While there is still, at this elderly date, some slight contest as to whom God favors most—warm debates held at great distances, often over inebriated purges of piety between the Jews, Gentiles, and soberly, oh so profoundly soberly by the Muslims and Mormons—regardless, one would think it safe by now to concede that God is Catholic. Of course! What else would He be? For with cleanliness next to godliness, none must budget for more cleaning products than the Catholic Church. Have you not seen the Vatican? It glimmers like a golden crown of sanitized goodness. And I’m certain if I were God—and sometimes I do wonder about Him, and why I’m not, and just why not, really…but were I God, I would make sure to be stinky wealthy, and therefore very clean. This everyone knows, or should.

However, slight arguments aside, I have summoned you here to ask you something far graver: Surely you agree that there is nothing in this world—wait! Let me ask with just the right tone, a sober—not slurring as is often the case, but a sober and ecclesiastically pitched tone: Is there anything more noble in this lukewarm, wanton world than morals? Morals, yes! That very sacred, oft adorned, and therefore weighty thing that hangs devotedly—on Sabbaths and holidays, round the heads of the most respectable, most pious and civilized of our breed: the preferred religious.

Being Catholic, God attended mass with His most-preferred religious at the Saint Michael of the Immaculated Sacred Host Cathedral, on the corner of Second and Main, in the bewitching city of D-----. Why this church? Surely you, being quite astute and may I note, looking slightly slimmer and even more provocative this week…you would not ask this. For it is positively sacramental! Sixty-foot stained glass walls joined atop by elaborated archways framing lightly-graven images frescoed humbly within gold-plated ceiling tiles. At least we believe they’re plated, not solid gold; for by now one tile would have surely loosed and found its fallen way, crushing to papaya at least one unfortunate head, bowing far below. (Though perhaps they are indeed solid gold and we—ignorant and jaded, discount another obvious miracle, as humans are wont to do.)

The other reason God was known to attend this church was that His Son also attended here. An obvious and unequivocal fact. Another miracle, to be sure. For His Son’s very footprints had been found there one day in early April, appearing mysteriously on the white marble floor, directly in front of the Eucharist. These footprints would not wash away—no matter the cleaning product! Nor could they have been made by mortal man, since there is none so sacrilegious as to walk, barefoot and dirty, through this grand and rather chilly church. It was a clear and divine enchantment. Granted, the footprints led from the Eucharist, across the marble floor and out the nearest side entrance—quite obviously so; and in a spaced pattern that suggested not walking so much as running. After much pensive, half-throated debate, the preferred parishioners came to realize, sincerely so, that Jesus must have run to his sanctuary backwards from outside, for not wanting to turn his back on the world. Inspiring, no?

It was here, in this grand and hallowed church, where the piety of ladies is oft calculated by the square inch atop her devotional bonnet; and where men who wear fur, wool, and blended cashmere hats reverentially remove them upon entering, as a sign of deference either to God or to the ladies’ hats—this, no one yet knows. But here, in this church, God was sure to notice one Delinka Desitierovych. Omnipotence aside, He couldn’t help but notice her, since Miss Delinka attended every single mass. This meant that one could find her, alone, in the third pew from the left, twice a day during the week, thrice on weekends, and—as is proper—every holiday, all day long.

If you thought her motivations purely devotional, you would be only half right, or wrong, depending on your optimistic persuasion. For while those with the moral filament to equal that of Miss Delinka are a puckered lot, there exists even now an intoxicating enemy to morality and piety—desire; and this enemy existed—that is to say lived, breathed, took its teas in the afternoon and generally existed, in the heart of Delinka Desitierovych. For Miss D was smitten not just by God and his word, which she sorely was, but most—most inappropriately, by a certain priest, of a certain age, with saline-green eyes and six-foot-long black cassock robes. A Priest with an appetite for ornate footwear and community service; and with a certain way of smiling that surely made the angels envious and cranky. 

Miss D was no potato herself, indeed. Gifted with translucent blue eyes—usually lowered at half-mast; with blond undulating hair—nearly always stretched tight beneath a short and therefore impious bonnet; and, regrettably, with a pre-Raphaelite figure that she hid like a wayward stepchild…only rather than a broom closet, it was hid beneath long, ruffled dresses that buttoned to her nape. And yet, despite such determined measures, Miss D—sadly how she suffered. For she had morals—yes! Morals! Strong damnational convictions she carried daily; perhaps not atop her head but at least within her heart and stretching up to her nape, from ankles to fingers to the prayerbook she clutched to her hidden bosom, always.

Watching the Priest give his sermon, as she was intently doing, I watched Delinka Desitierovych. I sat one row down and just far enough away to watch and listen, quite acutely, to her. Having studied her gaze, I have pieced together what it must have been like for her—this longing. I saw her mind try—try to hold tight to the words being spoken, “Only when you renounce your past!” how her eyes would veer off the words to the lips that issued them, “And Repent!” lips on the verge of whispering something intimate, expressly to her. That delicate mind, so derailed by those thick, provoking lips, willed her to look up—up into twin green pools…ah, but it was hopeless. For I’m told that his green eyes oft conveyed a primal and decidedly indecent suggestion, like a lucid invitation to an orgy—Not! Concentrate! Look down. Down!—she must have thus willed herself away, thinking, I must be moved only by his spoken spirit, and not, she may or may not have told herself, not by those shoulders, thick arms, portly neck, and that rounded chest that titillates his somber robes and makes them heave and quicken like my—Down!

For by this time, the Priest was reaching the apex of his sermon. “Only when you refuse temptation!” How difficult his orations must have been to bear, “Deny your sinful lusts!” her eyes slinking ever lower down his cassock, “And repent! For—” just as the Priest was turning to the last page of his sermon for the elevating finale, Delinka’s gaze wrenched up in time to see him lick his two fingers; illuminated by the light, those strong and graceful fingers, how his red tongue parted over them, how they then curved round the page, so moistly. Her mind (surely, yes?) saw what those cupped and moist and probing fingers could do on a willing, pulsing—Not! Focus! Look down! And thus, his shoes would again consume her focus, and her muffled Aves begin.

Ah, Delinka. Would that her gaze had once locked on me like it did those fantastic shoes.

But this was so, for she stared—locked like a gasping clam, at his shoes. How Delinka must have tried, vainly, not to envision his naked feet. Her bosom heaving (if you happened to stare closely, holding your breath, you too could see it), heaving past the closing songs while her eyes held tight to the shoes; at times even staring at them during the closing prayer.

Not that one could blame her! For his shoes…They were crafted of a supple maroon leather, triple-stitched, in an ambitious expression of the finest Italian craftsmanship that could not be found in the city of D----, and were therefore special ordered. It was hard even for my gaze not to be drawn frequently to these shoes. I mean to say, it may be well and good for Jesus to walk barefoot through this very parish—or run, as it were; but much more is expected from His lowly servants, and there is nothing so divine—surely you agree—as fine Italian leather.

How oft had I wished this Priest convert to that decidedly Greek persuasion! For the thought of what such a stylish, robust man could do to a woman, had he that inclination, was beyond what a delicate mind “AMEN!” could bear. (I will not share details of her accepting the Eucharist from him. It was downright sacrilegious, if you stared very closely at her bosom.)

After mass, she traveled on foot a further distance to the lesser known and not as conspicuously attended Church of Saint Thomas of the Ascended Passion Heart. Where else to confess such grave ills? The priests at St. Thomas were an attentive and forgiving lot, who often drew turns for the laborious task of confessing her.
I listened close by, just on occasion. And never on Easter.

“Father, I have sinned. I lusted in my heart for the priest—again! I tried to listen, and I was doing so well, you see, and then, his long, gentle fingers went in his mouth and then, there was his tongue, you see, turning the pages of…and…”

“Yes, dear child, go on.”

“And I imagined, just for a second, that his fingers were pressed against my mouth, my lips…”

“Yes, child?”

“And I wanted to–”

“Say it!”

“I wanted to suck his fingers!”

“What?”

“Yes!”

“Is that–? I mean. Well, my goodness.”

“I did! It was only for a second but I did!”

Tearfully she jotted in that heavy, fraying prayerbook an exorbitant litany of grace-filled punishments that consumed her waking mind and kept her from speaking with all others, including myself. Every day she walked right past me, always in somber and decidedly humiliating recitation, the great distance back to her sightly home. But even there, there must have no peace been found. For in her sleep, surely she dreamt such vile and disfiguring things, mad moments of such shocking, sweat-anointed passion that I can only imagine! With such weighty morals, she must have oft woken to tears of shame. Though I cannot know this last for certain, as I am not a stalker. (Honestly, how could you even think such a thing?)

As her litany grew, so too did her will to die—to be free from an incessant and damnable psyche. But, as any good and even middling Catholic knows, nothing fares worse in the next life than ending one’s life in the present; and since awake or asleep all roads led to damnation, Delinka’s health and sanity eroded. She became bedridden, chanting Aves interspersed with nursery rhymes, screaming out the Priest’s name—“Damian! Oh, Damian! Are those sheepskin? Have you any wool?”—during tortured, fevered sleep. This, everyone in town heard.

The night the Priest showed up at her bedchamber was to be Delinka’s last. Her family, believing such a visit from God's own servant would assuage her, were quite mistaken. For when the Priest appeared there, so close to her bed, well, her mind must have burst at its loosened seams…As she, with the last of her withering and feverish strength, is said to have hobbled up from her death bed and, with one determined push, tossed herself down on the ground to land at his feet. Once there, giving herself over to such passions as only the subconscious mind could envision.

For you see, on that floor, prostrate and impenitent, Delinka embraced those fine Italian shoes and began to lick them. Yes. Yes, you see she licked them. Repeatedly, she did. Thus, with tongue outstretched—poised as if to take a final Eucharist—she died!

As you can imagine, the Priest was not a little worried as to whether all that saliva would stain his supple footwear—which it did, those shoes were ruined! And yet—yet again—despite the many cleaning products tried! But, added to such worries, the Priest was “simply shocked” to in this way learn of the devout Miss Delinka’s shameless adoration.

“Had I but known!” He now states. “But she never even looked at me! Only at my shoes!” And more recently, I swear that I overheard him say: “Had I been privy to what lay in Miss Delinka’s swollen heart, I would have done the Christian thing and serviced her as well.” Assuredly true, for the Priest had long serviced many of the single and even married bonnets and hats of his parish, having a weak spot for all community service.

Now, here in D----, we may still quibble over whether—had Delinka known of our Priest’s predilection for the servicing of others, would she have held him in the same high regard? Could it not have mitigated the shameful lust that pinned her heart to the back of a long black cassock? (Should I have told her?...) We might also then ponder whether she, damnable or not, might have willingly allowed herself to be likewise serviced upon her fevered bed. Or, on many a subsequent night, I might still question (Why! Why?) how it is that I was not more vocal in offering my services in his stead. But, regret is a freakish mate, and fear a fiendish master. And I, well, I was much too young for my Delinka back then, or so it seemed. Never once did she pause at my shoe-shine stand; unlike the Priest, who still worships the very finest in Italian leather. However—this is not the point.

The point—the point is, in those final moments, as she succumbed to a most overt act of lustful expression…in those crucible seconds did she feel—as she had all through life—the sure damnation of her soul? Did she deplore virtue itself, thinking as Marcus Brutus did before taking his own life (like a most horrible pagan), “O virtue! I thought you were something; but you are only an empty phantom!” (Yes, yes I think we all expected more from Brutus, too.) Or did she, just in that once-time before leaving me behind, fully embrace her passion’s breadth, pried loose from its womanly core, contained by soft tissues, held by bone and sparked by flame, and did she revel—fully revel in desire freed?

Well?...Damn you, I must know!

Ah...

I am truly sorry. No, it’s—I’ll be fine…never mind, never mind…I should not have even asked this of you; for this, only God the Catholic can explain...Perhaps one drink, then?