The Monk and the Prostitute

THE MONK AND THE PROSTITUTE
by
Robert Jaunsen

The day was almost over and a pale moon was rising over the high
desert. Brother Thomas sat on a sun-bleached rock, alongside the dusty
road that led to his monastery, and watched the cars turn off the main
highway in the distance. As darkness crept in, he saw the red-orange
light pulsate from the beckoning, neon sign standing guard over the now
parked cars. He visualized the sign in his mind and the flashing of the
name Pinto Ranch became indelibly imprinted in his brain as if burned
there with a branding iron.

He had been resting on the rock for an hour entranced in thought. It
didn't bother him in the least that the other monks would be in their
cells, chanting and praying, while he spent his time fantasizing about
a woman. Nor did it bother him that she was a prostitute. He reasoned
whatever led her into that profession may not be any more ironic than
what caused him to drop out of society and take the vows of a
monk.

Thomas met her several weeks ago on the same road. She enjoyed hiking
in the desert, especially during moonlit nights, and soon they found
themselves going on long walks together. He was impressed by her common
sense wisdom and ability to reason things out. He found her
freethinking philosophy refreshing when compared to his usual diet of
religious dogma. Most of all, he liked her for her sense of humor. She
laughed at everything, including herself, and it was infectious. He
found himself laughing for the first time in his life.

They were both young, in their early twenties, and were quite enamored
with each other. In spite of their obvious differences, they had quite
a bit in common. They both grew up unwanted and abused as children,
ending up in their current situations primarily for the sake of
survival. Neither felt overjoyed with their status quo and she saw no
hope for a better life and he didn't care-until now.

The moon was almost overhead when Thomas spotted her shadowy figure
approaching. Her tawny hair floated past her shoulders partly obscuring
the words Life Ain't Fair silk-screened across the front of her
t-shirt. A pair of faded jeans with holes in the knees and recently
washed sneakers made up the rest of what she wore. He slid off the rock
nearly defrocking himself when his robe hooked itself onto a small
crag. Smiling with a child-like innocence, he adjusted his garment and
eagerly went to greet her.

"Lilith," he said with some anxiety. "I was afraid you wouldn't come
tonight."

"I was afraid you wouldn't be here either, Thomas. It's getting pretty
late," she answered, embracing him with sublime affection. She kissed
him unexpectedly on the mouth, causing his face to flush.

Thomas felt previously unknown pangs of love well up inside his heart
and he sensed the feelings were mutual. All of a sudden, he wanted
Lilith to run away with him, start a new life together and never look
back. He knew becoming a monk exemplified his pitiful attempt to drop
out and escape from a society he loathed and couldn't live with. A
latent agnostic, he would have been condemned to a life of mental
degradation imposed on him by a religion that demanded absolute faith
and could never be questioned. With Lilith's help, he uncovered some
lost vestiges of self-respect and the necessary courage to begin facing
life's adversities. He felt confident he could handle anything with
her, standing by his side, giving him doses of rational, mental
support. No longer would he need his religious pretensions as a shelter
to hide behind. In a significant way, Lilith served as a replacement
for his need of religion, and she was much more than a crutch--much
more.

"Let's walk over to the dunes tonight," Thomas suggested, giving her a
gentle tug on the arm.

"Okay," she agreed without hesitation.

"Abbot Moses asked me why I've been going out at night so much."

"What did you tell him?"

"I just said I felt closer to God walking alone at night, looking at
the stars, and stuff like that. He smiled and put his hand on my
shoulder."

"Thomas, I need to talk to you about the Abbot," Lilith said with
concern in her voice. "He's really a dangerous man. He's pretty
scary."

"What are you talking about?" Thomas asked. He turned away from her to
pick his nose.

"He's not just an Abbot. He has another life."

"What," Thomas interrupted. He flicked a booger at some red ants
scurrying around on the hot sand. "Are you joking with me?"

"No, listen. I've heard this from different people. Think about it.
Where does the Abbot go when he leaves the monastery?"

"I don't know. On business, I guess. What else?"

"Business means money, Thomas. You guys are dirt poor, right? And
since when do Abbots have chauffeured cars picking them up? He should
be riding on a jackass. That's the stereotype, isn't it?"

Thomas agonized over Lilith's allegations. He realized Abbot Moses did
behave differently than the other monks and seemed to avoid socializing
with them. The Abbot rarely prayed or held communion with them, which
bothered and upset a few of the brothers. The Abbot's quarters occupied
an entire wing of the monastery and were off limits to everyone except
his special visitors. Thomas remembered Brother Quentin barging in on
the Abbot last month, resulting in him never being seen again. It was
assumed he was expelled from the order like others before him. It was a
common occurrence and no one gave it a second thought.

"I think he's got a TV, a computer and who knows what else?" Thomas
said. "There's a satellite dish on his roof. That stuff doesn't make
him scary, though."

"Well, think about this," Lilith said. She stopped walking and faced
Thomas to impress upon him the seriousness of her concern. "What do all
you brothers have in common, besides your shitty-looking robes?"

Thomas answered, feeling uncomfortable with the question. "I guess
we're mostly loners...shy...passive, like a bunch of sheep."

"Like celibate sheep," Lilith said, unsure if Thomas would take
offense at her remark. She regretted saying it. She had fallen in love
with him and had every intention of stealing his virginity that night,
in the sand dunes, under the watchful light of the full moon.

"Yes," he agreed, taking his eyes off her and looking down at his
sandal clad feet.

She continued, "None of you have family, or friends, or visitors.
Right? No connections outside the monastery. No letters sent and none
received. Not even the government knows you guys exist."

"That's good, though. There's never anything to worry about. No
problems, no complications, no responsibilities, just peace of mind,"
Thomas explained

"And no love, either...Well, no heterosexual love, anyway. I guess if
a monk's gay or in love with a mythological, invisible god then he
could be happy, I suppose."

"What's any of this have to do with Abbot Moses?"

"Shit," Lilith blurted out. "He sells body parts. Organs, eyes, stuff
like that."

Thomas became dumbfounded as Lilith told all she knew. Several of her
customers at the Pinto Ranch were reliable sources, even when half
drunk, including one of the chauffeurs who periodically drives the
Abbot to the Vegas airport and helps load unmarked, refrigerated cases
onto chartered aircraft. The monastery was nothing more than a covert
source for readily available human parts with faith-blinded monks
becoming the perfect and unwitting sacrificial lambs. When Lilith had
no more to say on the subject, she grasped Thomas by the hand and they
resumed their trek toward the dunes in contemplative silence. She
wondered if his robe was made out of burlap.

The sand dunes appeared surreal in the moonlight and the two of them
no longer thought about terrible things. They chased each other and
rolled down the hills of sand as if they reinvented the playtime
missing from their childhood. Soon, they came upon a wind-eroded hollow
in one of the larger dunes and Thomas boldly removed his robe,
spreading it out on the powdery sand. He gently took hold of Lilith and
passion's fire converged over them, blotting out all else.

The dawn was throwing a golden light over the dunes when they woke up.
Thomas brushed some sand out of Lilith's hair and she smiled at him,
still mesmerized by the emotions of love.

"I love you," Thomas whispered.

"Oh, Thomas. I love you, too...so much." She struggled to fight back
the moisture welling up in her eyes. She felt happy for the first time
in her life.

Thomas never bothered to ask Lilith about her past or how she ended up
working at the Pinto Ranch. It simply didn't matter. He only cared
about where a person desired to go, not where they had been, and this
applied especially to her. From this point on, he wanted no other man
to touch her. He felt she belonged to him now and it became imperative,
more than ever, to get away and start a new life together.

They hastily made up a getaway plan. Lilith would walk back to the
Pinto Ranch and get some sleep as she usually did during midday. In the
evening, she would swipe some clothes for Thomas from the bartender's
closet, grab the money she secretly stashed away under her dresser
drawer, and meet Thomas at the back door to her room. He would quickly
enter, change clothes and they would casually walk around to the front
parking lot, steal the bartender's car and drive to Vegas, dump the car
and dissolve into the populace.

With the temperature rising as fast as the sun, a rattlesnake glided
effortlessly across the sand in their direction, searching for shade.
Lilith spotted it first, leapt to her feet and screeched,
"Snake!"

Thomas shook his robe at the sidewinder and it veered off in another
direction, wanting nothing to do with two, unpredictably dangerous,
naked humans. They watched the way it moved across the sand with
interest, cracking jokes about being Adam and Eve, and the sidewinder
being the serpent sent to corrupt their morals, among other
things.

"It's a sign from God," Lilith quipped.
"Nope, This ain't the Garden of Eden and there's no apple tree around
here," replied Thomas. "All we got out here is sand, mesquite and some
fossilized dinosaur bones."

She stared at his crotch grinning. "Put your robe on before your snake
gets sunburned."

Thomas thought about telling Lilith how she was the most beautiful
woman he had ever laid eyes on. Since he never saw any other women
naked before and he figured she knew that fact, he refrained from
saying anything complimentary at all. Instead, he chose to make a
vulgar comment. "I bet I look like a big turd in this robe, huh?"

Lilith just laughed as she wriggled into her tight jeans, tearing the
knee holes further. "You look more like a chocolate Easter
bunny."

The morning sun grew more intense, heating up the desert floor. Before
the sun reached its zenith, no living thing, other than scattered,
half-dried flora, wanted to be caught in its harmful radiation,
including Thomas and Lilith. In tune with the nocturnal ways of the
desert, they kissed goodbye and parted.

Trudging along faster than usual, Thomas sweated his way back to the
monastery in a straight line, avoiding the road. Inside his twelve by
twelve cell, he plopped down on his cot, stared at the ceiling and
waited. Thoughts he never dealt with previously during his young life
clouded his mind like a fog. His love for Lilith brought out deeply
embedded emotions of elation, which were equally countered by the new
concerns of worry and responsibility. His peace of mind vanished,
replaced by the complications of love. Still, he now had someone to
live and care for3/4a real, live woman3/4not some faith-based deity. He
would worship her as a goddess and love would be his one true religion.
Intoxicated with ecstasy, he came to understand happiness for the first
time.

Evening came and Thomas looked around his cell for the last time.
Besides the cot, there was a small wooden table, a single chair, and a
homemade chest constructed from salvaged, pallet boards, which gave
Thomas an occasional splinter in the palm of his hand. A glass bowl sat
in the middle of the table, full of candle wax, pieces of wicks, and
burned matches. On a wall hung a faded lithograph of Saint
Lucretius.

Thomas stood up and yanked the crucifix off his belt cord, tossing it
on the cot. From the splintered chest, he retrieved a dog-eared bible,
which he had read a thousand times. Reading this bible became the root
cause of his agnostic thinking with all the contradictions and evil
acts contained within its passages affecting his opinion. His faith was
already a fa?ade when he met Lilith and became exposed to her
freethought philosophies, although he would never have considered
leaving the order had she not entered his life. Alone he was nothing, a
man without purpose or direction.

He threw the bible at a roach scurrying out from under the chest. The
bible and the roach broke into pieces on the tiled floor as he walked
out of his cell muttering, "At last, my bible served a useful
purpose."

The sun already dropped to the horizon, giving way to dusk, when
Thomas arrived at the Pinto Ranch. The day still held its oppressive
heat and he paused long enough to catch a mouthful of dry air outside
the back door to Lilith's room. He pressed the door open and an icy
shock surged through his body. Lilith lay lifeless on her bed while
Abbot Moses stood over her naked body, like a monstrous predator,
clinging onto a garrote, disguised as a rosary. The Abbot turned to
face a trembling Thomas, still standing in the doorway.

"Brother Thomas?" The Abbot groaned. "What are you doing here?"

"Lilith!" Thomas screamed. "You fucking bastard. You killed
her!"

"Calm down, Thomas. Calm down."

"I know all about you...what you do. You murder the brothers and sell
their organs. You're a fucking monster," Thomas sobbed.

"And women sometimes. I own this place, you know," the Abbot confessed
in a boastful manner.

"Human life has no value to you."

The Abbot smirked. "It has quite a bit of value, actually. An organ
taken from a worthless person has more value than the whole person
does. It's the only contribution to society that a dreg makes."

"Lilith was no dreg. She was beautiful, intelligent and full of love."
The shock and grief Thomas felt transformed to rage. "You're the
worthless dreg, you bastard!"

Thomas attacked Abbot Moses, hurtling into him with enough force to
send both men reeling to the floor. The man the Abbot considered a lamb
became a lion, pummeling him with his fists without mercy. In
desperation, the Abbot managed to put the rosary garrote around Thomas'
neck. Thomas tried to wedge his fingers between the garrote and his
carotid arteries, fighting off strangulation. One of his hands found
the silver-plated crucifix attached to the garrote and he tore it off,
thrusting it with all his remaining strength into the Abbot's head
above the right ear. The Abbot fell dead and Thomas rolled out from
under the weight of the body, trying to avoid the oozing blood.

Thomas never knew emotional pain could be so horrific. In a
half-trance, he picked up Lilith's t-shirt from the floor and used it
to wipe away the mixture of blood and tears from his face. He gingerly
kissed her pallid cheek and tucking the t-shirt into his cord belt,
made his way back to the monastery. He informed his brothers their
Abbot was dead, their religion was dead, and their faith was
dead.

The low-pitched vibration from the brother's chanting, in unison,
resonated in Thomas' ears as he walked out into the desert for the
final time. He remembered Lilith's admonition about the one truth of
nature and the universe. Indifference, she told him, complete and utter
indifference. He pulled Lilith's blood-spattered t-shirt from his cord
belt and dropped it on a mesquite bush. The words written on it glared
back at him with irreverence. "Life ain't fair," he said aloud.

A pair of vultures drifted in lazy circles overhead, while a hungry
coyote stalked nearby. Their presence almost seemed preordained.