Something Like Shame (BWWM)

Chapter 21

"I spent a large sum of my life studying to become a priest, you know. It was ultimately what I wanted for myself by the age of fifteen. My mind was set on the church. My heart was set on being closer to God. And my body was made of nothing more than cogs and levees for clockwork. It was only suited for sustenance. Nothing more. I was a machine.

"I was out of university by the age of sixteen and it all seemed to have been written in the stars. I was a prodigy in our church. The girls my age never truly approached me over the subject of dating since I was more of a prude. But, unbeknownst to them, I was burning with pent up passions and frustration. I never quite relieved myself of the weight, for lack of a better word, and it was clenched up inside me like a perverse, little coil. Often times, I watched them at their play, practically green with jealousy. However, faith and certainty were my main goal, seeing that the girls never quite took to me and I them.

"Eleven years passed before I settled into my vocation and the warm smell of the pews and all the comatose melodies. Calm and consistent. Consistent and plain. This was my life before it was rocked by a tiny little nymph.

"In the early spring of '07, Carmen moved into a neighboring townhouse of her father's to mine. We were in a village just outside of Oxford. That's how we came to know one another. She was about thirty-two and I thirty-four. The woman was pretty but I was blind to what was coming to me and, looking back, it was to be expected that I'd be so naive and unfocused and free with my affection, careless for whom they may have affected. So, I managed to trip myself up into a series of 'dates' with the batty old woman until she felt comfortable enough to introduce me to her daughter. When I refused, she assumed it to be my fear of commitment to someone other than Our Lady. Remember, I was sort of unskilled romantically. Too unskilled to actually refuse her full out.

He scoffed. "And that brings me to Sophia, her daughter, she was in her early period of adolescence and, like a roaring tide, she crushed me and suddenly I was moved. It started when she wandered her way into my youth group, fidgety, wired, and hopped up on her gooey sweets, all doe-eyed. I didn't have a chance and, due to her grandfather's declining health and Carmen found work in the city, I found myself to be her caregiver. Her mother and grandfather were hardly home and Sophie hated the hospital so she would tell them that I would watch her and watch her I did. Her grandfather never quite liked me, for good reason might I mention. But this had little effect on my whereabouts, they lacked too many funds to relocate and there was nothing that could make me budge even a fraction of an inch from Sophia. And so I watched from my porch as she teetered through the street, swung on the monkey bars, and spun on the merry-go-'round, round and round. Her curly dark hair flying over her eyes incessantly and those brown eyes, I would paint them sometimes. She was so unattainable outside of the pages because, for all the opportunities I had to have her, there was always a possible witness near me or a church-goer looking to repent for something I couldn't quite fix. It was a cat-and-mouse game between me and that little nymph but her mother was convoluted enough to think that I was struggling to express my love. How right she was...

"That was the rub of it. See, the hag had a strange knack for committing herself blindly to things and people, even monsters like me. Before I knew it, she was finding ways to trap me while Sophie did nothing but tease. They were the worst tricks. Soph would situate herself in these compromising positions, steal my keys from me, and fiddle with my notes for service until the laws of Leviticus were chocolate-smeared...

"For some strange reason, I admired that about her. It was endearing; the winks and cheeky little comments, it was all too tempting for me.

"And- well, since we lived in such close proximity to one another, I felt wildly exhilarated at the idea of what could happen if, in a moment, Sophie may slip through my door and into my home- argh! Such wretched thoughts! I hardly considered that it would mean my ultimate decline in the clergy. I was caught in the throes of distorted love, delighted to play those silly games and feel how small her hand felt in my mine.

"The next year's winter came quickly and I found myself using Carmen for my little cravings. Those little cravings quickly turned to big hungers for instance, upon learning that she planned to take Sophia back to their shabby home in Florida in the spring, I panicked. In a fit of desperation, I begged them to move in with me, offered to give up my ties to the church, and, by doing so, take on a whole new life with them. And the proposition was too tempting for Carmen. You see, I was aware that she had fallen in love with me, the morally upright man who her daughter adored. What a strange thing it is that our perceptions can be so disconnected from reality, even in the soundest minds. Anywho, my offer was more than beneficiary to me seeing that Sophia was growing more and more reclusive with time, and more beautiful. She stopped with all her child's play and visits to the youth group. She preferred her bedroom to anything else.

"This pushed me to take a more deliberate step and force myself into a larger role in her life. There would be no escaping me then. It took a couple months before I proposed and, following shortly after that brief chore, and while Carmen basked in her after-glow, I attempted to sate the hunger and, by doing so, finally taint the sweet sapling, Sophia. For all the heady lust I begrudgingly kept, my mangled mind could hardly decipher that my plan was doomed to fail.