She looked away from me at the grimy, unused fireplace and didn't seem to be as cheerful as she had been.
`Doesn't it seem … strange that a college girl should be … here?'
'Ah. Her breach of role playing was bothering her.
`Certainly not,' I said firmly. 'According to my fried, almost all the call girls he knows are college students, many of
them straight 'A' students. Tuition costs being what they are, what can a girl do?'
This line of reasoning seemed to take some time to absorb. She blushed and turned away at the phrase call girl, but finally said quietly that's true.' `Also,' I said, `college girls learn how irrational all sexual inhibitions are. They learn how safe sexual intercourse can
be and how profitable.'
`But she said. `But - of course some girls still fear that God - that sex -'
'You're right there, of course. But even many deeply religious college girls have also become call girls.'
She now looked up at me questioningly.
'They realize,' I went on, `that God always examines the reasons we do anything. If a girl gives her body to a man to
give him pleasure and to earn money so that she may educate herself and thus increase her ability to serve God she is
actually performing a good act.'
She looked away nervously. - `But God says adultery is a sin,' she said.
'Ah, but the Hebrew word for adultery, fornication, actually means sexual intercourse had only for pleasure. The
Commandment actually should be translated: 'Though shall not selfishly give yourself in adultery.'
Many of the girls at LIU in Bible History 162 have been quite surprised and pleased to realize the true nature of God's
command.'
She was hunched over on the couch beside me drinking her gin with absentminded abandonment. She stared into her
glass as if it might hold the ultimate answers.
`But God says that…' she started. `Paul says that . . . the Church says that-'
`Only selfish pleasure. The Hebrew is absolutely explicit. In Second Corinthians, verse eight, the text reads: 'She who
lets a man know her for the glory of God is blessed, but woe unto her who in selfishness commits adultery. Verily the
very earth will swallow her up.'
Again hesitation. Then:
'The glory of God?' she asked.
`Saint Thomas Aquinas interprets this as meaning any act which is intended to further the individual's ability to glorify
God. He cites the case of Bathsheba's daughter who gave herself to the Aramite that she might convert him. He also cites the prostitute Magdalen of the New Testament who, according to tradition, continued to sell herself to men that she might better know them and testify to the Divinity of Christ.'
`Really?' she said sharply, as if at last Truth were being touched.
`In Dante's Paradisio, which you may have read, the religious prostitutes are placed in the third sphere of heaven, just
below the saints, but above the nuns and virgins. In the words of Beatrice, his guide, 'A fugitive and cloistered virtue
can never reach as close to God as an active one. If the soul is pure the body cannot be soiled.'
`Oh I read that. Was that Dante?'
`Paradisio, Canto Seventeen I think. Milton paraphrased this verse in his famous essay on divorce.'
`It's funny…' she said and jiggled the remaining ice cubes in her glass before taking another swallow.
`The Church has naturally played down this tradition,' I said, taking a satisfied swallow from my own drink. `It has
felt that young girls might be seduced unnecessarily in their dream of converting men, and although such an act would not be sinful, it was decided to create the impression that all sex was evil. The masses, of course, have thus lived in ignorance of God's true purpose.'
At last she looked up at me and smiled sadly.
`I'm going to take more history,' she said.
I turned to her, and with my right hand brushed away her hair from her cheek.
`I'd love to have a student like you in one of my classes. I get so lonely for someone with whom I can talk about
things.'
'Do you?'
`I feel spiritually lost, alone - since losing my wife. I've needed the warmth of a woman's mind and body, but until this
evening all I've ever met were dull, pedantic women that weren't able to . . . unselfishly give themselves to me.'
`I like you very much,' she said tentatively.
'Ah Terry, Terry…'
I took her in my arms, spilling the last of her drink onto the floor and couch. I hugged her tenderly, my eyes, well
above the level of her head, fixing idly on the manila folder on the bookcase. The radio was blaring, `Why Don't We
Do It in the Road?'
`Please, my darling,' I said, `come with me now to the bed room.'
She held herself still in my arms and didn't answer. The music stopped, and the radio announcer began running off at
the mouth about the incredible power of Gleem toothpaste: he followed that without pausing for breath with kind
words for Robert Hall's.
`You're so big,' she finally said.
`I have a great need for you.'
She remained still. I released my embrace and looked down at her. She looked up at me nervously and said: `Kiss me
first' She reached her arms up around my neck, and as we kissed I slid heavily forward on top of her. We writhed
together for more than a minute.
`Am I too heavy?' I asked.
`A little bit,' she said.
`Let's go to the bedroom.'
We disentangled and stood up.
`Where to?' she asked, as if we were about to begin a long hike.
This way,' I said, and after we had negotiated the ten paces into the bedroom I added: `That's the bathroom.'
We look at each other. `You undress there. I'll undress here.' `Thank you,' she said and walked into the bathroom, her shoulder just bumping the doorway as she entered. I undressed myself, dropping my clothes neatly in select piles between the bed and an old walnut dresser. Inside the king-size double bed, I but my hand behind my head and watched the ceiling swirl like cosmic nebulae. Five minutes later the nebulae were still providing the only active entertainment.
