Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
Jesus Christ walked me home from a Quaker meeting. He was all leers and innuendo. He said, "Baby, I've been around the block. But let me tell you: I've never seen a face like yours. You are one pretty girl."
I was flattered by the attention. Who wouldn't be? Don't believe the things you hear. He's got this insouciant sex appeal, this willingness to be familiar. That first time we met, he walked his fingers down my arm like a spider. When they reached my hand, he tried to hold it. He asked, "Is this okay?" pretending to be a gentleman. I yanked my hand away.
"Listen," I said, "you're taking this the wrong way. I'm not doing this religion thing because of you. I happen to like Quakers."
This was not a brush-off, but the absolute truth. I do like Quakers. I always have. I like their pacifism and serenity. I like their sense of equality. I like their ability to just sit in silence, and to listen, and I like the very idea of them — the doctrine of the Inner Light and the groovy schools and the kindly man on the oatmeal box.
Jesus tried to impress me with Quakerisms, calling me "Friend" and so forth, but I wasn't convinced. It's true what I told him, I'm not a religious person — not in any educated way. I don't know much about Jesus, but I'm not completely lacking intuition. I'm fairly certain: he's no Quaker.
But he was persistent, phoning all the time. He'd show up on my doorstep at polite, convenient hours. He wasn't attractive to me initially, but his face could mutate in a way that was sort of titillating. He had that scraggly blond hair, and those blue eyes. You've seen the pictures, those colored moving holograms. He looks just like that, but less kitschy — more intriguing — in the flesh.
He'd bring flowers and chocolate and say corny things like "sweets for the sweet." What could I do? He wasn't just some stranger off the street, some loser I'd met in a bar. This was Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. It didn't feel right not to invite him inside.
He said, "You're so pretty, every inch of you." He said, "It's so refreshing to spend time with a really intelligent woman." I began to put some of my prejudice aside. I told him some of my secrets, and he listened closely. He listened like I had something important to say.
One night he brought over spare ribs so we could barbeque. I made the sauce myself. He came up behind me while I stirred Roma tomatoes into sauteed garlic. He wrapped his arms around my waist and bit the base of my neck. He said, "I've got to tell you, Baby. If I can't have you soon, I'm going to go crazy."
I wouldn't normally give in to this sort of come-on, but don't underestimate him. He can be very charming and persuasive. And besides: he didn't seem to have any place to go. He had such a sad look about him, and I had such a clear vision of what he'd been through. I knew that all over the world, people were praying to him, singing to him, pleading with him. And here he was, pressing my hips into the electric stove. I turned off the burner.
A few minutes later, when he pushed himself into me, my meager bed became satin sheets and lace
He let out a moan, like all these years he'd done nothing but wait for this very moment.
pillows. His body shuddered, and he let out a moan like all these years — these thousands of years — he'd done nothing but wait for this very moment.
Afterward, I soaped up his back in the tub. Thirty-nine lashes looked like so many more, this raised and red and intricate network.
"Did it hurt?" I asked him.
He said, "Baby, I don't want to talk about that."
I pushed his hair out of the way, and ran my tongue along those inverse grooves. It was hard to find a trail I could follow — the scars stopped and splintered. So I went up and down, across and back. I licked the nape of his neck, the base of his spine. He turned and wrapped his legs around me. Water sloshed onto the bathroom floor.
"I think I might stay here a while," he said. "If that's all right with you." I nodded, and he slipped back into me. "M-hm," he said. "You are feeling like home."
Before too long, he wanted to travel. It wasn't enough, the meals I cooked for him. I made him roasts and casseroles, tortes and pecan pies. He ate potfuls of Brunswick stew. My body grew soft and round just from watching him eat, while his looked more hollow after every meal. When he kissed me, the bones in his jaw felt sharp and malnourished.
We fucked in every one of my small rooms — under the bed and over it — but he wanted to get out in the open air.
"You have no idea what I've missed," he said to me. "I want to see the world."
So I packed up my things and followed him.
We went everywhere together. We parasailed in Key West, we climbed Longs Peak in the Rockies. We drank wine in Napa Valley. We skied through a wind storm in the frozen tundra.
"Jesus," I called to him, when the snow began to swirl. "I can't see."
The most desolate landscape, blocked from my sight. "It's okay," he shouted. "I'm coming back for you."
I could hear snow banks moving, shifting and buckling. My fingers burned inside my gloves. For a second I felt like the whole world had fallen away, and I would be left here to freeze. Then I heard him sliding back to me.
I felt his hand, but couldn't see his face in the storm. He tied a rope around my waist. "I'll lead you out," he said.
Ice pelted my cheeks. I moved my feet forward, seeing nothing but his tracks in the snow, trusting him completely. When we finally got between the trees, I was stronger than Sampson and Delilah put together. We dug a cave in the snow and spent the night. His hair was so long, it wrapped around my entire body.
"Do you think I'm beautiful?" I asked.
"He said, "Beautiful? Yeah, I think you're beautiful. Do you think I'm beautiful?"
I said, "Yes, I do." But I was surprised that he would ask.
Cold as it was, we made love in that snow cave. He ended up with frostbitten fingers. We made jokes about the stigmata, and in the morning pushed back to the continental U.S.. Once we got there, he said what he always did. "When I think of what I've been missing. The whole world. After all that sand and wind, the last place I need is a frozen wasteland."
"Sure," I said. I didn't care. I would have gone anywhere with him. He wanted to go South. I wanted his happiness, and I missed the Quakers. So I followed.
Don't think I didn't suffer, sleeping beside that pale white ghost. He could be sweet, absolutely, but on the whole it was a lonely business. We listened to Christian radio on every highway. We saw the billboards and the advertisements and the verses posted in front of every church. He thought it was funny, but my body convulsed with jealously every time we saw the name Mary Magdalene. My heart: how it would break when we drove down a busy street. His head swivelled at the sight of every pretty young thing — woman or man.
But he said, "Baby, you're the only one for me." And I believed him.
We traveled the states and did everything that could be done. In Missoula, Montana we went through the dumpsters behind McDonald's and Burger King, the ones marked "inedible." We took the meat back to our hotel and grilled it. Jesus made the special sauce with ketchup and mayonnaise. Afterward we went to a Quaker meeting. We sat for an entire hour in silence. No one had a single word to say.
Look. I'm telling you this because I think it's important that you know. We went everywhere together. He taught me things about my body I'd never known. He taught me curves and crevices and loopholes. He taught me my spine, my vulva, my femur. He had these long fingernails, sculpted and curved as if they were meant for
"Listen," I said. "I've been having a love affair with Jesus." Some of the Quakers nodded.
scooping. He combed my hair with them before I went to sleep, stroked and combed and teased until I drifted away. Nobody, not even my mother, had ever done that for me. I woke up a while later. He was coming between my breasts. I was sleeping. He was fucking my breasts, and I was sleeping.
He said, "How could you be upset or angry? You know what you are to me, what your body means to me."
"I don't know," I said. "How can I know when you never tell me?"
He said, "You're not making any sense. Baby, I tell you all the time."
Which was true. He told me all the time. But all I could see was a body hovering over me in the dark, greedy and attenuated like so many others, and I couldn't be sure of anything.
I stood up at a Quaker meeting in Eugene. Jesus and I had been sitting with the Friends for half an hour. A woman had just quoted from a Quaker pamphlet: "I hold up persons before God in intercession, loving them and seeing them with God, longing for a healing and redeeming power to course through their lives."
"Listen," I said. "I've been having a love affair with Jesus. It's the most incredible thing I've ever experienced. The things I'm learning, about myself and the world, there's almost no way to articulate it."
Some of the Quakers nodded. Some of them gazed out the window. Some of them had their eyes closed.
"Sometimes I'm afraid. But what I'm learning," I said, "what I know is that I am the body of God. You see? He's been inside me. God has a spiritual form, and that's intangible and genderless. But when God comes to earth, He needs a receptacle. You see? I am the body of God."
I wanted to say more, to get explicit. But how could I offend these gentle Quakers? The were so serene and kind. They listened to me with such conditioned patience, such innate respect.
Jesus reached up and tugged my hand. I sat down and bowed my head in silence. I knew he could tell, I had started to want things. Listen, I would think, lying in the dark and listening to him snore. I will leave my home for you. I will slice onions and fry bread and shave chocolate. I will contort my body into any shape that pleases. I will lick your scars and soap your body and wake up in the night while you're already doing whatever you like. I will follow your tracks across the frozen tundra. What will you do for me?
Of course you know what he did. He took me to Bolinas and left me there.
"It seems like you're wanting to settle down," he said. We moved into an old yellow house across the street from the Catholic church. He liked being near the ocean. He liked the town — the tie dyed shirts and the wooden bakery and the Nazareth look of the locals. One day in the dairy section of the little grocery store, we heard a man in a frayed poncho say, "Jesus was actually a very righteous man. Wise and kind. It's the Christians who've fucked up the world." I raised my eyebrows, and Jesus laughed like crazy. He always loved it when people said that.
He wanted more time to himself. He skipped meetings and went to Mass. The sex began slacking off. Then one morning I saw him walking down Main street with his arm around another man's shoulders. From the back they looked like a pair of girls — all slim hips and flowing hair.
"You're taking this completely wrong," Jesus said, when I marched over to confront him. But I could tell by the other man's sheepish grin, I'd taken it exactly right.
At home he packed while I begged and pleaded. "I never meant to hurt you," he said. "But there's only so much you can expect from a man like me."
I asked him about everything he'd promised, and he put his hands over his eyes like he might weep, or fall over from exhaustion. I couldn't help myself. I wanted to reach out and hold him. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to let him rest.
"I'm tired of all these promises," he said. "I can't be held to every last one. You don't understand what I've missed. What I've been through. I want to see the world."
He kissed me on the forehead like he cared about what happened to me. Then he closed the door, and he was gone.
Alone in Bolinas, I reenacted the crucifixion hourly. I thought how good it would feel to pound nails into those bony lying hands, those knobby clumsy feet. He'd be up there for days, begging for water, and I'd just stand, drinking lemonade and watching.
I wanted to shout. "Jesus. You scum-sucking motherfucker. You worthless sleazebag. You lying piece of shit."
All this to say and no one to say it to. Jesus didn't leave a forwarding address, and no telephone number either. I droveout to Berkeley and went to a Quaker meeting. I stood up the minute it started.
"Jesus," I said. "I have something to say to you."
The room was so quiet. People had their hands folded and their eyes closed. They wore mismatched bonnets and shoes, their dresses were too tight around the waist. The men were losing their hair. It was so heartbreaking I felt like I could cry.
I said nothing. I just sat back down.
When I got home, he was waiting for me, holding a yellow rose.
The woman next to me put her arm around my shoulders. She could have been burnt at the stake three hundred years ago. Her dress looked cotton and homemade, her face had raised and sunken grooves. There was a round piece of lace that covered the grey bun at the nape of her neck.
I pictured an airy room with no electricity or running water. I saw this woman bringing me trays with silver tea sets and scones. I heard her singing hymns while she rubbed my head to help me sleep.
Another woman got up and sang a Joan Baez song in a quivering, off-key voice. Everyone turned to each other and shook hands, and the meeting was over.
When I got home, there he was waiting for me, holding a yellow rose.
"Oh ho," I said. "The resurrection."
He smiled and said, "Come on back, huh? We could go to Mexico. They love me down in Mexico."
I pictured an endless landscape of ceramic statues — garland crucifixes and streaming colored ribbons.
"No," I told him, "thanks just the same."
He looked despondent and pathetic, that craggy face drooping with a cartoon frown. I took the rose and said something about having no regrets. He crossed the street and walked into the church. I looked at my watch. Just in time for the afternoon confessional.
Don't think I've forgotten. I'm not immune to sentiment. I keep a plaster replica of the Virgin on my mantel. Sometimes I buy rainbow-colored holograms of his face, and I cut them into shreds.
He calls me from time to time, but I hang up the phone. I know how the promise goes, and that I haven't seen the last of him.
Meanwhile, I keep my mouth shut. I keep my promises where no one can see them. I never miss him, and you'll know when he's on his way. Because that's when you'll see me running. In one direction, or the other. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Nina de Gramont is the author of a collection of short stories, Of Cats and Men. She has stories this autumn in The Cream City Review and The Canary River Review. She lives on Cape Cod with her husband, David Gessner.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
