Close Proximity to Christ

I’ve only had sex in a church once. Most people put this act on their list of things to do; their kinkiest fantasies and taboos. I didn’t. I found myself in that group of people who actually found the idea rather repulsive, at least until I found myself in the situation. At that point, I was fairly ambivalent to it—seeing as how I was sort of already in the process, anyway. It wasn’t any more or less fun than the other time I’d had sex, at least in regards to location. It’s not difficult to trump the eroticism of a dorm room foray.

Anyway, it was summer break in between my second and third years of college, I think, and I was just a few weeks shy of my twenty-first birthday. I had gotten dragged out to a bar with some friends of mine, who absolutely assured me that the bartender didn’t check IDs when he served, especially on Thursday nights. It was here that I met Sarah Young, perhaps the most interesting girl I had met, but one that brought me to one of the strangest experiences of my life.


But I’m getting ahead of myself. I didn’t know Sarah Young, which was a completely perfect reason for me, holding tightly onto my second draught beer, to approach her. The makeup of my small town world is not so much a small town but a small rural county with
one center of entertainment. Her hair wasn’t exactly blonde, but it did have the potential to turn that shade at any moment. She had a nice face, not exotic or anything, but nice and plain—something I had been longing for after many nights spent at frat parties
meeting girls with too much cleavage and overabundant make-up. Her face and arms were marked by a light dusting of freckles. Her modest sundress, a patterned shade of brown that wasn’t too tight or loose, and the bottle of Bud Light she casually held, were also working in her favor.

I don’t remember what the jukebox was playing at the time, maybe some AC/DC, but she was lightly singing along to herself when I got there, a little off key but not so horrible, and from what I could tell, she wasn’t with anyone. Even though I wasn’t really looking for anything, it was only fitting that I used the best pick-up line I knew to start the conversation:

“Hi.” Even after close to twenty-one years of talking to girls, I still had trouble.

She stopped mid-chorus and looked in my direction, as if assessing the threat level—the battle of the sexes is interstellar war.

“Uh, hi,” she finally responded, as if all the sensors read “harmless.”

“I’ve never seen you around here before,” I said, “come here often?” I settled into the
routine, acting as if I were in fact a regular.

“Nah, I got dragged out tonight by friends. You?” She had resigned herself to fate—at least a short conversation, anyway. You couldn’t tell from my body language, but I was ecstatic.

“The same,” I waited for the bartender to get out of earshot, “The guy doesn’t card, so I got dragged out here.”

“Haha,” she gave a brief chuckle, “me too.” She took one last swallow of beer before placing the now empty bottle on the countertop. “Sarah Young,” she said, even though I hadn’t asked.

“Ken Ross,” I replied. Most people call me Kenneth, but I thought maybe I should sound more relaxed.

She hummed as if in deep thought for a moment before responding. “You graduated in oh five, right? From Tecumseh?” I nodded my reply as she continued, “Roosevelt, class of two-thousand and six, right here.”

That explained my having never heard of her. I generally kept to the northern part of the county, unless it was to head to Wal-Mart or the video store, or restaurants—or even the very bar we were sitting at. I kept ordering Killian’s. She stuck to her Bud Light.
I grew to like Sarah more and more as we talked, not just because she shared my same enthusiasm for drinks—bottled beer mainly, the occasional rum and Coke. It turns out that Sarah and I had more in common than borderline alcoholism. I had literary aspirations and a small library of short stories and personal essays. She had literary aspirations and a large repertoire of poems and the beginnings of a short story or novel—she hadn’t decided which—but she said that we should exchange various pieces of our work sometime, along with the books and movies we discussed. She forgave me for never reading Ayn Rand and I forgave her for never seeing The Rules of Attraction.

The bar eventually closed and neither of us was really that tired, so it’s only fitting that we, having sobered up a bit, got into my car and drove. I wasn’t sure where exactly we were going—like I said, I had voluntarily segregated myself from the southern portion of the county, but Sarah did a nice job of explaining the roads to me. When we got to her town not more than seven or so miles away, she apparently had a sudden thought.

“Wait. Take a left here,” she said when we approached a stop sign. I did just as she asked and continued to take the directions she gave me until we ended up parked on the street just outside a small church. I didn’t know what denomination the church was, or what possessed this girl to take me for prayer after a night of beer-drinking.

“A church?” I asked, suddenly curious. I hadn’t set foot in a church for any purpose in the better part of six months. After enduring the bitterness of a congregational split, I was in no hurry to set foot in a place filled with that much hatred again, especially as a young person blamed in part for some of the problems.

“I come here to practice piano. No one’s ever here this late.” The statement implied the idea of other late nights—perhaps practicing Chopin? The idea wasn’t completely out of the question: Sarah intimated earlier that she was an accomplished pianist. I had assumed that she owned one based on the conversation. Apparently, I was wrong. I wasn’t that concerned when Sarah withdrew a key—she obviously had permission to be here on a regular basis—but I wondered for just a moment if she had brought other guys to this church after spending the better part of the evening drinking and talking about Postmodern literature.

“So, why are we here?” I finally had the courage to ask as we stepped into a side hall, a sort of miniature foyer.

“I thought maybe I’d play for you.” Innocent enough, I guessed. She led me into a modestly-sized chapel, with pews that looked comfortable enough that you wouldn't mind sitting in them for an hour or so, but never any longer. A white cross hung, invisibly suspended by something behind it. Off to the side there sat an equally humble, well-used piano. She sat down and started to play Fiona Apple’s “Paper Bag.” This girl had excellent taste; I was expecting her to play something classical, but was pleasantly surprised. The song had become one of my favorites through the course of the previous autumn.

“I was staring at the sky, just looking for a star to pray on or wish on, or something like that. I was having a sweet fix of a daydream of a boy…” She started in, and her voice, though not quite the same as Fiona’s, was still pleasant. She played through the entire song as I remained in silence, rapt.

“Very nice,” I said after she had finished, “Do you have anything else to wow me?” I had meant for the statement to be a small joke, not an insinuation of anything that I’d actually wanted.

She turned from the bench to face the pew where I had taken a seat just behind her.

“Maybe,” she said, leaning forward. She kissed me. I had never been kissed in a church. Ever. I didn’t even think about the fact that I was in a church for the moment. I suppose my judgment was impaired by the fact that this situation usually never occurred. When she pulled away, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“This,” I said. “All of this. The bar, the drive, the church, that song and kiss. You have to know that things like this typically don’t happen.”

“How about this,” she asked, “Do things like this happen often?” She stood from the bench and moved to me, and that was when the trouble started.

In all honesty, I didn’t expect that her next move would be to unzip that little flowered dress she was wearing, or for it to drop to the floor, but without exaggeration, it was in fact what she did. At this point in my life, I was in the process of making the decision of how I felt about my faith in God—what little there was, anyway. It’s only understandable that because of this dilemma, I was trying to decide whether or not this whole thing had even the lightest tinges of sacrilege. The jaded, bitter, cynical part of me that wanted to thumb my nose and offer a middle finger to God won out, I’m afraid, and I took full advantage of that moment of weakness. We made love on the floor of that sanctuary. The position we used was the only one appropriate in that situation—the awkward one. My lack of experience with women didn’t offer me much in the way of knowing what to do, but I feel as though I did something right. However good or bad it was, Sarah said something just as she was about to climax that disturbed me greatly.

“Oh, oh,” she had moaned, and all the usual filler words applied, just before she said, in a hushed whisper, “Oh, Jesus. Save me, Jesus. Oh. Oh.” I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but I was in a moment of my own. I let it slide.

When we were finished, we lay beside one another on the floor. I looked up and saw a stained glass window next to my head: Christ and his flock just above my naked body. Flickers of yellow from the headlamps of cars cascaded over the image. The only sound was our breathing and the occasional momentum of cars passing us outside.

It was a weird question, but had to be asked as I considered what had just happened. “So what does your dad do?”

Matter-of-factly: “He’s the pastor of this church.”

“That’s why you have the key to practice piano.”

“And to clean on Thursday evenings after choir practice,” she added, as if this were a necessary anecdote.

“Do you bring boys here often?” I asked.

“No. You’re the only one.” That was comforting.

I rose to a sitting position and turned my head to watch her do the same. We got dressed quietly in the dark of that sanctuary, under the cross and the stained-yellow eyes of Jesus. We took a seat in a pew beneath His image. I checked my watch nonchalantly. A minute later or so, at five-thirty, she broke the silence.

“So, what now?”

“I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to think after that.” I was still trying to convince myself that what had happened was real.

“Want to get breakfast?” I was startled by the frankness of the question.

“No.” I lied.

“You sure?”

“Yes.” I lied again. I wasn’t ready for breakfast, even though I wanted it. I was hardly ready for the absurdity of being seduced by Fiona Apple songs after drinking in a bar before my twenty-first birthday. Did I even want what just happened to be real? My thoughts were interrupted by a chord progression on the piano. I waited for words, but no vocals came from Sarah’s mouth. The instrumental said everything it needed to.

After a few minutes, she asked me to take her home. I couldn’t speak, only nodded. The short drive to her house was steeped in silence. As the door opened, she turned to look at me. One last kiss between us and then she was quickly up the walk and silently into the house without looking back. I drove forward, but my eyes were on the mirror the entire time.

—D. Fresh