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As you may have noticed, Charles and I, individually and together, have made the decision that despite our erotic proclivities and the way such proclivities are usually regarded by the people most people associate with the word "Christian," our hereditary Christianity is important to us. Charles was more than happy to leave the Methodism of his childhood and adopt a (shall we say?) stricter regime--which is how we ended up at St. Thomas Fifth Avenue the Sunday he proposed to me.
If you've been reading this blog for a while, reader, you also know that I don't hesitate to mix the sacred with the profane (see for example my new one, The Duke's School for Young Ladies!); indeed, you have probably been able to discern that in fact I delight in that mixture almost above all things.
Our real wedding took place at the little episcopal church where I had sung in the choir as a girl. I brought my own Anglo-Catholic priest, a man I've always suspected of being a sub himself, whom I found in college.
This may be the right place to say that at the height of my religious struggle with my BDSM orientation, junior year in college, I tried to confess my erotic habits to this same Anglo-Catholic priest, but the language I used was so vague that I'm not sure he even understood what I was talking about. Certainly when he talked kindly to me about my confession, before giving me penance (a few rosaries) and pronouncing absolution, he didn't mention it.
Although confession is one of the hottest things imaginable in my book (a heartfelt thank you to Selena Kitt for exploring the theme so well in Under Mr. Nolan's Bed, as well as to the particular Anonymous who wrote The Autobiography of a Flea), the sacrament of penance and, reconciliation, as it evolved in the medieval church, doesn't work for me. That confession to the nice priest who eventually married us was my last formal confession, though I have had some wonderful relationships with spiritual directors over the years since.
The reason confession doesn't work for me is very relevant in the context of my wedding, as well, because it has everything to do with how I can continue to be a religious person despite shamelessly indulging the profane fantasies you find in my EXPLORATIONS, both by writing and by self-abuse, and also by countless acts that might make the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah blush.
My problem with sacramental confession is similar to the basic quarrel of protestantism with the sacramental priesthood, but more complex, and confined to confession: Father Tom, Dick, or Harry (or even, since I of course support gender equality in holy orders, Mother Tanya, Doris, or Harriet) doesn't share my understanding of what sin even is; the notion that he or she can magically absolve me from my sins makes for a veneer of falseness that vitiates what might otherwise be at least a beneficial ritual from an emotional standpoint--talking about the things that make us feel broken with a person who specializes in trying to help people deal with the brokenness of human existence. I don't have a problem with that same Father or Mother being the one who celebrates the Eucharist and marries me to my husband and baptizes my children, because I understand his or her consecration as a useful and moving symbol of professionalization. It's when the church's historical bureaucracy turns the idea of repentance, so dependent on our unknowable inner states, into something only a priest can help with, that things go South for me.
Anyway. In the Anglican Communion, there's a wonderful saying about confession: "All may, none must, some should." That means that since I no longer consider myself to be one of the some who should, having come (like a good, reasoning Anglican) to my own understanding of what sin is, I got to have the wedding I was looking for, with the incense and the elevation bells and the choir singing, of course, the Byrd Mass for Five Voices. My dress was simple except for the lace ornaments, which of course matched the white lace thong I at last wore more or less appropriately, at least according to my understanding of that most sacred of garments. I also insisted on a full veil, with a gorgeous lace border, which insistence made my mother, I thought, look at me like I was crazy (it turned out later that I had been misinterpreting these looks of hers for years, but that's another story).
Because this post is turning out to be the least hot post ever for this blog, let me add that during our wedding--specifically while the choir was singing the Sanctus--I imagined that instead of the Eucharist, my ass would be the sacrifice for that nuptial liturgy. Charles would lead me to the altar (which is really, in most churches, including that one, the perfect height, though late medieval and renaissance traditional altars set into a reredos would be too narrow to lay even the most petite bride over), and I would gracefully drape myself over it, stretching my arms out so that the priest could bind my wrists together and tie them to the ring set in the stone paving hundreds of years before for just this purpose. (Reader, I suppose you never spent long parts of Sunday mornings wondering what all the little fixtures in an old church are for. More's the pity, but I can assure you that a ring for putting brides in bondage wouldn't look out of place.)
(I thought idly about whether anyone had actually ever been fucked over the altar of that church, and about how many people must have been fucked over altars, Christian or otherwise, over the course of human history. Hundreds? Thousands? Surely the temptation of the sex/violence metaphor is too great for it to be fewer than a thousand, even if I knew no cult-practices that actually require it. . . [so few people understand that an altar is a place where you kill animals, though. It takes a classicist.])
(It's a very long Sanctus.)
Charles would lift my skirts, and the guests would gasp at the sight of my lace thong, worn over the suspenders of my garter-belt. The priest would come and sprinkle my backside with holy water, and make the sign of the cross over it. He would put incense on the charcoal in the thurible, and I would hear that lovely sacred sound of the top of the thurible going up, and then going down, and then I would hear the chains, as the priest swung it, 3 times 3, around my ass, and I would feel the heat as the thurible almost touched my bottom-cheeks. The holy smoke would consecrate my pudenda, and my rectum, and I would feel blessed, and very, very warm, as the scent of my arousal mingled with the indescribable scent of the pure frankincense I had ordered specially for the wedding Mass.
The priest would say, "I pronounce this wife's ass to be the property of her man. You may fuck the bottom."
The holy oil of lube in hand, Charles would approach. . . "All glory be to thee, almighty God our heavenly father. . ." said my nice priest. Thankfully, like a good Anglo-Catholic celebrant, he was facing away from us and couldn't see me blushing.
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