My relatives invited me to attend their Baptist church when my mom and dad separated. I grew up in a Catholic household. But seeing how the separation took a toll on my mental health, my mother agreed to let me join Sunday meetings at my relative's church. Everybody was kind to me, and I gained more appreciation for the Bible. And somehow, my mom and dad's separation felt so far away from me as I felt closer to religion.
The Abduction of Ganymede by Dutch artist Rembrandt is one of the many paintings created surrounding the mythos of Ganymede, a young boy kidnapped by the Greek god Zeus. Painted in 1635, it features the mighty god, who transformed himself into an eagle and grabbed hold of the boy Ganymede with its beak and talons. The painter used oil on a 177 cm × 130 cm canvas.
I did not last long at the Baptist church, though. Simply put, it was tiring having to attend two mass services in one day. My mother prayed that I would go back to her and Catholicism. The truth is that I never really forgot being a Catholic. I was just a lonely teenage girl. Unfortunately, I never returned to the church, especially with the revelation that occurred a few years after my exit.
According to mythology, Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan hero with whom Zeus fell in love. Smitten by the youth's beauty, Zeus transformed himself into an eagle and carried Ganymede to Mt. Olympus, where the young man became a cupbearer. Ganymede was only an adolescent.
I forgot whether I was in high school or college when my mother received the news from her twin brother. But my uncle's voice was shaking when he told us their parish pastor was raping young boys. Although my uncle was grateful that the predator did not touch three of my male cousins, he felt nothing but disgust when he learned that more than a dozen boys were harassed, assaulted, and raped at church.
While other famous works of Ganymede featured the boy as a wiry, beautiful teenager, Rembrandt's interpretation of Ganymede featured a plump, perturbed child whose face showed terror and panic. Rembrandt even included Ganymede soiling himself, an uncontrollable physical reaction to a disturbing event.
There was never an arrest. The pastor was assigned to another church, someplace far from our city. Yet every other day, we would bump into him or his family at the mall. The children's families received monetary compensation. But was it ever enough? Were a few thousand pesos enough to pay for the abduction of those boys' youth and innocence?
Unlike other artists who depicted the scene as a homoerotic homage to the Greek story, Rembrandt interpreted the painting — and, subsequently, the tale of Zeus and Ganymede — as the non-consensual kidnapping of a young boy, who was raped and exploited by an older and more powerful man.
Originally submitted for Advance Creative Writing
Comments