chapter 17
Decca, Pentecost
“Wait... you’re telling me you’re allowed to perform exorcisms?”
Gus uncrossed his arms, considering the question before nodding slowly.
He played with his glass, twisting it on the white paper, smearing the condensation ring and dragging it through the little pools of water to create blobs.
It was hot in the restaurant. There were too many people looking at us. At the priest on a date with the goth girl. I started to sweat just sitting here. It felt like being under a spotlight.
I stared slack-jawed at Gus, handsome as ever in his priest garb, even if it was intimidating. He’d been a priest for a few weeks now, and he was more at ease in his new armor. Unless it was a nod or a kind smile to a stranger, he paid no attention to the nervous glances. It almost put me at ease.
“An exorcism is the first part of every baptism.”
I smiled. An image was now taking root. Gus holding a Bible and a cross over the forehead of a split pea soup-spitting prepubescent girl, sprinkling holy water over her bed as she crab-walked up the walls.
“I know that look in your eyes. Don’t get all excited.”
“What look?” I asked innocently. Too late. I was already sexually objectifying him.
Our food arrived and he bit into his blue cheese burger like a starving man. Technically, he was. He’d been fasting from meat and dairy for weeks, which meant Gus had been living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Not that I’d been around much, but I’d seen the evidence in the trash.
“Dismiss what you think you know about Catholics from us. It’s not provocative. It’s not like The Exorcist,” he said, sipping (or pretending to sip) from his beer glass. “Any of the Exorcists,” he clarified.
Setting his messy burger down and wiping his hands, he quoted somewhat absently, “Be rebuked and depart to thy own Tartaros, O Satan. Banish from her every evil and unclean spirit hidden and lurking in her heart.” He shrugged. “There’s more, but that’s the gist. It’s not that exciting.”
My sweat-slicked skin chilled at his words. At the slow, lazy way he drawled them. At the look on his face after, as he lifted the glass to his lips and sipped without breaking eye contact. I hugged my arms around my body to brush away my goosebumps.
It was our first date. My husband had asked me out on a date to eat bougie burgers and listen to an Americana-folk trio. And here we were talking demons and exorcisms as if they were real. And it was turning me on.
“You’re always welcome to attend catechism with Vasili. I could christen you. Give you an exorcism to cast out your demons.” He smirked.
“Mmm… I think I’m good with my demons,” I said, seductively.
He blinked and pressed his lips into a firm line. “I think you mean that as a sexy thing, but that’s like...” he shook his head.
“Too far?”
“Yeah.” His eyebrows drew together in thought. “That’s interesting. I consider myself pretty progressive. Too progressive, really, for Orthodoxy, but... I guess I do have a trigger.” He said it like it had come as a surprise.
“Making light of demonic activity?”
He chewed a fry and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”
That was interesting. The man had a Satanic Bible on his shelf. He accepted so many philosophies and religions as existing under the yoke of God, even if his church didn’t. But demons... that was his boundary.
Granny had believed in demons. And her parents and their parents. The belief was as deep as the roots of the mountains themselves.
Some people will think on a thing ’til it comes real, Granny would say.
She respected the stories and lore. Never dismissed them for ignorance.
That was the thing about the mountains. The thing I’d learned even before I’d left. Why I did the work I did. It wasn’t just empathy that I’d brought with me to burials and deathbeds. It was a curiosity and acceptance of the unknown.
The only thing I knew of faith was that I had no answers.
I suspected that even with his dogma, his rituals, his collar, deep down, Gus felt the same.
My eyes lingered on the white tab at his throat. It was still new. He’d been ordained weeks ago, and since then, his wardrobe hadn’t deviated from black shirts and pants with the Roman collar when he was out and about, and the various cassocks he wore over it at work.
He crossed his arms and leaned back on the tufted velvet banquette, eyeing me with an amused look when he saw where my lustful gaze was trained. “Divorce your ideas from Catholicism,” he reprimanded. “The collar’s just a collar. Like a tie. What is it about the clerical wardrobe you like so much?”
It wasn’t just the priestliness. I liked men in ties, too.
He scanned the bill with his phone. I didn’t think I’d ever been on a date where I’d let the man pay. Just now, with Gus, I’d let him do it without thinking. It was an interesting form of intimacy.
We’d talked about a joint checking account, but it was basically theoretical, and we hadn’t made the move yet. The significance of him paying—of me barely noticing I was letting him—made me all warm and gooey inside. Almost drowsy with happiness.
I pressed my lips together, trying to decipher what exactly I found so fascinating about his neck. “Joining the priesthood—any priesthood—is extreme. I’m drawn to extremes. It’s more than the titillation of corrupting a man who’s off limits, although I know it might look like it. And I’ll admit, there’s a bit of fetishy vibe at play. Only a tiny bit, though.” I’d never thought about this before. Now I was doing my thinking out loud, which was never a good thing. “I like men who can sexually restrain themselves. The collar represents that restraint, even if you are technically married... The collar expresses the repression of selfish desire for the greater good. You’re not to be touched. You belong to God.”
“I don’t, though. I belong to you.”
I looked up sharply. His normally intense eyes were tempered with a vulnerability that I didn’t often get to see.
Was that really how he saw it? For an instant, I allowed myself to bask in those words.
I belong to you.
“I became your husband first, before I became a priest.” He said it matter-of-factly. A mere statement of ownership, of giving me responsibility. A second later, he slid out of his bench, leaving me overheating and unable to swivel off my chair. “That’s why the church allows married men to become ordained. And doesn’t allow priests to marry.”
His words were an explosion aimed at my solar plexus. Excitement radiated down my spine and arms. Every nerve was telling me to reach for him, to press the pads of my fingertips against his exposed forearms and feel the warmth of his skin, the sinew underneath. We’d reached some kind of tipping point tonight.
Then why are you still restraining yourself? I wanted to ask, alerting him to the irony of the fact that he married me so he wouldn’t have to remain celibate for the rest of his life, and yet here we were, six weeks into a sexless marriage.
I cleared my throat. Then I remembered there was a glass of ice water in front of me and I sucked down half of it before taking a final sip of my wine and managing to stand on shaking legs. “Why wear it, then?”
He laughed. “The Orthodox church doesn’t give me much choice in uniform. It’s the collar, or the cassock. But I guess it’s the same as a doctor wearing a white coat, or a cop, their badge.”
“But they can take off the coat and the badge for date nights and days off.”
“I don’t get days off. Somebody always needs a priest.”
“There’s also the fact that a cop uniform can be triggering for some people.”
“So is the collar,” he said with a twinge of sadness.
I hadn’t thought about how he must feel being a walking trigger. To see hate, fear, and sadness in the eyes of strangers and know you’re the manifestation of their abuse.
He was quiet for a moment before elaborating. “Most people are simply surprised to see a priest in public. Some are traumatized by it. It’s heartbreaking. Seeing their reactions. The dimming of their eyes when they see me. The church was supposed to offer safety and healing and forgiveness.” His eyes grew angry and cold. “Instead, the clergy only represents darkness for them. The most insidious and hateful monsters. For that reason, I wouldn’t wear this stupid piece of plastic if it wasn’t required, but… there is a benefit. Many people have questions. About life, death, God. They’re drawn to it.” He smirked at me. “In a non-fetishy way.”
“I always thought it was to set yourselves apart.”
“You really think I have any desire to stand out as being holier than thou? I wear this because people recognize it. So they can seek me out if they want to talk. I’m always on call to talk to anyone, of any faith, or no faith. No one who’s not Orthodox sees a rasson or an anderí and would identify me as clergy. Even the Orthodox are used to the collar now. The beards and long hair, though... that’s a different story.”
“I thought that was just your style.”
“I’d prefer short hair and clean shaven.”
“No way.”
He nodded solemnly, but there was a twinkle in his eyes. He knew I liked his hair and beard. Same as I liked his collar.
We wandered down Fourth Avenue, making our way nowhere, slowly. It was nicer being out in the hot night than in the hot house with an air conditioner that needed fixing. The humidity was ungodly, and Gus’s hair was curling up endearingly at the ends where it was tucked behind his ears.
“So why the beard and long hair? To look more like Jesus?”
He smirked. “It’s supposed to humble us—to make the servants of the Lord less attractive—”
I snorted. “You know that didn’t work, right?”
“But it didn’t become a thing until the Council of Toulouse, when the Pope commanded that all Catholic priests should cut their hair and not allow their beards to grow like laymen. The Orthodox patriarchs decided our clergy should grow beards so we didn’t look Catholic.”
“So, you have a beard to spite the Pope?” I smiled.
“A twelfth-century Pope.” He grinned widely, looking so devilishly handsome my heart was seized again with the desire to hold him and kiss every inch of his body. “There’s more nuance involved. That’s the internet meme version of the truth, but in this case, I like it.”
“So, why were you drawn to religion in the first place?”
“Why not?”
When he reached out and clasped my hand in his, I gasped. Did he really…?
“Is this okay?” he asked.
I stared at our hands. “Y-yes.”
My heart had stopped. I was dead.
No, it didn’t stop. It pounded extra hard, thudding inside my chest, rocking me. I looked down in disbelief. He threaded our fingers together without saying anything more and kept walking. I willed my feet to move in step with his, but all I could think about was how my hand felt in his, his callouses scraping against my palm, the dry warmth of his long, thick fingers, and how much I loved him taking without asking, just because I was his to take.
I shook my head to clear it. What had I been trying to ask him?
“You’re obviously a spiritually tolerant man. So why go into a line of work that’s so dogmatic and rigorous?”
“I was raised in the church. For a lot of Greeks, the church is a secular space. A cultural center. You go to church on Sunday to be around your people. Greek school to learn the language. Greek dance classes to become Zorba.”
We’d reached his truck where it was parked on the street. Instead of opening the door, he leaned back against the passenger’s side, pulling me between his spread feet on the curb. He rested my hand between both of his, running his fingers across the top, tracing the veins and tendons, rubbing circles across my knuckles.
Oh. Hang on. This was not the skittish dog behavior I’d come to expect from him.
When he spoke, it was to the hand he continued caressing. The gentleness of the motion sent shivers up my arm. The sensation was heaven, a gentleness that was almost unbearable.
“For me, though, it had always been about the spirituality. Even when I was a shitbag teenager and it wasn’t cool to admit it, I loved being an acolyte and serving behind the altar. I loved looking up at the dome in the center of the church and feeling small, but also feeling that Christ himself was coming down to my level and meeting me where I was. I loved the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, a woman raised in the inner rooms of the temple—places men were rarely allowed to tread. It filled me with purpose and light.
“I mean, would I have rather slept in on Sunday mornings? Absolutely. But I always felt better walking out of church.
“I know it’s not the norm for a lot of people—for most people, maybe—but church was the one place I never felt judged, even by myself. I want others to feel the same. I want to continue cultivating that in our church, the way Vasili’s always done. There’s something about Orthodoxy that meets you where you are and doesn’t push. If you want nothing more than to receive blessed oil on Holy Wednesday, or just bring home the lit candle after we sing Christos Anesti during the midnight Resurrection service, I welcome that. Even if it means I won’t see you for another year.”
He lowered my hand, put his own in his pockets.
”I like philosophy,“ he continued. “I appreciate the spirituality people develop outside the structure of religion. But I love the puzzle of theology. There are firm pieces that all fit together. No one’s quite solved it yet, but I think it can be done. God is a concept many people feel the need to rename. But it doesn’t matter what you call Him... Her... It, if the concept of God was always wrong. The world is reeling from bad religion. From the corruption of the old Catholic Popes, or the abuses of shitty evangelical megachurches. My own religion isn’t exempt from unethical practices or misguided zealotry. None of us are perfect. But I see value in simple ritual and being part of a community of faith.”