by Gene Logsdon
Nevertheless, he tried to resist this anticipation of dreams or the “noctural emission” that sometimes accompanied them, which is what the Moral Theology textbook said you had to do. Sometimes as he was waking up, but not fully awake, he realized that he was masturbating and then the floodtides of guilt overwhelmed him. He could not determine whether what he did was willful masturbation, a mortal sin that could send him straight to hell if he did not confess it or “involuntary nocturnal pollution,” to use the term in the textbook. Article II of Chapter 1, section 228, subsection B said that the degree of sin depended on the degree of involuntariness. But how could one judge the degree? He began to see a glimmer of a solution to his scruples when he read in Jone and Adelman that it was lawful “to wash, go bathing, riding, etc. even though one foresees that due to ones’s particular excitability in this regard, ‘pollution’ will follow, so long as one did not consent to the pleasure.” Hmmmm. How could anyone, knowing that “pollution” would follow, not commit a sin by doing these seemingly innnocent actions? And what all did that “etc.” encompass?
But it was in Section 229 that Fen finally found his salvation. “Nocturnal pollution which was willed neither directly or indirectly, is no sin,” the book said. “This is true, even when in a dream one takes pleasure therein.” Hmmmmm. “But if the pleasure is experienced while half-awake, there would be a venial sin.” Aha. Venial sins he could handle. They did not require going to confession to save one’s soul.
But how did one know when he was half awake rather than fully awake? How about three-fourths awake? He was plunged back into the depths of his dilemma.
Over time, Fen developed a solution that if it did not entirely convince him that he was not headed for hell, at least kept him from having a mental breakdown. As long as he was fully conscious, his steel-willed mind could keep him from doing anything outrightly sinful. If he masturbated in his sleep, or anywhere between sleep and full, out-of-bed wakefulness, he was not going to worry about it anymore. He wondered if other celibates came to the same conclusion, but to ask would have been unthinkable for him. Not even the SBDC Boys discussed such matters, at least not until Very Reverend Lukey made a discovery.
Very Revervend Lukey had gotten permission to do research at the University of Minnesota library in the Twin Cities for a paper he was doing, at Fr. Alexus’s suggestion, on the history of the Church’s teachings on celibacy. Since future plans called for the seminarians to attend secular universities, Fr. Alexus thought a trial run might have merit. Prior Robert grudingly gave permission. At least it would keep Oblate Luke, who had been relieved of his kitchen duties, from bitching all the time about how the farm crew members were playing around at the barn when they should have been in chapel chanting the breviary with the other oblates.
One of the first books Very Reverend Lukey read at the university, because it was the one everyone at the university was talking about, was Alfred Charles Kinsey’s report on human sexuality. Lukey read with shocked absorption. Kinsey, he was sure, was the devil incarnate, writing all those lewd lies, but Lukey read to the very end and then started telling the other oblates what he had learned. Soon the Kinsey Report was making its rounds through the seminary and causing a theological earthquake of perhaps 7 on the Ethics Richter Scale.
“Did you know that according to the Kinsey Report nearly everyone masturbates, including religious celibates,” Lukey said to Fen. “Do you believe that?”
Fen, taken aback, stared at him. He was more surprised that Very Reverend Lukey would repeat such a notion than whether it was true or not. He wondered if Lukey understood that by the very act of asking the question, he was hinting very broadly that he masturbated.
“Ninety percent of them masturbate,” Lukey continued triumphantly, trying to elicit a reply.
“No one asked me,” Fen said and walked away.
He was nevertheless thunderstruck by this information. Could it possibly be that he was not any more wicked than the others? That they were all preoccupied with thoughts about sex?
When Prior Robert got wind of the Kinsey Report he tracked down the book that was circulating and read some of it himself. His face blanched as he read. He doubted little of it, of course. Anybody who had been hearing confessions as long as he had, could have written the Kinsey Report off the top of his head and spiced it with a great deal more anecdotal material than Kinsey had collected. But to let seminarians, already aching with sexual desire, see this misery all laid out in print, God help us. Their minds would be warped even before they started hearing confessions.
He now had another reason to oppose sending seminarians to universities. He took the Kinsey Report back to the library himself and told The Very Reverend Lukey that for the time being, the seminary’s own library provided research material enough.
Sexual repression had another effect on Fen which he could not understand. Walking alone along the river, or among the springs in the swamp, or along Lake Wassermensch, he had tremendous urges to go swimming naked. He could find nothing in moral theology that expressly forbade that. In fact, Section 228, saying that it was okay to “go bathing, riding etc.,” surely applied to swimming too. Even without any sexual pleasure, he found swimming naked somehow exhilarating. Sunbathing after a swim, he often fell asleep, and sometimes during sleep he would have delicious sexual dreams that ended in delicious sexual climax.
By August of that long hot summer, he had developed a habit, whenever time allotted, of walking to the lake at the rented farm, or actually, running the five miles through the swamplands, up the bluffs, through the corn and alfalfa fields to get there. Hot and tired, he would swim out to the little island at one end of the lake, and then fall asleep on a promontory where the breeze coming across the water blew the mosquitoes away. He felt, on the island, totally tranquil and secure in his own little Garden of Paradise where no prying eye could see him basking naked in the sun. If sexual climax occurred, with or without a little help in his state of semi-wakefulness, so much the better, because, he told himself with his newly-acquired education, he did not directly will it. Besides, everyone did it. He would then walk slowly back to the seminary, refreshed and calm, at peace with himself at least for a while. He was just one of millions of weak mortals, thank you Dr. Kinsey. He had, he thought, solved his dilemma.
CHAPTER 20
Most of the little lakes in Carver and the surrounding counties were completely surrounded by farmland, giving them a privacy that would have astonished people from more populated lakeshore areas nearer the Twin Cities. Cows rather than humans frequented the shore lines, and fences had to be built out into the water to about a depth of four feet, or the animals would amble in the shallow water to another farmer’s property. The farm at Wassermensch that the seminary had rented encircled the 60-acre lake except for a short stretch on the far side, where a township road paralleled the shore. Public access to the lake at that point made it a favorite spot for fishermen. Hasse often said that some day, all the lakes would be surrounded by houses and cabins. That’s why he had bought this farm. He owned almost all egress to the water. In his eye, the shoreline was paved with gold.
Kadie Crockin pulled off the road at the sign announcing Wassermensch Lake and with practiced eye, scrutinized the water from her pickup. What was it about water that so lured her, she wondered. Were the evolutionists correct in theorizing that all terrestrial life had its beginnings in the seas, that therefore, all humans felt within them some long forgotten yearning to go back to their real roots? She did not think so. To her the attraction of water was its aliveness, the almost infinite surface changes the wind could mark on it, the play of light on its surface, and most of all, its tactile delight against the skin. To be immersed in water was a delicious physical pleasure. But maybe it was deliciously pleasurable because animal life had begun in the sea. Who cared?
Her aim was to swim in every one of Minnesota’s ten thousand or so lakes. She was up to 150, and at 25 years old, figured she had plenty o
f time to test the waters of the other 9,850. There was a nice breeze today, so out on the water the mosquitoes would not be bad. There were no rowboats, no fishermen in view, so she would be alone. Were that not the case, she would probably have driven on to another lake. Solitude was her prime requisite, which was why she had to journey this far away from Minneapolis where she lived. Lake Minnetonka, for example, was so crowded on weekends now that traffic jams of boats occurred occasionally.
She backed the truck as close to the water as practical, turned off the motor, and untied the ropes holding the canoe on the pickup’s bed. She was wearing a bikini with a short, wrap-around skirt over it. From the standpoint of beauty and proportion, her body was as perfect as that of a catalog model. She had a dark complexion and dark hair rolled up and pinned in a French bun. She pulled the canoe down off the truck and to the water’s edge. The truck keys, her billfold, sunglasses and watch went into a waterproof box secured under the front seat of the canoe, along with a fishing tackle box. Pushing the canoe expertly ahead of her, she eased it into the water, and at the precisely perfect split second, sprang like a tigress into it as it headed into deep water. Soon she was far enough out on the lake that no prying eyes from the road could discern her in any detail. She stowed the oar under her seat, removed her clothes and slipped over the side of the canoe. The water consumed her hot body and she sighed pleasurably, rolling over on her back and floating.
For about fifteen minutes she swam around the boat, then pulled herself alongside it and just as expertly as she had rolled out of the canoe, she now in one swift motion pulled and rolled herself back into it without capsizing. She fixed a fishing line, tied it to the canoe, baited the hook with worms she had brought along, and tossed the hook into the water. Then she stretched out on the bottom of the canoe, using a lifejacket as a pillow, and basked in the sun. A feeling of tranquillity overwhelmed her as the lake breezes dried her skin, a sensual pleasure not matched by any other sensory delight that she knew. Reaching the perfect balance of four part harmony in a good choir came close, both more pleasant than the pawing embraces of one of the male clients that she escorted around the nightspots of the Twin Cities during the week.
She lay there thinking about nothing in particular for a while, alone in the world of nature, which was the world she had long ago decided was her true habitat. As soon as she had a little more money laid away in the stock market, she and her mother would pool their cash and buy a cottage on one of the ten thousand lakes. The thought of money brought her mind back to full consciousness. She hated the stuff and yet she loved it, just as she loved and hated her career. She did not think of herself as a high-class prostitute, but as the owner and operator of Quality Companion Service, a one-woman business that she had inherited from her mother. She did not know her father, having been sired by one of her mother’s clients. Her mother would not say which one. “All you need to know, honey, is that he was mighty high-class stock, as successful and intelligent a man as you will ever meet.”
Her mother had made sure Kadie received a quality education and the kind of training in manners and habits that would attract the higher classes she catered to—as if she were grooming her daughter for the Miss World pageant, she often said. Raised entirely outside the society of Christian culture and traditional family values, Kadie Crockin had no sense of wrongdoing about her way of life. She would argue, and sometimes did, that she was performing a beneficial service. She could point to occasions when she had curbed or stopped altogether the predatory business greed of restless, powerful men, soothing them with a sexual fulfillment that they had for one reason or another never enjoyed. Lacking that satisfaction, they had tried to compensate by driving competitors wolfishly out of business. Kadie made pussycats out of them and made everyone involved happier.
Also, she could point to dozens of children who, if they had known, would have thanked her profusely for saving their parents’ marriages and their familial security. She supplied their fathers with the kind of intimacy that their mothers would not or could not provide and so the marriages went on, a farce for sure, but a secure haven for the children.
A few clients did not even want sex from her. At the end of a busy day of high-powered meetings made extremely stressful and exhausting by the testosterone-afflicted male competition that so often fuels the drive for success, these men merely wanted someone gentle and unthreatening to talk to in the evening. Kadie often said that she made more money listening than screwing. But, as her mother taught her, listening wasn’t enough. A Quality Companion must also respond with conversation of her own, conversation that was stimulating, even controversial to a point, but never with even a hint of argumentative competition. It was a fine line, something that could not be faked, which was why Kadie, and her mother before her, had all the high-priced business they could handle. To win a bet with her mother, she had even succeeded in being so playfully imaginative and intellectual with one client that he became absorbed in their conversation and decided that contrary to his original intention, he didn’t want the evening to end in sex after all. He went back to his rectory instead, went to bed with his wife, and next day delivered a sermon on the evils of adultery.
But there was a wearisomeness to her career too, physically and mentally. When she had to escort more than three men a week, she found herself finding sex repugnant, something that in the beginning she did not think possible. Mentally, she was getting tired of men in general. They were so vain, so predictable, and so easily manipulated. Hardly any of her clients were happy. That’s why they came to her. So many of them had convinced themselves, or been taught, that making a lot of money was simply a matter of pushing all the right buttons. As the money flowed in, so would the happiness, they thought. Learning how untrue that was, they became petulant, morose, easily offended, hungry for sympathy. She did not believe she could ever have one of them around her constantly.
She rolled over on her side. The boat was slowly drifting across the lake. Still no one in sight. She closed her eyes, irritated that she had let the thought of business thrust itself into her tranquillity. She started thinking about her home, after her work years were over. Lots of gardens. Lots of fishing. She would produce almost all the food she and her mother would eat. She would not wear clothes in summer. She would sew what she did need and save oodles of money. She would require only the money that her investments brought in. And no men. She drifted off to sleep.
A gentle thump, the canoe touching shore, awakened her. As was always the case when she slept naked outdoors, she now did not feel uneasy about her nakedness. After only a short amount of time, especially time that included sleep, being nude became natural and normal. But she was aware that she had floated to a shoreline which could mean people around. She raised her head above the gunwale and looked around. The canoe apparently had not reached the true shore, but had floated up against a little island offshore a couple hundred feet. She loved islands. She would explore this one. The bank inclined continually upward. Obviously the island was an isolated little hill, common to the area, submerged except for its top. Leaving her clothes in the canoe, she walked up the incline. Suddenly she heard a groan. Panic-stricken, she froze in her tracks, looking wildly about for the source of the noise. With a start, she saw below her, around the curve of the island hillock, a man apparently asleep on his back and very obviously naked. Her first impulse was to race back to the canoe and paddle away as fast as she could, but the unusual sight arrested her. The man kept groaning and thrashing around in his sleep. He would intermittently grab at his crotch, then jerk his hand away hastily, groan again, subside to stillness, and after a pause, claw at his groin again.
She edged closer, so entranced by the sleeping figure that she forgot her own nakedness and how embarrassed she would be if the man awoke. But lying there naked, he did not at all appear threatening. Nudity loves nudity. Slowly, step after soundless step, she approached him. He was absolutely beautiful, she thought with an objective detachmen
t that could only come from a prostitute or a sculptress. She was used to seeing older and much more portly men. She had in fact never been intimate with someone her own age, and realized that she had gotten into the habit of thinking of sex as work. Now she understood what she had been missing: an abdomen hard and rippling like a scrub board, a waist trim, a butt tight and lean, shoulders square and strong, bulging leg and arm muscles, a wild shock of hair begging to be combed by eager, questing fingers. And, oh Lord, what a gorgeous cock blooming grandly in the sun. This guy could get a permanent job posing for art classes at the university. But there was no model’s detachment in him. It was obvious that his body craved sexual satisfaction, and she waited, rather clinically, for him to achieve orgasm, perhaps from some novel form of auto-eroticism she didn’t know about but which might come in handy in her business.
But soon her observations went from being professional to wantonly sexual. She could feel her own body preparing for copulation. She had to get the hell out of there, but her feet remained rooted. This was so different from her usual experience. A man totally vulnerable, totally passive, not a leering, heaving predator grabbing at her. She began to feel as she had at age 17 before she became a Quality Companion. She had at least to touch him before she fled. Breathing as heavily now as he was, she knelt beside him, full of carnal desire that took away from her all caution. She would help the poor guy out. Put her hand where he apparently would not allow his own. She could relieve him without waking him—prove to herself just how damned good she was at her work. But then a more powerful wave of desire swept over her and she suddenly straddled him, carefully eased herself down upon him, her mouth on his, her legs carefully cushioning his penis between them.