Chapter One

Dominus Vobiscum

At times,

I might rebuke this bright passage between two dark holes and can only envision the final fall.

But, then

I remember the cover tossing joy of holding you or talking to you… then, I laugh in the morning light, hardly able to wait for the next bright dance to come, hardly able to wait for my next chance to fold myself in your arms…”

Et cum spiritu tuo.

Narrator:

Here, I introduce to you two other characters in our history. They are young lovers, Agnes and Chris, with all the energy and enthusiasm appropriate to their age, but their love takes them along this path of increasing realization until eventually they join with Fr. Adam to effect the intentions of his esoteric rituals. Adam didn’t tell you about them in his long Nepsis letter did he?

And how archetypically American that we should have first explored our love in that dusty barn on Chris’ family’s ranch in Southern California. Then, days were still smog free. Clear, clean heat waves rose from the broken pavement of the road. Small herds of cattle rested, chewing beneath scattered trees on the dry hills. Dry stack of alfalfa bales stored in that hot barn and covered with the old horse blanket was our prickly, uncomfortable bed for those early explorations. Sometimes the alfalfa stems and leaves would get caught in our clothes, between our sweaty legs. The cows didn’t care. They would eat it anyway. We were so young when we first started but we didn’t get serious until much later. Not serious. No, that’s not the word. “It” became a terrifying compulsion. Compulsion? Not exactly that either…

Night after night, I would go to my room and find Chris waiting for me there. The room was in the attic of our huge old ranch house. Or we would agree to meet in that isolated hay barn at the back of their property. Chris always seemed fresh, fragrant with some new cologne. His body would be so warm that at times it seemed he must be on fire. He kissed me, offered me his naked body. Nor did I resist him.

It was so often so rough. It was almost rape. Sometimes we would fake a struggle. Chris would rip away my blouse, my jeans. Then he would drag his hands over me, my skin that had the resilience and perfection of a baby, back then. I would slap him. He would only get more excited and rape me against the wall. Sometimes I would suck him, ravenous for him. He emitting his little moans as if in joyous agony.

There were wild times, mostly in the otherwise quiet afternoon hours before our parents came home after work, when he would come over, take me somewhere secret or sometimes in the open where our struggle would be spiced by risk. One time we stood for it, my back up against the gate post, next to the public road! There was not enough time, ever, for us to get our fill. Sometimes he slapped me really hard as I invited his hot cruelty. But then, maybe I would deserve it because when he was tender and needy, I would be cold, even cruel. It didn’t matter. We both liked it because it only heightened the game. Back then, when we were in our teens, we hardly ever spoke at school. Even when we went to high school, we didn’t speak much. We had different friends. Chris went out with different girls, I with other boys. I even had a couple of short-term boy friends. One time, “just to show me”, Chris seduced my boyfriend. Came at him from behind, he said. Chris said the boy really liked it. Chris said he didn’t mind either. But I know an ugly shame overwhelmed him. That he had sex with another boy. Dominated somebody like that. Even if it was just to show me. Maybe then, he started to question himself.

We didn’t see each other for a while after that. It was the fall semester. He was the quarterback for our football team. I was a princess in the court of the homecoming queen. He and she had a relationship. I hated her then. Him too. But he wasn’t really interested in her. He was just bored and confused about his life, so went along with what everybody else wanted. When he was a senior, he liked to go out drinking with his jock buddies. They would usually end up getting into fights with other guys. Drinking and fighting was all they did back then in that country town.

He had gotten into a lot of trouble earlier in his life. Bad genes, I guess. Even went to reform school when he was twelve or something. I don’t know the details, like I said, we didn’t talk much.

I was in the choir at church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I love music. I can imagine it in my head. It justifies everything. All my stupid mistakes, and misunderstandings. I like it when it is wild and savage, like rock and roll. I like it soft and gentle like a love song. Especially a tenor or a mezzo soprano. I like just to let the music drift or soar around inside my head. I like best to sing myself. By myself. I’ve got a damn good voice.

It was then that I met Fr. Adam. We had many talks over the years. First, the childish talks of a little girl talking to a big, pure man that she admired and loved. Then, as I got older, we talked about more serious things. And he tried to help guide me in my life. Chris and I both knew him from Youth Group activities at Church. Chris was not raised a Catholic. Fr. Adam tried to discourage me in my relationship with Chris. I don’t think that he thought that it was normal. He never seemed judgmental, though. More perplexed. But let’s face it, I always did what I wanted to do, then explained it to him afterwards.

One night that fall, he was waiting for me outside the Church after choir. The wind was blowing, dry leaves scratched across the sun bleached asphalt and shadows of the road. We hadn’t gotten together for a long time.

“Do you want to come with me tonight?” “Where to?”
“I don’t know. We’ll drive somewhere.” “It’s late and I’m tired, Chris.”

“You can sleep in tomorrow, there’s no school.”
“You have the precautions? I don’t want to take any more chances.”

“Well, maybe. Alright. Let me go home first, then I’ll sneak out my window. You wait by the road, park your car behind those trees across from the gate and wait. I’ll be there before midnight.” It was ten.

We drove to a place about an hour away. It’s called the Devil’s Punchbowl. It’s now a park, but it wasn’t then. It’s where the San Andreas Fault comes to the surface. We walked to a place that over- looked the edge of this deep chasm, strewn with huge boulders. It was nearly a full moon in this late autumn warmth of California’s Indian summer. We could see anyone coming from a long ways away, where we were, but it would be hard for anyone to see us, night or day. It was a perfect place beneath boulders and pinyon pines. We spread our blanket on a bed of soft, fragrant pine needles.

Do you want to love me?

“What do you mean, love?” “I don’t know.”

She knew that Chris was watching her. Her back turned to him as they sat on the blanket and bed of fragrant pine. She breathed deeply, deeply, quivering just a little as she released her breath. It felt good to breathe so deeply. She knew that Chris was watching her. And such a sharp stab of desire caught her that she was appalled by it. Desire radiated from him as well, radiated out over the chasm into the darkness and seemed to stretch into eternity. But he did not touch her yet.

“Love you?” Chris’ voice spoke so low that Agnes could hardly hear. A tiny sound outside a cave in the dark.

“Love you? I am in hell with desire… for you. Have you never guessed? Have you never seen beneath everything that I’ve done since we were children? But there are so many kinds of love. I lust for you. I want your body that I know so absolutely. Sometimes I think that I want your soul. I really mean that. I want to be so close to your soul that yours and mine would seem one to any who might be watching. Nobody could see two but only one bright, glorious, full light– us. So, close that even God would be jealous. Even God.

“Don’t say that! You don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, my lust is so strong that I could rape you to the hot center of the earth and even that boiling, molten rock would not be hot enough to touch that part of me that wants to be inside of you. (He laughs at his own exaggeration.) But there is something else I want even more. I want you. You. I want to touch your soul. There is love you see and there is love.

“They aren’t two things. Don’t tell them apart. Give me all of it. Come to me.”

In the soft autumn air, there was the rush of a breeze. And did the earth tremble just a bit? As a soft fall of garments sounded the beginning of something different. For as Chris gazed into her eyes, so close, so naked… He peered so deeply into her, she was afraid. But when Agnes looked back there was nothing but the gentlest desire, in him, on his lips, between his legs, that hardened and began to massage her body. Chris sucked at her lips, her tongue, his hands digging into her as they held her. Her mouth opened to his, as his opened to devour. But then he pulled back, slowed, then, all the rapacious cruelty of the past, and more than just theirs, catalyzed into a swift and almost desperate union. *The first nudge strangely terrified her. She gave a long gasp and then her whole body opened up. His, hard, thick and pounding; she moved with it. For an instant they were bound together. He stopped. He stopped and held it. Just inside. His face agonized. She did not understand.

“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Just wait,” he gasped after a few moments.

Then, he started again, his lips pressed to her neck. Working between her breasts with tongue, nipping slightly her nipples, pink and hard, with his teeth. Entered her again. Pumping, pumping. Then he rolled over away from her as if wild with pain. And she reached out for him. He resisted. She tried again. His body perfect in its youth, modeled by the soft light of the moon. She felt his sex. He recoiled painfully. But she, very gently took him into her mouth, surrounded his organ with a wet, gentle warmth; a delicious, gentle, then ravenous sucking. Stronger, more and more until, just before he would cry out with release, he pulled out and held her with his strong arms at a determined, confused, questioning distance. And once again he rolled away.