Spirits of Desire

Spirits of Desire
Conversations with My Priest
Frank Browning

NPR correspondent and best-selling author Frank Browning (Culture of Desire) recounts his talks with a closeted priest with whom he has had an ongoing affair—a priest who cannot and will not live without physical, sexual expression.

Journalist Frank Browning, who has shared personal narratives in his books Culture of Desire and A Queer Geography, now turns his attention to the spiritual world, particularly the intersection of sexuality and religion. A casual pick up of an unnamed priest of the Dominican order in a Paris art gallery leads to an affair, which in turn serves as the basis for Browning’s provocative conversations with the closeted clergyman.

Accessible in tone and content, their conversations excavate the nature of secular and spiritual friendship; the relation of the body to God; the mission of charity enacted by the drag troop Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, several of whom the priest knows rather well; the biblical prohibitions on improper pleasures of the body and how this priest managed his confessions knowing that he would not cease to have sex with men; the anathema represented, in his view, by the campaign for gay marriage; and his own conviction that the human body, and in particular his own handsome body, would persist in its fi nest perfection for all eternity so long as he maintains his faith and follows the duties and obligations prescribed by Christ. In short, this is a personal engagement between two profoundly different gay men who attempt to comprehend each other’s sense of spirit and desire.

Frank Browning’s newspaper and magazine articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, The New York Times, Mother Jones, and Playboy. He divides his time between Paris, France, and eastern Kentucky.