Chimney

The last time I looked at a chimney with such anticipation was probably about thirty years ago on December 5th. That's what it must feel like, I thought, for nature lovers who set up a wildlife camera and wait for a fallow deer to appear on camera. Only my fallow deer was a grey old man with an outdated worldview.

NOS had managed to get my attention. At any moment white or black smoke could come out of the chimney. Really at any moment.

Little did they know.

The first smoking moment, Wednesday. I watched for almost an hour. No idea why. I'm not Catholic. I'm not religious at all. The chosen one won't have a direct influence on my life. But I knew the contenders. Parolin, Tagle, Zuppi, Erdo, Grech, Pizzaballa, I could dream them up. I read up on them, watched videos, studied the odds at the bookmakers. Knew the backgrounds: boring secretary, Asian Francis, priest from the street, conservative friend of Viktor Orbán, offered himself to Hamas as a hostage. And then you'll see, plot twist, just like in 2013: it'll be someone no one expected.

I think I just had Eurovision fever. The winner of that also has very little effect on my life, I also can't really reconcile those candidates with my own taste, and I also wonder why some are actually allowed to participate.

Was the conclave where staunch Catholics and always-online gays like me overlap in the Venn diagram? Vatican’s Next Top Catholic . Vatican’s Drag Race – don’t tell me someone named Pierbattista Pizzaballa couldn’t lip-sync to a Laura Pausini song every Friday in a Roman café. The most fun things to follow on social media around the conclave were in the queer corner . The drama, the fashion, the secrecy. Faith as reality TV.

Blasphemous? Probably a little. I found it particularly wonderful that a segment of society that is at best tolerated by the cardinals in the conclave, but still largely vilified, took such pleasure in electing the new pope.

The second smoking moment, Thursday morning. I didn't have to watch for an hour. My wish list had been carefully compiled by now based on whether the cardinal in question had ever hinted that he thought I had a right to exist. The bar was low, but it had to be set somewhere.

The third smoking moment, Thursday afternoon. I stared at the chimney again. White smoke. That's how I started the evening, just like thirty years ago, waiting for a glimpse of a man I don't really believe in at all.

Frank Huiskamp replaces Frits Abrahams this week.