A loud voice blew a chill into her bones: Margery. She awoke clammy and spooked and lay still. Jesus glided out of the dark with underwater fluency; he was resplendent in a short crimson gown, a large velvet hat trimmed with lynx, a golden girdle around his waist, and a golden baldric trailing behind. He wore a sassy expression, head tossed to one side, shoulders cocked. His sap green breeches were so tight she thought his asshole appeared when he bent over; she was more aware than Jesus of that blurred red light in the darkness. What began as a fashion show ended as a striptease.

When they were about to come, Margery spit in his open mouth.

“That’s gross,” Jesus whispered with a look of grievance.

“Of course it is,” Margery replied in a normal voice as Jesus began to spasm with a weak unwilling groan, shifting beneath her slightly. Margery was giving Jesus something to remember but it was Margery who remembered it. “We had exchanged so much spit but let some fly through the air . . . It was just something I wanted to give him.”

41

People do not like Margery during their lifetimes but want her to weep when they are dying and she does because she thinks of Jesus dying. Jesus shapes her dread and expresses the ecstasy of the present.

She pushes her finger into his asshole as though he’s a pie. She encounters shit—well, it’s Jesus’s shit; she just slides it out of the way. She nudges his prostate while pressing down on his groin with her palm, mixing the inside and outside. This makes Jesus moan though Margery isn’t sure if he’s responding to the sensation or the idea. Only his asshole has odor—a dragon guarding the cave. Once inside, she’s elsewhere—underwater though able to breathe. My cathedral is built for a god to see so even secret places have ornament.

His pubic hair looks adolescent; his cock looks big, big, big—big head, big shaft, lots of skin, and looks like it could get bigger.