At First, Introductions Shortening the distance between, Two worlds. Polite innocence displayed through, Conversations like Celestial bodies orbiting one another, Electromagnetism. Glancing and peering through Open intentions beyond the Firmament between. Into our lungs entered the air of, Lust and We became living concupiscence.

I stood there in the pool pit in front of the podium dressed in a brown suit, comfortable gators, no tie, my afro nicely picked, and a three-day old beard and mustache peppering my twenty-one year old face with hair. I stared out at the members of the congregation, everyone staring back at me in anticipation. Clearing my throat nervously, I reached for the microphone pulling it up so I wouldn’t have to bend down to speak into it. I stuffed my hand in my pocket searching for a napkin, sweat beading up on my brow, an uneasy feeling in my belly.

“I can do this,” I thought, glancing over at Susan who was sitting in the third pew smiling at me.

“Well go ahead son,” the minister behind me whispered.

“I must do this,” I thought again as words describing my reasons for standing before all of these “good people” conjured up hurtful memories that begged to be shared.

My mother and I were inconstant people of irregular patterns of living resulting from the disease of poverty and financial depression. We moved around a lot and in our exhaustive travels, we stayed with distant relatives, friends, or alone in our attempts to survive. We often came into contact with mental anguish and his relatives: distress, grief, agony, angst, and sorrow. They kept us company most of the time, becoming more of a family to us than our actual family was.

We were originally from the beautiful small town of Sonnersville in South Carolina. I never really knew exactly how beautiful Sonnersville was, because we left there when I was only five, after my mother’s second attempt at love – the one that hurt her most, leaving a scare that grew with each new town we moved to. In our traveling, many of the people we came into contact with proved to be insensitive to our plight. Mom would just tell me it was a dog-eat-dog world and everyone is doing the same thing – just trying to survive.

The insensitivity didn’t matter at first though. We thought ourselves tough enough to handle whatever we had thrown at us. My mother, the God-fearing humanity-loving woman she was, went out of her way to forgive people always telling me we should treat others as we would want to be treated, while secretly she despised herself for not doing what most of us eventually do – stand tall and proud and tell the insensitive people to go fuck off! It wasn’t long before I began to notice her buckling under the weight of it all.

My mother brought me up in church, feeding me scriptures for lunch and prayers for dinner, but I was too much like my father, she often told me. I never knew him you see, my father left my mother after finding out she was pregnant. They were both just two young stupid kids still in high school, but I was every bit of what she could remember of him, she’d say. She painfully kept a mental catalog of every male she came into contact with, reliving each minute of pain they caused her.

I didn’t understand church people; my mother’s people; the ones she loved and hated the most. My father didn’t understand church either, she once told me. He spent his time enjoying the night life always saying it was better to live before you die than to hope for life after. She had found herself a man of God now, who shared her sentiments, and she poured all her trust into him. His presence never once changed my outlook on church though. In actuality, his presence only served to strengthen my views on church and the world at large.

I didn’t understand how church people could go through life like we did relying on a promise to free them from the bondage of poverty. I also never understood why a man would want to subject himself to pretending to be righteous while praising God and stumping his feet in a house full of single or divorced fan waving behind your back gossiping two stepping Holy Ghost catching women in heat, who embraced for their minister, the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing, a gigolo.

Years had passed and my mother and I no longer lived with one another. I was still a young man, but very experienced on account of all the traveling my mother and I did together. By this point in time, I had decided I wanted to explore my roots and repay old debts.

I first meant her at Bible study, having finally returned home after spending the last four years away studying psychology abroad. She was the image of love to me, so innocent and pure, but my thoughts moved to the drum of a different agenda.

At Sunday school, we were introduced and the breach of space and unspoken words between us began to close.

“Hi, I’m Susan,” the light-skinned, medium height, long haired sexy young nymph said, extending seduction to greet me.

I shook her hand, “I’m…Devon,” I said with a short pause, gathering my thoughts as intentions begin manifesting in action.

She was the minister’s eldest daughter and she taught the children ages eight to eleven during Sunday school. I watched her like a beady eyed hawk scanning the surface of what I considered my territory for the first glimpse of vulnerability and, in seeing, swooping down to take hold of my prize. She smiled. I smiled back.

A few Sundays of conversations had passed and in preparation for youth day, I helped her prepare the church for the skits the kids would put on. We were the first two there.

“They’re late again,” Susan said blowing as if irritated by the absence of help. “Well, I guess it’s just you and me for now,” she continued looking in my direction, her arms folded.

“Hey, no problem,” I said smiling devilishly, “Just let me know what you need me to do.”

We began moving boxes of material out of hiding so we could expose their contents. I intentionally brushed up against her soft skin as I picked up the schedules she dropped. A little apprehensive at first, but my persistence and occasional complement-filled discussions of God’s power and wisdom in creating such beauty in her began to win her over.

A few hours later, she began to preach sweet nothings to me, complementing me on the size of my hands, the width of my shoulders and the heft of my frame. I returned the complements with seductive whispers in her ear and large hands between thighs. She sighed and panted like a dog in heat brushing her hand against my manhood, feeling the size of lust. Suddenly, the realization of doing what we were doing in the midst of a church startled her. She quickly and politely pushed me away and instead of the “God this feels so good” came the “God what are we doings,” but I, bidding my time, agreed and quickly began working again.

At the church picnic, we sat away from everyone else near a tree on a small hillside with short blades of the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. The birds in the tree sung to us as we sat beneath them. I looked around and began to see the beauty of Sonnersville my mother always spoke of, as the sting of cupid’s arrow burned in my chest. My eyes returned to Susan and my intentions began to seem less desirable than before.

“We’ve been seeing each other for a few months now,” Susan said, “and I still don’t know that much about you.”

“Well, what do you want to know,” I replied.

Fidgeting as she moved closer she asked, “Have you ever been hurt before?”

“No, I’ve never gotten close enough to anyone for that to happen. I’ve always been too busy looking after my career and, until I could give a woman my all, I never really wanted to get that serious – until now,” I said holding her in my eyes.

She smiled, “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she said touching my hand.

I could tell my attempts to capture this young innocent woman was really working. We continued talking and she told me her father had used a woman once before and she didn’t want that to happen to her. She didn’t want to be used. She couldn’t remember who the woman was, just that the woman left seriously hurt by her father. I told her not to worry, what we had was special; what we had was real. She smiled and admitted doing what we did in the church was a serious turn on for her. I told her there were so many things I wanted to show her, quickly stealing a kiss unnoticed. Women are so easily manipulated, I thought. I would soon convince Susan to do things she had never dreamt herself capable of doing.

We volunteered to stay after church every Sunday to clean up now. No one noticed or even suspected a thing. My polite brushes against her skin had turned into caressing the heft of her sweet ass, my tongue preoccupied with searching the inner secrets of, vagina. She squirmed with excitement trying to hold in screams of immense pleasure, yearning to burst forward from her lungs. I taught her amazing things, showing her where to put hands, where to put lips, how to arch her back, and slowly the innocent became lustfully guilty. She was a natural and sucked harder than a baby on a tit, impressing me, caressing me, confessing to be the goddess of love but I knew it was only lust. She had never been touched like this before, never been kissed like this before, never been laid and displayed like this before. She wanted more. I’d had enough, so we turned others on to the shrill of satisfied temptation. Soon we were a group of six, two males and four women, all kids of the preachers trusted staff of deacons.

We spent hours in church, under the pretense of doing work, exploring the deepest secrets of lust. I brought a video camera suggesting we should tape ourselves then play at the next session for more stimulation. We played these suck and fuck games for weeks turning the house of God into a house of whoredom, but all things must eventually come to an end.

Walking through the white halls of insanity, I had decided to visit my mother, who actually lived fairly close to Sonnersville. The nurse said she was doing better. She was beginning to recognize things again. Within a few more years, she might even make a full recovery from the nervous breakdown she had so long ago – the result of the scar left on her heart. I whispered in her ears. “Tonight mother, tonight I’ll reward him for you.” Then reading from the bible, I continued, “Revelations 18:6 Reward her even as she rewarded you and double unto her double according to her work: in the cup which she hath filled fill unto her double.” I closed the book. “Mother, you taught me to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but tonight I will do what has been done. I will repay the man who scared your heart double.”

At revival, the preacher wanted to recognize us, those of us who had stayed after church so faithfully to clean and prepare for other events. He invited me, the newest member of the team, to say a few words. His daughter smiled. I smiled back as I went to the podium. The congregation sat quietly waiting for me to begin as I stared out at them, somewhat nervous.

Tonight, I have a few words I’d like to say about God’s greatest gift to man – the woman.

More than a help meet.

“Amen,” the church said in unison.

More than a pillar of comfort.

“Amen,” the church agreed.

More than a mother, a sister, or a wife.

“Amen,” the church continued.

They are not only the carriers of new seed but life givers and I wouldn’t be here before you now if it wasn’t for that very important woman in my life, who use to be a member of this church but now resides in a mental institution, suffering from a broken heart, having been used and abused by a man she not only knew as her lover, but also as her minister.

And with that, I grabbed the remote for the church projectors that lay next to the microphone, pushed play and, stepping down from the pool pit podium, walked out, leaving the church on their feet aghast at the sight of the preachers daughter and the deacons’ kids on screen in the church fulfilling their every sexual desire. I later, sitting next to my mother, read that the preacher had a heart attack as he watched his lovely daughter being fucked from both ends.

My mother smiled, “Very good Curtis,” she said.

“Thank you mother,” I replied resting my head on her shoulder, “These people deserve what they get for how they treated you.”

“Yes,” she sighed.

Fumbling with my cell phone, I continued, “So what should we do next mother?”

Absentmindedly, she looked away at what she thought was a window in the room of four white walls, “You remember John,” she began, “The man in Seederton, Va who took advantage of me?”