wouldn't even be in a room alone with you, you know," he says, mock-confidentially lowering his voice. Brother John loves dishing to reporters; he recently was profiled in a local magazine as the wired monk. (It only takes a cell phone and Internet access to put a monk at the technical vanguard of his broom-and-wooden-bowl brethren.) "I found the article on Salon about your, um, experiment, " he continues casually. He pauses dramatically, milking my discomfort before intoning with some glee: "I pray for your boyfriend."

Brother John likes to tease and to shock. He says his boyhood was chaste but heterosexual, though I would have pegged him as gay. He reminds me of Dana Carvey's Church Lady when he buries something catty in "who, me?" disingenuousness. On the general topic of how monks and priests master their desire, for example, Brother John says, "I've heard professors say that the religious people with the most degrees have the highest sexual urges." He adds quickly, "Now, I have no way of knowing that, of course."

He says his own torment-free chastity is rooted in his upbringing in a small Illinois town. His description of it makes the no-dancing town in "Footloose" look like Bangkok: Nobody smoke, drank or had sex because of "positive peer pressure." The kids sound like some do-gooder Mafia in Brother John's example: "Someone in my sister's class was dating a boy from another town who was bad and we feared they would have sex. The popular girls of the school would surround her and get her to appreciate herself more and get her involved in other activities."

Brother John says he fell in love with several girls in high school but never moved passed kissing, because touching a girl's breast, he explains, "would be a trespass." He and the other boys did their kissing in their cars. Did your feelings ever manifest themselves, uh, physically, I ask delicately. "You mean popping woodies?" Brother John barks in his cut-to-the-chase voice. "Oh sure. But that would be a sign that you needed to step back from the relationship."