Gus
Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved me when I was in distress; have mercy on me, and hear my prayer. . . .
The words caught in my throat like a fresh heap of frankincense in the censor. Instead of my prayers drifting up to God’s ears, they hovered in clouds around me, choking me.
How many hours had I been at this tonight, barely able to get through an evening compline without my throat closing up and my head wandering away from the prayers I was supposed to be reciting?
I stilled, my eyes vaguely aware of the icons arranged on the table. Seeing nothing but smears of color. Golds and reds. The muted blue of the God-bearing Theotokos.
I rose, stepping closer, my knees on fire after boring into the unrelenting wooden floor for so long.
The Byzantine face of the Panayia Virgin Mary. Her glorifying gaze trained on her infant son so that our focus might be drawn to Him as well.
Saint John the Baptist holding his own head on a platter.
Saint Constantine, the Machiavellian and probably irreligious emperor of Byzantium, depicted with his mother, the faithful Helen.
Tonight, I struggled to see past the paint on their gessoed wood canvas. To see them as anything more than two-dimensional art. These were supposed to be the faces of history, yes. The faces of wrongdoing and deathbed confessions. But the experiences in these histories gave respite and comfort.
Comfort I was grasping for.
My chest heaved as I tried to force it over me.
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled.
Fuck it.
God needed a different prayer from me. I needed to approach Him more plainly. Without following centuries-old scripts—services and prayers I loved under ordinary circumstances but lacked all meaning here.
What good was reciting a service when God and I were slipping away from each other tonight?
The bed creaked as I sat. I let my heavy shoulders fall forward, surrendering to the nothingness of the inevitable.
I could no longer expect Him to wait for me. I’d strung Him along, biding my time, chasing degree after degree, always putting His will second to my own selfish urges.
It was enough that I was saved from a life of misery and ruination. Saved so that I didn’t inflict my family with further despair and pain. And given this new life where I could celebrate His mysteries and beauty and proclaim them for others to see.
God. Forgive me. I said I’d be your priest, but . . . celibacy, my life lived completely alone. . . . I don’t understand your will. I hate your will for me. But I submit to it.
I waited for the peace. Closing my eyes, meditating on the shush of the rain, I let myself feel the utter rightness of this decision.
It didn’t come.
Submission was supposed to fulfilling.
I was supposed to be content.
Instead, my resignation was a vast . . . hollowness . . . inside my body. My bones crumbling as all viscera was stripped away.
Resignation . . . not submission.
My bones were troubled.
My body sagged under the weight of it. The lack of support.
I fell onto my side on the bed, curling my legs up into a fetal position, partially . . . almost . . . lighter from having finally done it. Just that little thing.
There was a certain freedom that only came after reaching the lowest point of despair. There was no further down.
I’d sunk all the way to the sea floor, bounced off the sand, and now I could simply float until my lungs filled up and I lost myself in the church.
I’d been afraid this was where I was headed all along. Now that I’d gotten here, it had an anesthetic taste; a certain . . . bitterness.
My eyes stung as tears built but wouldn’t flow. I’d never felt so separate from my Creator. Ripped away and set apart from His Creations.
The grief made sense. I was giving up of half my life. My hopes for the future. I’d have to mourn its loss. I’d always thought I’d have a wife. A partner. Surely someone should have come along by now so that when I went to Father Vasili, I’d be asking to be ordained a married member of clergy.
Celibacy was my future now. I could almost grasp that. But there was something so much worse.
Loneliness.
Long decades of watching as an outsider as the kids of my congregation grew into teenagers, then college students, then hopefully, if they hadn’t grown weary of religious tradition by then, I’d officiate their weddings. I’d spend my years counseling newlyweds with wisdom I could only glean from books, crowning young couples in love, then crowning their children thirty years later.
God could have shown me a woman any time during this last decade I’d spent preparing to do His work. Any woman at all.
No. That wasn’t exactly true. Or fair.
None of the collar chasers at seminary had turned my head. At least, not for longer than a chaste date at the local diner.
No. There was one woman I wanted.
Why else did a certain doe-eyed, red-lipped, elfin-faced anthropologist pop into my head every time I’d prayed for a partner during the last couple years.
I couldn’t keep picturing her. I couldn’t do that do her, no matter what it did to me whenever I heard her deep, husky laugh when our conversations lasted too late at night, both of us punch drunk from too much work and too little sleep. I wouldn’t picture her sheet of silky black hair that kissed her shoulders in that black sundress with the tiny straps she’d worn the other night when we’d prayed together. I definitely wouldn’t picture that odd smile she cracked whenever she saw me in my seminarian’s robe, or her sitting in the middle pew of the church when she attended with Soula, head bent over the Liturgy book with cutest look of determination on her face as she tried to decipher the Greek side of the page.
I rolled onto my back and wiped my hand down my face, scrubbing my short beard. Anything to snap Decca’s face out of my mind. But it was futile. I couldn’t help it if I’d been attracted to a woman I shouldn’t want, but the image I’d just told myself I wouldn’t picture seemed permanently etched into my brain.
Now I’d have to do whatever it took to scratch it off.
She wasn’t mine.
She’d never be mine. She’d never want me or the duties that accompanied my job. The church would never see her as a presvytera.
Thunder roared outside the thin attic walls. My eyes shot to the small window. Silver flashed against the distorted glow from the streetlamp. The rain raged harder, crashing against the door three floors below. Sounding more like ten-foot waves against the hull of a fishing vessel.
I covered my eyes with my arm, the pressure relieving some of the tension.
God, please. You calmed the tempest on the Sea of Galilee. Calm the tempest in my heart.
I’m not Jesus. I can’t sleep through this.
Of all the Orthodox iconography I’d seen and texts I’d studied, it was Rembrandt’s painting I’d envisioned now. The darkness and despair he poured out on the canvas with oils and pigments matched what was in my heart.
What utter desperation must the Apostles have felt during that storm.
We are perishing, they cried out.
Out on the open water. No hope of saving themselves. Walls of water crashing over the gunwales, cracking the hull like an eggshell. Threatening to pitch them overboard to drown in a frenzied, sucking sea.
But God didn’t just quell the storm. He rebuked the sea and the winds. To the disciples, he asked, Why are you fearful?
A if imminent death wasn’t reason enough.
Why am I fearful?
How shallow is my own faith, that I haven’t placed my trust fully in Him?
Maybe it was too much to ask that he’d provide for me in my last hour more than once.
My future was as empty and looming as a gaping pit.
I closed my eyes. Just for a minute. It was late. I’d been determined to pray through the night, but when the church fathers instructed us to pray without ceasing, they didn’t mean it literally.
I almost didn’t hear the knock.
No one knocked here. This wasn’t a place where Girl Scouts came to sell cookies or landscapers their lawn services.
I sat up, groggily, from where I was curled on the bed and threw a button-down over my t-shirt. I couldn’t look like a slob in case it was a client. Or potential client. It was a habit cultivated after a lifetime of living in a funeral home, the child of a funeral director father and an embalmer mom. Presentable at all times.
The door pounded again when I reached the second floor.
“Just a minute,” I shouted. I doubted they could hear me on the other side. Not with the storm raging.
I moved the curtain to the side and saw someone small. A woman? Child? Evil spirit from a Japanese horror film? Long black hair, parted down the center like curtains and slicked to her face.
I unlocked the deadbolt and threw open the heavy door.
“Decca?” I stepped out onto the cold, rain-soaked porch, wrapping a hand around her elbow automatically. “What’s wrong? My God, come in.”
She stepped inside, holding her arms across her chest though it only squished the water out of her drenched clothes.
“Can I. . . .” She gestured to her shoes.
“Yeah, uh . . . let’s get you a towel.”
She stepped out of her sneakers and picked them up.
I backed away enough to look into her eyes, unsure of why she was here but unwilling to prod too much. Probably some harebrained scheme of my sister, Soula and their best friend, Bethany’s. Or more likely, Decca’s own harebrained scheme, because that was the kind of woman she was. Knowing Ma and Dad were out of town on a second honeymoon—or cancermoon—as Dad morbidly referred to it, sneaking into a funeral home on a stormy night to perform a seance would totally be a Decca thing to do. Except Soula was making the most of her maternity leave right now, and Bethany was probably . . . tied up somewhere, waiting for George to get home from work.
The three women had forged a bond over a decade ago on the first day of grad school orientation at the Body Farm at University of Tennessee. While only Decca finished the UT program in Forensic Anthropology, each were as heavily invested in their different avenues of death care. Soula took more interest in public heath than solving cold cases. She went to medical school and became a forensic pathologist and the chief medical examiner of Williamson County. Bethany, the extroverted ray of sunshine went to mortuary school to serve the families of the bereaved and greenify the industry.
That left my Decca to dig up the bones and solve the unsolvable cases.
My Decca. I didn’t have the right to think it. And think it so naturally, as if she was attached in any way, to me.
But wasn’t she? Decca was just as much my friend now, too, I supposed. Probably the closest friend I’d had outside of my birth family or my ecclesiastical family. But we’d been friends intermittently, through my visits home for the holidays. Through texting and phone calls. Now that I’d moved home, I hadn’t given any consideration toward what our friendship would look like. Or if I could even have a close woman friend as a priest. One who was gorgeous in a goth pin-up way and who worshipped whatever Pagan deity or ancestors she chose that day.
So . . . not my Decca. Not for much longer, anyway.
“You’re shivering. Let’s go upstairs. You can change into something dry.” My hand moved to her lower back, guiding her up the grand staircase. I dropped it, afraid to touch her, even through the thick, sopping wet sweater. Instead, I took her shoes, my fingers accidentally brushing hers in the process. Her hand felt like ice.
I looked down at those thin fingers, huddling in the oversized sleeves, Whatever concern I had about her health, her emotional state, her everything, it was my priority to take care of her body.
She needed to get warm.
Hesitating only a moment on the landing of the second floor, I bypassed the apprentice rooms, leading her through the narrow hallway and up yet another staircase.
There, at the top, I paused. I pressed my forehead against the door. What was I thinking bringing her up here? I could have run and grabbed a towel and some sweats and hurled them down to her while she changed in the bathroom before doing whatever she came here to do.
I sighed, turning the ornate knob and swinging the door wide.
This was fine. Perfectly fine. I trusted myself.
I entered the attic bedroom with Decca on my heels. It was small. Spartan. Void of personality or comfort. A room established not for coziness but temporary necessity. Once I became ordained, I didn’t know where I’d be sent to live. It would probably be somewhere in the same archdiocese, but that only meant the Southeast US. I couldn’t let myself get too comfortable anywhere now just to box up all my books again in a couple months to move them to fucking Florida or wherever.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Please don’t move me to Florida.
Decca huddled inside her sweater.
Right, warmth.
“Sorry. Be right back.” I grabbed a towel from the downstairs bathroom and by the time I’d gotten back, she was stripping off her oversized black pullover. Her back to me, she plopped the sopping wet cotton on the floor.
I watched the play of muscles in her back. Decca was a very petite woman. Slight everywhere. But seeing more of her body bared—only the thin straps of her tiny black camisole in the way—I was fixated on the play of her wiry muscles. Mesmerized by her shoulders. Entranced by the way they worked under her skin as she gathered her hair into a knot on her head and secured it with a tie from her wrist. Her movements were capable and elegant.
“Ugh. That’s better.” She turned to face me. “I’ll have to wring that out in the bathroom.”
All I could see were the points of her small nipples poking through the thin cotton. She saw where my eyes were focused. The edge of a smile played on her lips as she took a confident step toward me.
“Is that for me?” She gestured for the towel.
I nodded, finally tearing my eyes away from where I shouldn’t be looking. But her face was equally as riveting. Normally, she wore a lot of makeup. Black eye makeup. Heavy lashes. Blood red lipstick. It highlighted her black hair and pale skin. I’d never seen her without it. Now, she wasn’t wearing any. Her usually-camouflaged freckles dusted the tops of her cheeks and nose. Her cheeks red from the cold rain. Her lips pale and smaller than usual, eyes as doe-like as ever. She looked just as much like a heartbreaker without it, only more kissable like this. Less smearing. Although I had to admit there was no more beautiful sight than a woman’s mascara trailing down her cheeks as she took my dick deep in the back of her throat.
She took another step toward me, her yoga-muscled arm snaking up and around my head, her fingers running through my too-long hair.
“Gus?” Her body pressed against mine. I took a step back to . . . to what? Create distance? It’d been too long since I’d felt the soft heat of a woman. She moved with me, urging me back another step, then another, until my back hit the closed door of my monk’s cell. Pressing in even closer, she grabbed the towel out of my hand and dropped it to the floor, then placed that hand on herself, cupping her breast.
My eyes drifted, reveling in the warmth of her flesh bleeding through the cool wetness of her shirt. I closed my fingertips over the top. Her hard nipple pebbled in the cup of my palm. She moaned and threw her head back, exposing her neck to me. An invitation to kiss, to lick, to bite.
And I did. Impossible to hold back. Not with Salome in my arms.
I was St. John the Baptist and at this moment, I didn’t care if it was my head on a platter or my cock in her cunt she wanted, but I’d give either. Just to touch a woman again. Touch her.
This woman. My Decca.
This felt right. For years I’d been living another man’s life. Wondering whether or not it would ever feel right for me. While knowing full well it should, because this was the life I chose. Suddenly, with Decca, it all clicked into place. Of course it was her. Maybe I’d been waiting for her all along. She was mine.
Grabbing her neck, I bucked against her, flipping us around in one effortless move. Now it was her pressed between me and the paneled wooden door. And I did not fuck gently.
“You’re soaked through,” I breathed against her neck before sinking my teeth into her white skin, hard enough to leave a bruise. I just wanted to feel her on my tongue. Her flesh between my teeth.
“Take it off,” she said.
I didn’t hesitate as I peeled her tiny shirt off her tiny frame, exposing her naked breasts. They were small, perky, and obscenely hot. My mouth watered as I imagined all the ways I wanted to feast on her bounty, loving her breasts more than wine. Covering her with my palms, wanting to take rest between them, just as Solomon had written. The Song of Songs had come alive for me now.
“My jeans,” she said, looking deep into my eyes, giving me permission to let go of myself, telling me it was okay. It was all going to be okay now that she was here. Now that we were like this.
My hands found the top button quickly, undoing it, then unzipping them hastily. I knelt in front of her to shed them from her chilled legs. Inch by inch, they peeled away, baring more of her goose bumped skin for me to kiss away her chill. I kissed down her legs, pulling up each knee in turn for her to step out of the tight, soggy, miserable material.
I stayed there at her feet, praying the same prayer that we were called to pray ceaselessly.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Only I didn’t say it out loud. I repeated it in my head again and again, looking up into Decca’s open and curious face at the end. Her fingers raked through my hair. The tension on my scalp felt like heaven.
I smiled up at her in wonder. How could she have known this was everything I wanted. She was all I needed, and she had delivered herself at my doorstep. God had given me the opportunity to unwrap her like a Christmas present.
She truly was the dove of Solomon.
I rose to my feet. I still hadn’t tasted her mouth yet, hadn’t slacked my thirst with her wine.
I crashed against her, kissing her harder than I intended but it couldn’t be helped. I was in some kind of dream state. Her mouth tasted of bitter beer and honeyed almonds. Her tongue caught mine with the same intoxicating frenzy, but then she pulled back smiling, tasting my lips while she sucked.
“Fuck, Decca. You’re perfect” was the only thing I could think of besides Bible quotes that would probably send her running out the door naked.
She laughed from deep in her belly. The sound was wine to my ears, rich and silky, but it lit a fire inside my own body.
I jerked away and turned her around, pressing her cheek to the door. My brazen cock was insistent, pressing through my pants, wanting to nestle between her cheeks. She reached back, moaning with a slight hiccup, but I gripped her wrists in one hand, raising her arms high above her head.
“No, Dove. Don’t touch me.”
She groaned but accepted her fate.
“But I’m going to touch you,” I whispered.
She sucked in a breath and her ass punched back against me. God, she felt good against me. Even as small as she was, as tall as I was, we somehow fit each other. I was strong enough I could throw her around and she was strong enough that I wouldn’t break her. We were made for each other.
“Spread your legs.”
She did. I pulled down her panties until they twisted awkwardly around her thighs. I didn’t have to look, and I couldn’t even really see in the dim light, but the thought of her looking undone and at my mercy like this was so fucking dirty, I groaned.
My middle finger brushed down the cleft between her legs. She was warm and welcoming. Silky and wet.
“That was some rainstorm. Even your pussy is soaked.”
“Gus, please. Make me come.”
My hand moved back and forth, my fingers gliding between her lips until she started grinding back against me in a rhythm. I allowed it this time. Next time, I wouldn’t make it so easy on her.
She was panting, her pitch going higher and higher, less controlled and I knew she was close. I wasn’t even inside her vagina and her cunt wept onto my hand. It felt so good I was about to fucking blow in my pants.
My own breaths were fast and shallow against her wet hair. A passage came to me and I couldn’t stop myself.
“Rise up and come my companion, my fair one, my dove.
For behold, the winter is past,
And the rain is gone;
It has departed.
The flowers are seen in the land.
Arise and come.”
Her voice broke on a wail as she clawed the door with her pointed black talons, riding my hand as she came down.
Startled awake by the pounding on the door, I quickly scanned the room in shame, searching for my seminary roommate’s uncomfortable face. Oh, God. What noises had I made this time?
But this wasn’t seminary housing. It was my parent’s house.
I’m alone.
I exhaled in relief. Alone, in the attic cloister of my childhood home, slumped over the bed where I’d fallen asleep during prayer, curled around a pool of my own semen.
