Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire

From Chapter One: Soul-Kissing in PurgatoryWhen does loss lead to desire? Desire to loss? When does a kiss become obsession? A touch the key that does not unlock, but imprisons? I think of a child who is rarely touched. Or told touch is a sin. I think of Catholic girls of my generation.I was fifteen. I was luscious. I sat paralyzed with shame in the Monday Religious Instruction class of a Catholic church in Irondequoit, New York.It was late spring of 1955 and that weekend I had allowed a boy to "go further." Which meant he had rested his hand uneasily on roughly three inches of the pleated tulle and strapless bra covering my young chest. His breath caught. "I love you," he said. I waited to feel something even better than his words -- there, in my armored breasts. "I'm sorry," he said, "I shouldn't have rushed you," and took his hand away. I was silent. Not from what he might have thought, but from disappointment.The boy was tall and lanky, with a blond brush cut and tender eyes. His first kiss had unsettled me for weeks. I wondered why girls were told that boys wanted something girls shouldn't give them till marriage. I had no idea what I wanted, but I knew that what moved in my body, what took away my appetite and made my nights wonderfully sleepless, was not the boy's, and would never be. It was fully mine. It lived in the same place as story. What bad boys wanted didn't matter.I was not alone. My girlfriends and I invited boys to Joyce's basement rec room. We drank her mom's apricot brandy, smoked her brother's cigarettes, slow-danced to "Unchained Melody" and were baffled -- and delighted -- by how boys managed to walk with that long, hard thing in their pants.The priest walked up to the blackboard and began to write.Commandment Seven.The boys in the class poked each other and grinned. We girls sat mesmerized, still as sacrificial maidens before the slaughter. The priest continued to write:Thou shalt not commit adultery.The boldest boy scribbled something on a piece of paper and passed it to the guy behind him."I will explain this commandment," the priest said nervously. "You all know the soul is like a blackboard. A venial sin is like a chalk mark that can be removed with prayer and penance. A mortal sin is a mark that can only be removed by time in Purgatory."I waited. Aeons of gray Purgatory Time seemed to stretch ahead."Now," the young priest said, "if a woman rides horseback and gets, shall we say, pleasure from it, she commits a venial sin."The room was silent. Everybody, sniggling boys and wordless girls alike, looked dumbfounded."And," our teacher went on, "if the woman gets back on the horse for more pleasure, it is a mortal sin."Dead silence from a dozen normally rowdy teenage kids.The priest sighed in relief and rubbed chalk dust from his hands. "I hope that clears the Seventh Commandment up for you. Next week, we will discuss the Eighth."He dismissed us early. We did not burst from the building as we usually did. The boys walked slowly in silent groups. The girls held their books to their young bosoms and looked away from each other, and from the boys.My friend's mom offered me a ride, but I walked home alone. I felt shattered. It was hard to breathe. The light seemed even duller than our normal lakeshore gray. I knew exactly what the priest had been talking about -- impossible choices. Be good and give up the only physical warmth I'd been given in years. Be bad and give up my soul. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. I put one foot in front of the other. Good. Bad. By the time I came to Titus Avenue, I was trapped between good and bad. Between tenderness and sin.It was just past five o'clock and traffic was heavy. I looked to my left and thought, It would be easier to die. I lifted my foot to step in front of an oncoming car. Before my foot touched down, I felt an unsought and most welcome clarity move in me like a good strong breatSojourner, Mary is the author of 'Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743229692 and ISBN 074322969X.