Guilt

--


I am thirteen years old, walking home from school. 

Near the school there is a corner store.  Inside the store is a news 
stand.  And on that stand, I know, lie the pages of American Swimwear, 
and other magazines of its ilk. 

Images flash through my mind, young nubile women dressed in bikinis. My 
heart starts to pound.   No, I think to myself, I must resist.    

I start to pray.   My God, please rescue me from the path of evil , the 
prayer echoes in my head.  But the images, the memories of times I have 
succumbed before, haunt me.  I hunger to see the pictures of girls, 
hunger for the alluring midriffs, the bright flowing hair, the curvy 
sensuous legs, the bulging breasts. 

I think of the Book of Proverbs, and its cautionary words,  

	"Keep thee from the evil woman,
	From the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman.
	Lust not after her beauty in thine heart,
	Neither let her take thee with her eyelids.
	For by means of a whorish woman
	A man is brought to a crust of bread..."  

War is on, war between my sexuality and my spirituality.  On the one 
hand are the stern words of the sacred texts.  On the other lie the 
clarion call of my hormones and the tantalizing beauty of the swimwear 
models.  I think of them and I feel the stirrings of an erection in my 
loins.   "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after hath committed 
adultery with her already in his heart."  

Temptation, they call it.  "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us 
from evil."  But evil lies within me, inside my body, dying for its 
hunger.  It wants to lust for the girls, wants to feel the passion of 
raw animal physical desire, wants to leer at their bodies and stare 
hungrily at them.   

Sometimes I resist.  Other times I succumb.  And I go into the corner 
store, excited, and open the magazine delightedly.  The erection rises 
like a storm.  I stand there in triumphant adolescence, tension boiling 
in my loins, penis hard as iron, sensations swirling.  Pleasure courses 
through me as I leaf hungrily through the magazine, absorbing page after 
page of female skin.  I feel the familiar wetness of pre-cum soaking 
into my underwear. 

Soon I can endure it no more.  I rush home quickly, the 
pictures and memories reeling in my mind.  I dive into bed 
and let my imagination run wild.  I think of girls' skin, girls' bodies, 
girls teasing me, pleasing me, fondling me.  The visions become a swirl 
as I lie on my back, my entire brain suffused by its hungry hormones.  
Finally I can endure no more; I roll over and masturbate onto the bed.  
Ejaculation comes within seconds.  During that moment of orgasm all the 
vision, all the splendor, rushes through me.  For five seconds I am in 
paradise, nirvana, joy, heaven, all the pleasure that can exist on this 
world. 

And then it is over. 

I lie on the bed with a pool of semen beneath me and a pool of guilt 
inside me.  "Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of 
death."  The stern words echo in my mind.  I start to curse myself for 
my weakness, my selfishness, my lustfulness, my cruel sexual sins.  I 
begin to pray again, praying for God's forgiveness, praying that never 
again will I commit this abomination.  I ask Jesus to guard the door to 
my heart, lead me to righteousness and make me whole. 

But in the back of my mind, there is a thought, burning, that despite 
God, despite will, sometime, somewhen, I will do this all again. 

"He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter..."