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He smirked. “It’s supposed to humble us—to make the servants of the Lord less attractive—”
I snorted. “You know that didn’t work, right?”
“But it didn’t become a thing until the Council of Toulouse, when the Pope commanded that all Catholic priests should cut their hair and not allow their beards to grow like laymen. The Orthodox patriarchs decided our clergy should grow beards so we didn’t look Catholic.”
“So, you have a beard to spite the Pope?” I smiled.
“A twelfth-century Pope.” He grinned widely, looking so devilishly handsome my heart was seized again with the desire to hold him and kiss every inch of his body. “There’s more nuance involved. That’s the internet meme version of the truth, but in this case, I like it.”
“So, why were you drawn to religion in the first place?”
“Why not?”
When he reached out and clasped my hand in his, I gasped. Did he really…?
“Is this okay?” he asked.
I stared at our hands. “Y-yes.”
My heart had stopped. I was dead.
No, it didn’t stop. It pounded extra hard, thudding inside my chest, rocking me. I looked down in disbelief. He threaded our fingers together without saying anything more and kept walking. I willed my feet to move in step with his, but all I could think about was how my hand felt in his, his callouses scraping against my palm, the dry warmth of his long, thick fingers, and how much I loved him taking without asking, just because I was his to take.
I shook my head to clear it.What had I been trying to ask him?
“You’re obviously a spiritually tolerant man. So why go into a line of work that’s so dogmatic and rigorous?”
“I was raised in the church. For a lot of Greeks, the church is a secular space. A cultural center. You go to church on Sunday to be around your people. Greek school to learn the language. Greek dance classes to become Zorba.”
We’d reached his truck where it was parked on the street. Instead of opening the door, he leaned back against the passenger’s side, pulling me between his spread feet on the curb. He rested my hand between both of his, running his fingers across the top, tracing the veins and tendons, rubbing circles across my knuckles.
Oh. Hang on. This was not the skittish dog behavior I’d come to expect from him.
When he spoke, it was to the hand he continued caressing. The gentleness of the motion sent shivers up my arm. The sensation was heaven, a gentleness that was almost unbearable.
“For me, though, it had always been about the spirituality. Even when I was a shitbag teenager and it wasn’t cool to admit it, I loved being an acolyte and serving behind the altar. I loved looking up at the dome in the center of the church and feeling small, but also feeling that Christ himself was coming down to my level and meeting me where I was. I loved the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, a woman raised in the inner rooms of the temple—places men were rarely allowed to tread. It filled me with purpose and light.
“I mean, would I have rather slept in on Sunday mornings? Absolutely. But I always felt better walking out of church.
“I know it’s not the norm for a lot of people—for most people, maybe—but church was the one place I never felt judged, even by myself. I want others to feel the same. I want to continue cultivating that in our church, the way Vasili’s always done. There’s something about Orthodoxy that meets you where you are anddoesn’t push. If you want nothing more than to receive blessed oil on Holy Wednesday, or just bring home the lit candle after we singChristos Anestiduring the midnight Resurrection service, I welcome that. Even if it means I won’t see you for another year.”
He lowered my hand, put his own in his pockets.
”Ilikephilosophy,“ he continued. “Iappreciatethe spirituality people develop outside the structure of religion. But Ilovethe puzzle of theology. There are firm pieces that all fit together. No one’s quite solved it yet, but I think it can be done. God is a concept many people feel the need to rename. But it doesn’t matter what you call Him... Her... It, if the concept of God was always wrong. The world is reeling from bad religion. From the corruption of the old Catholic Popes, or the abuses of shitty evangelical megachurches. My own religion isn’t exempt from unethical practices or misguided zealotry. None of us are perfect. But I see value in simple ritual and being part of a community of faith.”
Decca
“Gus, can I askyou a question?” I asked, once I’d brushed my teeth, thrown my hair into a messy ponytail on top of my head, and swapped my black dress for my black Cramps t-shirt.
“Always,” he said. But he braced himself. He was still dressed. Even down to his black Vans. He’d removed the tab from his collar and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Leaning with his shoulder against the wall, in his undone clerical uniform, he could’ve easily been mistaken for a modern Johnny Cash, rather than a Greek priest.
“We said we’d try to find the skeleton that would work for us to build a marriage on. Have we found any bones yet?”
His lips quirked, but there wasn’t an outright smile. He rarely smiled. “We working from the top down? Ground up?”
“Spinal column first. Proximal to distal.”
“Okay, then. I held your hand tonight. You didn’t cringe. I think that earns us a few vertebrae. Maybe a rib or two.”
