THE SEX REBEL OF JESUSLAND, mini-chapter 78

78. DINNER WITH EZRA

Dinner, thought Eve, as she looked at her second empty glass of wine, is a dangerous thing, Much more dangerous than lunch.

Dinner was dangerous if you were tipsy and the man across the table was Ezra and you had already talked about sex, not as a subject in the air, but as a solid thing lying between you and the man – a bridge you could walk over to meet in the middle – that had a way of being the main subject no matter what you talked about. There was a wiring in the mind, wired to the body: the way the body interfered with the mind, that directed the thing between you so as to lash the two of you together closer, moving your selves right up to the face of the danger, because that was where men and women lived, that was where they caught fire, in the machinegun-rapid fire of stuff banging between them, the touch of the eyes that, once unleashed, kept edging two people on closer together, skirting the communal danger.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know how to say this, but you’re much sexier than you were at twenty,” said Ezra.

“I might say the same for you. You’ve grown into yourself, haven’t you?”

“I’m surprised at myself myself,” said Ezra. “I had no idea I would turn out this well. Ahem. Pardon the slip into narcissism. But I took my tabula rasa for what it was. I thought I would stay quite empty all my life.”

“God has put in His details.”

“Eve, He has certainly done that with you. Even your eyes are different. They have a glow they never had before.”

They didn’t have it until very recently, Eve thought. These are post-orgasm eyes.

“You never talked with this focus before, Ezra.”

“I never appreciated people before. I was just a boy, really, with my boyish pain, with my own fixations, a callow youth conflicted with himself.”

“Have you solved all your conflicts?”

“No. The biggest one remains.”

“What is that?”

“The one between me and my environment.”

“That’s very broad. All of us are a me in the world, aren’t we? Why is that a conflict for you?”

“I have always thought of the environment as two things. Either hostile and inimical, or something implacable to fit into.”

“How is it different now?”

“It is something I can bend. I can make my own reality. But that has a responsibility. I have to think of what my reality is, of what it can be, of what I want it to be.”

“You also have to think of how you can create a reality for others.”

“I think one does that naturally – that is, if you are with others with any kind of consideration. What I’m thinking of is bigger.”

“Like the Bureau of Behavior Design and Management?”

“Something like that. More of a bend that is something that doesn’t necessarily come from me, something that I would desire, but something interesting I can think of.”

“You’re beginning to discombobulate me. I’m lost.”

“It’s like TV programming. For example, when I came up with the idea of my first great TV hit, American Evangelist, quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing, I did it without thinking what it would do for people. I just had an idea for a show that grew out of that old show American Idol. I wanted to honor the performance of top evangelists. I wanted them to distil their messages, and their power, into four minutes, no longer than a song. But I had no idea what it would do, that it would be such a natural way to spread the Gospel. More people got converted to Christianity via my TV idea of it than in any other way. It was more than a TV idea; it was simply the best idea of Christianity. Ahem. Pardon that slip into narcissism. But not only that. We ended up creating so many creative preachers. Missionaries who honed their messages, rehearsed their sermons till they hit so hard and so deep. Now we have people who are voting their beliefs. The viewers vote for what most speaks to their hearts. They vote for their favorite spiritual experience. They vote their souls. Who would have thought? All I wanted were ratings. I just wanted to do something suitably Christian. And then, to my surprise, I got to be an ultimate do-gooder, bringing people these very special experiences. A general in the march of Christianity. That’s why I say, the highest good is the highest TV ratings. Here we have the most popular TV show of all time, and it’s not a frivolous thing. I sell spirituality. I create the major spiritual experience of the nation, once a week. The environment bends to me, but it was not what I expected. An entire religion bends to me, and I had no idea. Ahem. Pardon that slip into narcissism.”

“Are you comfortable with power?”

“I don’t think of it as power. It’s just the world I live in.”

“I would like to live in that world.”

“Eve, what would you do with power?”

He was testing her.

“My focus would be to finally integrate Christianity and sexuality.”

“How would you do that?”

“Sex as prayer.”

“What do you mean, Eve?”

“When we pray, on our knees, we are praying with our minds, our words, our throats. But when we have sex, we are praying with our bodies. If our bodies, when we have sex, were praying to God, were moving close to God, that would be sex as prayer. Sex is when our bodies pray to God, and He grants us immediate satisfaction for offering our bodies to Him. The French call it the little death, the orgasm, but when one has an orgasm, one makes a connection, an electrical connection, with God, as if your negative is plug right into His positive, your cord plugged into His greatest outlet, connecting with His charge. His finger reaches down and touches you. In the end sex is a gathering of bodily power yearning for God.”

“What kind of a prayer is it? In prayer you ask God for something, don’t you? What are you asking for with sex?”

“To be precise, I’m asking to be closer to God. It is a prayer of gratitude, for giving me such an out-of-body body experience.”

“Wow. That’s amazing. That sounds like the most Non-Sanctioned Notion I ever heard, but it’s amazing. I would like to pray with you.”

It had slipped out. He had been so enchanted with her intellectual leap that he was totally disarmed, and fell in with the intellectuality so wholeheartedly that his whole body, his whole being, followed suit.

Eve looked at Ezra. He was wholly open, wholly genuine, wholly clear. It was as if the devil in Ezra had stopped being devilish, but lay all his cards face up on the table, choosing candidness over cunning.

She wanted to leap back at him, herself as open as he was, but then she leaned back. Now his fate was in her hands. This powerful man was in her power. He wished something from her. She had him.