My friend J.R. had this thing about ‘corrupting Christian girls.’ It started junior year of high school when he dated Marie, who went to St. Augustine’s, the Catholic school across town.
When they started dating, she was firmly abstinent, no sex before marriage, keeping herself pure in the light of God for the right man sort of thing. Through the variant of teenage ‘seduction’ that involves quite a bit of pleading, cajoling, whining, a lot of attestation of deeply felt true love never experienced by another soul before, plus exhaustive debates of what really constitutes ‘sex’ and arguing whatever a horny teenager can interpret and remember of a few web articles on Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus, after about eight months of dating, J.R. wore Marie down and they had sex. Shortly after that, Marie realized she enjoyed sex so much she cheated on J.R. with the lead singer of a local rock band J.R. had turned her onto, and not much longer than that she learned she liked sex with other girls at St. Augustine far more than she did with J.R. and his friends.
If J.R. was hurt, he didn’t show it. He actually bragged about it, he talked about it like Marie’s sexual awakening was the curse of religion cured by the magic wand of his dick. He was hooked. Between the rest of high school and much of our time at University, he went after every coy Christian girl he could ferret up from whichever end of campus they were trying to avoid being ‘typical college girls’ at, and whenever there were dry spells there he’d find another high schooler and attend carefully to determining they were over the age of consent before rolling out his playbook, which of course got easier for him overtime. Usually these relationships would last until about a month or two after he achieved his desire, at which point he gleefully sent them off into the world and only kept in touch as long as they continued to exhibit sexual proclivity: those girls that then went back to their determination to avoid people exactly like J.R. he forgot pretty quickly.
“But no dude, you know what I really want to do sometime?” he told me one night. He had just broken up with Patricia, a Starbucks barrister who had attracted his attention with her huge and elaborate silver cross complete with Jesus’ human form in twisted agony set, eye-rollingly enough (for I was there for their first meet cute) gently reposed in her soft cleavage. She had cheated on him in a threesome with her store manager and his wife. So we were out getting ‘sympathy beers,’ though I knew the event was more for him to tally up additional clauses of his bragging rights.
“Two innocent Christian girls at once?” I ventured. I wasn’t even being sarcastic, just exhausted.
“Hey, that’s an idea,” he said. “But no, what I really want is to corrupt a nun.”
Sounded about right. “Where do you find nuns?”
“I don’t know. At churches?”
It’s probably useful, albeit predictable at this point, to mention that none of his interactions with deeply religious girls over the years had translated to any actual knowledge about their beliefs. Half the time he couldn’t even remember if they were Catholic or Protestant even while picking debates with them to continue on his little process.
“Well I guess the first thing you’d have to do is figure out where they hang out, and then figure out how you can hang out in the same place, and then how you can separate one from the others to seduce, and so forth,” I said. To be honest I have no idea how he found his girls and ground them down, any more than I understood how other dudes womanized regular girls. Dudes just get a nose for the vulnerable, I guess, which made me uncomfortable but mostly lonely.
“Yeah, it may be a bit much, even for me. But you know, wouldn’t it be awesome?”
“I don’t know, man, are nuns even attractive? How can you tell with the whole outfit and stuff?”
He squinted, as if reading a far off sign. “Isn’t there that, like, young blonde chick from Sister Act? Like that’s what I’m talking about, dude.”
“I guess. There’s always the stories about the young prostitute or ruined woman or whatever who has to join a nunnery.”
“No man! I don’t want a whore reformed into a nun. I want to reform a nun into a whore!”
“Very classy,” I said through my drink, and that was the end of that part of the conversation that night.
Anyway, J.R. got his opportunity a few years later. At that point he was working in New York, a consultant. He had seemed to put the corrupted innocence fetish aside to some degree; he had had two longer term relationships with not particularly religious, sexually active within normal bounds women, and he stopped e-mailing me about his sexploits, though I wouldn’t know if it’s because they stopped happening or he just was more private about them. At any rate, our friendship was relieved of that one perennial conversation that had me wondering how I got into it.
J.R. was on his way to visit a client at an import / export firm in San Francisco, and he decided that he would travel by train instead of fly. Something something about reducing the carbon footprint and not neglecting seeing ‘flyover country’, but my understanding at that time was that J.R. was feeling burnt out and the train forced him to slow down for three days. He definitely had more to say about the potential for dropped wifi and cellphone signal deserts than for any civic or environmental benefits.
The first part of the trip went according to his plan. The train from NY to Chicago disembarked in the evening, and he watched the sun go down over New Jersey before sleeping an unanticipated full night in the rocking of the private carriage, woken up by the steward as they were pulling into Union Station. He had a long layover and mostly spent the first half of the day hanging around Millennium Park, eating a takeaway sandwich and watching people waving at themselves in the reflection of the sculpture that shall not be named The Bean.
It was when he boarded the California Zephyr that afternoon that the journey took a new, exciting tenor. Loading into an entire coach carriage was a contingent of nuns, passing bulky brick-colored suitcases amongst each other, exerting the energies of a few train stewards in organization and placement, babbling questions and answers, sometimes to themselves.
According to what J.R. told me later, he didn’t even think about it. He walked right over and started helping the load-in, initiating a ripple of thanks and “Kind gentleman”, using his trademark half-cocked smile to hide that he was scanning their faces, looking for any interesting one.
Once the sisters had all been assisted and found their seats he turned toward the front to head to the sleeper cars. The survey was disappointing. The nuns were all mostly older, mostly heavier, reminded him of mothers rather than ladies. Still, he thought to himself, at least he was doing something nice for once.
As he climbed the fold-out stepladder to his carriage he looked back, and there she was. Young, pale, with achingly large eyes that glimmered even across all this stretch of train station — at him.
Her. A nun. Her face in a gaze he was familiar with, a gaze of interest. She held his gaze for long enough to matter, and then silently ascended the ladder and closed the door behind Her.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy.
On Amtrak, you have to reserve your dinner spot in advance. He asked the attendant taking the reservations what the availability was, and took the one the attendant said “would be crowded, since there’s a whole group of nuns that will be eating then.”
At that point it was merely an act of making himself available. J.R.’s had spent the whole first leg of the journey alone in his sleeper car, but now, he figured, it was time to check out the lounge car. This was on me — I had told him about it. The lounge car is the real meeting place of the train, where the riders, mostly from coach but a few from sleepers, all sit in a more open area and watch the countryside flow by while usually complaining about the bankers and the elites. It’s good for a beer, too, but unlike the bar car you’ll also get Amish and Mormons and other sorts of teetotalers who just want to sit more comfortably than coach, sometimes playing games or conversing.
J.R.’s assumption wasn’t wrong — a few nuns were there, and one or two would come or go as the train traversed Iowa and eventually entered Nebraska, with a longer stopover at Omaha.
They were never Her, the girl that he could feel waiting somewhere on this train for him, that he could sense onboard somewhere like a radiating object of desire, desire he determined must be more Hers than his.
A few of the nuns recognized him from his help given earlier, thanked him again. He asked them if they needed anything else, he offered he could go back to their carriage and make sure they were comfortable. They saw no reason for him to, thank you kindly, you are very precious. Hey, he thought, at least they’re on my side.
Nor, as he found out later, disappointed, was she amongst the group in the dining car when his reservation was in place. He had to look over the flock a couple of times, as he and a farmer were the only non-nuns dining during that hour, crepuscular light purplish through the windows, deepening their habits to a silken void. The farmer engaged J.R. on some light chatter about the way this country is going, but J.R.’s attendance to the conversation only knocked into place whenever the farmer would mutter something ugly sounding and then say, “Sorry Sister!” to the nun beside him, who probably hadn’t heard anything he said anyway and would nod him away with a bright but hurried smile.
Finally the reservation hour was up, and J.R. had to clear the seat to make room for the next passenger. He’d have to try again tomorrow, he supposed, but deep inside he felt flustered. There was something unique about this moment, something fateful. This was his chance, he was entitled to it. Everything was lining up as intended, it was as if it was meant to be, hell, he even mused, maybe even as God intended. He saw his smile in the reflection of train window against night and indulged himself: I really am a pervert. Well there it is, I can’t help myself.
It’s just the way I was built. He went to the bar car. He had been avoiding drinking to appear genial to the sisters, but now what the heck. He nursed a few Heinekens, not tasting them and not really thinking about how many or how much they cost. In such a small venue as a train, surely there were ways he could accidentally stumble on his nun, a-and hey even in that circumstance she’d just happen to be alone, or perhaps only with one or two other sisters he’d handsomely urge Her away from, abandoned sisters both a-twitter but also crossing themselves in offense, everyone knowing the situation for what it is, Her sparkling large eyes admonishing him, Her light but not meaningful pleas to stop, thin wrists pushing gently against his ribs before finally dropping down, exploring…
He shocked awake. The bartender had disappeared. They had closed it without waking him. The bar car was empty. The lights were turned off.
How many beers had he had, anyway? He got up, and for the first time felt the sway of the train like he was on a boat crossing a wake. The rhythm of the tracks sounded strange. He moved forward step by step, keeping his hand on the bar, then the backs of seats, like a blind man, to keep from falling.
Through the door of the bar car began the series of coaches. Everyone was asleep; no one even had their reading light turned on. No emergency lights on the aisle for him to see. He continued his four-limbed progress, hands on alternating seats, feet stepping carefully around sleeping passengers’ own where they nudged into the aisle. For his drunkenness he didn’t seem to awaken anyone, though somewhere in the breathing, sighing sleep atmosphere of the moment he felt he couldn’t even if he grabbed a person and screamed.
This same dark progression took him ever down slipstream, until he reached the nuns’ coach, recognizable only in that the sleeping forms all merged into a veritable pool of dark fabric. He peered wildly into the darkness, trying to see a face or a limb or some sort of distinguishing human feature, but the habits were arrayed over the seats like a sort of tent, tilted in fact the way the floor seemed to be, guiding him silently to
Her. Her luminous eyes reflecting light from some source not in the carriage. That same face of pale expectancy, alluring. It was better than he could have hoped. She had determined this course just as much as he.
His heart was pounding. His skin felt sensitive even to the air, the sleeping mass’s breath that was one mass and one large breath. He approached Her. She melted forward into his arms, pliant, compelled. Turned Her face up to him, Her eyes full of him. They kissed.
He felt Her slender figure under Her robes. Fine boned and delicate… most importantly, yielding. A more sober voice somewhere inside mused that he didn’t really know how to take off a habit, but he slipped his hand under Her cowl and traced Her backbone slowly upward. Surprisingly, Her hair was wet, and very warm.
No. Her hair was sticky. And it burned.
He pulled his lips from Hers. Her face was unchanged: expectant and bright. Her hands slipped under his shirt, and pulled him to Her by his lovehandles with surprising strength. She had long, sensuous fingers.
No. Her fingers were too long, and wormy. He looked down at them. They had just too many knuckles. Too many bends. And they burned.
Her cowl was slipping off. Whatever that glutinous mass was underneath Her cowl, it wasn’t hair. Nor, he could see now, did Her lips cover a mouth.
“No!” He was choking over the smell of his own smoking skin. He pushed himself away, but she was far less pliant than she had appeared. Her arms kept getting longer. Her eyes more ecstatic.
He tore himself away — literally, leaving a strip of flesh from his abdomen dangling from Her outstretched, snaky hand. She glided forward, like a slug, leaving a sizzling trail on the industrial carpet.
He ran. The train became a series of dark objects, plastic extrusions meant for buffeting and bludgeoning him as he clawed himself desperately, cabin by cabin, back towards the front. He could feel Her oozing behind, patient but persistently. Nobody awakened. They would not see Her.
He reached his sleeper car, pulled the thin wooden door closed with a yelp mixed out of pain and fright. His hand was no longer cooperating beyond the pain it screamed into his brain, overtaking any other thought. He could do nothing more than collapse on the floor and scuttle backward, as he felt the form of Her on the other side of the door, as if it was bending under Her pressure.
She knocked, softly, inquisitive. He held his breath. Underneath the door something mucilaginous slowly seeped. She knocked again. Oh so soft. Plaintive. For all his fear he imagined elfin hands, delicate skin that blushed red under the pressure of his grip as he twisted her hands behind her, held her prone, heard her gasp and to avoid the pain pushed herself closer…
The steward found him the next morning, cradling his now melted hand and sobbing. A medical crew met him in Denver and rushed him to the ER, where they called me as the business card in his wallet with a number from the nearest area code. I lived eight hours away.
By the time I made it to the hospital, they had amputated his arm. He told me his story in short, spasmodic episodes, all through gasps and grimaces. The attendant nurses rolled their eyes, but I had known J.R. long enough to know that even if this never happened, he completely believed it. It’s at least what he perceived, if in a delirium.
And to sign for his story he whipped off his sheet with his good arm, “Look!” and I saw not so much his torso but its absence, a negative space my mind took so long filling in the pustules and gore eating him away there that the nurses had already covered him back up and shoed me out the room by the time I processed it.
The next day I returned to see how he was feeling, but the hospital informed me he had already died. When I asked if I could still see the body, I was told he had dissolved completely.
This story was written for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month STSC members create something around a set theme. This cycle, the theme was “Habit.”
If you are a writer, you might consider joining us.
I was saving a comment of the sort "if she wanted him from the start it doesn't count" but fucking the devil counts, oh boy, it does. :))))
Don't mess with the nuns