TEXAS
Houston Press
By Casey Michel
Mon., Mar. 11 2013
Martin Villanueva didn’t mind the first time his tires were punctured. He knew how to repair the drill-holes — take a nail, take a bit of adhesive, and call it good. He was frustrated, sure. But these things happen. Random day, random car.
Then, it happened again. Nails, adhesive, frustration. And it happened again, and again, and again. And Villanueva’s nail stock ran low, and his budget ran lower, new tires purchased after every few punctures.
And a pattern, beginning nearly three years ago in Edinburg, began to grow. The holes, this automotive stigmata, came only when Villanueva’s car was sitting in the parking lot of a new church he was visiting. They came only when he skipped out on his traditional place of Catholic worship, Edinburg’s Holy Family Church, and settled into another pew on Sunday mornings.
The whole time, Villanueva suspected. The location, and timing — it all pointed to one individual. It all pointed to a jilted love. It all pointed to a friend-cum-vagrant, a priest, Eusebio Martinez, who believed that he and Villanueva should maintain more than a simple pastor-parishioner relationship.
“When I met when him, I was building a house for him,” Villanueva told Hair Balls on Friday. A relationship developed, and flowered. It grew far quicker than Villanueva would have preferred. “He wanted me to be real close, wanted to be a real good friend. And then he wanted to be in control of myself.”
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