Dance of Dichotomies

Remember those cartoons with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other vying for supremacy?

That’s me.

“Single ministers in the church are expected to live a chaste life, holy in body and spirit, honoring the single life, and working for the good of all.”

I’ve publicly affirmed this statement before the church. My early theological training conditioned me to support it. My church expects me to abide by it if I serve in ministry.

But there’s another voice whispering in my ear.

Guess which voice is winning?

An escort with a Pentecostal upbringing said this was what she learned about sex growing up: “You’re not allowed to do it.” I essentially learned the same thing (i.e. “True Love Waits®”). I internalized this attitude. Religion was set against forbidden sexuality. My religious values incorporated the warnings and restrictions on sexual behavior I received. Sexual desire, understood to be dirty and impure, was experienced with guilt and shame. Beyond reaffirming traditional prohibitions, the church was silent about sex.

As an adolescent, I struggled with my sexual desires because they didn’t harmonize with my beliefs. I was expected to maintain sexual purity. As sexual exploration beckoned, I strove to live up to the stringent biblical doctrine I was taught. Bodily pleasures were opposed to the fruits of the Spirit. My purity card was a covenant that I was convinced I could not break. Lusting after a woman in my heart, which I believed was a sin, brought guilt. I suppressed my sexuality.

Until I couldn’t any longer.

“The moment I knew sin, I fucked.” And once I fucked, I couldn’t stop fucking.

I tried to stop. I intensified my religious practice, enrolled in divinity school and entered ministry. I strove to be “good” and maintain my religious identity. If anything, my transgressions became more egregious. I began to splinter into two compartmentalized selves: the religious self and the sexual self. A double life had been created. The thrill of sex, especially forbidden sex, was too much to resist.

I’d repent. A session with a call girl or a hookup with a classmate would induce guilt and shame. I’d vow never to do it again, beseeching mercy. I’d remain chaste for a (very) short period of time. Then I’d sin again and reenact the process. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The expectation to remain chaste still presses upon me, while my personal desire to have sex remains undiminished. The conflict caused by the collision of my sexual desires and the demands of my faith eludes any tidy resolution. I’m slowly coming to accept that my life is a dance of dichotomies. (I borrowed the term from a “courtesan” who spent Sunday mornings on her knees at Catholic mass after spending Saturday nights on her knees, well, you know.) I am both saint and sinner. Luther described the Christian as simul justus et peccator. Paradox defines me.

My religious self and my sexual self inhabit mutually exclusive spheres. Sex is divided from the soul. I separate my sexuality from my Christianity, compartmentalizing my experiences in order to live out both.

It’s not easy. The parishioners at my church see me as an ideal student, teacher and minister. The pressure to maintain this facade is enormous. Exposure of my sex life would result in my removal from ministry. I have to lie and cover up a great many things. It’s impossible to live a life of integrity without an integrated personality.

A woman preparing for ordination in the Unitarian Universalist church professes to have integrated her spiritual and sexual selves:

The way we as a culture understand the world separates the sacred–the religious, the pious, the God-fearing– from the profane–the sexual, the dirty, the visceral–and there is no contact between the two. Being both is supposed to be rife with pain and conflict.

There is no conflict between my calling and my coming. My religiosity and my ministry do not preclude me from fully experiencing my sexuality. I love God and I love fucking…. I’m interested in sex as a particular way of knowing; in fucking as both pleasurable experience and a way of deepening my connection to the world….

What I am saying is that there does not need to be any conflict between religion and sex.

Those conflicts are the product of someone else’s imagination and do not have to be your reality. There is no need to close yourself to one for the sake of the other.

You can love God and fucking.

There is an effort to construct a “sex positive” ethics that affirms sexuality and defines ethical behavior within a paradigm of consent. I’ve studied some progressive Christian perspectives on sexuality. Marvin Ellison, critiquing the Christian tradition dating to Augustine as “sex negative” and rules-based, maintains that a sex positive approach is essential when addressing sex in contemporary society. I’m not so sure this is viable. Anthony Grey comes closer to the truth when he writes, “I do not see how the traditional Christian theology of sex can be significantly changed without tearing up its Biblical and historical roots – and, if this happened, it would almost certainly wither away entirely….” Besides, even a liberal Christian sexual ethics couldn’t sanction all behaviors. I’m caught in a matrix of sin. Unlike this lusty Unitarian lady, religion and sex cannot seamlessly coexist for me. The imprint of the culture in which I was reared is too deeply ingrained in me. Perhaps my sexual adventurism is a sublimated rebellion against a conservative morality that I nevertheless cannot disavow.

Soccer Mom

“Sex should be fun!” she said as she slid the vibrating cock ring on my turgid member. Then we proceeded to have some fun.

“Linda” is a self-described “soccer mom” in her 40’s. She operates out of a modest apartment about an hour north of here. When I first contacted her early this afternoon, she couldn’t talk right away. She said she was helping her daughter buy a car. When she later got back to me, she said she could host late in the afternoon at her incall. I decided to make the trip.

Wearing a tight black dress, she welcomed me to her place. She looked Italian with long dark red hair. She handed me a glass of water, and we sat down on the couch in the cozy living room. Asking me to recommend any books I was reading, I suggested Michael Lewis’ latest work. She volunteered that she enjoyed her work because it enabled her to have sex without having to date. Then she invited me to retire to the bedroom.

Bedroom was something of a misnomer because there was no bed frame in it, only a bare mattress. She peeled her dress off, pulled down her panties and told me to make myself comfortable and join her on the mattress. She had an inviting smile. After some foreplay, she brought out the cock ring. As my cock buzzed, she moved on top of me and energetically fucked me. Soccer moms need to get laid, too.

After it was over, Linda dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. She was intrigued by my studies. “Next time I want to pick your brain,” she said, explaining that she was fascinated by spiritual energy. (I knew a little about the subject from Rhonda’s esoteric beliefs.) As I prepared to depart, she let me know that her daughter had recently become a provider, too. She slipped me her daughter’s number.

Defiling the Marriage Bed

The English word “adultery” comes from the Latin adulterare, “to corrupt,” meaning, “debauch; debase.” That which is pure is made impure.

I had defiled her marriage bed.

My only regret is a lack of regret.

She had proved herself an adulteress. She had promised to remain faithful, to honor her sacred vow. But forbidden fruit is delectable.

“Contrary to all public verdicts on adultery, the lack of any wish whatsoever to stray is irrational and against nature, a heedless disregard for the fleshly reality of our bodies, a denial of the power wielded over our more rational selves by such erotic triggers as high-heeled shoes.”
Alain de Botton, How to Think More about Sex

I was on Ashley Madison before it was hacked. I didn’t have much luck on it. It turns out most married women want to cheat with married men, as did the single women on the site.

I did meet “Suzie” online (Her nom de sex was “Suzie Sux_a_Lot.”) She was an elementary school nurse just shy of 40, overweight with an unremarkable face. Her husband was a pilot who was frequently away. When she contacted me, she assumed I was married and asked, “Have you strayed?” She grew up in the church but no longer considered herself religious. She confessed to fooling around with the dads of her daughter’s sports teammates. “Mostly titjobs and blowjobs,” she said. A friend helped facilitate her transgressions. She suggested possible signs of flirtation from a married woman at church. Then we got together.

One time I pulled up to the back of her school in the early winter twilight. She was waiting in her SUV. When she saw me, she got out and opened the back of her truck. Then she shimmied out of her slacks. I felt a chill as I hurriedly unzipped and pulled down my pants. We crawled into the back of her SUV. She had spread a blanket down over the seats folded flat. She shut the door, lay down. and spread her legs. I got on top of her. Soon the truck began to rock.

We hooked up a several more times at her friend’s house. (I regret we didn’t have sex in her own bed.) She revealed to me that she had been promiscuous since she was a teenager. She said she used sex as a way to receive validation from men. Her neediness turned me off, and I quickly cut off our “affair.”

The guilt of transgression is smothered by the thrill of the naughtiness of it all. One wife said of her first act of unfaithfulness, “It felt surreal, so wrong, evil and infinitely arousing.” The arousal negates any concern over who gets hurt. The risk intensifies the experience. The thrill of adultery overwhelms any moral objections.

I once engaged in an online sex chat with a married woman. (“OMG you’re a pastor?” I explained to her that I was a lay minister. I don’t think it mattered to her.) She confessed to frequent extramarital encounters and was forthright about her motives: “Cheating is fun.” The prohibition against adultery gives it its allure. Personal experience has taught me that religiosity is no impediment for a woman who seeks to stray. I’ve heard several rumors of infidelity among pastors’ wives.

Why would a woman like Lindy — a pastor, a prominent figure in her church, a mother of two small children — risk it all for a furtive encounter in her office? Were her “harmless fling” to be discovered, it could jeopardize her ministry and tear her family apart.

Sometimes women are just bored in their marriages. Emotionally disconnected from their spouses, they feel unappreciated and lonely. They seek attention, being objects of desire. They seek intimacy. They’re sexually dissatisfied. Their husbands’ sexual performance leaves much to be desired. Sex in an affair can feel “dirty,” making it exciting, wild and liberating. They experience a longing for passion and new opportunities. In marriage, according to Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid Love:

There is always a suspicion … that one is living a lie or a mistake; that something crucially important has been overlooked, missed, neglected, left untried, and unexplored; and a vital obligation to one’s own authentic self has not been met or that some chances of unknown happiness completely different from any happiness experienced before have not been taken up in time and are bound to be lost forever…

Adultery is a form of theft. One enjoys the possession of another. “Stolen water is sweet; and bread eaten in secret is pleasant” (Proverbs 9:17). There is a certain pleasure that comes from the knowledge that I’m screwing another man’s wife.

And it’s really hot when she wears her wedding ring while she fucks you.

“Cheating is fun.”

Jezebel

“Thou sufferest that woman Jezebel…to seduce my servants to commit fornication.”
Revelation 2:20

Jezebel appears in 1 Kings as a Phoenician princess who sought to convert her husband King Ahab, and by extension the northern Israelites, to the cult of Baal. Her name came to be associated with “an impudent, shameless, or morally unrestrained woman” (Merriam-Webster), marked by sexual promiscuity. In The Handmaid’s Tale, “Jezebels” refer to prostitutes in Gilead.

“They call me Jezebel….”

I once hired a companion who went by the name of Jezebel. Seriously. She was cute and curvy and redheaded and hyper-extroverted. When I stepped into her motel room, she squealed, “I’ll show you my underwear if you show me yours!” She then lifted up her pretty red dress and showed off her panties. A brief conversation ensued as we sat on the edge of the bed, in which she revealed that she had moved from Dallas. And she used to be a stripper.

I left the envelope containing the donation on the counter. Before I knew it, she slipped out of her dress. Her voluptuous ta-tas were a sight to behold. Clad in only her thong panties, she showed off some of her stripper moves. She then walked me to the bed and started massaging my hard cock through my boxers. She slowly peeled off my shorts, tied her hair back, then remarked, “Giving a good blowjob gets me off more than anything.” I lay back on the bed while she kneeled between my legs. She started licking my shaft before she wrapped her wet lips around the head of my cock. She stared at me with her deep blue eyes as she pleasured me with her soft mouth. I couldn’t take it any more.

Mon Dieu!

I came in her mouth. She smiled at me. She got up to go to the bathroom where she spit it out.

When she came back, she peeled off her panties, hopped on the bed, rolled onto her back, and spread her legs.

“It’s time for you to eat some pussy!”

She pushed my head down between her thighs. I dived in for a while, then pulled back.

“Don’t stop!” she pouted. She spread her legs farther apart. Cunnilingus resumed.

It hadn’t taken long for me to get hard again. I buried my face in her breasts. She teased me with her ass. She grabbed a condom, then spread her legs wide. I got on top of her and slowly entered her. Damn, she was tight. And nasty. She spewed a torrent of the filthiest language I’ve ever heard uttered by a woman. By the time she begged me to smash her cervix, I cried out that I was going to come. When I pulled out of her, the condom stayed inside. “See, I do my Kegels!” she boasted.

We hung out for some post-coital conversation on the bed. She was poised to embark on a European vacation with a girlfriend. She couldn’t wait to see the red-light district in Amsterdam.

“That was cute!”

I usually don’t utilize Backpage as an escort resource. But late last night I craved the pleasures only a woman can give. I perused the ads and found “Madison,” a blonde in her 30’s. I called her, and we quickly set up an appointment. I drove to her place in, shall we say, a less affluent part of town. She texted me that she was running behind. I spent about 20 minutes at a nearby bar, which was packed. After drinking a $4 Coke, Madison texted me again and said she was ready to see me.

She hosted at her home. Madison has a nasally voice, but is otherwise conventionally attractive. She’s a writer who has contributed to several rock ‘n roll publications, including Spin. She once interviewed Marilyn Manson and found him extremely intelligent. (I’ve heard others say the same thing.) Madison is pleasant but business-like. She put a condom on before she sucked me. “I can do this all night,” she informed me. I ended up on top of her. I really got into it, vocalizing my pleasure more than usual. After I exploded, I nuzzled my head against her neck.

“That was cute!” she said of my journey to climax.

A guy wants to be called a lot of things after sex — “good,” “incredible,” “skilled” — but “cute” generally isn’t one of them.

As I prepared to depart, she told me she wanted to see me again.

Yes Girl

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“Kristi” was a classmate I hooked up with. Recently graduated from college, she was a fellow Lutheran who had an interest in art therapy. Her liberal beliefs were quite different than mine. That didn’t matter. Her long red hair and nice baby-making hips meant more to me.

We met up at an off-campus party. We were reading Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church for class, and I asked her for her thoughts on it. (She wasn’t too impressed by it.) Like most of the others, she had too much to drink. At that moment I intuited that she might be one of those elusive “Yes Girls.”

I had heard about these creatures, but part of me assumed they were mythical, like the Easter Bunny. I heard whispered rumors about “Yes Girls” in college. Unlike the self-professedly “virtuous” girls at my school, “Yes Girls” were coeds at the nearby public university who would pretty much say “Yes” to any sexual proposition. (It turned out that this “virtue” was a facade for many of the girls at my college. They were merely more selective in their sluttiness.)

Was Kristi a “Yes Girl”?

There was only one way to find out.

My roommate was gone for the weekend. I invited her to my place.

“Okay.”

We excused ourselves from the party and got into my car. We said nary a word during the drive. When we arrived at my place, we went straight to my bedroom. She peeled off her jeans right away, then fumbled with my belt. My pants soon came off. Kristi went straight to work sucking my cock. It was obvious she had done this before. Then she lay on her back and spread her legs open. I slipped on a condom and dove in. As I slowly thrust, I bent my head down and licked her puffy nipples. I increased my pace. She met my thrusts. My bed started to squeak. The sweet smell of her shampooed hair mixed with the stench of cheap beer. We weren’t making love. You don’t make love to a “Yes Girl.” Sooner than I wanted, my body shuddered in pleasure.

Without much being said, Kristi fetched her clothes and dressed. It was clear she didn’t want to spend the night. I drove her home. We didn’t even kiss each other goodnight.

We didn’t talk about it afterwards.

Primal Instinct

As my body rocked on top of her’s, I couldn’t hold out much longer.

I had always pulled out before. We tried condoms a couple of times, but she didn’t like how they felt. She wasn’t on the pill. So when the time came, she let me ejaculate on her stomach or her breasts.

But now I had the urge to not pull out. The thought of shooting my cum deep inside her heightened my arousal. The risk of pregnancy produced a thrill of excitement. An internal voice whispered to me, Knock her up. I wanted to plant my seed inside her. I sensed her fertility. I wanted, for a moment, to prove my masculinity in the most decisive way, to give myself over to some primitive and powerful biological process — to procreate. The image of my sperm swimming toward her egg flashed in my mind. I pictured her belly bulging. I felt like a god as I thought about making a baby with her.

Knock her up.

Imagine the scandal. The disgrace. We would be expelled from ministry. And still….

Knock her up.

Besides, I was past the point of no return. It was time to unload. My body shook slightly as orgasm was about to overwhelm me. I lowered my head and positioned my mouth on her ear. I wanted her to hear what I was about to do. I emitted a guttural groan as I felt my semen spurt out of me. A primal instinct had overcome me.

“The supreme moment in the life of a woman, when her original being and elementary pleasure are revealed, is the moment when she feels the male seed running inside her.”
Otto Weininger

Afterwards, I accompanied her to the drug store and purchased the morning-after pill for her.

Spinner

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While on the train as I made my way into the city late this afternoon, I received a text message that “Victoria” was running late. When I arrived at her hotel, she texted me again reiterating that she was running behind. So I went to a nearby Starbucks and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally she texted that she was ready. I knocked on the door to her room and was met by a lithe blonde with a tight body. She appeared distracted. Clad only in panties, a bra and stockings, she looked appetizing.

We sat on the bed and chatted for a little bit. Then my hands started caressing her body. We kissed. Her bra came off, revealing her perky tits. Her hands when down to my thighs. I pulled off my underwear. Her mouth moved from my neck to my chest and then to my cock. Eager to please, she dropped to her knees, grabbing the shaft of my cock with her hand and placing the head into her mouth. I grasped the back of her head and emitted a series of low groans as her mouth worked up and down on my cock. Then it was time to take this spinner for a ride. She climbed on top, gyrating as she rode me cowgirl. Then I flipped her over on her hands and knees. Hands on her hips, I pounded her to the accompaniment of her sweet soft moans. A deep moan signaled my satisfaction.

She excused herself to the bathroom and came back with a washcloth to clean me off. We cuddled on the bed until our hour approached its conclusion. I took a quick shower and got dressed. She gave me a kiss and a hug and bade each other farewell. I hurried to make the next train.

Playpen of the Damned

“Do you watch porn?” Stephanie asked me. Among the titles in the small bookcase at her incall apartment were A History of Pornography and How To Make Love Like a Porn Star.

I admitted that I did.

“I like the sounds of porn,” she said — the inarticulate moans, grunts, gasps, and cries of pleasure, the profane verbiage uttered by participants in the sexual act. “It turns me on.”

Like many of my generation, porn has become an vital expression of my sexuality. I had little access to pornography growing up. My college filtered our Internet access, so my encounters with sexually explicit material were titillating but sporadic. It was only after college that I was able to absorb the cornucopia of porn available online. In absence of any formal sex education, porn has instructed me. Its unabashed physicality fuels my lust. Its presentation of sex without affection appeals to me. Having watched it only furtively, it feeds into my double life. Its exploration of taboos fertilizes my dirty mind. It offends bluenoses and feminists, feeding into the transgressiveness that characterizes the erotic.

There is no better window through which to view the darkness of eros than porn. Camille Paglia writes, “Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer.” I just saw a statistic that 88% of the scenes of the most popular porn depict physical aggression, of which 94% is directed against women. Outside of a few niche sites, intimacy and affection are absent in porn. Men and women fuck with impunity, liberated from the strictures of religion and bourgeois prudishness. Porn is nihilistic. Doing what it takes to produce the “money shot” is the only normative principle.

Some concerned citizens lament a “pornified” culture in which sex is commoditized and reduced to its brute physical components. This is precisely what I find so compelling about porn. Others complain that porn is unrealistic. Yes, it may be unrealistic in its anatomical acrobatics, but it taps into those dark forces that animate sexuality. It penetrates the mysteries of sex. It exposes romance as a chimera. It highlights the aggression that accompanies the sexual act. It reduces sexuality to raw fucking. It exalts personal pleasure over concern for the other. Women are defined, and define themselves, solely by their sexuality and their capacity to satisfy male desire. Orgasm, as evidenced by male ejaculation (the cumshot), lies at the heart of sexuality. It’s addictive qualities demonstrate the coercive power of sex over our own lives. One insider in the porn industry called it “the playpen of the damned.” “Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness,” wrote Susan Sontag in “The Pornographic Imagination.” Porn documents the unleashing of those forces with brutal honesty.

Transgression

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” – Psalm 122

Rhonda suggested it as we studied in the library. It was early on a Saturday night, so who was going to be there then? Besides, the risk only made it more intense.

I held Rhonda’s hand as we exited the library and walked to our destination. We said little as the anticipation built. The grounds were deserted. I tightly clasped her hand as we approached the stately facade of the familiar structure. I spied our surroundings to make sure we entered unobserved. Once inside, we were greeted by darkness. The only light was provided by the flashlight on my cell phone. With it I spotted familiar surroundings: the organ, the altar. To minimize the chance of discovery, our furtive encounter would have to be short. Rhonda hurriedly undid her skirt, letting it drop to the floor. Then she pulled down her panties, latched on to the back of the last pew and bent over….

Philosopher Georges Bataille believed that transgression is at the heart of eroticism: “The inner experience of eroticism demands from the subject a sensitiveness to the anguish at the heart of the taboo no less great than the desire which leads him to infringe it.” Or as John Hawken says, “The thrill of the forbidden needs the act of forbidding to produce the thrill.” One sexologist puts it more directly: “Of course, the irony of creating a taboo is that, once something is forbidden, it becomes very exciting, kinky and very, very sexy. Everyone knows that naughty sex is hot sex!… So, if, according to your religion, sex is bad (and it usually is), then ‘bad’ becomes very sexy.”

“More souls have been conceived at Rockefeller Chapel than have been saved there.”
Robert Maynard Hutchins

I entered her from behind, thrusting myself into her with unbridled passion. Her moans and my grunts resonated throughout the chapel. I could hear the sounds of our bodies slapping together. I reached under her Aeropostale sweater, pushed her bra aside, and grabbed her right breast as I continued to pump into her. A feeling of power surged through me. As I pounded her faster and harder, a bizarre image flashed through my mind: it was that of a host of angels blushing as they witness me fucking Rhonda’s brains out. But angels are pure spirit. They know nothing of the lust of the flesh. Or its nonpareil pleasure.

Observers might label our lusty exertions a desecration. Or was our fucking a consecration? As I came inside Rhonda, a deep husky groan signaled my “Amen.” It gently echoed throughout the chapel, the most honest sermon I’ll ever preach.

After we finished, we quickly composed ourselves and exited the chapel.