Some bosses are interesting. Sometimes that’s good. Until it’s not.

In late December of 1969, I saw a help-wanted ad for the position of sexton at Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn Heights. I knew nothing about Presbyterians. I don’t think I had ever met one before. I had even less idea what a sexton was, but I wanted to meet Spencer’s minister, the Reverend William Bell Glenesk, the man who had joined Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki in holy matrimony in a surprisingly somber ceremony on The Tonight Show. Along with thirty million others, I’d watched it. Despite lacking experience, knowledge or credentials of any kind, I applied. The ad had appeared in The Village Voice; how fussy were they going to be?

To be on the safe side, I did some homework. After a quick trip to the library and a perusal of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature I knew more than a little about the Reverend—all of it made the job even more appealing.

Years before his appearance on national television, journalists had been documenting Glenesk’s career in newspaper and magazine articles, beginning with a notice in The New York Times about his appointment to Spencer Memorial in 1955, while still a graduate student at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. From then on they regularly mentioned him, even listing, in an age when they were still considered newsworthy, the themes of his upcoming sermons. The Times had five articles about him in 1962 alone. In 1963 Look Magazine’s special issue devoted to “The New New York,” called Glenesk a “rebel in a Brooklyn pulpit.” In 1964 he threatened to defy a ban on Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Fanny Hill and a Time Magazine profile noted that “the Rev. William Bell Glenesk incorporates everything from jazz bands to barefoot modern dancers in his freewheeling, experimental services.” His guests included Ruth St. Denis, Metropolitan Opera bass Jerome Hines, and composer Ned Rorem, who not only presented a concert of songs (Mourning Scene for voice and string quartet) with Adele Addison, he gave the sermon. All this was part of Glenesk’s vision of modern liturgy: “Any creative art is touched with the divine . . . you should not go to church out of habit. I’m all for the idea of enjoyment. You should go because it is exciting. One week you can come out walking on air; another time crawling on the ground.”

By 1966, he was indisputably famous, or infamous, depending upon which side of the generation gap you stood. That year he told a reporter from the Montreal Star, in descending order of unorthodoxy, that he was an agnostic: “Every honest Christian is an agnostic. There is a vital difference between I believe and I know.” He did not obey the Ten Commandments or advise others to. He called himself a pornographer and claimed “Every preacher of the Bible has to be part pornographer.” (See Girls Gone Wild in Old Jerusalem for confirmation of this.) Plus he had smoked pot, and, after a lawyer told him he’d be breaking the law by distributing the copies of Fanny Hill Putnam had provided him, contented himself with reading excerpts to his congregation.

He was so much more radical than the Nehru-jacketed, folk-mass loving “Father Get-With-It” priests I was in flight from, that he appealed to me. I had been kicked out of a Catholic boarding school three years earlier; now I was hoping to work for the opposition—a genuinely protesting Protestant. It all went straight up my rebellious teenage alley.

I put on a suit and tie for the interview and took the subway to Brooklyn Heights. On my way to the church I passed St. Francis College, the scene of the psychological tests I was subjected to after getting expelled from St. Joe’s. I was thrilled to be on my way to a Presbyterian church. Entering Spencer’s side door on Clinton Street, I saw an empty pint bottle of Chivas Regal lying just inside the wrought iron fence. Evidently, they had a better class of bum in Brooklyn Heights, another good sign.

I remember very little about the interview other than Glenesk informing me that the job had a pedigree of sorts. Peter Schumann, founder of the Bread and Puppet Theater had been sexton there, using the meager salary to supplement fees the troupe earned from touring in Europe. Everyone who marched in a peace parade or anti-Vietnam War demonstration in the 60s was familiar with Bread and Puppet; their enormous, impossible to miss papier-mâché heads loomed over us like Easter Island statues come to life—I had never seen any of their theater work, but I was impressed—and they were in residence at the church that winter.

I don’t know how many others applied, but he hired me within minutes. He said that I could dress more casually as the job required some cleaning, as long as I didn’t look too scruffy during the Sunday services I would help prepare. This made the job even more attractive—as did the salary: $40/week or $20 each for two half-days, Thursday and Sunday afternoons. And as I found out after being hired, they were willing to pay me off the books. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $254 in 2013 dollars. My duties included sweeping the sidewalk and checking for trash as well as tending to the altar, pulpit and the refectory, where everyone met for coffee and pastries after Sunday services. Turns out “sexton” is not much different than “janitor.”

From my first day, I loved the job and the people I met. The congregation had a lively mix of locals, artists and writers, actors and musicians, plus a few United Nations types who enjoyed the countercultural atmosphere. At the other end of the theatrical spectrum from Bread and Puppet, several members of the chorus of Hello Dolly, then the biggest hit on Broadway, sang in the choir, their trained voices carrying the rest of the congregation through the hymns.

I even began socializing with some of the parishioners. My favorite was a young German émigré, Katrine, a devotee of Krishnamurti. She took me to the apartment of the first gay couple I’d ever met—I didn’t know then that they were gay, only that they lived together. They were tall, handsome, Nordic-looking, with lanky blond hair and lean bodies under loose floral shirts and blue jeans. They both wore sandals—good sandals—that one of them told me he’d purchased at Alan Block on W. 4th Street in the Village. On a Sunday afternoon we four sat in their living room and listened to Krishnamurti on the radio, speaking in that odd, halting manner full of silences, while one of the couple took down every word in expert Pittman shorthand. When the program ended, they talked about Gurdjieff and Ouspensky whom I thought were their friends at first, so many of their sentences began with the phrase “Gurdjieff (or Ouspensky) said. . . .” They dazzled me. As did Glenesk. He was mercurial, but so what. This was LIFE! I had made a leap into a different world. I might still be parochial, but I’d certainly found my way to a different parish, albeit one I couldn’t always take seriously.

If you’re raised Roman Catholic, it’s hard at first to see the various protestant denominations as little more than chips off the old idea—a very big idea. The Mass contains a sermon, but the sermon isn’t the Mass. Communion—transubstantiation—is the Mass: “Hoc est corpus meum.” “This is my body.”  Spencer was my introduction to a non-Catholic service. The organist improvised a Ravel-flavored Processional. The Reverend entered, we all prayed, there were a few hymns, scripture readings, a sermon—sometimes by a guest preacher—or a theatrical performance with a message, little cups of wine that were not the Blood of Christ, followed by announcements and the reception. It seemed thin to me. I no longer believed in it, but I missed the grandeur of the Mass, even if I now thought it little better than the “hocus pocus” heretics ridiculed. I concentrated on the entertainment Glenesk’s service provided, which was considerable given his love of theater and training. He had studied acting and dance with such luminaries as Eva la Galliene, Uta Hagen, Martha Graham and Ruth St. Denis.

The first two months were without incident. But midway through the third month trouble began. Mercurial is also another way of saying contradictory, or perhaps indecisive. Whatever you want to call it, I couldn’t always follow Glenesk’s many, rapidly issued instructions without him losing his temper. On my last day at Spencer, he asked me to clean the large (approximately 15’ x 15’) back wall of the refectory.

Standing atop a very tall ladder, I began scrubbing the grimy plaster—sooty, sudsy water dripped down onto a row of newspapers I’d placed on the floor, leaving a mountain range of grey and black streaks that eroded as I sponged left to right and back again. I had to move the ladder twice to clean from one side to the next. He came through when I was half done and asked me to make sure the altar was properly stripped. I got down off the ladder, went into the church and saw that it was. The moment I came back into the refectory, I was given a different assignment, which I completed and then got back up on the ladder. A few minutes later he was furious that the wall was “a mess” and demanded to know why I still hadn’t finished the job. He left the room again before I could explain that he’d interrupted me in the middle of it. Plus my shift was over. I’d already put in a half-hour more than I was supposed to. And I snapped.

The novelty had worn off. I knew this would just continue—besides I now had other prospects. My brother was at Fordham, his old job in the Young Adult section of the Brooklyn Public Library was available. I would have to be paid on the books again, but the library was on Eastern Parkway, right across the street from our apartment.

I climbed down from the ladder and started throwing away the newspapers. I didn’t care if the wall was half-finished. It would stay that way until the next sexton came along.

When he came back into the refectory, I told Glenesk I quit. And that’s when the fun began. I was owed a week’s pay: $40. Not much now but adjusted for inflation today it would be $240. Worth fighting for. He didn’t want to pay me because “you didn’t do the job.” But I had a weapon—keys to the building. I could enter the church through the side door and the front. And I also had keys to an office and a supply cabinet. I knew my meager salary wasn’t worth the cost of four new locks.

Glenesk had no taste for conflict, or maybe he couldn’t stand being confronted by a teenager who refused to back down. He sent his secretary Mildred after me.

She tried the casual approach first.

“You can leave the keys with me.”

“Sure. As soon as I get paid.”

“Stop this childish nonsense and give me the keys.”

I ignored her and sat down, the keys safely in my pocket. If I had to sit there all day or she had to physically throw me out I was willing.

A parishioner there on an errand saw me and asked how I was.

“I just quit.”

“You’re not the first,” he laughed.

“And they’re refusing to pay me.”

“Sorry, but I guess there’s not much you can do about that.”

I pulled the key ring out of my pocket and dangled it in front of him.

“Oh yes there is. No money, no keys. Mildred is furious.”

“She’s met her match!”

I guessed this was an unusual occurrence.

After a while, Mildred came back with $40. I gave her the keys and left. Within the month I was shelving books, processing new acquisitions, and clipping newspaper articles for the head librarian Mrs. Roth in the Young Adult Section, and in my spare time between work and classes, volunteering as a tutor. I rarely thought about Glenesk. I saw him again only once, one night walking in Greenwich Village, and I’d occasionally read about him in the news.

My brief tenure had broadened my world. My next job was going to do the same, with a more positive and longer-lasting effect. As a volunteer tutor on Welfare Island for Brooklyn College, I met a young woman who radically changed my perspective on what was and wasn’t possible.

PS: Spencer Memorial Church is now a condominium. A two-bedroom, two ½ bath apartment was recently listed at $880,000. If you’re richer, a duplex with a mezzanine is available for just under $2.5 million.