A Dash of Delicious Sin: The Legacy of a Catholic Girlhood

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Custom is king

One of the first things we discussed in on my philosophy classes (an ethics class) was that custom is king. What we might see as common place and accepted, another culture might not. And vice versa.

I have always been fairly open-minded, and accepting, but I admit there are some things that I just can't find a way to understand.

I might not agree with it, but I can see where the idea of "no sex before marriage" would be beneficial in some ways, at some times. Having had my child (with my husband) six months before we married, I can safely say that I broke that rule. But then again, I have never felt it applied to me, because it is not part of my custom. I can accept that others view it as sacrosanct, and I can respect them for it. Even if I just don't understand it.

A young lady I used to work with dated her boyfriend for years, and never slept with him. He held off propsing to her, despite them loving each other so much it was obvious to anyone who saw them together, or even apart. She shined with love for him. But he had cancer, the kind that required a bone marow transplant, and he didn't want to be selfish and marry her, then die leaving her with only bills for comfort. So he held off proposing until he got the all clear.

The day he popped the question, there are truly no words to describe her appearence. She glowed. Her happiness was shimmering from the inside out. Unfortunatly, he fell ill again. Though it all, they never slept together. And sadly, he passed away a few months later. She refused to give up, refused to let him break off their engagement.

I tried not to judge. Goodness knows I tried. I bit my tongue when she mentioned wanting to be one with him, but knowing it would be a sin if she did. I bie my tongue when he fell ill again, to keep from telling her to grab what happiness she could, with what time they had. I bite my tongue to keep from yelling at him that his act of selflessness was the most selfish thing I had ever seen, because he denied her YEARS worth of possible good memories. Denied her so much.

They never had sex, and she will never know what it would have been like with him, because it was sinful in their eyes. I just don't understand that. I try, and I respect their belief, but I just can't wrap my mind around it. If something had happened to my husband before we got married, I would still have had the memories and the child we made together to cherish.

Another part of religion I can't understand is one that calls for female circumcision. I do not mean to start a flame war here, just express my own cluelessness. How can something so beautiful, the joy to be found in a spouse's arms as he is sliding into you, and holding you pressed tight against him, be denied to a woman? I understand wanting to remove temptation. If I could, I would ask every single attractive woman in the area to not wear skin tight jeans and belly shirts. Especially the redheads. Hubby loves redheads. But removing a woman's clit, and sentencing her to a lifetime of not just joyless, but in many cases painful sex, for something she MIGHT be tempted to do just doesn't make sense to me.

There are so many other instances where I truly want someone to make it make sense to me, that I could spend all day typing this post. But I am sure you don't want to read a novel on my cluelessness.

Just to make it clear, I have no problem with religon. I wasn't raised with one, but hubby is very faithful to his chosen path, we have many wiccan, other forms of pagan, christian, muslim, and even a few buddhist friends. I respect them all for their beliefs, and I respect their beliefs. Our daughter is currently seeking her path, and I am supportive of her questions, and respectful of her ideas as she searches for what feels right to her.

I just don't understand many religions. Especially when it comes to sex.

Thou shalt not shag

by Ashley Lister

I remember hearing a priest on the radio condemning nudists. His words were, “If the good Lord had intended us to go around naked, we would have been born that way.”

It’s impossible to argue against logic like that. It’s impossible to argue against religion.

Personally I’m not much of a believer. I have a difficult enough time keeping track of fictional worlds, real worlds and royal payments. Trying to focus on another realm of consciousness will seriously impede my opportunities for watching Dexter, 24 and anything else good that appears on the TV.

Perhaps the 10 Commandments could be rewritten to take into account modern issues?

Thou shalt not smoke.
Thou shalt not binge drink.
Thou shalt not shout ‘wanker’ at another driver who cuts you off.

It would mean trimming some of the other commandments, but a lot of them are redundant anyway. We can certainly lose the tenth commandment.

Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s ass (etc).

Without coveting, capitalism would be in a pretty piss-poor state. Coveting is what’s made this world successful for corporate businesses. If I didn’t covet laptops, cars, DVD sets and book collections whole industries would collapse. I really don’t think it’s wise to dissuade humanity from coveting.

9, 8, 7 and 6 are the important ones. These are the commandments that cover lying, stealing, murder and adultery.

I sometimes wonder about those four commandments, and what it says about God’s lack of faith in his creation. Do religious followers really need a rule that tells them not to murder? The rest of us treat this as a given.

I’m a member of a poetry society. We have some rules to ensure events are orderly, and help things run smoothly. No adult material in the family-friendly first half of the event. Try to limit your performance to one poem if possible. That sort of thing.

We haven’t yet told members that they’re not supposed to kill each other. I didn’t think this needed writing down. It’s the same story with lying, stealing and screwing around. We haven’t told members not to do these things. Fortunately, there aren’t many religious types in the group so murder, lying, stealing and adultery haven’t become issues yet.

I could go on. But I have a sneaking suspicion George Carlin has covered this territory before me.

I certainly think we need one new commandment that clarifies the religious position on sex. Something that says, ‘Thou shalt not shag.’ Admittedly, it’s not as erudite as the originals. But it gets the point across and applies to all sexualities, except for celibates, who are already obeying this one. (Celibates will look on this commandment the way the rest of us non-religious types look on the commandment Thou shalt not murder. Celibates will look at the commandment and think, “Well, I wasn’t going to do that anyway!”)

Sex is a sin. It’s fun and it gives pleasure to people. How on earth could an organised religion condone such heresy? I can almost hear that radio priest rephrasing his lines to make the message appropriate for this subject. “If the good Lord had intended us to enjoy sex, he would have made it pleasurable.”

And how can you argue with wise words like those?

Molly

She was laying on her belly with her face turned away from him. He lay next to her listening to her breathing.

She was crying. Snuffling into the pillow

“Are you awake?” he said. “Are you all right, Sarah?”

“You hate me.” She whispered.

He couldn't think what to say. “No, I don’t. You’re my good wife. My fresh new bride.”

“I’m a bad wife. I’m not what you wanted.”

He sat up straight, feeling angry at having to prepare himself first thing in the morning to tell her more lies. “You don’t know that.” Watching her broad back, her shaking shoulders, more than anything he felt baffled and small. He didn’t want this, any of this. His hand touched her shoulder and she squirmed away from him.

“Last night.” She whispered into the pillow. “You were treating me like an animal. You wanted me to do dirty things.”

She rolled over, sat up, facing him, smoothing out her heavy night gown. He still had no idea what she looked like underneath. She’d been crying for a while, even while he’d slept. Her pallid face was puffy and red eyed.

“I was acting as a man acts with a woman. Maybe I was too amorous, too filled with love for you.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Sarah - it’s what husbands do with their wives.”

“As soon as we were alone, you began acting all – all nasty! You had your thing out! Your thing! Your weenie thing! Sticking your hands all over under my clothes, where they don’t belong. Showing your big red weenie to me. That was disgusting!”

“Sarah.” He waved his hands in despair. “The Bible says the marriage bed is undefiled. What do you think that means? You’re still a virgin. Don’t you know what a virgin is?”

“It means husband and wives sleep together celebrating their pure love for Jesus.”

“But what about babies?”

“Of course we’ll have babies.”

“But how do you think you’re going to have a baby if you won’t let me do it?”

“Do what?”

“Put…” he could hardly describe it for shame. “”Put my… you know. In you.”

“What? What are you saying, Adam?”

“Listen, Sarah. Tonight, Elder Mid Wife Goody Harris is coming here. She wants to see if we consummated our marriage. That’s what it means. It’s not a marriage unless I put my thing in you. That’s what she’s going to check you for. It’s not a legal marriage unless you let me put my thing in you. They’ll send you away. Don’t you know that?”

He looked at her face and realized with shock, she really didn’t. “Sarah, beautiful darling, where do you think babies come from?”

“From their home in heaven with Jesus.”

“Yes, but how do they get inside your belly? Did anybody explain it to you?”

“My mother told me, she said the Holy Spirit will come to me, just like it did to the Mother of Our Lord. And then the Holy Spirit will get me with child.”

Adam looked in her eyes and realized the enormity of his task. “Nobody’s ever told you how to make a baby.”

She began to cry again. “You hate me! You think I’m stupid.” She wailed and hid her face in a handful of the blankets.

“I don’t,” he said. “I just didn’t know you didn’t know.” He took the blanket away from her face. “I’m going to explain some things to you. Listen.”

She looked at him suspiciously and crossed her arms over her breasts. “Don’t you touch me.”

“Listen. The man has the seed. The woman has the womb, like the field.” He made a hollow fist with his left hand. He inserted his right thumb into his hollow fist and thrust it in and out. “You see how it works? The man plants the seed. That’s how it’s done.”

She turned red and looked away. “Lord Jesus, protect me from sin. Lord Jesus protect me from sin.”

“So how do you think the seed gets inside the woman’s belly?”

“The Lord puts it there.”

“No!” he caught himself just in time. Patience. Patience was the thing. “A man loves a woman. He feels so close to her and loves her so much he wants to be even closer. As close as he can possibly be. Like me, I want to feel close to you and to love you. When the man feels very close to the woman and he’s bursting to be even more close to her - he does this.” He got off the bed and stood in front of her. Watching her face carefully, he removed his pajama top and dropped it on the floor. He untied the drawstring of his pajama pants. He drew his pants down exposing himself to her. She turned away at the sight. He held out his hand to her and she looked at his flaccid penis, her lip trembling. Look at her face, he thought, look what they’ve all done to her. It’s so hard for her. She wants to do right, to please me or to please Jesus or please somebody. She wants that so much.

Feeling the cool air, and her eyes staring at his penis, he felt it begin to stir. He looked down. It really is an ugly thing, he thought, the first time you see it. A big bag of skin. That strange long thing hanging down, sometimes sticking up by itself, all on the outside as if God had put it there at the very end of His act of creation as a joke. “Have you ever seen a naked man before?”

She shook her head. But her eyes were wide now, staring at his cock, with horror and fascination. "Put your weenie away."

“It’s a penis. Say penis.”

“peh . . peh . . . ”

“Penis.”

“Peh. . . no.”

“My penis is how I plant the seed in your field. You have a different thing, and my penis fits inside it.” He made the fist and the thumb for her, thrust, thrust, thrust.

"Stop doing that!”

“Think about it. Doesn’t it make sense? Touch it. Just touch it.” He stepped close, almost putting it in her face. For the longest time, she sat huddled in misery. Finally, hesitantly, swallowing her revulsion, she reached out and ran her finger tips along it. He felt a rushing tingle and began to stiffen.

She jumped back as if she’d been burned. “What’s it doing? Do you make it do that?”

He took her hand and gently wrapped her fingers around his cock. “No, you made it do that. It likes you. It belongs to you.” He said, suddenly feeling very strange at the thought. “This is your pet penis. Give him a name.”

“I don’t know. Peter?”

“Peter the penis.”

She smiled a little for the first time. “What do you want to call me? What I have?”

“Molly! You have a vagina. Your vagina is Molly. Peter and Molly.” He swallowed hard. “Sarah. Please. I want to see you.”

She didn’t move. The smile vanished. She let go of his cock. He wanted to speak, to protest, shout, order, demand. He waited, standing in the middle of the room, nude with his penis standing at half mast like a curious animal. Her eyes moved to look at him and he waited.

To his amazement, she got off the bed. With her back turned away from him, she slipped the night gown off over her head and dropped it on the floor. Her body was bare from the waist up. Soft and pliant, full in the thighs and ass. She drew down her panties, and kicked them away. She stood looking at the bed, her arms hanging straight at her sides. Her fists clenched. Cautiously, he came up behind her, and caressed her back softly with his fingertips. He massaged her shoulders and she allowed him. Gently he slipped his hands down, down under her arms which she lifted for him and he reached around. He took her soft baby bird breasts in his warm palms and lifted them, feeling the nipples rise. She was shivering. “You’re tempting me.”

“Tempting you to what?” he said, softly.

She raised her arms a little more, elbows hovering, and leaned back against him. He held her gently from behind, his hard shaft pressing the small of her back, now running his hands over her, lifting and dropping her breasts, pinching her nipples. Slowly, he inched his right hand down her belly, then below and twined his fingertips in her wiry nether hair.

“Lay down on the bed.” He said.

At first, nothing. And then, trembling, she moved away from him and turned around. Facing him. Naked. Her eyes looked frankly into his, one foot shyly crossed over the other and she gave him time. Time to run his eyes over her, appraise her, judge her, approve of her, love her, imagine the future with her. Her fecund belly, her bell shaped breasts, her thick topped thighs. Her eyes, waiting.

Turning her back to him, she lifted a knee, mounted the bed, then the other leg, rolled, and lay down in front of him on her back, her eyes never leaving his face. Her legs were open, and he could see her labia below were glistening and swollen. He got on the bed, placed himself, kneeled between her knees and touched her sex beneath.

“This is what we’re going to do.” He said.

“Don’t hurt me.” She whispered.

“Peter belongs in there.” He said. “Can you feel it? That feeling like Molly wants something inside her?”

She nodded.

“Let me do something for you first. Trust me.”

He inched back on the bed, dipped his head down and touched his lips to her sex hair, kissing her inner thigh. Her body tensed and began to move away from him, until he put his hands on her hips and held her in place. He peeked at Molly. There above her wet cleft, a swelling ridge. A smooth little pink nub. A miracle.

They didn’t cut her. I have four wives, and I’ve never seen a clitoris before now. She still has a clitoris. Thank you Jesus, thank you.

He felt her electric tension, a baffled mix of gathering lust and fear. His other wives would never let him go as far as she had already. What he was doing, even now, would have had them screaming in rage and threatening to turn him over to the Chastity Police. They had been damaged in every way. She had not. They had had their clitorises cut away, almost at birth. The memory had been burned into their very nerves. Unlike this one here, they understood sex and despised it with holy hate. They resented him for his hound dog desires, the marital duty of having to tolerate his climbing on top of them, grunting over them in the dark and finally splashing their wombs with his foul spunk in order to have children. This sheltered girl was still intact in every way. She had possibilities. She knew nothing of sex. Maybe she could learn to want it, maybe – impossible! – but maybe even seek him out for it, to come to his bed willingly, nude, wet inside and eager for him. This girl alone of his wives could learn to love him without fear. The other wives would expose her if they knew her secret. Maybe even have her cut, out of sheer malicious spite.

He put his tongue to the tiny nub, tasted it and played with it. She tensed and lifted her knees, he pressed them down to hold her tight over the edge of whatever was happening inside her.

“Adam. . . I didn't wash . . . “

He licked her nub and she jumped, but stayed as she was, as he ran the flat of his tongue along the swelling shaft above her cleft, himself feeling terrified of what he was doing, and the terror of waves of deep pleasure carrying them both away from shore, unable to let go of the seaweed taste, the slick feel, the sheer danger. He played her with his tongue, feeling the tiny noodle tip of her clit and kissing it with the curled tip of his wet tongue. She rolled her hips undulating against his face. Her breathing became ragged and then urgent. “Stop! No! Adam - stop!” She went limp. He continued.

With a sudden strangling sound she thrashed her hips once, banging hard into his nose. She sprang half off the bed, shoving him off her lap;wheezing,laughing wildly. The bed squealed as she collapsed back, curled up on her side into a ball, put her hands between her legs and held herself there. Her lips were tightly puckered in surprise.

"Are you all right?"

She stared blankly and nodded her chin. "... Yuh ... huh-huh...” Her thighs squeezed hard against her hands and her belly shivered. She groaned and bit the pillowcase hard, gasping. After a moment she said “Did you know that would happen?"

"Are you happy?"

She shook her head. "My body feels silly."

"Is it good?"

"I don’t know."

"I think it’s the way I feel when I give my seed to a wife."

She looked troubled, still holding her hands between her legs. She was looking up at the ceiling fan and thinking. "Isn’t there a Holy Spirit? My mother said there's a Holy Spirit and the man just watches. She wouldn’t just say that. Or lie to me."

This poor girl, he thought. This poor, excellent girl.

She looked at him, slack faced and confused.

He gently removed her hands from between her legs. He patted her thighs apart. She folded her arms across her chest and he could see her pale pasty skin was flushed a glowing pink and her face was almost red. She squeezed her arms so that her nipples seemed to pop out and the sight made him feel carnal and huge.

"I feel so much." she said. "I feel everything."

He eased himself down between her legs, belly to belly, his cock nested in her wet thatch of wiry hair. "It's that time.” he said. He kissed her lips. With his hand he stroked her soft hair and she looked lost. “All right? Its time for Molly to meet Peter now.” He nudged the tip of his cock against her.

She came to herself and looked down. “What are you doing?”

“Shh. Hold still.” Reaching down with his hand, he rubbed his cock against her wet cleft, feeling for the spot.

“Oh no. . . oh no.. . . stop. Adam. Don’t hurt Molly. Be careful.”

Her last words – be careful – were her assent to him, her surrender. He proceeded to press into the spot, felt her interior resistance. His body wanted to thrust in ruthlessly, he held himself back.

He gentled his way in, whispering love words in her ear, chanting, stroking her neck and her breasts in a methodical way that he seemed instinctively to know how to do without knowing how he knew. She became deeply relaxed, limp, breathing quietly. Her eyes closed.

He caressed her and continued, rocking gently, setting up an easy rhythm. She opened her eyes. “This feels all wrong. Are you sure this is what we do . . . .”

“Molly.” Swinging his hips forward, he pushed through with a hard thrust.

She ground her teeth hard, grunting at the pain.

“Almost over.” He whispered. “Relax. Relax your legs. Almost done.” She was panicking. “It’s okay. Just let me do this.” Her eyes were welling with tears. She was trying to wriggle out from under him as he felt his orgasm gathering. Her struggles excited him and he battered her groin harder, faster, dropping his weight down on her. “Molly!”

She got her hands under him and heaved him off. He tumbled down off the bed to the floor. His stiff cock, glistening and blood speckled, waved in the air alien, and unsatisfied. “Why did you do that?” He shouted.

“It hurts!” She was crying again. “You lied to me!"

He hadn’t come. Seeing her this way, enough was enough. “Your mother lied! Everybody lied to you all your dammed life! I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was making love to you. Love!”

“You can’t put it there! It doesn’t go there.”

“I’m sorry!” he waved his arms. “I’ve had it with you. I need to leave for work.” He went into the bathroom and washed himself at the sink.

When he came out to look for his suit, she was sitting at the edge of the bed, naked, with the blanket over her knees, looking down. He came up to her hesitantly. There were no more plans. "Well, Sarah." He stood over her, putting on a jolly voice for her. "You’re a woman now. You’re a real wife."

“Do you know," she said, looking at the floor, "I have to give all my life to you. But you only give a fourth of your life to me. That’s all I've got.” She looked up at him sadly. "I wanted a honeymoon."

"Maybe someday." He didn’t know what else to say. He found his clothes and quickly dressed. As he tied his shoes she was still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor.

She looked up at him as he went to the door. "Husband?"

He turned. The sight of her made him hate himself.

"I feel dirty." She said, “Love should be about higher things. Not like animals."

"Sarah."

"What you did? That was a sin. That was a big sin. What I did, that was a big sin too. I know because I can feel the Devil inside me now. Tempting my flesh, making me want it more. You’re not supposed to want things like that, dirty things. I'm going to fast and pray for forgiveness, and I'm going to confess to Sister Goody Harris when she comes here tonight."

A wave of mortal panic washed over him. "No!"

She looked at him with hostility. "Why not?"

"Why? Why? Because they'll kill us, that's why."

Her face fell apart. She grabbed the blanket and threw it over her nakedness and began rocking back and forth. "Oh no. . . I knew it. . Oh my Lord Jesus. . ."

"Its sodomy, Sarah, that’s what we did. Got that? If you tell Goody I was licking and kissing Miss Molly, they can stone us to death for that."

She stuffed the blanket in her mouth and cried. "What did you do to me? I didn’t want you to do anything to me. Adam, what did you do? What will we do now?"

"Do? We won’t do anything, all right? You shut your mouth, that’s what you do. We consummated the marriage. That's all Goody wants to know."

"No more." she said softly. "You made me sin. I didn’t want it; it's your fault. Adam? After we have our baby, we have to stop. No more Molly. No more Peter. Don’t touch me anymore after that. No."

He stood in the doorway hating her. Hating everything about his life.

"Do you love me now?" She said.

"Molly." he sighed. "I don’t even know who you are."

He closed the door behind him as he left.

"Sarah." She wiped her nose with her fist. Rising up from the bed, tightening her jaw, standing, defiantly nude, attuned to the ringing silence of the room.

"My name is Sarah."




C. Sanchez-Garcia

Ridiculous Barriers

For me, here in reality, the idea of sex as a sin is ridiculous. Of course it's ridiculous. It's a made up thing to make us feel bad and stop us being those monkeys that masturbate twelve times a day and have sex with each other up trees and in fields and wherever else they please.

Not that I think that without the concept of sin and shame and so on, we'd all be doing it in trees. It's just the fear of trees, isn't it? The fear that if Godly and authoritative types don't say "if you have sex in trees you'll go to hell", that's what we'll all be doing.

But really we wouldn't. Because, well...having sex in a tree is probably pretty uncomfortable. Branches sticking up your bum, bark scratching at the backs of your thighs...that sort of thing. Plus, we're not monkeys.

So poo on sin and shame and all that stuff.

That being said, in the ludicrous panoply of worlds inside my weird head, I do enjoy the idea of sex as a sin. In the modern world, there's not many of those old barriers around sex. Of course some still remain, but there are definitely not quite so many old dudes and pinch-faced ladies, telling us what we can and can't do, sex-wise (thank God, ha ha!). Which gives my head a kind of freedom, oddly, to think up those barriers for itself.

Because those nothing so fun as building up the walls, only to smash them down again.

For example, in my time as a writer I have put up the following sex obstacles for my characters:

1. Magical powers mean that if character has sex, other person will die.

2. Magical powers mean that if character has sex, he will die.

3. Magical powers mean that if character has sex with another character, both of them will die.

4. Character does not know what sex is due to horrible apocalyptic happening, and is afraid of it.

5. Character does not know how to have sex with a woman, because women ceased to exist due to horrible apocalyptic happening. (This one has been published: it's out on Monday from TEB. )

6. Character cannot have sex with other character because other character is an alien from the planet Blargon.

Of course, I've hugely oversimplified the plots of my stories (I hope!), but at their core, they do represent my fascination with things that stop sex happening. And though this fascination isn't all about sin, sin does make a heady stopper, just waiting to be overcome.

All I have to do is look at this picture:

To know that.

Morality is for Mortals

BY Kathleen Bradean

Egads. Another Thumper topic. (If you don’t have anything nice to say…) I can imagine what many of my co-bloggers will say about the way religion uses sex and shame to control people, so I’ll leave that in their able hands.

I was raised in a very religious household, but even my parents teased me about how serious I was about religion compared to them. That should tell you how deeply wrapped I was in matters of faith. On my tenth birthday, I faced a moment that forever destroyed my relationship with god, but it didn’t change the fact that I was a believer. I’ve struggled with this ever since.

A couple weeks ago, a fellow writer had a several hours to kill between flights, so I picked him up at the airport. Among the things we talked about as we walked along the beach was god. He told me that he wrote a story about how utterly frightening it would be if there really was a god. I had to agree. And yet…

Rational me says, “You know better than to believe.” Spiritual me just can’t let it go. If anything, I’m just as deeply wrapped around matters of faith as I was when I was young, it’s just that I understand now that it’s an unhealthy relationship of unrequited love. I know I really need to stop this, but I can’t. God will bedevil me until the day I die.

Spirituality, gods and goddesses, and the relationship between humans and gods are recurring themes in my work because I can’t let it go. In my Chaos Magic series, the main characters are gods. In Piquant (Hearteater anthology, not yet released) the narrator regrets his affair with a goddess or she might be a demon. The mistress in She Comes Stars is divine. With all the gods and godesses I've written though, I’ve never equated sex with sin. If anything, the gods I write about are into sex for the pure pleasure of it. They aren’t monogamous. They don’t wait for marriage. They fuck whoever they want to, however they want to. They don’t think there’s anything wrong with their actions, because they’re gods, and gods do whatever the hell they want to. Morality doesn’t even enter their minds.


SHE COMES STARS (Garden of the Perverse) by Kathleen Bradean

I want to worship at the feet of a Goddess.

The ad I posted was that direct.

Her reply was also to the point: “You may bow to Me.”

She stoops to conquer. To her, I’m not subhuman; I’m human. That’s low enough.
She’s divine.

~~

To my eternal damnation, I’ve learned that the catch when it comes to a Goddess is that she is absolutely inhuman, meaning that she is not human and she doesn’t give a damn if I am. So what if it makes me catatonic to leapfrog through human history in search of abasement? If I curl up in a fetal position after she sells my body to the Marquis de Sade, does she care? Oh no. She revives me, pokes me, prods me. She demands, as her green convertible Jaguar roars down the wrong side of the autobahn at three hundred miles per hour, “just what the fuck is your problem anyway?”

You wanted this.

Sure. I wanted this, but I wanted it different, somehow. I wanted to be in control of my domination. I wanted it to be like my jerk-off fantasies. This… This constantly defies my desires, and yet, reveals them in stunning clarity. My Goddess cuts to the heart of my libido, guts it, tacks it up for everyone to see, dissects it, splices, and wallows in it.

~~

“Don’t do it,” she mumbles. “Mistake.”

Mistake? I am the King of Mistakes. I gave my soul to a Goddess.

No one can imagine what it’s like to be so addicted to humiliation that I sob when she chooses to romance with coos and kisses instead of pain. I suffer horrible nagging doubts as her attention wanders away to the pretty boys dancing together in clubs. I have sweating nightmares about boring her. When I sulk, she doesn’t bother to ask what’s wrong, because she doesn’t care. Or maybe it’s just another of her exquisite cruelties. Fear and hope make for tortured nights. Then, as I’m sure it’s over, and I’m hoping she’ll allow me to go mad again rather than exist in sanity without her, she’s inspired to create a fresh hell. She takes me lower, lower, but I’m so relieved that she still wants to test my limits that I kiss her feet and praise her name even when she brands me a heretic and hands me over to the Inquisition.

Don’t tell me about mistakes.
~~

Holy Lust

By Lisabet Sarai


Warning: this post may offend some people with strong, traditional religious beliefs.




He set up his curtain in an alcove of the chapel. I tiptoed into the sanctuary an hour after Matins, hoping to find him available. Cold winter light poured through the arched windows. I could see his feet behind the drapery; I knelt on the floor before him.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been forty days since my last confession.”

“I know your sins, Sister Ursula. You need not recite them.”

I was shocked. “Father...”

“Be silent, Sister. I will tell you your sins. You are proud and vain, knowing that you are gifted with beauty and intelligence beyond those of your sisters. You are rebellious against the discipline of the Order, wishing another, worldly life for yourself. Do I speak truly?”

I bowed my head in shame. “Yes, Father.”

“Furthermore, you have unclean thoughts and desires. Your young body burns with need. You dream of many hands, stroking and caressing your flesh.”

I never recalled my dreams, but as he spoke, I remembered, or imagined, the scenes he described. I felt dampness on my thighs beneath my habit. The ache there was a hundred times stronger than I had ever felt before.

“You feel that you have been abandoned here in the abbey, left to languish here, unnoticed and ultimately alone, for all your days. That is the worst, is it not?”

His perceptiveness astonished me. I had not consciously realized how much I missed the feeling of belonging that I had enjoyed when I was younger.

“Yes, Father. Can you forgive me, Father? Can you give me absolution and peace?”

“I can, but only after you have done penance. Meet me at sixth hour in the stables.”

“I will be there, Father. Thank you. Should I say any prayers?”

I could swear that he laughed to himself. “I will teach you to pray this afternoon.”

The air in the stables was cold, but ripe with animal and vegetable smells. Father Jerome was waiting for me. In his hand was a whip of braided leather. He ran his palm over its length as he watched me approach.

“Kneel before me, Sister Ursula.”

Puzzled but strangely pliant, I followed his instructions, my eyes cast down. The straw tickled my nostrils.

“Sister, the heart of sin is the feeling of separation from God. The remedy is total surrender to His will and a return to communion with Him. Do you understand?”

I nodded, though I hardly grasped what he was saying.

“No, you do not, not yet. But you will. Remove your habit.”

Once again, he shocked me. I looked up, into those azure eyes of his. “Surely, Father, this is not proper...”

“We are all born naked. The flesh is glorious, not shameful. Do as I say.”

He spoke with such authority that I could only believe and obey. Unknotting the cords around my waist, I pulled the bulky wool robe over my head, then folded it neatly and placed it beside me. Now I wore only my rough linen shift, my crucifix, and my wimple and veil. I shivered in the February chill. Yet at the same time my cheeks, my earlobes, my fingers and toes, all grew warm, pulsing with some inner heat. My breasts felt heavy; my tightening nipples scraped against the homespun fabric.

Father Jerome paced a circle around me. “How do you feel?” he asked me.

“Embarrassed,” I replied. “And strangely free.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied. “I will beat you now. Not as punishment for your sins, but to teach you to surrender. When you surrender, your sins will evaporate like dew in the morning sun.”

– From “Communion” by Lisabet Sarai

Sex frequently gets a bad rap from religion. In the Catholic tradition, lust or fornication is a “mortal sin”-- a deed so offensive to the Diety that it carries the threat of eternal damnation. In Islam, lust is considered so spiritually dangerous that women are required to cover themselves to avoid becoming objects of temptation and men are forbidden to be in the company of females who are not wives or family members. Judaism takes a more favorable view of sexual pleasure, but only when it is experienced within marriage and supports the continuation of the race.

Obviously the question of what is sinful could generate volumes of opinion, commentary and debate (and has). I'm more interested in the issue of sex as sin from my perspective of an erotic author. I'm quite sure that legions of fundamentalists in the U.S. wouldn't hesitate to label me as damned—evil, corrupt, disgusting, deserving of the worst punishment. I find this extremely non-intuitive since I feel that sex has brought me closer to the Divine—both sex in my writing and in my life.

As I've shared in other posts, I was what many people would consider extremely active, sexually, in my mid to late twenties. When I reread my journal from that period, it seems as though I was constantly involved in new adventures. I had several lovers concurrently (not literally at the same time, but interleaved) and was in love with them all. I could hardly walk down the street without striking up a new relationship. Flirtations quickly flowered into full-scale affairs. After years of being an ugly duckling, it appeared that I had quite suddenly become a pheromone-broadcasting swan.

One fascinating thing about that heady time, also confirmed by my diary, is that fact that I was simultaneously undergoing a kind of spiritual awakening. I'm not talking about a mystical sense of oneness with God...well, not exactly. But the ecstasy I felt in my lovers' arms, the soul-to-soul connection I experienced, seemed to confirm my relatively recent conclusion that there was some sort of Higher (or maybe Deeper) Power, some reality beyond the material. Serendipity, synchronicity, lucid dreams, mind melding—sex and love (which I couldn't really separate) were my gateway into a world of Spirit. My occasional anguished journal entries questioning the wisdom or even the sanity of my behavior were followed by confident, faith-filled conviction that this path of pleasure I was traveling was a spiritual path as much as a carnal one.

My best stories, I think, the ones that people remember, capture the sense of reverence I felt during those years. I'm drawn to D/s scenarios partly because the perfect, trusting release of one's self to the Master comes so tantalizingly close to being a religious experience. When S.F. Mayfair and I edited Sacred Exchange: Stories of Transcendence and Spirituality in Dominance and Submission, we were trying to express this shared vision of sex (and specifically sex that involves power exchange) as ecstatic, transformational, even mystical.

Spirituality doesn't necessarily sell. Sacred Exchange was a commercial flop, though it contains some of the finest literary erotica I've ever encountered. And a lot of my work—these days, in particular, when I'm writing a lot of romance—sidesteps the deeper questions that concerned me back then in favor of titillation and entertainment. This still hasn't altered my underlying belief that, far from being a sin, sex can be a mode of worship.

There have been Christian and Muslim mystics who understood this—who experienced their intense desire for union with the Divine in a sexual manner. And of course sexuality is prominent in the iconography of many non-Western religions. It seems to be mostly the monotheistic religions that arose in what is now the Middle East that loudly condemn sex as sinful.

I have a theory about this. Lust has power. It can be so extreme, so overwhelming, that it distracts from the contemplation and consciousness of God. To live a spiritual life, to walk a spiritual path, means keeping one's focus on the immaterial world of the Eternal Mind. The pleasures of the flesh can blind one to the reality of Spirit. This is the justification for religious celibacy, and I think it makes some sense.

But the monotheistic religions seem to demonize sex out of a kind of jealousy. “Thou shalt have no other God but Me,” it says in the Old Testament. Sex is viewed as sin because it's a sort of competition for people's attention—and a pretty potent one at that.

I admire people who embrace celibacy as a spiritual discipline. However, this is not the only way to approach the Divine. I'm quite certain of this. Purity in lust, total surrender, can work equally well for some people. I have a suspicion that I'm one of them.