I tried to make sense out of the last several days as the plane began its descent across the eastern Atlantic into the peninsular city of Dakar, capital of Senegal. From there it would be several hours of a dusty ride northeast to the village of Sagata, in Louga Province. I tried hard not to think of this as a banishment, and why it might have been banishment baffled me. The bishop had seduced me. I hadn't been anything but reserved in the monastery until he had lain with me—or, more pointedly until I had agree to lay under him. I was very careful because of my past. But then, of course, Bishop Dominic had known of my past. And with the power that gave him over me, what choice did I have but to lay under him when he commanded that of me?
It was black men—large, muscular black men—who had been my downfall. Bishop Dominic was a large black man. The man sitting next to me in the plane was one too. Big, muscular, a heady musky scent of masculinity about him. Someone who could hold me captive and have his way with me, as men had when I was working the streets of New Orleans—before I was saved, brought into the Catholic Church, and given purpose and a cassock.
I sensed that the man sitting next to me in the plane—most probably a Senegalese businessman—was interested in me. But he hadn't signaled nor did I expect him to. My black cassock now was a barrier to that. I had taken up the priesthood for the barrier it would provide.
It didn't provide a barrier to Bishop Dominic. He'd said that it was a reality of his sect of the Liberal Catholic Church, a progressive, serving church that worked the streets of New Orleans—the soup kitchens and the food pantries, the addiction and AIDS clinics, and the counseling for the downtrodden and social victims. I had been such a victim of society, he told me. I grew up virtually on the street. And being small of stature, more pretty than handsome, and vulnerable, I was able to survive on the streets of New Orleans only by selling my body to men.
That had all changed, of course, with the Liberal Catholic Church took me in, gave me a home and a purpose, and sent me through seminary. Bishop Dominic had guided me the whole way. And when I was under his charge, in his monastery, he explained to me that his was a particularly liberal sect of the Liberal Catholic Church. He said that, although certain things were banned, personal pleasure and physical release weren't—and receiving this from and giving it to other men wasn't irrevocably counted as a sin. Bishop Dominic certainly had his way with walking the edge. There were limits, though, to what would stop short of sin in men having their pleasure with other men. Physical penetration was a sin. These limits didn't prevent him from touching me and kissing me. And it didn't prevent him from coming to my cell in the night, lying beside me, and touching me intimately to evoke physical release and urging me to do the same with him.
Release was good and necessary, he'd said. It wasn't sodomy in his sect's definition of the term. The full meaning of this meant nothing to me at the time. I probably should have asked for specific guidance. Over the weeks the touching led to grasping and stroking with the hand—and providing sexual release, first him masturbating me and this moving into the two of us masturbating each other simultaneously. Eventually, it went to him lying on top of me or stretched out behind me, or the two of us standing, and him holding me close, and masturbating me while I held his cock between my thighs and he stroked it there to an ejaculation.
There was a steady escalation of the need for arousal and release, though, and one night we were breathing hard and writhing against each other, his shaft between my thighs, his hand on my cock, and I begged, "Do it. Take me. Don't tease me anymore. Fuck me."
I was in such a state of arousal, having had men inside me before, that my mind went to all of the black bulls—muscular, powerful men just like the bishop—who had taken me fully. My need and pleading moved his arousal beyond his control, and he brought his thick, hard cock up, entered my ass slowly but deeply, and began to move it increasingly vigorously inside me. I had been fucked—and roughly so—before. There was nothing I was doing with him that I had not experienced with men before. We bucked against each other to a shared ejaculation, his shaft deep inside my channel. He satisfied my need as well as any man had done. I could tell that he had been equally moved and satisfied—at least to the fulfillment of his release.
It then had been as if he'd been struck by lightning, though. He sprang from the bed and ran out of the cell, crying out "Sodomy!" Moments later he reappeared, demanded to take my confession as a tempter, and handed me a hand whip. My penance was painful and self-inflicted. He assured me that his would be too. He stayed around to ensure I used the whip on myself and it seemed to me that he enjoyed watching that.
I didn't see him after that. I was confined to my cell. Two days later I was called into the presence of Father Mark, Bishop Dominic's confessor, and informed that I was leaving imminently for a foreign mission assignment to a Liberal Catholic Church community church and school in Sagata, Senegal. It was, of course, spoken of as a privilege and a progression of my training as a Catholic priest. I had difficulty seeing it that way.
I didn't understand what I had done. I didn't understand the difference between what Bishop Dominic seduced me into doing and what sodomy was—at least how the bishop's sect defined sodomy.
* * * *
The two men, both big, black, muscular brutes, wearing loincloths were wrestling in the center of a crudely marked ring in the dust at the center of the village. Each was trying to take the other down as they locked chests, embraced each other with muscular arms, and danced around in a circle. It aroused me. I knew both of the men, and both of them aroused me even when they weren't pitting muscle against muscle in a dance of control and domination. I was hard inside my black cassock, and I so wanted to touch myself. But there was no way of doing so in the public square without attracting notice.
Idrissa, the rectory's cook and housekeeper, tall, willowy, and dark brown, stood beside me, egging the men on. One of the men in the ring, Malik, was my driver—and Idrissa's lover. The two made little effort to hide their sex play from me. Indeed, when I had been driven from the airport—by Malik—to the bishopric in Dakar, Bishop Jawara, yet another black giant, had alluded to the relationship between the two.
"There is a certain intimacy going on in the rectory of your church and school, Brother Gordon," he said. "I didn't want you to think I didn't know and would worry about telling me, but the men aren't priests and we are a tolerant sect. They are both good men—and are faithful to the church. You will find that life in this part of the world is simpler and more primeval than in most."
The bishop was standing close to me when he said that, touching the sleeve of my cassock, and exuding the same manly musky scent as the man sitting next to me on the plane had done. Because of my past, I had difficulty sometimes determining when a man was being friendly and solicitous and when he wanted to be intimate. This was such a moment.
