When God wanted to punish me, He sent me to my boyfriend. When the Devil wanted to tempt me, he sent my boyfriend away.
I was still wallowing in the pre-TGIF mood when my phone chimed with the arrival of a new text message. Thank God It’s Friday, it read. I can’t wait to be with you. It was him, my ridiculously handsome boyfriend. I couldn’t wait to be with him too.
I did not need parental consent to spend out, but I did not want my mother imagining her nun-to-be daughter was having the ride of her time on a Member’s Day bacchanalia, so I perpetuated my teen hominess at my holier-than-thou aunt’s house. Aunt Sarah had gone for a three-day retreat at the Marian shrine in Komarock, and I was sure she and her hypocritical husband wouldn’t be bursting in unexpectedly. Later that night, when we wrapped the heat of our bodies around each other like a blanket, Mark promised, for the umpteenth time, he would wait on the world’s longest queue for me, or the rest of his life, to have a taste of me. Heck, I would have given everything for Mark to mark his territory in me, but premarital sex was what God frowned upon. I sure didn’t want God getting pissed at me.
The hardest part was surviving the night with my body hungerings. We did not even kiss that night as though it was our punishment for having stolen moments not sanctioned by our mighty parents and their Almighty God. I sat in the valley of Mark’s legs, and he would cross his arms over my stomach before slowly cupping my breasts.
“Let’s get married,” Mark said, and for a second I almost said yes.
But I did not want to get married because my body was on fire. Even if I said yes then, sex would be the reason behind it. Long after the archetypal orgasm in the silence, I would hear God’s voice asking what I had done and I would shamefacedly say that Mark had tricked me into marking the area where the Tree of Life was in the Garden of Eden. I would blame my hormones for letting me down, and Mark for lighting the fire. “Come on you horny bastard,” I said. “You haven’t even treated me like the queen I should be yet you want a wife to boss around?”
In the morning I slipped out of the house and walked down the path that led to the rhododendrons hoping to thaw the memories of the night with the dew. Over the night I had given heed to my mother’s advice and listened to the voice of reason not because I was more afraid of teenage pregnancy than contracting HIV/Aids, but because in those witch hours when lust was at its peak God awakened the fear of hell in me and I smelt the stench of eternal damnation. God, God is terror. But thank heavens, I managed to keep my virginity intact.
I sensed him behind me. Hell, if he touched me right now I would turn to a pillar of salt. I turned and looked at him. I had never seen such a beautiful man. All he had to do was just make the first move and I would take the deal. He reached up to where I was standing and wrapped me in his arms. I felt my nipples harden against the soft chiffon gown, penetrate the fabric and glaze his chest. Tremors ran through me even in spaces I did not imagine existed in me.
God, I wanted him like hell, very much, at this moment. He just needed to ignite the spark and no turning back. Please, God, don’t let it be here, in Aunt Sarah’s holy gardens. But it was not to be.
As though I were a two-year-old toddler he picked me up and carried me up to the bathroom upstairs. He put me in the tub where I had once found Aunt Sarah making love with her husband and stood aside staring at me. He stared at me some more then announced, “Lemme go and buy breakfast…”
God, why has he changed his mind? I asked Him, but what I wanted to say was to Mark, “Take what’s rightfully yours, I will marry you. My mind is made up, you are mine, and I’m yours. Why not just do it?” but he was already gone.
I got out of the tub and got rid of the drenched gown.
I went back to the tub and sank slowly beneath the hot bath watching the steam go up and condense on the white tiles. I massaged myself with the soap bubbles, leaned back, luxuriating in the bath oil, and felt my clenched muscles slack. The girl-on-girl and solo girl YouPorn clips I watched on my Smartphone under the blankets with headphones on showed me how I should touch myself. I leaned my head back against the rim of the tub, closed my eyes the way the girls in the clips did it, and tried to think of what I ought to feel.
I tried to imagine Mark kissing me, his tongue pushing through my teeth, his soft hands all over my body. God, it was heaven and I moaned only to realize it was my hand touching me where it shouldn’t.
When I opened my eyes, Mark was standing over me. I tried to cross my arms over my chest and to twist my legs, but he had seen it all. A flush of embarrassment ran from the pit of my stomach up to my cheeks.
“Don’t,” he said. “You’re so beautiful…”
“No,” I said standing up abruptly, grabbing a towel and sloshing water all over the floor as I avoided his eyes.
