Contreras was doubtless, in his attempt to balance Joyce’s humility with her hubris, more deSade than Dominican. Nevertheless, she’s in good company: St. William, St. Rudolph and the aforementioned St. Dominic all had their boys take the lash to ‘em. St. Theresa had it that the birch and the scourge took one to a state of ecstatic mysticism. Did Joyce inch toward St. Anthony-style rapture or, from a more modern standpoint, move closer to integrating her shadow, as Jung might posit?
Or was she just near-mortally embarrassed at having been whipped by a freak-boy on the corner of Second and Downey?
(You’ll have to picture the scene as looking more like this –
as this was once the site of the Ancient Order of United Workmen [who later became Mutual Life Insurance Co.] lodge from 1889 until its demolition 1966.)
Contreras probably had too much passion play infused into his psyche as a lad. Hard to say which home housed his room-the street numbers on this short, quiet street have mysteriously shot to five digits. Was it in one of these that he mixed himself into a potent cocktail of unbearable devotion and manic lust, with a floater of sadistic madness?
