Mass brought out the worst in me that way, especially when I used to try giving up masturbation for Lent, or at least Lenten Sundays. Somehow the attempt always threw me into a frenzy of eroticism, as when someone tells you not to think of a certain word, ’pineapple’ for instance, and your sentences become haunted by that word, and all you can see for hours is that fruit, prickling across your retinas. Not that I tried those givings-up in order to enhance my solitary sex life; the attempt to quash my lust was genuine, if hopeless. It was just that the church was, the perfect environment for what they still called impure thoughts in those days. Perhaps because the body was so limited in its movements, so dulled and contained, that the mind ran riot. Besides, I had always found the most effective fantasy was not to imagine one thing and do something similar, but to imagine one thing while doing something totally different. This did require some mental gymnastics; I had to practise quite a bit before I was able to lie on my back in bed and imagine I was standing against a wall in a dark nightclub, or face-down in a field of daisies. But the effects were wonderful. The body was bewildered, tricked into letting go. On my own or with Cara, I found that a demanding hand could metamorphose into an angelic tongue, or vice versa, and I could float free of the literal. Though always at the last minute Cara managed to hook me back, anchoring my swell to the here and now.

The Monsignor’s regretful homily was over at last, praise be. We all struggled to our feet and chanted our way through the creed. I used to take this very seriously indeed, trying to comprehend and wholly believe each item on the list in the second or two it took to say it. I had them all in hand by the time of my confirmation at the age of eleven, I remembered, except for the resurrection of the body, which was just too silly to believe. At least, until I discovered the big O a few years later. Such rapture made me believe anything of the human body, even that it could rot away to nothing and then be revived in the playing-fields of heaven.

When it came to the sign of peace, the man in front of me [136] with the roll of shaved red neck turned and took my hand in both of his, very gently. I gave him a startled smile. Mr Wall’s papery fingers were next. I hesitated before reaching out to Kate, as did she; then we shook hands too heartily, to compensate. Her palm was startlingly warm. I tried to remember if I had ever touched her skin before.

‘He Is Lord’, the choir were moaning. Of course God wasn’t really a he; I couldn’t imagine that there were testicles in heaven. But pronouns were handy things, and that was the one I had been brought up with; ’it’ was horribly inanimate, and ’she’ a nice idea, but too self-conscious for me. I had to work with what I’d got, the childhood patterns of helpless prayer. It should be said that I had little interest in God the Father; he seemed to be the chief executive, rarely glimpsed in the corridors, with his own fan club of those Christians who could really only respect a middle-aged man. No, the one I worshipped, in my low-key chatty way, was Jesus, because though I called him Lord as I had been taught, he was not by any stretch of the imagination a patriarch. I saw him as a nice young guy with five o’clock shadow, the kind who might turn up on your doorstep, clearing his throat deferentially, and you would say, hey, come in, there’s spaghetti in the pot. To be really fair, I supposed, I should have worshipped the widely neglected Holy Spirit, but I only know it as a flame or a dove, and doves were basically pigeons, and pigeons outside museums were irritating to the point of deserving a kick. Once I tried to imagine the HS as a woman, but the result kept flapping her Victorian lace sleeves and coughing and saying ’Don’t mind me’. So I talked to the Lord instead. He was a better listener than most men I knew; he never butted in with ’I think what you’re trying to say is. (pp.136-37.)

[...]

I was still rigid, halfway down the street. A sign for the Pro-Cathedral seemed a useful hint; I climbed its steps. It was smaller than I had remembered from the odd midnight mass my mother brought me and Gavin to when we were children, but still impressive. Banks of candles flamed on every side; ten pence for a little cup, twenty for the tall tapers, one of which (beneath Mary’s hem) keeled over as I walked by. I stopped to straighten it. Others had flags or ruffs of white wax. I would have liked to light one, but I had no more change. Our Lady’s head was bent under a crown of thorns with ten electric lights on it, strangely reminiscent of the European Community logo. She also had a faint blush. ‘I’m No Saint Reveals Queen of Heaven’, or maybe ‘Only Technically a Virgin Says Lesbo Mary’. [187] / She must rue the day she had him, I thought, watching her pained eyes. All those high hopes, and then he went and got himself killed; what an anti-climax.’ (pp.187-88.)

[...]

The hood of the clitoris was not a hood to take off, only to push back. In fact the whole thing was a series of folds and layers, a magical Pass the Parcel in which the gift was not inside the wrappings, but was the wrappings. If you touched the glans directly it would be too sharp, like a blow. It was touching it indirectly, through and with the hood, that felt so astonishing. Like an endearment in a mundane sentence, or a cherry on a rockbun, the combination was all. It was not the bald revelation that thrilled me, but the moment of revealing; not the veil or the bare body, but the movement of unveiling.’ (p.257.)