Father Paygan's Mass

Father Paygan's Mass
by Mark Plimsoll

        One Sunday, Cloudia called Ahndreah to hear about her latest adventures, since Cloudia's plans for sexual conquest had fallen through the night before. Ahndreah's luck had been similar. So they had nothing better or worse to do last night but sleep, and get up early enough to try and irritate each other with a bit of friendly gossip. Even that fell through once caught each other up-to-date on each other's failed weekend.
        Ahndreah couldn't believe it when Cloudia asked her to go to church with her and hear Father Paygan.
        "Oh that is a scream! Father Paygan!"
        "No seriously! He's young and good looking, seriously innocent and naïve. I don't even think he's homosexual."
        "Get out of here."
        "No really. Listen, I'm going whether you go or not, and your place is on the way, so I'll stop out front and honk and if you want to go, give me some sign at the window or something and I'll wait for you to come out."
       
        As the two women entered the Church, Father Padre walked out onstage in front of the huge backdrop, a modernist sculpture of a wooden cross contoured like Scandinavian furniture set on a field of radiating glass rods which ever so slowly changed color by means of a machine that enclosed a light source and rotating color filters.
        He put both hands on the podium, and looked up toward the ceiling, then as his eyes became accustomed to the dim interior of the church, they fell down the center aisle where Cloudia and Ahndreah approached.
        Something about his expression communicated to the congregation that the devil had just walked in, and everyone slowly turned to gaze at De Laguna's two most current, active, and successful seductresses in attire that left little doubts as to the irresistible charms they both flaunted.
        They strode arm in arm down the aisle, feigning oblivious to the disapproving faces that rained scorn and outrage upon their voluptuous figures and undulating gait, and took seats in the front row, in seats as right in front of Father Paygan as they could get.
        Father Padre cleared his throat and looked at them.
        They both smiled up at him and crossed their right leg over the left at the same time, as if on cue. They both crossed their arms also, gathering their bounteous fontal accoutrements into heaping, overflowing cleaving softness that threatened to jump ship from the little undersized bra cups that shown through the light colored transparent gauzy tops they wore mostly open from the collar down and tied in a loose knot above their navels.
        Father Padre broke out in a sweat and seemed to lose his breath for a minute. Not a second, but for about a minute. In that time, Cloudia leaned over to Ahndreah and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "I told you so."
        Father Paygan suddenly seemed to become aware of the grip of silence in the church, and cleared his throat. Others began to shuffle their feet, pull out handkerchiefs to daub at sweat funning down faces that had come in from the sweltering ten o'clock West Texas August heat.
        Father Paygan opened his big bible, took out several sheets of paper, folded them over once, then put them behind the bible.

        This is Father Padre, with God's truth. Today, I would like to break tradition a little, and start out by discussing Modesty with you all.
        Lately I've noticed people complain about how women dress in our church.
        It's not only this church, but it's a problem throughout the Archdiocese. So we've been issued some thoughts to help each one of us clarify in our hearts how we should dress and behave when we enter God's house.
        It's not only how the women dress. Men should be modest too, though most men wear long pants and collared shirts with sleeves and a tie, to their credit, thank the Lord.
        But then I watch television, men dress so formal and the women almost undressed. Isn't that the truth? If you go home and turn on the TV, see if this isn't so.
        Why?
        With all the sexual harassment and violence today, women must take much of the responsibility. Women allow themselves to be abused in this fashion. Not only sinful women want to attract attention. All women want to feel beautiful and attractive. That's the way God made them.
        Entertainers in the past did not appear half-naked, but dressed as a wife, as a mother, a lady. That's what women used to aspire to, being a wife, mother, a lady.
        For example, I saw a woman, weighing over three hundred pounds, bend down to hold the hand of her little child as they crossed the street coming to our church. She wore a mini mini that did not cover her private parts, very very minimal coverage for her ample breasts. I stared, and stared, as she approached. She took no notice of me. I blocked her way and pointed my finger, "You must go back home, put on your clothes. Aren't you ashamed to dress that way in front of your child, in front of all of us?" And I sent her on her way.
        My mother told my sisters, and all the mothers in our neighborhood agreed, skirts should cover the knees, blouses must have sleeves and a collar, and in church women must have a hat or a veil.
        Nowadays the skirts and blouses show parts of their private bodies. Most unbecoming. Very ugly to see the body this way, the privacy.
        Even when we go to the beach, among people, we should be modest. Not just to respect oneself and God, but to respect everybody. Because Modesty refrains from boasting and egoism. It is not boldness, not vain. It is bashful, humble, innocent. The truly modest are sheepish.
        Be modest. Be one among God's flocks.
        Above all, in church, we should be most respectful, and yet women hardly wear anything on their breasts or arms, the short skirts that they wear, when they sit down, they cannot cover up their privacy, and even here in the front pews!
        From the pulpit, we in the clergy, we look down upon our flocks and see half-nude women, half naked girls, we sometimes even see their privacy, and things we don't want to see, and think about things we don't want to think about.
        Please remember to be modest.
        Thank you.

        Both Ahndreah and Cloudia had started giggling about halfway through, and Father Paygan began to sweat and turn red every couple of seconds as a new round of sputtering and seat-writhing impinged upon his consciousness.
        By the end of the sermon, he'd already had a plan, and quickly asked everyone to rise, and the noise helped hide the frantic nail-digging repression the two girls subjected each other's arms to, and then he requested one of the congregation's most popular and spirited songs.
        He couldn't have known that Cloudia's professional singing career had started as a little girl in the church choir, and not only did she know the song, she sung it gospel style in a black church for months. So she used this opportunity to send up a joyous noise that seemed to swell up from the bottom of her soul and fill the church.
        Not that the bottom of her soul's depth reached to much profundity, but the amplitude of her heavenly pipes seemed to set the radiating glass rods behind the cross into vibrating like a pipe organ, humming with sympathetic vibrations that caused many in the congregation to shut their mouths in amazed curiosity.
        All eyes centered upon Cloudia, even Ahndreah's.
        As the song ended and silence beat back the vibrations and humming of the glass rods set off by Cloudia's final powerful note, Father Paygan quickly said "let us pray." And while he intoned a preface in Latin, the girls whispered briefly together, then slipped off their shoes and beat a hasty and silent retreat out of the church.
        As the prayer ended, they rounded the corner of the block outside, put their shoes on, and crossed the street to disappear in the greenery of the park, headed toward their car on the other side.
        Within the church, the multitude bobbed and craned their necks throughout the sermon, trying to convince themselves that they had not just witnessed a visitation by harlot demons from hell.