Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Rigoberto describes his first and only Communion in 1984. While the ceremony itself was uneventful, except for the priest’s light blue tunic imprinted with the Virgin Mary praying, the confession the day before with the Franciscan priest left him full of shame. He describes how he couldn’t tell the priest about his gay desires. Rigoberto remembers the first time he felt this desire, in Zacapu, where he was friendly with the children of a strict family across the street. He had sex with the daughter, but later the eldest son of this family penetrated him, “which [he] enjoyed even more” (117).

The week before his confession, in catechism class, the teacher told the story of a priest who didn’t disclose a small sin and was thereby doomed to haunt the churchyard for the rest of eternity. This story haunted Rigoberto and, leaving the confessional without having told the priest about his sexuality, he thought about how after his death he will have to join that priest haunting the churchyard, “a pair of branded souls dragging the heavy burden of their sins” (118).