Post Winter Fire: He has risen

I love it when worlds collide. Easter weekend may not be the best time to hold a kinky conference in a hotel blocks away from the Capital: Easter egg roll on the White House lawn, Spring Break and cherry blossoms -vs- fucking machines, play piercing and tantric sex. It's all just a fantastic sociological experiment just aching to go horribly, horribly wrong.

But I love Easter. It's my favorite holiday: little girls in pretty dresses and little boys in ties, women with big crazy hats, PAAS, Cadbury Eggs, plastic grass, and the beginning of Spring. Rebirth, renewal, it's all good. It's also the one day out of the year I go to church. I'm not very religous and was raised in a pretty secular household. We went through a church phase for a while and then we all grew tired of it. But once a year, I like to sit in a pew, listen to a choir and watch the sun shine through stained glass.

I had been debating going all weekend. Did I really want to get up early, miss the Fucking Machines class and sit in church for an hour? Who knew what state I was going to be in Sunday morning? Aside from that "am I hung-over or am I still drunk?" feeling, I was doing alright. Plus, I really wanted to go to the Kinky Barbershop class, but it was at 10:30, church time.

But when God closes a door, he opens a window. Lucky for me there was a church just a few blocks away from the hotel. It was a Lutheran Church that was temporarily housing a United Church of Christ church (the denomination I grew up with) while their own building was under repair. So, the UCC service didn't start until 1:00. Perfect!

I made it to the Kinky Barbershop, but had to leave early to change. I wore these black boots with little kitten heels that seem tame enough, but the last time I wore them was at a BDSM club, so as far as I was concerned, from the knees down I was still in the dungeon. It was a beautiful, sunny mild day and it was nice to get out of the hotel and walk in the sunshine for a while. I sat down near the back and watched people greeting each other and helping old ladies into pews. I tugged my off-white sweater over the red-wrist band and tried not to look like the proverbial "whore in church."

Church always makes me cry. I don't know why, but as soon as the music started so did the water works. I held them back the best I could, I concentrated on my breathing, I kissed the pew with my asshole á la "Erotic Breathwork" and pulled myself together. The choir was really lovely, but by the time the sermon started, I began wondering what I was missing back at the Hilton. Then I opened up the program to follow the lyrics of the chosen hymn:

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me
Melt me,
Mold me,
Fill me,
Use me,
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me

That was it. The knowing smirk was now permanently etched on my face for the rest of the service. I had an overwhelming urge to steal a hymnal for some reason. So the remaining time was spent plotting the best way to sneak out a hymnal without anyone seeing me: old lady to the left of me, WASPy family to the right of me. I could put the book in my lap, cover it with my coat... I could bend down to check my bag and slip it in...

I chickened out in the end and put a $10 bill in the collection plate.