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- Herausgeber: WS
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Serie: The Magnum Opus
- Sprache: Englisch
See why so many critics and readers have been giving Ancilla four and five star reviews!
The early 1990s in decaying, rust-belt Ohio sets the stage for a powerful tale of a woman grappling with the confines of sexuality, religion, and societal expectations.
She had it all - riches, a college honors program scholarship, a girlfriend - until her conservative, hyper-religious parents found out about the girlfriend and made her choose between conversion therapy and disownment. That was the end of her academic career.
Now, three years later, she meets a shy public reference librarian in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over.
What ensues between the two neurodivergent lovers is magic.
Given that he's about to become her tutor in the magickal and erotic arts, that's only to be expected.
But at what cost?
The mysterious older man is all she could ever have wished for, but she may need to choose between her developing identity and the most profound love she has ever known.
"Master, teach me. I want to apprentice myself.”
I can feel him trembling. Am I trembling too? I must be. My voice is. But all I feel is him.
“Is this something you really want, or do you just want to learn how to be a dominant?” Shaking. God, he’s shaking. His raw need rips through me. “You did mention your former girlfriend wanting you to play the dominant. I can advise you without actually asking anything of you if that’s the case. Or is this about that conversation we had a while back about studying magic –”
“If I only wanted advice, I’d ask for advice. I don’t just want advice. I want you. Master, teach me.”
I take a deep breath.
Silence falls.
“I want that very badly,” he says at last.
“I’m yours for the taking. Please. Take me.”
The room is still. Too still. The very air is holding its breath.
“Please.”
The only one trembling now is me.
Set against a mystical academic backdrop with richly developed characters and a love story that leaps off the book's pages, this scorchingly hot but highly literary erotic coming-of-age story is like nothing you've ever read before.
Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.
“If sizzling romances are your jam, this is the book for you. Additionally, readers of literary fiction who love stimulating stories with philosophical and emotional themes at play will also find plenty to love about this novel. Sera Maddox Drake's storytelling style is refreshingly unique and authentic.” - Pikasho Deka, Reader’s Favorite
“Magic and philosophy sandwiched in between some of the hottest scenes I've read in recent years... Loved it!” - Hannah Gonzalez, Reedsy Discovery
“This novel has incredibly well-written HOT scenes... If you enjoy well-written erotica and clever references to artistic and literary works, I highly recommend." – R.A. Volt, author of "The Bookstore," The Whore, and Hard Ride
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Seitenzahl: 578
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Copyright © 2023 by Sera Maddox Drake
All rights reserved. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, or in other ways that abide by Fair Use guidelines. The author furthermore wishes to emphasize that this work may not be used to train artificial intelligence in any way, shape, or form.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, companies, organizations, places, events, locales, and incidents are either used in a fictitious manner or are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual companies or organizations, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All art and illustration, including the book cover, was made within the Canva app. All images used in the art, including the pictures of classic paintings and sculptures and the stock photography, are public domain to the best of the author's knowledge.
Reviews and Praise for Ancilla
“Beautiful and incredibly detailed...some of the hottest, kinkiest, and most passionate sex scenes, even with the scenes that aren’t technically sex...This book and its very slow-burn, artistic style might not be what the average smut reader is looking for, but I would recommend it to any literature geek looking for something adult, in every sense of the word.” – HappyCoati for The Gloria Regale Awards, Wattpad “People will remember it after some time due to its amazing plot...The perfect story for the perfect genre.” – aadhya2006 for The Gold and Pearl Awards, Wattpad “Have you ever had a dream about a tall, handsome man with an accent? Have you ever fantasized about a man who could satisfy a woman mentally and physically while also cooking chocolate chip cookies? If so, then this book is for you. And for anyone who believes that men who read are attractive... Even though I enjoy books about bad boys, I must say that we need more men like him in books... This character is not like the ones you see in today’s mainstream romance novels; he is a complex character who immediately captures your heart... He is the type of character who gets into your head, alters your brain chemistry, and raises your fucking expectations... Never settle for less when you can have a Magister.” – gremlinsbookstash for The Hot and Bothered Mini Awards, Wattpad“While it plays on adult themes, it is written in a mature manner that many people would enjoy… The author did portray great emotions in their characters, putting us inside their heads so we felt all...” – SSears90 for The Lilac Awards, Wattpad “I love the concept of this story! It was done nicely and I appreciated all the different elements woven into it.” – AthenePersephone9 for Phoenix Awards, Wattpad“The portrayal of a BDSM practitioner who is well-educated, respectful, and enjoys intellectual pursuits adds a layer of complexity to the stereotype... Magister is a complex and intriguing character. His intellectual pursuits, quiet confidence, and experience in BDSM create a multifaceted personality… The dynamic between him and the narrator is intriguing, with… a power exchange that is both consensual and emotionally charged. The portrayal avoids cliches and explores the emotional and intellectual aspects of BDSM alongside the physical.” – The Grand Masquerade of Writing Awards hosted byTaeTaeGinger, Wattpad“The characters are realistic, complex, artistic, and beautifully encapsulate the ‘slow-burn’ factor of this book... Very out-of-the-box plot... It is simple, not too hard to understand, yet complex and unique in its own way. Both the protagonists are a mystery. Actually, scratch that, the entire plot is a mystery, and it feels like the layers are peeled off moment by moment as we delve deeper into the plot and understand this uniquely crafted erotic magical realism romance while the characters discover magic, sexuality, and their own identity.” – abhipreeti for The ELPIDA Awards, Wattpad“A rare find indeed... The story hooks the readers right from the prologue itself.” – sungielxver for The Brumous Awards, Wattpad“I cannot start this review without expressing how deliciously dark and magical it was... I have read erotica in the past, but nothing could have prepared me for the intense character chemistry that walks the tightrope between consent, dominance, submission, trust, respect, and communication... I wasn’t prepared for this book, not because it was strong, but because of how well-executed the themes were...” – Saramitra for The Cloud Awards, Wattpad“Extremely interesting plot with well-described fantastical elements as well as established characters.” – arrowgig for The Watch Awards, Wattpad“I loved the character introduction... The development is strongly built... The story is original... A perfect book.” – sugararmy07, forRealistic Fantasies Awards, Wattpad“This book takes readers on such a wonderful journey... The magickal elements were interesting and worked into the story well... It was clear how Ancilla’s past affects her and it was wonderful to see her grow and come out of her shell. I absolutely loved that the characters being neurodivergent wasn’t their defining personality trait... I could easily see it from their interactions and how they react to things, as well as Ancilla’s tangents when discussing things and Magister’s info dumping. I also loved how nerdy they both are! The characters are definitely relatable... Overall, this story is very well crafted and thought out. It’s clear a lot of research went into the development... The spicy scenes were described well and the magickal elements made it unique and interesting... I don’t usually read the whole book for my reviews, however, I simply couldn’t help myself and I had to read the whole thing!” – Holly (lantea) for Primrose Reviews, Wattpad“The story possesses such uniqueness that I believe I’ve never encountered one quite like it before... From the meticulous detail to the vivid descriptiveness, even the minutiae that one might overlook are crafted perfectly by the author... The storytelling is exceptional, worthy of a chef’s kiss.” – Emily’s Blunt Reviews, Wattpad“This is erotica done well... This novel has incredibly well-written HOT scenes. It’s not overly graphic, but it is ALL there. At times uncomfortable, at times gut-wrenching, the D/s relationship between Ancilla and her Magister had me enthralled. There is a section where the two use elements in a power exchange that had me breathless (with envy!) The eroticism in this book keeps you in a dream-like state... It starts off slow with the expo but the moment Ancilla meets Magister you’ll be floating. I was. If only Magister could be my teacher!... If you enjoy well-written erotica and clever references to artistic and literary works, I highly recommend.” – R.A. Volt, author of “The Bookstore,” The Whore, and Hard Ride, via Goodreads“I rarely read romance because of the toxic nature of the protagonists often involved, and the way Sera has depicted a D/s relationship here is an amazing achievement… The characters have supernatural powers, but these are shown subtly and do not become cliched... Even if you don’t read the BDSM scenes (pay attention to the warnings, particularly the Netzach and Gevurah chapters - these are intense) you can still appreciate the book for its literary content... I can’t wait for the sequel.” – Rachael Adam, author of Sangre De Toro, via Goodreads
“Normal People meets Fifty Shades... Like the titular character of this book, Ancilla is a complex, captivating read... The novel follows Ancilla and Magister through several years of their relationship, blurring timelines and combining philosophy with emotional scenes of romance, heartbreak, and passion... It is spicy but highly intellectual. It is as much an academic novel as it is erotica.“ – Em, via Goodreads
“I didn’t know what to expect when I ventured into this novel, but I am glad I ventured... For those who appreciate more literary/academic erotica, this will absolutely appeal... I find it difficult to categorize this novel under any single label. What is not difficult is enjoying this book... It starts slow with a long exposition, but hold on because once the main characters meet the story gets magical fast, and keeps you fully engaged. I devoured it in three reading nights and fell in love with Magister, the character who is Ancilla’s ‘Master.’ Their relationship, and the chemistry between them, the longing soul-mate connection they have, is indeed “magickal...” The erotic scenes in this novel are beautifully written - not overwrought, but neither are they ‘closed door.’ At times brutal, at other times hauntingly sweet, I wanted to crawl into the book and live some of those scenes. Alas, I could not. But the magickal elements almost (almost!) made me think I might... If you want to read a book that is dripping with sensuality and brutality and the aching torment of a human soul longing for completion with its other half... read this. It won’t fit neatly into your head, but it will surprise, burrow, and then linger in your being. I’m glad I picked it up.” – Dill Iester, via Amazon
“It is nearly impossible to put a genre on Ancilla, and I don’t honestly mind… Sera Maddox Drake purposely chooses not to give names to the two main protagonists, and instead refers to ‘Ancilla’ and ‘Magister.’ From the beginning, we’re told that this relationship between the two of them is purely educational and temporary, as the best way to learn is by doing. And yet by the last third of the book, I was still (pleasantly) surprised with where we leave Ancilla… If you’re not interested in magic and philosophy being sandwiched in between some of the hottest scenes I’ve read in recent years, this book may not be for you… I’ll certainly be pulling it back out from time to time, and recommend it to open-minded readers with a craving for a more truthful, consensual relationship. Loved it!” -Hannah Gonzalez, Reedsy Discovery
“The academic setting, imbued with mysticism, offers an enchanting backdrop that is well-penned with atmospheric descriptions that match and enhance the emotional mood of each scene. The story’s honest, raw exploration of themes like identity, acceptance, and resilience, especially through the lens of bisexuality and neurodivergence, will certainly resonate with diverse readers everywhere. Overall, Ancilla is a refreshingly unique narrative that celebrates love, magic, and the courage to start anew, and it’s a read I’d certainly recommend.” - K. C. Finn, Readers’ Favorite“Sera Maddox Drake leads readers through each tantalizing scene while revealing a character with a unique realness. With its raw emotion and penetrating dive into the protagonist’s mind, readers may think, ‘Surely, this must be a memoir and not a work of fiction.’ Readers who are new to this genre will amass a great deal of knowledge as they absorb the main character’s diary-type entries. This isn’t my first read of this type of work, but I discovered many new things about the novel’s subject material… The protagonist is led through lessons that provide opportunities for self-discovery, and I have never felt such a fully involved love story radiating off every page with any other book of this nature. Readers who are ready to absorb and are not prone to triggers will truly enjoy Ancilla.“ - Courtnee Turner Hoyle, Readers’ Favorite“Kinky and thought-provoking in equal measure, Ancilla is part erotic drama and part coming-of-age tale beautifully woven together to craft an absorbing narrative. If sizzling romances are your jam, this is the book for you. Additionally, readers of literary fiction who love stimulating stories with philosophical and emotional themes at play will also find plenty to love about this novel. Sera Maddox Drake’s storytelling style is refreshingly unique and authentic. As a reader, it may take you a few pages to get into the narrative, but once you do, you will find yourself deeply invested in these characters and their fates. The master/slave dynamic between the narrator and the Magister felt genuine and believable. That’s because the author adds so much emotional depth to the characters to go along with the intoxicating lovemaking scenes. I very much enjoyed the book and recommend it to adult romance readers.“ - Pikasho Deka, Readers’ Favorite“Sera Maddox Drake’s Ancilla is sure to appeal to a subset of readers, namely, those with a more-than-casual interest in BDSM and other aspects of the occult.“ – Michael Howard for IndieReader
Content Warnings and Miscellaneous Notes
CONTENT WARNINGS
While the depictions of sexual activity in Ancilla are not exactly raunchy or smutty, nor are they the sole focus or even the primary focus of the book, this is still extremely sexually explicit material. The protagonist and her mentor/dom/soulmate do not make love behind closed doors, and they are BDSM edge players. Adults only!
The needles and blades used in the last few pages of the Gevurah chapter are potentially triggering to anybody afraid of sharp things or bloodplay. Also, the description of bloodplay might trigger people who fight an urge to self-harm. There is a brief description of choking in the Netzach chapter; the Chokmah chapter has an Air working that involves breath control used as a method of vampirism, which might trigger memories or flashbacks of smothering for some readers. (Dear readers, please do not do this at home. It’s not safe). From what I have read in Jenny Trout’s “Jealous Haters Club” book reviews, it is common for descriptions of starvation or dieting to trigger people who have had eating disorders into relapse, so I should disclose that my protagonist spends more than half of the book starving due to food insecurity.
Chronic pain, vampiric starvation that closely mimics symptoms of clinical depression, and being generally emotionally overwhelmed make her contemplate suicide near the end of the book, and I have been warned that this could trigger some people who tend to self-harm. There is discussion and depiction of homophobia because my protagonist is bisexual, and the book is set in the late 1980s to mid-1990s in Rust Belt Ohio. Anybody who is old enough to have survived that place and time knows how bad things were back then.
Beyond that… I’m sorry, but I have a hard time with content warnings because I haven’t the foggiest idea what triggers people. Everyone is different. There are some things, some commonly encountered in real life, some not, that I find triggering. And to the best of my knowledge, there is no etiquette book for confused writers like me, so here I am, playing guessing games and hoping I don’t cause somebody massive trauma just by writing words. If I have accidentally hit a trigger or a sore nerve or memory, put the book down, take a deep breath, do whatever you need to do to calm and ground yourself, and then, if you still want to keep reading, skim past the section that triggered you, and start reading again when you seem to have reached a safer part of the prose. Unfortunately, I can’t come up with any advice more constructive than that, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart.
TRANSLATIONS
Translations of the Homeric Greek words “Magister” utters can be found in an appendix. I am not providing a similar page for the Latin phrases, because rough, loose, abbreviated translations are embedded in the chapters that make use of Latin quotes (”Binah” contains a short, rather famous one from Catullus; “Chesed” contains excerpts of the writings of Heloise and Abelard).
SOME GRATITUDE TO MY BETAS
Many, many thanks to my betas (especially Kirsten K, who midwifed key parts of the manuscript almost from its inception ten years ago, including sections that were not in her areas of interest or passion). You’ve done your best to stand in for the professional freelance editing I couldn’t afford to use, and I am probably one of the most obnoxious writers ever. I snap at anyone who offers criticism, even when I need and have solicited criticism. I am thin-skinned and crotchety. I am stubborn. I never take the bad news of “this needs work” well, and I take “this needs to be changed or cut out” even worse. If it is any consolation, if you are reading this, I did take your suggestions to heart and I implemented them, which you will see if you read the book again. Thanks for putting up with me.
Contents
Dedications
Fixed it for you, James. Better late than never. You’re welcome.
For my Teasing Georgia muse, for my wonderful and long-suffering husband, and for my Beloved.
I have saluted my opponent, and I have honored the ones that inspired me. Now I lay on.
Beginning
Introductions are polite, so let’s start here.
(Don’t worry, this early bit won’t take very long. We’ll get to the more exotic fare soon enough, I promise).
I was playing in the backyard of a neighbor. I was maybe ten or eleven years old at the time. My companion was a five-year-old who had started following me around whenever she saw me – I have no idea why my actual peers avoided having anything to do with me, whereas children much younger followed me around as if I were the Pied Piper, but that seemed to be the case, and I wasn’t really in a position to object. It kept me from getting too lonely, and later, it turned into some paid babysitting jobs, which meant I could buy more books than what I could purchase with just the tiny allowance my parents kept me on. When I was still in lower school, though, it was more of a trade: I got somebody to play with who didn’t bully me, and the parents tolerated or even welcomed my presence in return because they got free, unofficial babysitting, and time to themselves.
So, at any rate, I was in the girl’s backyard by the jungle gym, as some of the other kids on the street, including her big sister, played soccer in another part of the yard. Most of us hadn’t bothered to change out of our school uniforms yet. You could tell which schools we attended by our uniforms. Some of us wore white dress shirts with navy jumpers or trousers – they attended a parochial school a few blocks away. A couple of girls wore plaid jumpers or skirts with their white dress shirts. They attended the nearest of our city’s two country day schools. Yes, we had two. (The boys there looked like boys at any private school: navy or khaki trousers, white dress shirts or polo shirts. At that time, public school children had no uniforms at all, and boys who attended private schools mostly dressed alike. The only real variety was in the uniforms the girls wore). The girl who attended the more distant country day school had the best uniform, I thought: She had a dark blue blazer with a crest on it, a coordinating striped rep tie and pleated navy skirt, and a white dress shirt that had a really cute collar. Her knee socks blended in with the uniform perfectly, and the whole effect was very well put together. I thought she looked like one of the characters from The Facts of Life, only her uniform was blue, not red.
Meanwhile, I wore what the other three older kids were wearing, which was the plaid skirt and white dress shirt of the lower school that was only a few blocks away. Our plaid wasn’t that different from the plaid of the nearby country day school. We had to wear saddle shoes, though, and their students did not. The saddle shoes were almost impossible to find unless you bought them from a store that had an arrangement with the school. We hated wearing them. We thought they were ugly and uncomfortable. The kids I attended school with who were playing soccer had bagged their uniform shoes and kept on the cleats they’d worn for soccer practice. Why they felt a need to keep playing soccer with their neighbors after they’d just finished two sweaty hours of soccer practice with their classmates on our school’s athletic field, I had no idea.
Nobody in my neighborhood went to a public school.
Since the others were busy kicking a ball around the yard, the only people near the jungle gym were me and the little girl. I was sitting on a swing, trying to read The Martian Chronicles. I’d just discovered Ray Bradbury. I’d already read Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and I couldn’t get enough.
The little girl wanted to go across the monkey bars hand over hand, but every time she tried to do it, she crumpled under her own fear. She looked like she was close to tears from frustration.
I probably wasn’t going to have peace and quiet enough to do any reading, anyway.
“Would you like some help?” I asked.
She looked up, dubious, and nodded. I was her favorite Pied Piper. She’d ask me for help.
I lifted her arms high again and hoisted her so that her hands could once again grasp the first bar. “Hold on tight. I’m going to let go,” I said, remembering what my swim instructor said when she was teaching me how to tread water in the deep part of the pool.
The girl’s eyes widened.
“I’ll be right here,” I said. “I won’t let you fall.” I slowly let her go but kept my hands about an inch away from her trunk. “See? I’m right here.”
She nodded.
I stepped back by about a foot. “Now grab the next bar with your right hand. That one,” I said, tapping her hand, realizing that I didn’t want to make her think hard about anything right now, including which hand was her right and which hand was her left. “I’m right here. See? Here are my hands. They’re right here. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
With eyes as big as dinner plates, she let go of the bar and grabbed the next one.
“That’s it. Now do the same thing with your other hand. Forward, now. I’m right here.”
Eventually, we got across the entire set of monkey bars that way. When she fell into my arms after the last bar, I put her down on the ground, and she shrieked, “I did it! I did it!” and started jumping around, unable to contain herself.
I smiled and went back to reading.
The soccer game in the other part of the yard continued unabated.
For the most part, though, my playmates were not children of any age – not peers, not the little toddlers and preschoolers that always seemed to be attaching themselves to me and trailing in my wake. They weren’t even really playmates. Adults liked me better than other children did. When I played, I played alone. When I socialized with grownups, it was just talk, unless we were playing board games or otherwise doing something formal.
I’ve always liked board games. I think I got into the habit of playing board games because of my father. We were very close, then – when I was young. He was the one who taught me to play chess. He started with checkers. When I could beat him fair and square at checkers, he said, then he would buy me a chess set. It took me almost a year to win my first game of checkers, but when I did, he was as good as his word, and that was how, at the age of five, I became the owner of a beautiful chess board made of polished wood, with matching pieces carved to look like medieval foot soldiers, nobles, and courtiers. And then he used it to teach me chess. By the time I was six years old, I had learned all the gambits he knew, and I had even managed to beat him three times.
He never let me win. He didn’t believe in coddling. With my father, you either beat him on your own, or he beat you at the game he played with you, and that was that. It’s a great way to teach a child the game of chess if you see the child has an aptitude, and you want to nurture it. He might have seen in me the potential to be a chess master, and had I not discovered Barbie dolls on my seventh birthday, I might very well have gone in that direction.
Oh, well.
He also taught me how to dance. He taught me the fox trot, the box step, the waltz, even the jitterbug. I forgot how to dance when I got older because I had no occasion to use my dancing skills, but when I was little, we used to dance around the marble entryway of our house, laughing, circling the fountain like whirling leaves. Before I was born, he said, he used to dance with my mother; but that was in the past. Her health was not robust. Her joints hurt her, and she always seemed to have a headache. She took to her bed once a month for several days with what I eventually found out were heavy periods that not only doubled her over with pain but actually drained her so heavily that she took iron pills that had been prescribed for anemia. She had help in the house on the weekdays, and when she was up and around, mostly she just sat in her chair in the television room and crocheted lace or sewed, or if it was winter and the trees had lost their leaves, giving us an unobstructed view of the river, she would gaze out the window at the barges that could sometimes be seen. Her dancing days were over. On our piano were framed pictures, including one with her dancing with my father at their wedding. She looked like a completely different person in that photograph. My father just looked like a younger version of himself. Thin, like me. Red-headed, like me. Dapper in white tie. Smiling at his lovely, elegant new bride.
He used to read to me – Winnie the Pooh and Heidi and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, when I was very young indeed, and of course, stories from the Bible when we said prayers at bedtime; but as soon as I seemed old enough to appreciate stronger fare, he would read to me stories from Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and tales of King Arthur from Malory. The more questionable stuff, such as how Zeus begat practically everybody in Greek myth and legend in practically every form imaginable or unimaginable, or how Mordred was conceived when Arthur had a tryst with his own sister, he skipped over, but I got quite a healthy dose of tales of chivalry and adventure. He also read to me from The Song of Roland, and other medieval tales, and from The Chronicles of Narnia.
He was a history teacher at the upper school that was a part of the school consortium whose lower school I attended. Different campus, but same school – as I gathered from reading old yearbooks and news clippings, there used to be four separate private schools that merged into a sort of educational cooperative, and the campus of the former upper school used to be located on the campus of what became the location of the lower and middle school I was enrolled in. I was at that specific school because that was where my father had taught for years, and we even had a discount on the tuition because of it, not that we needed it, since most of our family income came not from my father’s meager salary, but from interest on inherited investments. I’m sure there are many private schools that pay their teachers almost the same salary that could be expected by a tenured professor at a college or university, but the school that I attended and that employed my father was not one of those schools. But really, who teaches history for the money?
Having his only child be a precocious and lonely young girl meant that he could share his love of the age of faith and chivalry with a captive audience, with his history lessons falling on eager ears. How could I not love Arthur and Merlin, Percival and Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad? They became more real to me than my classmates. They were kinder and more interesting.
My father believed in chivalry. I believe he fancied himself, in his more sentimental moments, to be the scion of some ancient noble family or other, and given the family tree, his self-perception may very well have had some basis in reality, although genealogy is ultimately a self-flattering game of Six Degrees of Separation, because anybody can be related – related legitimately! – to a rich, noble, or famous person by enough marriage lines traced. Still, nobility seemed to be important to him, and that is probably more important than any actual noble blood, whether real or imagined.
Noblesse oblige, he would say, as if we were in fact noble, and thus required to act like the lords and ladies we secretly were; and while I am not so certain today that he completely managed to live up to his ideals, I think it would be fair to say that he probably tried to live up to them.
I became part of my small church’s choir after I was confirmed. The choir consisted of one bass, two tenors, one alto, and three sopranos. I was the designated alto. Technically, I was also a soprano, but I had a wide vocal range, and the choir needed altos, so an alto I was.
That September it was as hot as July. Our church hadn’t yet bought its two central air units for the sanctuary and parish hall (the units were eventually nicknamed Paul and Silas because they were nested in a protective barred metal cage that looked vaguely like a jail) so the only relief from the heat came from open windows, and from several electric floor fans that did little real cooling. I was roasting in my vestments. More than anything, I wanted to sit down in the pew to rest, but that was out of the question because the choir stalls were up front near the altar, and on display to the rest of the congregation.
Noblesse oblige.
It was some time shortly after the consecration of the Host that I succumbed to the heat and, I think, the incense and the candle smoke, and lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was lying on the cool, tiled floor of the refectory, with wet cloths on my forehead and wrists. Church was still going on, so the only people there were my mother and father. I had no idea who carried me downstairs to the parish hall, or how. It couldn’t have been my mother. She wasn’t strong enough.
“I should have been allowed to sit down,” I grumbled.
To which my father said, “Can the priest, who is wearing even hotter clothing than you are, and far more of it, sit down? He has an obligation to celebrate the Mass, no matter what. And you, as long as you are in the choir, seen by all members of the congregation, have an obligation to behave as a chorister. That means showing up for rehearsals, even when you have more interesting things to do, such as reading that new science fiction book you just bought; it also means kneeling or standing to sing when you would rather be sitting down comfortably, and remaining in your place even when you want to be elsewhere, such as a cool, air-conditioned room, because you are setting an example for all who behold you. You are in a leadership position, whether you are aware of it or not, and a leader must follow stricter rules than everybody else, to earn the respect of those who follow. Nobility imposes obligation.”
In other words, it was my fault that I fainted.
He did try to live by his creed of leading by example. He tried to give back to the community what he might take from it as a member of the taking class, albeit in what I would consider very minor ways – giving food and other charitable gifts to the impoverished, volunteering in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving morning and afternoon, taking part in community litter clean-up and tree plantings and Neighborhood Watch patrols. And of course, he tried to lead by example in the way he felt was the most important of all, namely, doing his best to live in an upright and moral way, at least as he saw it. He put more energy into doing that than he did into any kind of community service.
We have since had our differences, which I will go into, and there were many, but I would be lying to myself if I did not admit that of all the teachers who were my friends and role models when I was a child, he was my favorite, and I probably do take after him in many ways.
That was my childhood, then. Wealthy? Yes. Sheltered? Yes. Lonely, absolutely yes. But it was hardly something I should call unhappy. Even when I was bullied by classmates who were better at sports or, I guess, at simply talking to each other than I was (and for all I know, they probably bullied each other as well, over other minor things that made good excuses for bullying) I would not call my childhood a bad one. I think for the most part I was probably happy. I had what I wanted. I had a never-ending supply of books to read, teachers whom I generally impressed and beguiled into making me their pet, and a life free of want. I might have been unhappier had I been more desperate to make friends my own age and to fit in with my peers, but I was not very interested in that. Or so I told myself.
And then came adolescence.
My parents pulled me out of the school I’d attended since I was four years old and put me in a private Catholic school for girls. They were a little concerned that the school’s required religious curriculum, post-Vatican II that it was, would give me liberal ideas and corrupt me away from what was supposed to be a very straight and narrow path, but my father considered it inappropriate, due to conflict of interest, to be one of my schoolteachers, and he would have taught my history classes had I gone on to the upper school in my academic consortium. Also, the upper school, like the lower schools and the middle school, was coed. My parents had moral sensibilities straight out of the Victorian era and considered it unseemly for a girl of my age to be in classes with boys. I would have been more than happy to go to a boarding school in New England like the one my father attended when he was my age, but I was the only child, and my mother said she would miss me too much if I was sent up to boarding school somewhere, so a local private school for girls it was. The only single-sex high schools in our city were all Catholic.
It wasn’t a bad change. Without boys present, gym class was suddenly a lot less embarrassing. Even better, for some reason, I have no idea why, the bullying stopped. I still wasn’t even remotely popular, but being ignored was a step above being bullied.
The new school, furthermore, had something that my former school did not: philosophy classes. All the philosophy classes were taught by a genial old priest whose shadow I worshiped the instant I heard him talk.
My new school was in one of those experimental open-air buildings that had been so popular in the late sixties and early seventies – they were called “open-air” despite being indoors because there were almost no interior walls or classrooms for the most part (the wing that housed the noisy and messy areas, such as the music rooms, the gymnasium, the art studios, the theatre, and the home economics lab, was an exception, as was the perpetually chemical-scented wing that housed the darkroom and the science laboratories). The whole idea was to encourage students to learn to concentrate carefully on their own classroom teachers and tune out any background noises. Some students floundered and wound up going elsewhere; I never really had a problem with it. Either you sink or you swim, in that kind of environment, and I was a swimmer.
One time, though, I found my attention wandering during Latin class, and directly behind me happened to be the most amazing lecture I had ever heard.
“According to Plato – and, by extension, Socrates, whom Plato uses as his authorial mouthpiece – the vast majority of human beings are like prisoners in a cave, chained facing a wall, and unable to turn their heads to see anything other than that wall and whatever shadows get reflected onto it,” I heard a teacher’s voice saying. Curious, I turned my head enough to see the classroom behind me. The teacher was a short, apple-cheeked, somewhat rotund man wearing a clerical collar and black shirt over neatly pressed blue jeans.
For me, it was love at first sight. Love of Plato? Love of the priest who was teaching the philosophy class? I would not have been able to answer that question then, and I doubt I would be able to answer it now.
Like the proverbial prisoners in the cave, I could not turn my head any more than I already had, but I could tune out my Latin teacher and listen to the lecture that was going on behind me.
“So, what happens when one of the prisoners somehow manages to free himself? First, the prisoner will behold things in the cave itself as they are, rather than mistaking the shadows dancing on the wall for reality. Of course, increasing knowledge begets yet more curiosity, and the former prisoner will eventually leave the cave, and emerge, blinking, into the blinding light of day. He will begin to grow accustomed to the sight of this strange new world. And first, he will see the shadows of things best, and things as they are reflected in water, until he can look around him and see the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars. Finally, he will be able to behold the sun; and he will, as Plato puts it, ‘contemplate him as he is.’ This, then, is enlightenment.
“And enlightenment confers a certain responsibility, according to Plato. The enlightened philosopher is called to be a teacher; the philosopher must attempt to share enlightenment, you see, although often the gift of enlightenment will be unwanted by the prisoners who still define their lives by the shadows they see flickering on the wall. Nevertheless, knowledge must at least be made available to those others who would seek it, no matter if it causes a certain amount of discomfort by shaking the status quo. It’s about seeking heaven, in a sense; the quest for ultimate truth is the quest for union with God, even in the face of society’s lack of understanding, even in the face of social opprobrium and utter loneliness. Plato calls God ‘the sun,’ but I think we can all agree that this must be allegorical – Plato was not a sun worshipper. It was the truth he was after. ‘The prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul…’
“And there you have it. We must look away from the world of phenomena and direct our eyes to the sublime.”
It was then that my Latin teacher managed to break into my trance of concentration. She had been calling on me to read and translate aloud a certain passage from the Aeneid for some time, and this was the third time she had called my name.
“I’m sorry. I got distracted. There was a really interesting class behind me. They were talking about Plato.”
“Well, at least you were paying attention to the classics, although you’re supposed to be studying Roman literature right now, not Greek,” she said, her mouth quirking with amusement. “Now, kindly translate Virgil for the rest of us.”
The other change that came with adolescence, and this, alas, brought problems enough to cause me trouble, was that I discovered sex. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that sex discovered me. I was unaware. I was so ignorant that you, who read these memories I have committed to paper, will probably want to laugh… Or maybe cry. I don’t know.
See through my eyes.
I stand naked in my boyfriend’s bedroom, my gawky teenage body shivering in the air-conditioned chill. The cold is making my nipples stick out from what little I have of breasts. Or maybe it’s my nervousness making them do that.
I never thought it would happen, but somehow, I found a kindred spirit. We met several months ago through a school musical. My high school’s thespian society was putting on a production of Scrooge, which had a few large choral numbers, and since I was in the chorus and the vocal ensemble, I got dragooned into the production as an extra, along with the rest of the chorus and vocal ensemble. We were collaborating with one of the local all-male Catholic high schools to get a supply of tenors and basses to fill out the cast and to obtain male actors for the appropriate roles – Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, et cetera. My boyfriend was the Ghost of Christmas Future.
I met him backstage. He was reading Tolkien.
My parents aren’t happy about me dating anyone, but they’re tolerating it for now (“He seems harmless enough,” my mother had muttered after I got back from our first date – I’d introduced him to my parents before going out with him to see the latest Star Trek movie, in which Kirk and Spock steal a spaceship to go down to Earth and save the whales, and the less said about the small talk we tried to make for the duration of the introduction, the better) and somehow we’ve managed.
I have a very early curfew – ten o’clock, well before my bedtime – but there are ways around curfews. One way to spend plenty of time with him is to set up afternoon dates. After we had several months of library dates, and closely monitored study dates at my house, it convinced my parents that I could be trusted to actually study on a study date, so I am now allowed to study at his house on occasion. During the summer, when we don’t have school, we mostly just read science fiction books, or play Talisman. His mother is downstairs the whole time, so it’s not like my parents need to worry about our dates being unchaperoned.
We still haven’t worked up the nerve to kiss each other yet. Isn’t that funny? We’ve been dating for months, and we decided today to play doctor because I’d never played doctor as a child, and neither had he, and we found out that apparently that’s something nearly every kid does, and we’ve missed out on a large part of childhood, so here I am, naked. But we still haven’t even kissed.
We have at least established that my temperature is 99.1 degrees (“Well within normal range”) and that I have a pulse. Also, that my amber eyes are a clear indication of a rare recessive gene trait, although it doesn’t seem to mean anything other than that I have weird eyes, which I kind of already knew.
He bends down to put his ear up against my chest to listen to my heart. “Sorry. I don’t have a stethoscope,” he says, his voice an octave higher than usual. “Heart seems fine. Nice, strong heartbeat.”
His hair tickles my chest.
“I need to test your reflexes, now,” he says. “Could you sit on the bed and cross your knees?”
He doesn’t have a rubber mallet, so we decide to use one of my Dr Scholl’s sandals as a substitute.
My left foot flies in the air.
“Ow.”
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Your shoe is heavy. I didn’t hurt your knee too much, did I?”
“No.”
“Good. Okay. And you have good reflexes. Um.” He blushes. “Could you open your legs?”
“Why?”
“I need to check you.”
“Why?”
“Because… because that’s just how it’s done. Doesn’t your doctor do a complete examination when you have your physical every year?”
“No.”
“Huh. Mine does. Um. You’re not… bleeding, are you? Like, wearing a tampon?” He blushes even harder.
“No! Mom says I’ll lose my virginity if I use a tampon. And anyway, I’m not having my period. I just had it, remember?”
“How can you lose your virginity to a tampon? That’s not even possible.”
I blush.
“I promise, I won’t try anything. I just want this to be done the right way.”
Oh, God. He’s going to be the first person to get a good look at me since I was a baby, or at least since I was eleven years old, and he’s going to think I’m horribly, horribly ugly, because I’m not normal.
I had a friend in sixth grade who told me this. She was one of the few friends I ever had. She was as unpopular as I was because everyone said she was a lesbian, also that she had lice (she did not have lice) so we wound up always eating lunch together and eventually, we had sleepovers, and one night we were up late playing Clue after watching Saturday Night Live, a show that would have given my parents conniption fits if they’d known I watched it, and we were both naked because we’d been playing Truth or Dare and one thing led to another, so there we were playing Clue naked, and out of the blue she looked at me and said “You have a penis.” (She’d also tried to kiss me, earlier, which I’d found confusing). But anyway, we were friends. Friends don’t lie to each other, do they?
“Please don’t hate me,” I say, as I cringe and open my legs.
He blinks. “Why on earth would I hate you?”
“Because. Because I have a penis. My best friend said so. She saw me.”
“What? No, you don’t.”
”I do.”
“I got a good look at you when you took your clothes off, actually. You don’t.” He grins. “Trust me. I’m a doctor, remember?”
“But why don’t I look like… I thought I was supposed to have a hole there.”
He sighs. “No, no, no. I mean, I’ve never seen a naked girl up close, except for you, but I know that’s not always what girls look like externally. I’ve seen pictures. In magazines.” He blushes again. “Haven’t you had sex ed? My high school required it as part of ninth-grade health class.”
“I was embarrassed. I got an F.”
“Oh. Hmm. Well, that explains things, I guess… Would you. Can I. Um. This would be easier if I could point and use my fingers. Um… Could I?”
I nod. I’m blushing harder than ever, now.
“So, okay. This is what I remember from my health class. I’ll put it together with some of the, um, pictures I’ve seen. The diagrams they give us in sex ed class are kind of crap. So. This is your vagina. You absolutely do not have a penis. We don’t look anything alike. I mean, if you really want, I could show you, so you have some basis for comparison – no, no, better not. Anyway. These folds of skin here,” he says, his face red as a plum as he quickly runs the tip of his finger along the portion of my anatomy he’s referencing, “that look kind of like curtains, only they stick out, these are part of your vagina. They’re called your labia. Labia minora. They come in all different shapes and sizes, from what I’ve read. And sometimes they sort of dangle outside, rather than staying tucked neatly behind the outer labia, because for some girls they extend past – um, are you okay?”
I’m gasping. God, it feels good when he’s touching me there. It feels much better than when I touch myself there, even when I’m rubbing myself to get off.
I’m also probably blushing harder than he is. He’s my boyfriend. And he’s touching me.
“I’m okay.”
“Good. Okay, this part right here at the top? Sort of peeking out from behind that little bit of skin, when I lift it? That is a clitoris. Also, like your labia minora, not a penis…”
”…Oh!”
“You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I gasp. I’m definitely okay, now. I’m more than okay.
“Gosh, you turn red all over when you blush… Oh.” He notices that I’m still panting a little. He gulps. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… I was just trying to get things right. So, anyway. You’re healthy. And I can safely say you’re a girl. Nothing extra there. I’m not sure what your friend was going on about. Maybe she was trying to play a trick on you?”
I’m normal, after all?
“It’s a miracle!“ I cry out, and then I start laughing. “Thank you! Thank you!”
After I have my clothes back on, we cuddle together on the bed, reading our books – he’s reading something called A Fish Dinner in Memison, I’m reading The Mists of Avalon because I can’t take it home. My father would want to borrow it because it’s Arthurian stuff, and if he read it, he would absolutely freak out at the Goddess worship and the Druidism and the sex.
It’s probably just as well he doesn’t know about my boyfriend’s large collection of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons modules, and the gaming we’ve done, alternating who gets to be the player and who is the dungeon master, or the back issues of Dragon magazine, which has this really funny comic strip about gamers who are so stupid that they think gazebos are monsters – all that’s Satanic, according to my parents.
Or about the Heinlein novels, either. Thanks to my reading about Valentine Michael Smith and Lazarus Long, both of whom seemed to live very happy lives, without hurting anybody, despite doing things differently from the way my parents taught me life ought to be lived, I have decided that monogamy is just an exotic rainforest wood, and nothing I particularly need to have as a fixture in my home, once I am grown up and have a place of my own.
My boyfriend then asks me, “Wait, how could you think you have a penis if you’ve been having periods, and you don’t want to insert a tampon?”
“Can’t a person have both?”
“Oh. Hmm. Probably yes. But you don’t.”
We go back to reading.
A little after that, he gives me my very first kiss, and I have my second orgasm that day, and learn that I have something called a “hair trigger.”
I was stupid. I wrote about liking being kissed in my diary, which I had thought was stashed in a safe hiding place. The aide found it and took it to my mother. I didn’t mention the circumstances of the kiss when I wrote about it, but the very fact that I had allowed my boyfriend to kiss me was enough for my parents. They made me break up with him. He was no longer “harmless enough.” Neither was I. I spent my senior year grounded. My father made me do evening prayers with him every night as if I were a child again, and he made me leave the church choir because I was no longer someone to be looked up to. I didn’t understand why my being seen in church wearing choir robes and singing hymns at Mass should suddenly be a shameful thing, nor did the choir director, who had no idea what was going on behind the scenes and begged my father to let me stay in the choir, because I was still the only alto, but my father was adamant.
Actual sexual experience, due to a number of different factors, didn’t happen until I was in college on a partial academic scholarship that my parents were too proud of to make me turn down (and I was glad to be several hundred miles away, on the other side of the state – by then I wanted nothing to do with my parents’ rules. I think I must have been the only freshman in my dorm who didn’t cry from homesickness on my first night away from home). By then I had acquired a different boyfriend, who I’d met when he sat next to me in my Rationalism and Empiricism class and struck up a conversation about Pascal’s wager. And yes. By then I knew it was possible to do more with my body than just kiss.
His mouth is warm and moist against my genitals, his tongue doing insane, almost unbelievable things to me until I fall over the edge into orgasm, screaming out in pleasure and need. He’s been at this for a while tonight. Months, really; we’ve been groping and mouthing each other for months, while I’ve wrestled with the demons of my childhood religious indoctrination, banging my head against the concrete wall of my boyfriend’s dorm room until he begged me to stop before I hurt myself, crying myself to sleep in his arms after every make-out session, or at least trying to cry, for what passionate joy could I have if I did not pay a price in guilt afterward?
It has finally reached the point where I no longer care if I burn in hell for having sex before marriage. I’ve already been seen naked, all of me, including all the parts normally covered by underwear, and I’ve had all those parts touched, as deeply as fingers can reach inside; that means I’m not a virgin, by some definitions anyway, right? So, it’s too late for me. And I want to, so badly. I want him, he wants me. I’m pretty sure I love him. He’s told me he loves me. What more do I need? Maybe we’ll marry later, maybe not, but we’ve been fumbling at each other for all the last semester and the beginning of this one, now, and I don’t want to wait any longer than he does. The orgasms he’s given me tonight haven’t satisfied me, any more than they have before. They’ve only left me hungry for something more.
“Now,” I moan. “Tonight. Now.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He gets up and takes a condom out of his drawer, one that came in a discreet brown paper bag from the campus health center. He struggles with it for a few seconds, but eventually manages to get it on his member – it’s fairly goof-proof, really – and reaches for me. He’s warming me with his fingers, caressing me, entering me, gently stretching me, making me burn again until I’m practically engulfed by my need. I don’t know how he can be so patient. He’s been waiting so long for me, an eternity of unfulfilled desire, all because of my wavering and fear.
He climbs on top of me. I open my thighs for him and guide him into me with my hand.
And instantly my world is blazing agony.
I collapse onto the floor of his dorm room into a fetal ball. Blood is gushing out of me. It’s not a period. It’s not that kind of blood. There’s too much of it. The pain stabs me; I clutch my abdomen, keening, trying to shove everything back, to make it stop.
“Are you all right? Do I need to take you to the emergency room?”
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I know I don’t want to go to the hospital, though. My parents would see the bill, get scared, and ask questions, and if they find out I’m not a virgin any longer, I don’t know what they’ll do to me. Nothing good. At the very least I’m pretty sure they’ll pull me out of college. I don’t want to leave college. This is the first place I’ve ever really been happy and made friends. I’m picking all my own classes, and my professors and classes are all great. I’m in a medieval reenactment club and a gaming club and a classics club and a chorus. I’m enrolling in an introduction to bagpiping class. I’m going to be initiated into a sorority soon. Oh, God, I don’t want to have to give all of this up.
“No, I think this is normal,” I reply, still crumpled in a fetal ball, trying not to whimper. “I’ve read about it in romance novels. I’ll be fine. Can I have a towel?”
In retrospect, I do know that it’s not normal to have an experience right out of The Bell Jar. (Even in The Bell Jar, it wasn’t normal. Since that sort of profuse bleeding was supposed to be a “once in a million occurrence,” I have to wonder if maybe Plath drew on her own personal experience when she wrote about the aftermath of cherry popping. Surely that was too weird for her to have just made up. Did she also think about turkey necks the whole time, too, then, the way her self-modeled protagonist did? That must have been unfortunate). Hymens are thin outer membranes, part of the labia, rather like half-open sheer curtains at windows, not internal blood bladders that sit inside the vaginal walls, acting as gate guardians that somehow allow fingers and tongues and tampons to enter, but not penises, and should some cock manage to bypass security, they perforce self-destruct to create a fatal distraction that stops coitus from happening. All my research tells me that one’s first experience of sexual intercourse is not supposed to cause near-hemorrhaging, indeed, if there has been adequate foreplay and plenty of lubrication and stretching, the hymen may not bleed at all – it may just part as it is stretched. Which was certainly the case with me. I couldn’t have had a gentler, more attentive first love. And yet, there it was: I experienced awful pain upon first being entered, and I bled like a stuck pig.
More proof that I am a freak.
At any rate, I survived. I even somehow recovered without getting any real medical attention. I wish I could say the same thing about the relationship, but I can’t.
One reason things didn’t work out was that I discovered girls soon after I discovered sex, but that was only one contributing factor. There were many, many others, foremost of which could be summed up by saying that attraction does not always coincide with compatibility. Forget the old saying. Amor, eheu, non omnia vincit.
She is so warm in my arms. We have been dancing around each other, finding excuses to sit together, so that our skin touches; to put our heads on each other’s shoulders; to give each other back rubs. We hold hands, then trail our fingertips along each other’s palms and forearms when we break apart…
I’ve never wanted anybody so badly.
“What if we’re damned?” she asks me, her voice trembling. “What if the whole reason we’re so attracted to each other is that our faith is being tempted?”
“Do you really think God would be that cruel?”
“No…”
We silence our words and thoughts with kisses.
She has a long-distance boyfriend who is in the army. Her boyfriend does not know about me, or about the fact that his girlfriend is starting to realize that she likes other women more than she likes men. She wants to come out of the closet and break up with him in person, rather than through a letter or over the telephone, and I wish I had the strength to wait for her until after the fact, but he won’t be visiting her for many weeks, and we only have so much time before spring is over and with it, the school year, and we are tired, so tired of waiting. What if we never have each other? I have no more strength to hold out against this need, nor does she. It is done.
All the desperate love poetry we’ve written to each other has ended here, in this dusty storage room in the attic of the art building, while our sorority sisters play volleyball on the quad outside, heedless of what is going on in here.
I went through Rush Week for the experience, and the free food; I pledged the sorority on a whim because it had a reputation for being the straight arrow geek Hellenic organization on campus (average GPA: 3.91; during the lip synch competition last Greek Week, they lip-synched to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” from the Messiah
