I don't know how she does it.
I hadn't more than stepped one minute out of my morning ice-cold, therapeutic shower – my designer shower cap in hand – when my iPhone Big Ben Bell toned me.
(BUM-bum-be-BUM! Be-BUM-bum-bum!)
Who else would chime me in, bum me out so to speak, so early? My favorite spiritual telemarketer, come hell or high water, Sr. Serena Scatterpin, Renegade Sisters of Mary. Hand me a Neiman St. Marcus initialed towel.
"Are you fully awake, my child? Are you relatively decent? It's 6:30 in the a and m. May one safely assume as a BTL columnist of note – but perhaps of little enduring high-fashion merit – that you're ready for a challenging encounter with sexual destiny?
"Or does your cold shower preclude that? Anyhoo. Two words. Gerontophilia. Klismaphilia. Ring a bell with you? Or perhaps your BTL readers? God knows, the lot of you are into New York Times Crossword puzzles. How about 'paraphilia'? Surely you've come across that tongue tickler. Ten squares down. 'Love on the wild side.' Ring a door bell?"
"Honestly, Sister. I can't say it does. Is this something you Recovering Catholics get into, now that bingo's passe? Or – fashion conscious retro-nun that you are – the sort of thing you'd come across in Elle or Mademoiselle mags? May I remind you: I don't crossdress. I'm strictly vanilla wafer."
"Honey, if anybody's all Fig Newton it's you. And I'm sure autogymnephilia's not in your D&G beaded bag, is it?"
"Autogymnephilia? No, I usually walk butchly to the Y, especially when in Chicago. It's more, shall we say, culturally opportunistic in a Boys Town sort of way."
"…the sexual arousal of a man by his own perception of himself as a woman or dressed as a woman. Or, in Father Manly Everhope's case, as a nun. How about 'partialism'? If anybody's partial – especially when it comes to hunks, it's you. One more. Apotemnophilia? Are any of your readers apotemning? Just asking."
"Stumps me, Sister. If you'll pardon the expression: What in Hades is this all about?"
"Well, Fr. Everhope – who's heard some rather oddball confessions in his recent Benton Harbor gay bar ministry jaunt – got a call from the AFA (Archbishop's Fundament Ass'n.), telling him to contact senators in D.C. to put the cabosh on S909 and HR1913."
"S909? HR1913? For God's sake, Everhope's not involved with closeted CIA operatives is he? It's bad enough he hangs out with the boys in his see-through chausible. Is he some sort of decoy? A black-book sheep in shepherd's clothing? A Vatican under-the-covers agent?"
"Thank your lucky stars, he's no 007. The numbers are for Hate Crime Law. The AFA says that such coverage would include 30 kinky sexual orientations, including asphyxophilia, pedophilia, toucherism and coprophilia. If you ask Fr. Manley he says it's all a cracked crock of shinola. Bottom line is the AFA doesn't want gays (of which there are a goodly number of bottoms) to have hate crime protection."
"You'd think, Sister, that the AFA, a group that's forever going on about persecution of their biblical special religious rights (isn't its motto, 'Don't abuse or sit on our fundaments without Jesus?') would exhibit a little understanding and compassion to others?"
"It's crossed my mind on more than one occasion, Charlie My Boy, that when the Good Book says to 'turn the other cheek,' it's not definitionally clear whether that's kinky in bed or kinky out of bed. As far as hate crimes go, turn about's fair lay, er, play. Straight or gay. AFA or no AFA."
