Hurricane Cupid

A unique story in a unique niche: I’m the only one who could have written this story. I was a priest on Long Island for 25 years, a pretty popular priest who used to do about 60 weddings a year. I’ve written/directed/hosted Radio & TV shows locally for all that time. I’ve also had numerous articles and Op-Ed pieces published. One screenplay, “The Eggplant Lady” was produced by Family Theater Productions in 2000.

Long Island’s South Shore: Spring and Summer 2004

The start of a wedding in the Chapel at Howard’s of Baybrook (a large Catering Hall). Bride and her father wait nervously in the dark for the Ceremony to start. In a scene reminiscent of “Das Boot” Virginia Goldman, the owner, shoves the couple into the spotlights. Rabbi and priest wait at the altar. Father Paul Innamorata groans as the tacky, broad, comedic wedding proceeds.

After the ceremony, Virginia kidnaps Paulie to complement his style and offers him a job as one of her regular Officiants. Though Paulie is immediately attracted to Virginia, he’s insulted that she’d want to “put him in her rolodex” with Elvis impersonators and the like. Though Virginia is immediately attracted to Paulie, she plays a trick on him and sends him into the lion’s den with her psychotic head chef.

Paulie is summoned to the Diocesan Office (“South Park”) to be put on notice with the Priest Personnel Director. His interior monologue reveals how little he cares about the whole thing, a hit job letter-writing campaign organized by his Assistant, Father Dennis Scaladino… a Darth Vader like figure who’s anti-liberal, anti-gay rhetoric is meant to disguise his own perverse inclinations.

Virginia and Paulie bump into one another several times. Their attraction comes out into the open, prodded on by the Rabbi and his wife. Paulie talks to them all about his love of cooking and invites all three to his home for dinner. At the dinner, Paul and Virginia find themselves together alone… The Rabbi and his wife suddenly can’t make it. Just as things start getting really hot—

The Narrator switches to Paulie’s backstory: growing up in Levittown, his relationship with his parents, the death of his sister, his love of cooking, his growing priestly calling. Then, his strange experiences at the College-Seminary, romance with a beautiful Haitian girl, entrance into the Major Seminary where he meets the Narrator. We see Paulie’s even stranger experiences in his first parish assignments until he is finally sent to a parish by himself. There, he makes friends with the local Presbyterian Minister… who invites Paulie to her wedding… a secret late-night wedding to her girl-friend. After giving sermons decrying the abuse of children by priests, Paulie is punished by being sent to his present parish, St. Cyril’s… with Dennis as his resident spy.

Over to Virginia’s backstory (following a Disclaimer that the Narrator doesn’t understand women), growing up with a cold, domineering Mother and warm, caring step-father. Sent off to a boarding school run by Nuns, she freaks out and splits. Getting hip deep in sex, drugs and rock and roll. After she does calm down, she reaches out to her stepfather, who welcomes her (and her 2 kids) back home.

Back to the hot and heavy post-dinner “intercourse” (secondary meaning… sorry), Virginia and Paul are interrupted by a phone call from the Funeral Director: Dennis is a no-show at a wake. After Paul sorrowfully fulfills this obligation, he stops by the rectory only to burst in on Dennis and a friend in flagrante delicto. 

Meetings continue for a forthcoming wedding: Maureen and Seth have a deal with a national cable channel to film all the prep for their wedding. Virginia has made a deal with the cable channel and the couple to “pull out all the stops” for half-price. She hopes the publicity will save her floundering business. In a perhapsbad sign: the wedding is to take place on Friday the 13th.

Virginia and Paul do finally get together, and in funny, poignant scenes… fall in love. The death of her father, though and the reunion with her estranged daughters drive Virginia into a depression… all she can manage is work. Period. Paul is devastated. To make things worse, the Church has found out about his participation in a gay wedding… and has suspended him.

The last scenes of the novel take place where we began, back in the Chapel at Howard’s. Hurricane Cupid has suddenly changed direction and is heading straight towards them. Seth calls off the wedding at the last moment, Virginia and Paulie must tell Maureen and, as they talk… they express their own love for each other. As lightning strikes and the electricity goes out, the Friday the 13th wedding of Seth and Maureen becomes the wedding of Paul and Virginia. The cable TV coverage makes Howard’s the #1 catering hall in the Northeast.

My main character Paulie, is, as my Editor (Paul Young of Literary and Screenplay Consultants) says, a “bright, charming, witty, quirky, stylish, charismatic, progressive, courageous, sensitive and appealing” priest, who is also a passionate chef. He is also a Wounded Healer, crushed, formed and driven by the heart-breaking addiction and slow death of his older sister. 

Virginia is (I was thinking of Fran Drescher) an attractive, successful, intelligent, sensitive yet neurotic owner of Howard’s of Baybrook, a large south-shore Long Island catering hall. Twice divorced, alienated from her two daughters, she struggles to keep her business afloat, even experimenting with “themed” weddings (Star Trek, Braveheart, Lord of the Rings, etc.)

Our Story-teller is a (hilarious) wise, old gay priest who is fresh off a nation-wide scandal and hiding out in a far-away Seminary… under a false name, along with his dog, Whiskey. He also hints that he’s put his own backstory into two other books.