The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel (25 page)
Read The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel Online
Authors: Sam Torode
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Literary, #Fiction & Literature
When I ran out of verses about breasts, Sarah unveiled her own under the silvery Michigan moon. She lay beside me and we sang a song of our own, our bodies communing in a language more ancient than any spoken tongue.
Mama’s health books had introduced me to the scientific side of sex, and Dr. Herman Waldo Long had given me a few helpful pointers. But those science and technical books didn’t tell half of the truth about sex.
As Craw once told me, some truths are so big, so far beyond our understanding, that the only way we can grasp them is through a myth. Sex is like that. It takes a poem to express the deeper truth of the experience, the part that goes beyond what we can see. Anatomical drawings and Latin terms couldn’t begin describe what I found between Sarah’s legs.
Before that night, some parts of the Song of Solomon didn’t make sense to me. Like this one:
My beloved put his hand by the hole of the door,
and my heart was moved for him.
I rose to open to my beloved,
and my hand dripped with myrrh,
and my fingers dripped with sweet smelling myrrh
upon the handles of the lock.
Now I knew what ol’ Solomon meant by “myrrh.” Sweet, indeed.
And so, on the banks of Leach Lake, I realized my life’s ambition to make love to a beautiful girl before the Rapture. What else was left for me?
To make love again. And again.
And again.
Tarry longer, O Lord.
THE END
MY GRANDPARENTS
For love is stronger than death.
Song of Solomon 8:6
This novel is a retelling of the ancient Jewish tale of Tobias and Sarah (as found in the
Book of Tobit
), set in the world of my grandparents, who met and married in Texas during the Great Depression.
I love to hear from readers, so drop me a note at
[email protected]
.
—
Sam Torode
