Girls #1: The Preacherβs Daughter
Womon-poasting
The preacherβs daughter may or may not have a boyfriend. Iβm jealous of this hypothetical boyfriend because I want her for myself. Naturally, I havenβt mentioned this to her; instead I sort of stand around her sometimes as she talks to my sister, sometimes taking part in their conversation, making some joke or something, while I think about whether or not I really like her or am just experiencing my overwrought, brain-heavy version of being βhorny.β Sometimes she and I talk just by ourselves, and I feel like I can see in the sincerity of her smile her desire for me. When I see it, I feel every kind of ambivalence: Does she really want me, or am I imagining it? Do I really want her, or do I just want sex and affection, from any (adequate) source? If I really want her, does she match the contradictions in my life enough so that we can help each other and make each other happy? If I discover she does match my contradictions, will I still want her, or will I become disgusted at my own reflection in her? Do I want to live a fully honest and intimate life, or do I want something else, something more like the ability to continue to live my double (maybe even triple) life, in the foolish inner drama of secrecy and hypocrisy? Well. Letβs consider things for a moment:
The preacherβs daughter is slim and pretty. Sheβs got this blood condition that makes it so that if she eats like a normal stupid American sheβll die because her blood does not transmit toxins out of her body very effectively. This condition must be very difficult for her; her father (the preacher) tells me (we get lunch pretty regularly) that she almost died from this condition when she was very little, say between two and five years old. The medical bills were piling up, and the surgeons were making noises about removing her gallbladder or something. However, my preacher is very based in his quiet normie way, and he decided that this whole medical establishment was absurd, and the preacherβs daughter kept her gallbladder and now lives on a grain-restricted diet that they discovered while βdoing their own research.β This has had the unintended consequence of keeping her, as I said above, slim and pretty, although I do know that she jumps rope for exercise so her looks are not a complete accident. Iβm not actually sure how physically attracted to her I am. When she eats badly she gets jaundiced and tires easily, which are negatives. I think her condition is also responsible for the eczema all over her hands.Β But when she eats well she has lovely light olive skin that compliments her hair, which is colored like milk chocolate, and though the skin on her hands is damaged the structure of them is delicate and beautiful. She always has her striking gray eyes, full red-pink lips, and straight off-white teeth. The hair I just mentioned is streaked with strands of gold from time in the sun that glint under the auditorium lights. I have often looked at her beginning from the golden strands in her hair and traced through them the line of her body from head to toe, finding myself pleased with what I saw. There is something graceful about her, something quiet and inscrutable, that draws my eye. She looks best in profile, lips pursed in thought, with her hair about her shoulders or pulled up in a bun on top of her head.Β
The preacherβs daughter is a virgin; I donβt think sheβs even been kissed. On some level I want that first kiss for myself. And I want more than that, of course. I want everything, like any porn-saturated yet βsensitive young manβ does; but what does she want? Does she even want anything? I think every now and then about all the godly ways I could debauch her. I can imagine her before me now, looking perhaps a bit prettier than she really is, naked, with her long gold-streaked chocolate hair covering her small breasts, with the swell of her broad hips and the lines of her slender thighs revealed to me. I imagine her breathing with girlish heaviness through her full lips, staring with her strange eyes at me and my nakedness, apprehending my evident physical power over her (I must weigh one hundred and twenty pounds more than her, at least, and by this time Iβll still weigh 240 but Iβll deadlift 500 and bench 315, of course, so it will be even better), feeling a new wanting deep within her and a new wetness between her thighs as I span the length of her slim ribcage with my hand and trace my thumb along her open lower lip. I imagine us in a wooden cabin in some steaming hot place, with an ocean swelling and breaking in the background, sweating and naked as fingers of daylight passing through a half-closed window light up the dust motes dancing in the heavy air, and she leans up from the bed and stretches so that I can see the very slight swells of her vertebrae rounding beneath her damp skin, and she makes to leave but I catch her by the thighs and turn her to lick the rivulets of sweat running down the creases beside her Mound of Venus. I imagine us in church sometime, maybe listening to her father preach one Sunday morning, and weβre sitting perhaps a little too close together, and she canβt really focus on the lesson because she canβt stop thinking about the new ways sheβs felt because of what weβve done together, thinking about how there are bruises shaped like my mouth just under her dress, here in the Lordβs house, thinking about how the people in the church both know-and-donβt-know what all weβve been up to, and the idea somehow thrills her despite her conception of herself, and perhaps I notice in my so very perceptive way and take her hand in my own with a knowing, quietly burning, self-satisfied look. Do these fantasies have anything to do with her? Will she really accept me in that D.H. Lawrence way that seems so right to my idealized notions of love? Or will she be a clichΓ¨d church-prude? Or what if I take off her clothes and sheβs not what I want? Thatβs what I worry about here: that Iβll marry someone and get into a sexual trap, and that will be that for us unless we decide to betray our faith and families and divorce each other. I donβt even know if such traps exist. I bet they do, and that half or more of all people live in them. Most people donβt care about such things and have sex when it feels right to them, whatever that means. I canβt do that, though. Sex is always going to matter so much more to me, at least conceptually. Iβd hate for it to be ultimately disappointing.Β I think it can be what you make it.
Marrying the preacherβs daughter would make my family very happy. My family and the preacherβs family get along very well. We gravitated toward him, his wife, and his two daughters as soon as we moved to the church off the side of the highway (not an interstate; this is a major βstroad,β with red lights and turning lanes) across the street from the local Jackβs. Weβd left the congregation where I grew up thanks to an internal dispute among the elders (one of that preacherβs daughters managed to mess up her silly little domestic life, and since weβre one of the few religious bodies that takes Matthew 19:1-12 seriously, it was a problem for my parents when the preacher seemed to start taking it less seriously for his daughterβs sake), and had more or less left our old relationships behind. The preacherβs family was sort of alone as well with not that many real friends in this congregation, and so we found each other. The preacherβs younger daughter, the one in question, immediately became my poor lonely little sisterβs first real girlfriend, and I love her for that. I noticed her from the beginning and have felt both a pull and repulsion toward her the entire time Iβve known her. I like her as a person and sometimes I think sheβs pretty but I donβt feel she matches the contradictions in my life.Β
Second time Iβve thought about her matching the βcontradictions in my lifeβ here. What does that phrase mean? Something like this: Iβm a sinner in the eyes of my church and maybe in the eyes of God, though I donβt know about that last one. If they knew the things I get up to thanks to (1) the internet and (2) my education theyβd all be scandalized, and my life would become very difficult if I decided to try to hammer out my real principles rather than laying down and taking it like a good little church boy. Theyβd be right to be scandalized about the porn, of course (though Iβm sure every church man βstrugglesβ with pornography); I really need to stop that, even though sometimes I feel I donβt want to. But do I have to repent for reading American Psycho or watching Antichrist or Evangelion or something? I donβt want to do that, and Iβm not convinced that I am morally compelled to reject art. Yet everyone I know would require me to frame these things as sin, would want me to say that I βstruggleβ to keep myself βunspotted from the world,β as if Iβm supposed to spend my life watching reruns of The Andy Griffith show or movies made before Clarke Gable said βdamnβ in Gone with the Wind. Not that thereβs anything wrong with The Ten Commandments; indeed, those movies are high art! But so is Rosemaryβs Baby and Iβm not sorry that I watched it, even if it does have shots of Mia Farrowβs tits. These concerns probably sound silly to you, my dear readers, but most of you havenβt been raised like I was raised. Bear with me a little while longer.
So I am this sinner at least in the eyes of my church, but I donβt really want to leave it. βLeaving the churchβ is a meme that doesnβt seem to end well for most people, and I more or less agree with the most important part of their moral teachings, i.e. their sexual morality, which is basically βyou shouldnβt have sex till youβre married.β I like to think I have better reasons for believing this than they do, but I think they get to pretty much the right conclusion [Insert the IQ bell curve wojak meme here]. Given this, I think rather than βleaving the churchβ Iβd much rather be its (more successful) Martin Luther. I think it needs reform and, most seriously of all, scholarship, which as far as I can tell now it completely lacks. Iβd like to write things that seriously and in ways the average member of the Church of Christ can understand extrapolate some of the problems I see with our faith. Accomplishing this involves me being a much more disciplined essayist, and of course I have many other things I want to write than religious criticism, but Iβve not come here to whine about my problems with writing consistently and at length, like a good person should. The more pertinent concern here is what this means for my romantic life, and the sort of wife that would need to be a part of my life to allow both these parts of myself to be expressed and perhaps integrated someday. Which brings me back around to my subject: Iβm not sure the preacherβs daughter is the sort of person who is really committed to the pursuit of truth rather than merely saying she is while really being committed to agreeing with the way sheβs been raised her whole life. I suspect sheβs the latter sort of person, in fact. I know the preacherβs daughter wouldnβt watch Se7en with me, or be okay with what I want to do to educate my children, i.e., give them access to real art without censoring it. If I wanted to marry the preacherβs daughter Iβd either have to tell her the truth about everything I think beforehand, in which case she might not want me any longer, or Iβd have keep it a secret and either continue my secret βsinsβ (minus the porn, which Lord willing I will get under control one day) or repudiate the developing course of my life, leaving most of the things I think I think are important behind me. Most people do either the second or third option, which usually leads to some kind of misery as they are either inevitably found out by their spouse or are, as they say, βlonghousedβ i.e. rendered impotent hypocrites, for the sake of keeping their marriage together. Both of these latter options amount to living a lie, and I won't live a lie in my married life (Lord help me), so Iβll have to go with option one and tell her who I really am. And how dangerous that would be! What would happen if someone who disagrees with me learns the extent of my secret self? Scandal and difficulty for who knows how long. I imagine the machine of social shaming will be deployed in all its subtleties. But maybe I need to weather that storm. Iβm afraid to do so because I donβt think I've learned enough and cultivated enough strength of character to stand by my positions with integrity, so I think Iβd eventually cave to the social pressure and end up in the same limbo of submission as (I think) everyone else.
This is about as much as I can do regarding the βcontradictionsβ issue. Essentially: Iβd like to be with someone who agrees with me, and who will help me find the truth rather than try to keep me in any particular place out of genuine love and fear of my damnation, while at the same time I want to keep my relationship with my family and friends. So I want someone like me: a lonely hypocrite with lots of contradicting notions that they havenβt quite gotten straight yet. Someone who is not a trembling church mouse afraid of her own thoughts, yet who is also not an obese purple haired tattooed libtard who has βgone no-contactβ in their βabusiveβ family (that is, a miserable hideous narcissist). The preacherβs daughter will never be the latter, and she isnβt the former exactly, but she isnβt as free as I want.Β
Iβve gotten repetitive now; itβs time to move this subject somewhere else. How many of the questions in the first paragraph have I addressed so far? Arguably the only one Iβve addressed directly is the βcontradictionsβ one, and the rest of this is only tangentially related to the questions I started with. I havenβt even gotten to the more interesting introspective questions. I guess I can sum them up like this: do I really want to live a full, honest life, or do I enjoy wallowing in myβ¦ I donβt know, mire of indecision and bad feeling, because I think it makes me a βdeepβ person or something?
I think Iβm going to leave that question for the next entry in this series. For now, since this is getting long (I am happy about this), I want to conclude. So: Iβm not sure how much of my attraction toward the preacherβs daughter comes from her, and how much comes from the prospect of the preacher and his wife being my in-laws. I admire my preacher very much; he has been a wonderful conversation partner to me for a while now, even if the reason he first asked me to get lunch had something to do with my parents wanting him to talk to me about the βdoubtsβ Iβd expressed to them regarding my faith. Maybe he still gives them updates about me. This is okay; on some level I want my parents to know what Iβm thinking and feeling, but I donβt like getting into arguments Iβm not ready for, so in some ways itβs better if they hear about my mind through the preacher. Iβve been able to be more honest with him than with most other people I βknow,β with the exception of my few close friends. Of course he doesnβt know the gory details of the books and movies and music I like, but still. I like his sweet little wife as well, even with her nervous temperament and her raw goatβs milk and essential oils. On some level it would be very easy to (eventually) propose to his daughter and permanently unite my family with his. It almost feels natural, even though it might result in a great retraction on my part regarding my suspicions and investigations into the world outside of the saran-wrapped hothouse of the Church of Christ. Yet #1 will not repudiate unless Truth someday compels me (God willing), and #2 itβs obviously wrong to marry a girl because you like her family. So any romance with the preacherβs daughter will have to wait till I feel more ready to defend my βposition,β whatever that is, and till I discover how much I actually like her. There are many more things about her than Iβve covered here, of course: she is a much more disciplined writer than I am, sheβd be happy to homeschool her children which Iβm pretty sure I want because I want them to read good books rather than be spoon fed antiracist propaganda for thirteen years, she has a cheery and musical laugh, etc. Yet none of that lets me see very far into the core of who she is. Only time and conversation can do that, of course. And there are other girls to think aboutβ¦
Notes: I got the long poem from the βArs Poeticaβ challenge done. Iβm trying to get it published somewhere other than here, though, so Iβm not gonna post it till I hear back from the man in charge. Only one left to go. Iβve teased the last one twice now, but itβs not going to be crazy or anything; itβs just a way to remind myself to finish the challenge, no matter how late it gets.
This isnβt the start of a βseries.β Iβm just writing what Iβm thinking about. Iβve got one more planned about another lady in the scope of my life and lust. Canβt promise anything more after that.