over. A thigh swept across me and settled on my chest, squeezing the air out of my lungs. It lay across me like a hot tuna, submerging me deep in the mattress. Her stomach was in my face and her breasts rested on the top of my head. I was physically and emotionally overwhelmed. I could not move and could hardly draw breath. This limb of implausible but delicious corpulence and weight was going to kill me. Because the blankets were over my head, what little air I could gasp into my lungs was soon devoid of oxygen. I was suffocating. I decided I’d rather die than wake her up and have her move away. One more breath … Another … As I was about to faint, she threw off the covers. Now at least I had access to some new oxygen.
I didn’t sleep at all, just lay there under the marvellous thigh, feebly puffing in air until dawn. The next day I walked around in an awed stupor.
This was my second religious experience.
My third religious experience occurred a year later and was more conventional, having in fact to do with God. My sister and I were raised in the Church of England until we were about ten, at which time both parents sheepishly admitted they didn’t really believe. Going to church was just the decent thing to do, putting it on offer until we were old enough to decide for ourselves. Needless to say, we decided against it.
At the age of seven, however, a year or so after my brother Francis was born, I started to read the Bible avidly and pray every
night. This began because our house was tall and dark and if I told my parents I wanted to pray, they’d come up with me when I went to bed. Once they were there, the longer I prayed, the longer they stayed.
Perhaps there was another reason too, of which I was not then aware. Christianity is perfectly designed to provide a replacement family—God, the father; Mary, the mother; Jesus, the older brother—and at this time I feared my own family was about to self-destruct.
Although my mother and father had their doubts about this sudden religiosity, I was such a wicked boy they wanted to encourage any urge toward goodness even if it might not be genuine, and so they dutifully climbed the stairs to pray with me. Dredging about in newspapers and magazines, I located an endless and astonishing vein of human misery from which to mine the elements for my nightly pleas. I then became so moved by my descriptions of these sorrows that before long I began to think I’d like to offer my life in service to the poor wretches of whom I spoke. What had started out as fakery became authentic.
I had always thought of becoming either a naturalist, a gigolo, or a sailor. Now I began to think I’d take a shot at sainthood. I dreamed constantly of being a missionary, not in an evangelical way but in the sense of being where I was needed, as a worker in a leper colony, say, or among the maimed and dying. Usually I was in Africa, sometimes India. I had no wife or children. God’s love (I saw it almost as a friendship) and the adoration of those for whom I’d given up my life were more than enough. It was a glorious dream.
To qualify for sainthood, I assumed it was necessary to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and so I began. Although some of the stories were inspiring and comforting, a lot of it was incomprehensible and boring. Soon the arcane rules and the obvious contradictions began to irritate me and after a while I was driven off. I had no idea there were other religions to choose from, nor could I conceive of any way to achieve a state of grace without religious faith.
The phase passed, I sank quickly into delinquency. But if I close my eyes, I can still remember the sensation of purity, the profound reward that a life of such devotion promised: the transcendent relief of waking up each morning knowing that where you are is exactly where you should be, and that what you are doing is unquestionably right.
A policy of bussing children to larger schools closed Mrs.
I didn’t sleep at all, just lay there under the marvellous thigh, feebly puffing in air until dawn. The next day I walked around in an awed stupor.
This was my second religious experience.
My third religious experience occurred a year later and was more conventional, having in fact to do with God. My sister and I were raised in the Church of England until we were about ten, at which time both parents sheepishly admitted they didn’t really believe. Going to church was just the decent thing to do, putting it on offer until we were old enough to decide for ourselves. Needless to say, we decided against it.
At the age of seven, however, a year or so after my brother Francis was born, I started to read the Bible avidly and pray every
night. This began because our house was tall and dark and if I told my parents I wanted to pray, they’d come up with me when I went to bed. Once they were there, the longer I prayed, the longer they stayed.
Perhaps there was another reason too, of which I was not then aware. Christianity is perfectly designed to provide a replacement family—God, the father; Mary, the mother; Jesus, the older brother—and at this time I feared my own family was about to self-destruct.
Although my mother and father had their doubts about this sudden religiosity, I was such a wicked boy they wanted to encourage any urge toward goodness even if it might not be genuine, and so they dutifully climbed the stairs to pray with me. Dredging about in newspapers and magazines, I located an endless and astonishing vein of human misery from which to mine the elements for my nightly pleas. I then became so moved by my descriptions of these sorrows that before long I began to think I’d like to offer my life in service to the poor wretches of whom I spoke. What had started out as fakery became authentic.
I had always thought of becoming either a naturalist, a gigolo, or a sailor. Now I began to think I’d take a shot at sainthood. I dreamed constantly of being a missionary, not in an evangelical way but in the sense of being where I was needed, as a worker in a leper colony, say, or among the maimed and dying. Usually I was in Africa, sometimes India. I had no wife or children. God’s love (I saw it almost as a friendship) and the adoration of those for whom I’d given up my life were more than enough. It was a glorious dream.
To qualify for sainthood, I assumed it was necessary to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and so I began. Although some of the stories were inspiring and comforting, a lot of it was incomprehensible and boring. Soon the arcane rules and the obvious contradictions began to irritate me and after a while I was driven off. I had no idea there were other religions to choose from, nor could I conceive of any way to achieve a state of grace without religious faith.
The phase passed, I sank quickly into delinquency. But if I close my eyes, I can still remember the sensation of purity, the profound reward that a life of such devotion promised: the transcendent relief of waking up each morning knowing that where you are is exactly where you should be, and that what you are doing is unquestionably right.
A policy of bussing children to larger schools closed Mrs.
Similar Books
