I don’t remember Pastor James being particularly attractive, but I was enamored by his proximity to authority, both as an adult in a leadership role and for his presumed proximity to God—he was God to me. During the reenactment, two men helped him place the cross into a prefabricated base before they helped him onto a small step screwed to the cross that lifted him a few inches off the stage. They performatively tied his arms to the wooden arms of the cross, and I watched them restrain him with fascination. I wished that I was closer so I could watch their nimble fingers work. He was illuminated from behind by two bright spotlights that made it difficult to look directly at him. I was disappointed. My family had recently watched “The Passion of the Christ,” and I remember crying during the flagellation of Jesus as the Roman soldiers relentlessly whipped Jesus’s semi-nude body until he was bloody beyond recognition, his face distended and oddly colored like a peach I forgot in the bottom of my bag, battered by the sharp corners of whatever book and assortment of pens and cosmetics I was carrying. The reenactment with Pastor James lacked the grotesque foreplay necessary to warrant an intense emotional reaction from me. I wanted to watch the men humiliate Pastor James, to strip him naked and bludgeon his body until he wept and begged them to stop, forgiving them for their unwarranted cruelty. Forgiving all of humanity for its unwarranted cruelty. Instead, I watched ambivalently as if sitting through the subtitles of an action movie, waiting for some taunting easter egg at the end that suggests the story isn’t over yet.

My fascination with the crucifixion doggedly followed me into adulthood. It was mid-September in 2017 and I was working as a sales associate at the Topshop on Michigan Avenue. I was supposed to be returning clothes to the sales floor that customers tried on and decided they didn’t want, but instead I was talking to this cute guy on Grindr. I went to the bathroom and took a photo of myself with one knee up, the sole of my foot resting on the edge of the ceramic sink so that he could see the black kitten heels I was wearing and the fishnet tights that accentuated my long legs. It was the first time I had worn this pair of heels out. They rubbed the edges of my feet raw until they were red and tender. I sent him the photo and he responded almost immediately, “Do you want to come over after you get off work?”

“Where do u live?” I asked.

He sent me the address of his apartment, which I quickly googled and realized was out in West Town. “Kinda far...”

“I’ll send an Uber to get you. Just lmk what time you get off.”

“Kk.” I texted, smugly grinning to myself. After pretending to work for another 15 minutes, I sent him another message to say that I was about to leave. He responded with a tracking link for the Uber car. No one had ever ordered me a car before. My legs were tingling as I got into the backseat.

When I got to his condo, I used the call box to scroll through and find his name. He buzzed me up. We sat at his kitchen counter, and he poured me a glass of red wine. I kept glancing out the floor to ceiling windows that looked directly over a relentlessly green park. There were moving boxes stacked in one corner. He told me they had only finished construction on his unit last week. We talked forever. I made him listen to St. Vincent’s single Los Ageless. I had been listening to it on repeat since it was released. We sat on his kitchen stools and listened in silence as St. Vincent crooned, “I try to tell you I love you, but it comes out all sick.” He talked, and I nodded along. I was too young and naive to have much to say. I said that I wrote poetry and he asked me to read something, so I read a poem that started with the opening line, “I love America like a dog loves to eat its own shit…” He laughed. The poem wasn’t good. He told me that he designed book covers for an independent press and showed me one of the recent covers he had worked on. Years later, I found his name in the acknowledgements of a book that I bought on a whim because the cover was so appealing, featuring a minimalistic, flesh-colored pig’s head superimposed on a mustard yellow background. Our conversation turned to sex.

“Have you ever heard of sissyplay?”

I gave him a puzzled look and said, “I’m not sure.”

He described it. How he liked being submissive, having his sexual partners force him to dress like a woman, to shave his genitals while they watch, to apply makeup, to clean the house in women’s lingerie. I imagined him bending over in a pair of lace panties, the delicate fabric stretched across the hairless moon of his round ass. “It’s also sometimes called forced feminization or forcefem,” he said.

“Oh yeah, I’m familiar,” I hedged, adding that I had just never heard it referred to as sissyplay. I didn’t want to come across as naive or ignorant. He was visibly excited and asked me where I had first come across it since he only discovered it while researching different forms of kink during undergrad. “I think I’ve seen it on Tumblr,” I said and quickly added, “and I’ve watched some videos on PornHub, but I never realized it had a name.” I took a sip of wine and licked the bottom of my lip, relishing the bitter notes of licorice. We didn’t break eye contact.

“Well, should we play?” His eyes were gleaming, reflecting the peach-colored glow from the TV behind us, which had shuffled through a playlist of songs and returned to St. Vincent’s single. I nodded.

We moved to his bedroom. He pulled out a medium-sized closet organization bin, and I dumped the contents on his bed, surveying my options. I could feel him watching me, but I knew that I could take as long as I wanted. I was surprised at how cheap his sexual paraphernalia was considering his evident wealth. Plucking a French maid’s costume complete with a lace-up bustier and miniskirt from the pile, I held it up to my chest. The fabric was clearly worn from excessive use and made of cheap polyester. I would’ve never purchased it myself. I had expected real silk at least.

“Get undressed,” I ordered, and he moved quickly, peeling off his t-shirt and pulling down his jeans and underwear in one swift motion. His jewelry took the longest as he carefully removed each of his rings and placed them in a catch-all on his nightstand. “Pick up your clothes and fold them.” He bent over and quickly folded them into a neat pile and set them beside the bed. I stared at his ass, admiring the dark rosebud of his asshole. I handed him the costume and he stepped into it. “Sit on the bed.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and I kneeled in front of him, pulling a pair of black nylon stocking up his thighs. I pretended not to notice his dick as it twitched and rose to attention between his legs, poking through the mesh folds of the skirt like an overcooked sausage swollen with water and oil. He gasped as I fastened the clips of the garter to the lip of the stocking. I looked up at his face and savored his desperate, pouting expression. I paused for a moment, trying to decide what I wanted to do next, and then ordered him up onto the bed. I inspected the restraints that he had pulled out from both sides of the headboard while I was perusing through his outfits. I didn't move the heap of women’s clothing and he didn’t either, laying with it underneath him like a bath towel thrown across freshly laundered sheets to make the cleanup easier.

“You’re just a dirty little sissy, aren’t you? Just fucking on top of all your pretty things and making a mess. I can’t wait to make you clean this up afterwards,” I whispered in his ear as I fastened his wrists into the restraints. I moved down to his legs and linked them tightly together using a pair of cuffs. He moaned and I noticed the cunning glint of precum on the tip of his cock. “You like this, huh? You’re such a dirty little bitch.”

I leaned in closely and kissed the fat arrowhead of his cock. He tasted wonderful, like freshly roasted walnuts coated with salt. He flinched, pulling against the restraints and made a desperate sound like a dog tugging on its leash at the sight of another dog. His biceps flexed dramatically. I worried for a moment that he might accidentally break the thin, fragile-looking straps of the maid’s dress. I didn’t want to make a bad impression during our first night because I was enjoying myself and had already started to think of future scenarios I could force him to do. I slid the length of his cock into my mouth. He hadn’t lied about having a huge dick. I grinned with him in my mouth, accidentally brushing him with the porcelain edges of my teeth. He whimpered. I moved lower, feeling the head of his cock brush against the back of my throat.

His moans started to get more fervent and ragged like a car engine sputtering and popping right before it overheats and blows, emitting an acrid cloud of white smoke. I knew he was close. I stood up abruptly and stared down at him from the foot of his bed. He looked at me with his big, watery eyes and mouthed, Please. I laughed out loud. He looked pathetic with both his arms spread out on either side of him and his legs bound together, like a sad, perverted rendition of the crucifixion. If Jesus had been dragged through the streets of Jerusalem in a cheap French maid’s outfit purchased from Amazon and crucified on a memory foam mattress. I realized that I was rock hard underneath my linen shorts, but I didn’t undress. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above his bed and realized that my neck was flushed red. I was giddy at the thought of him being Jesus and crawled back onto the bed, gripping his cock in my fist, leaning in to gently bite his jugular.

“I’m gonna make you suffer,” I said and breathed into his ear. He made a desperate crying sound and pulled against the restraints. I wanted his forgiveness more than anything regardless of how much agony I put him through. And I knew he would forgive me afterwards, nuzzling his tear-streaked face into my armpit. I would glow with satisfaction, knowing I had taken him to the edge and beyond, offering him his humanity through metered, orchestrated pain. So, I move down his body, twisting his pliant nipple between my thumb and forefinger, and take his cock back into my mouth.

And here I am, amidst this dark and confusing world, thinking about Jesus.