He’d tried masturbating earlier. His hand had worked for nearly half an hour. He even gave up worrying about whether or not Ralph and Gerry could hear the creaking of his old bed or about whether he would give himself a blister. He did everything he could to make himself come, until, without warning, his mind suddenly emptied and his hands fell away. While his penis withered, he turned over on his side, facing the wall to wait for sleep. But, as abandoned as he felt, talking to God was a hard habit to break. And so, for the one-millionth time, he bargained with God for the return of regular, restful sleep in exchange for his chastity.
But now it occurred to him that the bit of cooling breeze that had touched his leg might be enough to help him out. His promise to God was already broken for that night; it didn’t matter that he had been unsuccessful—he had tried, and that was enough to break the promise. You didn’t give God half-promises.
If Jerome could have had a say in the matter, he would have preferred that the capacity of a penis for which a priest had no use would die. The ridiculous organ lay in wait all day in his underwear like a jack-in-the-box, ready to spring at the least provocation. At night, after it seduced him into touching it and rubbing himself to climax, it tormented him by stirring to life again within minutes, wanting more. Or, worse, it often humiliated him by wilting in his hands before ejaculating, leaving him lying naked in his sagging bed feeling like a failure. He had come to think of his penis as a wicked demon trickster attached to his body for the sole purpose of tormenting him, and he fervently wished to be rid of it.
And yet God, in His infinite wisdom, had made the organ the way it was. And He had made a priest what he was. A human. So Jerome reasoned that there must be a purpose in the brutal antagonism between his body and his soul. In fact, he wondered if abstaining from masturbating when he wanted to, when he thought he should try to, was a kind of underhanded insult to God. If St. Augustine was correct in believing that nothing about man could be corrupt because he is made in God’s image and nothing about God can be corrupt, then this urge to touch himself must have some godliness about it. God made the urge as well as the organ. Perhaps the evil lay merely in the senseless enjoyment of stimulation, in the blatant favouritism towards one part of the body. Jerome didn’t enjoy any other aspect of his physical self so much. In fact, he loathed his craterous complexion, his boils, his large clumsy limbs and uncoordinated gestures. But alone in a dark sweltering room, he overly loved a rubbery wand of temperamental fibrous tissue that resembled the neck of a skinned turkey. Perhaps God wanted him to succumb to this behaviour, not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of learning: to experience his baseness, his separation from God. If this was God’s intent, how graceless to refuse the lesson.
Besides, Jerome was certain that in this soul-sapping heat, if he could just come once he would be able to sleep. All his sleeplessness would flow out of him. With sleep, he would be able to discipline himself. With discipline he would begin again to travel in the footsteps of Christ. He would work all summer to put himself back on track and be ready to serve with renewed vigour by the time school resumed in September.
While he continued to rationalize, his hand passed down through his pubic hair to his penis. His fingers began running little tests. They fluttered, stroked, moved in small, light circles. The earlier discomfort was gone. It would be worth trying again, just for the sleep that would follow.
He kept his eyes firmly closed to concentrate. Travelling slowly across the smooth old sheet that was worn to the softness of newborn skin, the open palm of his free hand found the edge of the mattress, no longer a firm sharp ninety-degree angle, but now compressed and rounded by age to the width of a woman’s throat. His hand slid back and forth, back and forth along this column. His breathing, as well as his other hand, picked up the rhythm. After passing over imagined collarbones his hand searched for and found the partially firm mounds of budding, mattress-lump breasts, which he squeezed, first one then the other, one then the other. With each squeeze, he felt his testicles firming. This could have happened had he chosen another life; if people led parallel lives, this could be part of his life with a woman; this could be his marriage. There could be a soft warm breast filling his palm. Nipples could be rising on his tongue. There was no sin in merely enacting what could have been. This was normal; this was good. He hadn’t noticed that he had pulled both his lips into his mouth and was sucking on them.
He was erect now, filling his working hand. He wanted to spit into his palm for more lubrication, but it was too dangerous to stop for even a second. If only God had made man flexible. He tipped himself slowly, carefully onto his side so he could lower his erection between the mattress breasts. His free hand was frantically spreading the breasts, opening up a space to receive him. If only the mattress could magically grow a little receptacle, something wet for him to slip into. He rolled closer, and as he did so, a trickle of perspiration ran down through the hair on his abdomen, mimicking the rapid steps of an insect. His torso jerked, his eyes flew open, his free hand let go of the breasts, swatted at the distraction, jiggling the bed, and his full hand suddenly emptied. Goddamn!
Defeated and ashamed, Jerome rolled onto his back. He felt like a grown man who could not overcome a temptation meant for a child. Exasperated, he closed his eyes, but it was clear that he was not going to fall asleep again. If he got up, he could at least occupy himself with making a cup of hot chocolate. The thought of the hot chocolate reminded him that a new housekeeper was coming in the morning. The daughter of a former parishioner of Ralph’s. They were low on cocoa and he should leave her a note to get a new tin. The trouble was his limbs were heavy as wet sandbags and the kitchen seemed a very long way away.
Outside, tires approached on the wet pavement. Jerome wondered where another human being could have been until this hour. What did people find to do that detained them until nearly dawn? Or was this someone just going out at this hour? He opened his eyes to watch which way the blocks of light from the headlights were going to travel around the walls. Right to left or left to right? If left to right, which way was the car travelling? Up or down the street? The squares appeared above his desk and began their curious ritual, travelling slowly across the wall to the corner. Then, like live things, they flashed into the mirror on the back of the door, raced past his head and shot out the window. Absurdly, he imagined that they had fled from the gloomy solitude of his life.
Finally he swung his feet over the edge of the bed to the linoleum floor. He pushed himself up and stood facing the window. They had warned him in the seminary that a priest’s life was one of constant temptation. But then they had ordained him; they must have seen something in him, must have believed in his vocation. It couldn’t have just evaporated. Churches had always attracted him. Their cool, cavernous solitude drew him inside, even when he was a young boy. He liked the crisp echo of footsteps retorting from stone walls, the silent little eddies of scented air that surprised him. That was something, wasn’t it? Some sort of sign?
Surely this insomnia was just something temporary. It had to be; he could not live out the rest of his life on so little sleep. He just needed to get back on track. A simple, small catalyst could knock him back into the right orbit. Maybe he should make a list of things that he could do to spark himself back to life. Things like painting this dull little room and getting rid of that annoying bald-headed man on his ceiling. He fished under the bed for his slippers and lifted his robe off of the back of the door. It would be cooler in the kitchen with the back door open.
The kitchen was located on the ground floor, at the back of the rectory. When Jerome pulled open the heavy wooden door leading to the backyard, the sharp smell of damp mouldy earth and the cool moist air that pressed against him like a wet cloth startled him. The sensation was so pleasant, so welcome after the stifling heat of his room that he remained standing at the door, looking out into the