The Tempting of Neely J: Chapter Fourteen – Fallen Angel

Jasmine’s taunt was an exaggeration, Neely thought as she departed Lemongrass later that day, but she supposed she wasn’t starved of attention. Either within or outside the church. It would be convenient if she could find herself a mature-minded Christian with whom she could explore her sexuality in a chaste fashion. Then she wouldn’t have to fret when random sexy strangers showed an interest.She tried not to obsess as she prepared herself mentally for the evening ahead. One year on at Alton Bridge and the anniversary to be marked by a Q and A at the mid-week youth meeting. ‘Get to know Neely’—a chance for the church’s teens to gain the inside track on the full-time youth worker’s Christian thinking.“They need guidance,” Pastor Simmons told her once she’d arrived at the hall. “There are so many negative influences on these young people in today’s society, particularly when it comes to sex. What they need are role models like you to help keep them living a secure Christian lifestyle and to feel like it’s okay to do that.” Neely looked at him sympathetically and quelled her inward cringe. Jack Simmons’ obsession with the S-word was not what she needed. That evening’s interview was supposed to reflect her experience at the church and her views on a whole range of socially relevant subjects, but she had a sinking feeling as to where it would stall.“You’ve got to understand, Neely, how much of a blow the whole Danny Woodward business was for me. You scarcely knew him, I know, but he seemed such a powerful force for good here. And then—well I don’t like to go into the details, I spent enough effort covering them up—but to have him leave in such sordid circumstances really shook me to the core. Right here in this room it happened.”The Pastor shuddered at a dreadful memory. Neely wondered if his premature greyness stemmed from the notorious incident. She stared around at the polished-oak furnishings of the preparation room; an uncomfortable venue for a sexual liaison, but maybe the blasphemous thrill provided by the location had been a more important factor. Neely didn’t like to think about it too much.“Really dented my faith in the next generation of Christians.” The Pastor shook his head wearily. “I found myself lying to everyone about his reasons for going. You can’t know what that felt like for me.”Neely knew more about the Danny Woodward debacle than Jack Simmons thought. Most of the younger congregation-members did. She had met him once, briefly, but her knowledge was largely due to Luke, the Pastor’s eighteen-year-old son. That same young gentleman took delight in regaling his friends with details given the flimsiest pretext. He and his sister Rebekah had been with their father that Sunday when he stumbled upon Youth Pastor Danny post-coitus in the church office with an anonymous young woman.“He’d just finished porking her,” Luke had once recounted to a friend in Neely’s hearing. “She was up on the desk with her tits out and her legs spread and he’d pulled his dick out of her. He was still dripping jizz all over the carpet, you should have bloody seen it! It was amazing! And she was well fit. I’d have given her one. She looked like such a slut …” Neely wondered if Pastor Simmons knew what a charming godly young gentleman he was raising.“You know I have huge respect for you, Neely,” the Pastor was saying. “You dress modestly, you carry yourself well. You’re an attractive young Christian woman who knows how to conduct herself around others. The young people like you and look up to you and I know you’re a positive moral influence on them. It’s something on which we really need to capitalise.”Lord, could he hear how old-fashioned and puffed-up he sounded sometimes? And he didn’t know how she dressed of a Saturday evening. Not quite so modest. But she tried to see it from the Simmons point of view. The moral Mersin Escort life of the church rested squarely on this man’s shoulders and he bore its weight with a grim fortitude. “I appreciate your trust,” she told him. “And I’ll live up to it, you have my word on that.” She reached out and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.The midweek youth meetings were always well-attended, with street-dance interludes and dazzling visuals projected onto background screens. “Multi-media,” the Pastor would beam at her. “Contemporary. Modern technology projecting an old-fashioned Gospel. Not exactly my taste in music, but if it helps us relate spiritual truth to the youngsters, I’m all in favour.”Several hundred teenagers and early twenty-somethings were amassed before them as they took their seats on the platform, under the varnished-wood cross which dominated the front of the hall. Neely settled herself as the lighting of Brian’s worship session faded. Then as Pastor Simmons did his intro, her eyes lighted on a figure some few rows from the back—hard-hitting journo Ray. She had only half-expected him to show and thus had managed to relegate him in her thoughts. She felt strangely exposed before this congregant who had ventured in from outside church circles. It threw her so much that she missed the Pastor’s opening question.“Sorry?” There was good-natured laughter from the crowd at her confusion.“I was hoping you could tell us something about yourself and what brought you to Alton Bridge,” Pastor Simmons repeated, smiling with a paternal air.“Okay—well—I’m Neely Jordan, as most of you know, I’m twenty-four and I’ve been full-time here the past two years. I’m from St Albans, but I trained in Youth and Community Work here in Bristol. Then because of my faith I wanted to put that training to use in a Christian environment. You know, work with young people to … to try and show them how social concerns tie in really closely with the teachings of Jesus. How we as young Christians should be making a difference in the community, in all sorts of ways. Not simply keeping to ourselves.”She wondered whether her words might sound impressive to a stranger who did not share the beliefs of the assembled crowd. She wondered too how the whole evening would come across. Fresh and relevant? Or a crass attempt to ape secular culture in the name of ‘cool’? Alton Bridge’s trendier affectations made even her cringe at times, so she could only imagine how an outsider might react.She brushed away the thought, launching into a discussion of her responsibilities around the church and the youth initiatives she had helped get underway—like Alton Bridge’s teen-homeless project and the channelling of older teens into volunteer work with elderly people in the vicinity. That was before Pastor Simmons addressed her on his seeming favourite topic.“Of all the pressures on young people today—drugs, materialism, secularism—the pervasiveness of sex must be the most dangerous and insidious. Its influence is felt absolutely everywhere. As a modern young woman, what would you have to say to us on that subject?”Well wasn’t that perfect? On the night she drew in an attractive stranger, the Pastor set her up to trot out the church’s official line on celibacy. It wasn’t like she was short of other pressing topics. Drug culture and poverty and the interface between politics and faith. Still, if Ray was interested in her, best he knew from the start her stance on pre-marital sexual relations.“Well,” she began, pausing to gather her thoughts, “the problem, I think, with modern attitudes to sex is that it … it ends up getting ripped out of a broader context. The Bible sees it as something exciting and warm and loving, to be enjoyed and celebrated in the context of a committed long-term relationship. The temptation is to … to enjoy it for its Mersin Escort Bayan own sake, free of any real commitment, and so to miss out on something deeper and ultimately more satisfying. And …” She was acutely aware, as she continued, of one listener among hundreds. “… That takes patience. Take me. I’m like any other twenty-four-year-old. I’ve got desires. I’ve got passions. I’ve got …” The word ‘fantasies’ was hovering in her mind, but thankfully she side-stepped it. “I’ve got a major crush on David Tennent.” Save. Her Doctor Who geekery was well-known throughout the church and her remark garnered a laugh. “Not so much Matt Smith, though he’s a sexy Doctor in his own way I suppose. But …” The laughter eventually died and she waved away her improvised stream-of-consciousness to conclude the original thought. “… I think I owe it to myself and to the guy I eventually commit to, however olde-worlde and Jane Austen it sounds, to save that aspect of myself. It’s something precious. A gift to be stored up and not given away to the first person who comes along.”She felt she had dealt adequately with the matter, but Jack Simmons pursued his pet theme like a borderline obsessive. Soon she was fielding questions on how Christian couples should conduct themselves, how women could dress so as not to inflame male lusts, how youth in the church should maintain “purity of mind”. Patronising, sexist and pompous—nice going, Pastor.She spun responses to distance herself from the church-leader’s more reactionary views, to make herself sound progressive and open-minded. Still she ended up saying how ‘young Christians should pursue a broad range of physical, social and spiritual interests’; a tarted-up equivalent, she thought, of ‘take a cold shower’. She hoped that Ray wouldn’t read her comments’ obvious subtext: “I’m persistently horny and haven’t found a way to deal with it yet.”Neither had Brian, she recalled. Their dating several months earlier had consisted of his regular and crude attempts at seduction. “No, we can’t do this!” she had insisted hotly on her own sofa one night, as he executed unsubtle manoeuvres beneath her blouse.“C’mon babe, we’re not teenagers,” his breathless voice had insisted, warm hands refusing to un-cup her bra-clad bosom. A defter touch, she considered in retrospect, might have put her in greater moral danger. The situation’s erotic edge had been blunted by his sheer desperation.“You’re right, we’re not teenagers. We’re grown-up Christian believers!” she had exclaimed, struggling free of his clutch and rebuttoning herself. “Trying to lead that holy lifestyle you’re always banging on about during a worship-set. Or don’t you really believe all that stuff you spout?”“Hey, I’m not trying to get inside your knickers, I want to feel your tits, is all. It’s hardly the unforgivable sin.”“Feel my tits? God, Brian, I take it back! You are a teenager! This is teenage! Damned furtive fumbling on a couch. And the back of a car. And in the bedroom next to your parents’ room for Heaven’s sake! What are we playing at?” Her tirade had silenced his protests. “You know, I’m not even sure why we’re together. I mean honestly, what do we have in common?”“What do you mean? We both fancy each other, right? We’re both Christians.”“Yes, deeply incompatible Christians. We don’t relate on any level outside … outside churchy stuff.” She hadn’t the heart to mention how lack of basic intelligence and sophistication drained a guy of physical attraction too. Instead she added, “You think you can trade time spent with me for groping rights. It doesn’t do it for me, Brian. Let’s … you know, cut our losses. I’m sorry.”And that had been the end of that. Lord in Heaven, were there any real men in the church, single men with a bit of charm and self-restraint, worth saving yourself for in the first Escort Mersin place? Men with whom you could relax into a deliciously sexy abstinence? Who could make you shudder more by brushing your cheek than some could with a hand up your skirt? The thought lingered in her mind as that evening’s interview wound up.“Leading on from what we were discussing …” Once he had closed in lengthy prayer and a babble of noise filled the place once more, Pastor Simmons leaned over to her. “… I’m thinking that a workshop or two dealing with Christian sexual ethics might be in order. Especially with the summer break coming up. The youngsters need these ideas reinforced before holidays begin and they’re beyond the church’s sphere of influence. You and Jonas could lead them. It dawned on me as we were speaking and I think it’d be a great idea. Deal with the whole area of sexuality from a strong Biblical perspective.”“Oh yes?” Neely tried to mask her anxiety. She could only imagine Jasmine’s reaction if she knew, or that of Leo, her openly gay friend from the café. How she’d have to tiptoe around all those tricky Bible-bits with which she wrestled.“I’ll arrange some dates and let you know,” the Pastor said, as though the matter was settled. Neely’s heart flagged. Now there would be a minefield for her personal integrity. She wondered how fellow youth-worker Jonas would react; if anything he had more problems with Jack Simmons’ hard-line conservatism than she did. Making excuses about having people to see, she ducked into the main part of the hall to immerse herself among friends—even if that risked a Brian encounter.“I’m impressed,” a smooth voice said in her ear and she started at Ray’s presence next to her. Her slender five seven was shadowed by his frame. “You’re plausible, even to a confirmed heathen like me. Although I’m wondering now if we’re still on for that drink.”“Gosh, Ray …” Neely was reeling at his suddenly being there, her stomach a pleasurable turmoil. “Yes, yes of course we are.”She’d barely had time to respond, when her male opposite-number at the church called out to her. “Nice one, Neels—you’re a modern-day prophet!” Jonas’ short dark hair was spiked with gel, his features lit up with a reassuring grin. Girlfriend Leona, dark-haired and coffee-skinned, was beaming at her too from where she nestled into his side. “Hey, can we have a brief word about the schedule for the rest of the summer season?” Jonas inquired.“Yeah, sure, give me a sec.” Neely turned, a tad flustered, to the church’s newest guest. “Look, sorry. I really should have a quick chat with him. Maybe we could …eh …”“Why don’t you meet me round the corner in The Pump House when you’re done here? Then you don’t have to leave with the anonymous stranger, following all your sincere words on chastity.”She blushed and completely failed to summon up a witty rejoinder. “Yeah, that’d be cool. I’ll … I’ll be right over.” She flashed him a nervous smile. As she turned away to chat with Jonas, she hoped her excitement wouldn’t show. No such luck.“Who was that?” It was Leona who asked, dark eyes sparking with interest. “Is he new to the church?”“He’s a friend,” Neely said dismissively. “Thought he’d check the place out.”“Check you out on your big night.” Jonas grinned, squeezing Leona a bit closer. Since starting to date the girl he’d lost some of his cheerfully reserved cool. “Is he going to make a return visit?”“Maybe, don’t know.” She brushed off the subject and addressed a more pressing issue, dropping her voice as she mentioned it. The fact that Leona was listening in disconcerted her slightly; her co-worker’s girlfriend had only recently graduated from ‘youth-group’ status. “Jonas—has the Pastor mentioned to you any workshops?” From the look of inquiry on his face, it appeared not.“Seems he’s going to land us with a project. ‘Christian sexual ethics.’ He’s going to prioritise it in the Sunday night youth meetings, I think. Get us to provide a brush-up course.”“Really?” Jonas seemed more resigned than irritated. “Wow. Bang goes everything we’ve been scheduling. But I suppose he’s the boss-man.”“So we go ahead with it?”