THE SEX REBEL OF JESUSLAND, mini-chapter 66

66. A GIFT

Adam lay beside her, and noticed that his penis was bare. He had worn a condom, but somewhere, sometime during the lovemaking it had been lost. Disappeared. He wondered where it was, and then decided it was nothing important. He looked at the ground, and then remembered something else. He scratched at the ground.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for your gift,” he said. He dug into the soil and found what he was looking for. It was a necklace. Simple gold. Attached to it was an amulet.

He had buried it here for Sarah, but 9/11 had intervened, and now he wanted to give her what he had meant to give to Sarah.

“What is it?”

“It’s a necklace.”

“What does it mean?”

He didn’t know how to tell her. It wasn’t a very Christian gift. He had bought it before he had made the big turn in his life, before he was born again. It wasn’t something he would buy today, but it had a totemic power that nothing he could think of buying today would have. He decided to take a chance and tell her anyway.

“The amulet is a replica of a goddess, from the goddess religion that used to reign on earth, long before other religions.”

She was a little afraid of it. But she touched it. She felt like a goddess herself, in the aftermath of a godlike passion. The small figurine was flat-faced and big-breasted, short, squat. It looked ancient as well as modern-cute.

“It’s OK,” he said. “I don’t think it’s un-Christian. Or European. It’s an artifact. It denotes the fullness of the earth. I think Jesus would approve.”

“Shall I put it on?”

“I’ll put it on for you.”

He put it on her. “Do you like it?”

She held it up. “I do indeed, thank you.”

The sun was being swallowed by the horizon. Time to return to the real world. They cleaned up their site, got dressed, and slung on their backpacks, now much lighter than before. She dropped the empty champagne bottle by accident, and it broke on the blue rock. He collected the shattered pieces in a plastic bag. As he worked, a pressing melancholy settled on him. The journey down had none of the lilt of the journey up. The sun was setting on the other side of the mountain, and they descended in the gloom of dusk. No sunlight or heat on their side of the mountain. Only darkness. They moved wordlessly in Sugar Mountain’s vast shadow. Every rock and every bush seemed to harbor a somber secret. Silently they collected their clothes on the way. The garments were like portents left behind by gargoyles, trying to warn them of something. When they got to the bottom, they climbed into Adam’s jeep. They sat side by side. Eve wanted to tell Adam why she was with him, and why she wanted to be with him -- only for the sex. Not for the love he seemed to harbor for her.

But she did not. She did not want to put him off this early in the game. She wanted to see him again and again, and come again and again, until this new habit was as much a part of her as her devotion to the Lord. She wanted to blend her sexuality into her faith. Eros and Christus. Married. The foundation on which her ambition would rise.