The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel Read Free

picnic. And yet, the Song of Solomon was practically bursting with breasts!
     
    Thy stature is like to a palm tree,
    and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
    I said, “I will go up to the palm tree;
    I will take hold of the boughs thereof.”
     
    Wherever I turned, there they were—swelling like ripe fruit, rising like towers, leaping like twin gazelles.
     
    Thy breasts are like two young fawns,
    twins of a gazelle, that frolic among the lilies.
     
    I’d read some pretty racy stuff in Cowboy Love Tales , but no romance-writer that ever lived had anything on King Solomon.
    I wrote down all the juiciest verses and stashed them in my secret lock-box—the rusty medicine chest I kept hidden in a hollow tree stump out back of our house. At that time, my other treasures consisted of a few half-smoked cigarettes and a dirty comic book called “Tillie the Typist After Hours.”
    A year or so later, I added the crowning gem to my collection. Nosing around the rail yards one afternoon, I found it in an old boxcar, probably left there by a tramp. It was a photograph of a real, live, naked lady, stretched out on a fancy couch with one arm up behind her head. She must have been French, because she had more hair under her arm than I did.
     

     
    That picture awakened new longings in me—longings I didn’t even know my body was ready for. And so, with visions of the French Lady in my head, I started rubbing myself between the legs and spilling my seed. I’d heard about this from other boys—jerking off, slapping the snake, choking the chicken, whacking the weasel. Now I knew what all the fuss was about.
    I never dreamed of my true love, Emily Apple, when I did it. My intentions towards Emily were as pure as a saint’s. But the French Lady was my mistress.
    Mama kept a stack of women’s medical books in her bottom dresser drawer, and sometimes I’d peek at them when my parents were out of the house. That’s how I learned words like ova , semen , and vulva —along with more disturbing words like vaginal discharge and menstruation . One of these books warned about boys like me:
     
    Teach your boy that when he handles or excites the sexual organs, all parts of the body suffer. This is why it is called “self-abuse.” The sin is terrible, and is, in fact, worse than lying or stealing. For, although these are wicked and will ruin the soul, self-abuse will ruin both soul and body. This loathsome habit lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis, and heart disease. It makes many boys lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide.
     
    That put the fear of God in me. I tried my best to kick the loathsome habit; one Sunday during the altar call, I even stumbled down the aisle and blubbered the Sinner’s Prayer. But admitting I was a sinner didn’t kill the desire. No matter how many times I asked Jesus into my heart, it wouldn’t take.
    The summer I turned 16, I tried getting baptized. Father said that the Old Man was gone now, drowned in the baptismal waters, and I was a new and spotless creation. That worked for about a month. Then the Old Man crept back under my skin and wrapped his bony fingers around my heart.
    Whenever I did manage to put off the habit for a couple weeks, the French Lady would enter my dreams and I’d spill my seed in bed. I hated wet dreams—they startled me awake and created a mess. I was terrified that Mama would notice the stains on my sheets.
    I wondered—did Jesus ever spill his seed? Being fully a man, I figured, his body must have produced semen in the usual amount. And it had to escape one way or the other, or his balls would have exploded. So did Jesus have wet dreams? What were they about?
    These questions vexed me considerably. The Bible didn’t give any answers, and I knew I couldn’t ask Father. That would have exposed me for the unrepentant sinner I was. If I were truly redeemed, I wouldn’t even think about such things.

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    Lying in bed that Easter night, waiting to