LONG ISLAND BOOKS

By Elise D'Haene

"The Beginning of Calamities"

Tom House

Bridge Works Publishing Company, $24.95

When I was a fourth-grade Catholic school girl, I had a smashing crush on my teacher - a lay teacher - Miss Brown (a yummy Mary Tyler Moore meets Suzanne Pleshette). The first delicious whispers of sexuality crept through my body and I spent many hours valiantly trying to silence those whispers through prayer.

Often, during mass, I would focus my entire being on the image of Christ on the cross, blood dripping, head drooped to the side, his lithe, muscled body marked by whips and thorns, and I would imagine him staring back at me and I willed with all my might that he would climb down from his wooden perch, point at me, and I would levitate above them all - chosen, special, downright angelic. This was fourth grade.

The next year Miss Brown became Mrs. Something. Heartbroken and rejected by my Lord day after day, I and my brothers and sisters were transferred to public school because my folks couldn't afford the tuition.

So, upon receiving Tom House's extraordinary first novel, "The Beginning of Calamities," I believed that maybe the editor who assigned me to write this review was nudged into it by a heavenly power from beyond, allowing me to revisit the agony and ecstasy of green-checkered uniforms, Peter Pan collars, and budding homoerotic love.

The year is 1973. Islip, New York. Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Spring has sprung, much to the mortification of Danny Burke, a fifth grader who suffers in silence throughout recess, covertly pretending he is playing Keep Away Superball with the dozens of boys racing around the parking lot.

Danny is no athlete and no fan of outdoor play. He's a shy, stuttering, obedient, smart boy with tight, brassy curls. He's a spaz to most of the other boys and his position in the hierarchy of coolness in his class is close to the bottom of the rung.

Recess is a one-hour hell for Danny and his kind. Blessedly, the agony in Danny's body and mind gives rise to inspiration - he will write a play and rehearsals can be held inside school and away from the boisterous, rejecting environment of the playground.

With Easter a few weeks away, Danny decides to write a Crucifixion play, "The Passion of Christ." He is barely able to contain the sparks of excitement zipping through his body.

"Yeah! Can he? Because that seems such an amazing title, and 'passion' itself an even more amazing word, with its serious, whispery sound. He's always admired it, the many times he's come across it, capitalized that way. It means great suffering, and he associates it with Jesus's taut, pain-ridden face lifted beseechingly toward heaven, with the drips of blood flowing from the tangled crown of thorns."

Danny's first order of business is to research his topic in the family Bible and set of Catholic primers on religion. The most use these books have had for the Burke family is to be displayed on a bookshelf. Untouched. Unread. These books and the story of Christ set in motion a real-life drama for Danny and those around him.

Inexplicably, Mr. House has created a story about a boy and a religious play that reads like an edge-of-your-seat thriller. What could be an ordinary coming-of-age story is instead a taut, tension-filled drama with transcendent language, moving pathos, and humor, both innocent and dark.

It is almost impossible to set this book aside without agonizing over the next calamity poor Danny has to face.

Danny's mother, Carol Burke, is a "mother-of-four-pushing-40," with an ample behind, a disappearing husband, and a low-level bookkeeper's job at the local public junior high. She has her own grandiose imaginings, a belief that deep down there are untapped powers inside of her, thet maybe she's even a bit psychic. Her youngest son, Danny, is a mystery to her. Unlike her other children, he is well behaved, a good student, and odd in a way she can't comprehend.

When Danny tells her he is going to write a play about the Crucifixion of Christ, she is supportive, but secretly irritated by the idea and the Church.

"It seems gruesome to her, always has, the Good Friday stuff: all that whipping and those big nails. Every year they have to remind you of it, and right at the beginning of spring, just when things are getting nice. Contemplation of suffering. What a concept! You'd think there'd be another way to get your blessings. Why do they always have to strangle the life from everything, cover it in black?"

All that whipping has a much different effect on Danny - it turns him on, gives him a boner, makes him think about Jesus's heinie and titties. The play gives rise to Danny's passion for boys, a passion that makes him blush and stutter all the more. He comes to believe that God and the Holy Spirit have selected him to write the words, like one of the apostles, and not only that, Danny believes he is the only one who should play the role of Jesus.

In one night, Danny completes his 12-page, handwritten opus with Christ's words underlined in red. He presents the play to his teacher, Miss Kaigh, a recently graduated young woman still working on getting her teaching credentials so she can secure a job at a public school.

A neophyte, she's insecure, with intermittent nagging self-doubts about her lack of sophistication. She is intrigued with Danny's play, impressed that he wrote it by himself, and initially titillated by the notion of presenting it to the fifth-grade class - perhaps she'll even reap some Catholic kudos from the experience.

Once Miss Kaigh receives permission from Mother Superior, the true beginning of calamities picks up full steam. Much to her horror, none of the upper tier, good-looking popular kids want to skip recess to be in a stupid play.

"It's almost a sound, the hearts of boy and teacher falling at once, falls of some distance as, until this moment, neither has considered the possibility that the others wouldn't be as excited about the play as they are."

As one geek after another volunteers for the play, Miss Kaigh begins to feel like the Queen of the Lepers with a Jesus played by Herman, the Alvin Chipmunk of saviors. You see, Danny's passion and unmitigated desire to be Jesus have been thwarted by not only his teacher but also his mother. How could Danny possibly portray the King of Kings without humiliating himself and the two of them?

What Danny's mother and Miss Kaigh do not count on is Danny's tenacious, fervent belief that God wants him to play Jesus; not only God, but also his imaginary naked friend Arram, who bursts forth from an illustration in the Bible and becomes Danny's biggest fan. They practice the scourging scene in Danny's bedroom and Danny discovers the joys and many personalities of his penis. Sometimes soft, sometimes hard, slapping and flapping around as he runs through the house in the buff with his new, albeit invisible best friend.

Danny covertly undermines Herman and a procession of ill-suited boys in order to secure the sacred role for himself. Does he get to play the part? These and other mysteries of Danny's faith can only be revealed by reading this dazzling, wonderful book.

Thanks to Mr. House, I finally got the chance to levitate from the pew of my Catholic faith and flap my wings, my heinie, and my titties with a curly-topped spaz named Danny Burke.

Elise D'Haene, the author of "Licking Our Wounds," is associate publisher of Permanent Press in Sag Harbor. She lives in East Hampton.