“It happened without his intending it. He was sitting in his reading chair with The Ginger Man propped open on his lap when it dawned on him that his idle self-fondling might usefully become less idle. The priest, as always, could not go forward without pondering moral and spiritual implications, but these he set aside sufficiently to indulge with only the barest shame in that feat of deliberative stimulation which is, according to the catechism, intrinsically and gravely disordered. Afterward h...e felt ashamed, self-conscious, aware of himself as a celibate priest who’d engaged in onanistic pleasure, in sinful self-gratification. He was, at the same time, vaguely wistful, regretting that he hadn’t taken the time to squeeze more pleasure from the act. It had been swift and perfunctory and he was not that sort of self-lover generally, reasoning instead on most occasions that an indulgence was at least partly wasted whenever it wasn’t thorough. And since sporadic self-abuse was the whole of his sex life, such omissions of attention meant more to him than they might to other people.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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