SCREAMING WITH THE CANNIBALS

Seventeen

95 Seventeen Lard had dragged me to a seat near the aisle, only a few rows back from the pulpit, and then the big bastard had disappeared, laughing, leaving me there within sweat-smelling range of the preacher. My neck began to ache from being twisted far to the left as I watched the people. As I tried to find Ruth Ella. Suddenly, the woman sitting just to my right leaped to her feet, her face rigid, her arms clamped against her sides. I turned to look at her as she stared at the preacher, trembling in anticipation of something she did not understand. She was a plain woman, tall, her hair pulled back in a tight knot at the back of her head. She looked to be about thirty-five or so and standing there with sweat running down her face and arms she was a basic human animal, focused on something that was compelling. There was sweat running down the insides of her legs, too, I thought. There were others standing in the church, many others, but this one was standing right next to me, swaying, building herself for some final plunge. Her shoulders were back and her nipples were standing hard against her dress. My God, I thought, if she’s like all the other women here, she’s wearing a bra that could hold a sack of nails without showing through, and yet her nipples are making little bumps on her dress; nipples like hardboiled bird eggs. She spread her legs, jamming a leg against me. I could feel the trembling in it, the anticipation of something to come. I didn’t want to, I told myself. I tried to control it, but in spite of myself I felt the creeping hardness begin in my crotch. I was getting a hard-on. The woman moved a little, edging forward, then began to make her way past me, heading for the aisle. As she stepped in front of 96 me she momentarily lost her balance and flopped down onto my lap, awkwardly pumping her legs to try to regain her feet. In reflex my hands shot up and clamped to her ass, each hand cupping the outside of a hard cheek, squeezing. I suddenly realized that I was sitting in a frenzied crowd with my hands jammed against a firm farm ass and that I was pulling that ass harder against me. But no one seemed to notice that I had a woman sitting on my lap. I fought the urge to hunch upwards into her as I felt myself grow harder, as the woman ground her hips into me. The vision of her nipples flashed through my mind and I thought I could see them clearly, even though my nose was pressed flat against her back. Suddenly she was on her feet again, moving into the aisle, then rushing quickly toward the front of the church. She never looked back. The preacher watched her come, his eyes shining in the dim light, sweat pouring down his face. He watched her come but he never lost the rhythm of his sermon, never lost the flow of his voice, never lost control. It was one of the most sexual things I had ever been a part of. I was stunned. I suddenly recognized the vaguely familiar feeling running around in my guts. It was lust, pure and simple lust, a basic drive to couple hard and fast with the first woman who crossed my path. I felt myself being drawn into it, into some ritual which I knew had nothing to do with God or religion or worship or goodness or sin, into some ritual which existed for its own sake, for the power and drama of its own personal being, a ritual that rose and fell in great waves of light and blackness. I was held. My mind darted back and forth, trying to understand, trying to cope. A few years later I would think back on it and would say to myself that the ritual, this thing called a revival, was an outlet for people whose lives did not provide such outlets, an outlet for 97 people who slept in heavy nightclothes, who undressed and dressed for bed while standing in the darkness of their closets, who wore no makeup, who did not dance, who went to church five or six times a week...