Guest Blogger Jackie Summers on Preying in Church.
‘Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I had sex. Last week. Right here, inside this confessional. During your sermon.’
Having been the instigator of said sacrilegious act, I shared in her scandalous secret. Still, I would have paid any amount of money to have been a fly on the wall during her confession. The curious combination of circumstances which culminated in conduct thoroughly unbecoming a lady provides today’s discourse.
For the better part of my childhood, my father was on the road. A jazz musician by profession, he managed to provide for a family of five, the tradeoff being extended periods of absence. The raising of children was left to my mother, a uniquely independent spirit, simultaneously classic, yet thoroughly modern. She did her best in word and deed to imbue all of her children with impeccable ethics and values. From this complex set of morals and guiding principles, my conscience was born.
My cultural identity however, like most Americans, was in large part forged in front of a television. This didn’t mean Mom used the idiot box as a baby-sitter; we were poor and a single TV had to provide entertainment for the entire family, including Mom. The Matriarch wielded final say on viewing matter: we watched what entertained her, and Mom loved the classics. This meant exposure to ideals that seemed archaic in the post-sexual revolution era I grew up in.
It was in the cinematic culture of yesteryear I first began to formulate my ideas on manhood. I distinctly remember as a child wanting to be Errol Flynn, Clark Gable or Fred Astaire. You can imagine my awkwardness when I played with other children my age who wanted to be Spider-Man, Superman or The Hulk. ‘They can’t fly, they don’t have superpowers or secret identities’ I’d say, ‘but girls sure do like them. A LOT.’
Yes, at six years old I was thinking about what girls liked. Exposure to these archetypes during my formative years provided a study in contrasts that would form the basis of my concepts of male/female relationships.
First and foremost, my heroes were gentlemen. They were well read, well spoken, polite, courteous and impeccably mannered. But there was more.
They were rogues. Rascals, rapscallions, knaves, scamps, scoundrels and scalawags; they made women swoon. Cordiality notwithstanding, nice guys did not win women’s hearts. Nice guys finished last, dead last, every time.
It was a conundrum. How could chivalry and deviltry co-exist? This clear contradiction sent me on a quest to unravel the enigma: How could I be a good guy and a bad boy simultaneously?
A woman, of course, provided the answer. Lana Turner’s seven word summation solved the equation with eloquence. ‘A gentleman’ she said ‘is simply a patient wolf.’
The answer to why the axiom ‘nice guys finish last’ proves true time after time can be found in the etymology of the word ‘nice.’ It first appears in the English language around the end of the thirteenth century, when it was originally used to describe a dullard. Taken from the Latin word ‘nescius,’ the literal translation for ‘nice’ is ‘not knowing’, or ignorant. ‘Silly, foolish, stupid, and overly careful’ were early synonyms for ‘nice’ before it diffused into the modern meaning of ‘something mildly agreeable.’
For centuries, calling a guy ‘nice’ was about the biggest insult you could give. Nice guys were squeamish, effeminate, dainty. Being nice had no correlation with having moral fiber; It was emasculating, a way of saying a man had no balls.
In this light it’s easy to see why nice guys finish last, not only in love but often in life.
The other aspect worthy of consideration is the expectation forced up on women by society to be the bastions of morality. In a pattern dating back to prehistoric times, my Mom was charged with the responsibility of instilling a code of ethics upon her progeny, while her mate went off to procure sustenance for his family. Being forced to bear the burden of virtue, despite being prone to the same longings and desires as any man, creates a feedback loop. A man who offered a chance at unbridled passion broke the cycle of civility; it freed her to express her own wanton lusts in a way that protected her dignity.
The catalyst, is time.
Wolves are patient hunters. Before a woman will be thouroughly indecent with you, she needs to determine that you are essentially decent. I am always amazed at the women who do a double-take when I stand as they leave a table, open a door, or walk on the outside of the street. However once basic decency has been established, she wants to see your canines. She needs to know that you possess a darker side, one that will make her own darkness seem light in comparison. Women will tolerate a level of boorishness in a man; in fact many delight in it. No woman will brook a boring man for long.
Which brings us back to the beginning of our story. Her rule was simple: if I spent the night on a Saturday, I had to attend services with her on Sunday morning. It was the dog days of August in New York City, and the ancient cathedral where she attended services lacked air conditioning. Reluctantly, I donned suit and tie and acquiesced.
Some time previous, she had taught me a tantric technique which allowed you to shift the trigger point for a woman’s orgasm to somewhere less obvious; the nape of a neck, the crook of an arm, the back of a knee. In her case, I’d trained her how to climax if I tickled her ankles a certain way. As the service droned on in the oppressive heat, I wondered if anyone would care if I simply absconded.
And then I noticed: she’d worn her favorite pair of strappy sandals. Her erogenous zone was exposed. I couldn’t resist.
I discretely kicked off my own slip on dress shoes and began to caress her ankles with my toes. Her face went flush; she was stimulated. When she saw that the three or four not so subtle kicks to my shins were insufficient to dissuade me, she put on her shoes, and sought egress; I put on my own, and followed. In her aroused condition, she assumed she would find sanctuary in the one place I dared not follow: the confessional.
She was mistaken.
Now she was in my lap in that tiny confined space; her summer dress up around her waist, her thong slid sideways and my hand over her mouth, while I whispered in her ear ‘hail Mary now…’
She never insisted I attend Sunday services with her again.
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