Tales of Midbar: Secret Priest

After I’d eaten (I was trying not to vomit and just picked at my food and put the remnants in the fridge), Dad took me to the temple, saying he had something that would cheer me up. He and Mum had been together in his study and I suspected they’d discussed my situation without me hearing what they said. Mum was marching around twiddling her hair and gave us a dirty look as we left.

The temple of Yoho in Laraget was larger than most Holy Sites, a hulking building on top of a hill, that sat there like some hunched monster waiting to strike. In the black and red of red night, it looked particularly ominous. Inside there was a large sanctuary with seats, like a big theater but at the front there was a huge idol of Yoho, a bearded man holding a glass in one hand and a bra in the other, symbolizing parties and sexual morality. There were also many small rooms and somewhere, accommodation for priests and prostitutes and the rooms where the prostitutes had sex with their clients. I’ve always thought it odd that Trulism has Temple Prostitutes while the more intolerant religions, Winemakerism and Nuhara, don’t.

Dad left me in the seats and went to talk to somebody I thought was a Love Priest who was standing at the front with the idol looming over him. I always thought it incongruous to have Love Priests and prostitutes in the temple of Yoho but Dad just said that was one of the things that proved gods were only symbolic. Was he really going to get me a prostitute? I had mixed feelings about this. Sure I wanted to have sex but I didn’t want to basically force a girl into it. I couldn’t be sure as I’d never done it and it may depend on how the prostitute behaved but I didn’t think it would give me the sense of accomplishment that seducing a regular girl would. It was like passing an exam by cheating. Perhaps it would flip some epigenetic switch allowing me to seduce regular girls. Was he going to hand me over to be a prostitute? No. My sister had been taken to be a prostitute and they only took one per family. I sat, which was good because I was still feeling giddy and shaking a bit, and considered what could solve my problem? Girls were supposed to try to find genetically superior males with good resources who could give them genetically good children and help raise them. Theoretically I was a good choice: a faharni, the main race on Midbar although I had ten toes and ten fingers, male, heterosexual and in good health. I was more intelligent than most people and did well at school (as least in terms of academic scores). My parents were still together and had well-paying jobs so my family was fairly well off and had a nice house in a good area. I lived in Laraget; a large, prosperous city on the fertile southern plane in the Great Basin. This was in Pax, a peaceful country which; like Trulism, the main religion; was very concerned with fairness and equality. I was a Trulist, the eldest son of a well known and respected, if somewhat controversial, rabbi who was also a well known and respected, if somewhat controversial, lawyer. I’m just being honest. I was born and raised a Trulist so I’m not prejudiced. Yet theory didn’t seem to count for anything and the girls at my school had sex with boys who, by all objective criteria, were vastly inferior to me. The most likely explanation was my korbar.

Had Dad thought of something I hadn’t? I could see him talking to the Love Priest, or perhaps a priestess? They both dressed in the same feminine costumes although Love Priests were male. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but the conversation clearly didn’t go well. Then the priest came over to me. When he got closer, I could see he was a man and therefore a Love Priest.

“I hear you’re having some trouble at school?” he asked, tilting his head to one side with a slight smile.

“So?”

“Are you being bullied?” He jumped over me and sat down beside me, I was seated on the end of a row.

“No, none of the girls will have sex with me but they’ll have sex with all the other boys.”

“Will any of the boys ..?”

“I don’t want to have fornicating sex with boys!” I screamed.

“Strong emotions can be dangerous,” he put his hand on my shoulder which made me even more uncomfortable and immediately withdrew it as if he was also uncomfortable about this.

“I’m a teenager who has to watch complete sub-human feces fornicating decent girls while none of the girls will fornicate me. Of course I have fornicating strong emotions! What are you going to do about it?”

“I suppose exclusion is a form of bullying but I’ve never heard of something quiet like this.”

“Our school has a zero tolerance policy on bullying,” I said, looking into his heavily made up face. The shape suggested he was a faharni, like most people in Pax. This was confirmed when I noticed he had six fingers on one hand. “Yet I’m being bullied?”

“What do you expect? The school to order girls to have sex with you?”

“That’s rather hypocritical coming from you! I’m a psychic aren’t I? That’s why they won’t have sex with me. Well some of the girls are psychic but I’m guessing I’m an anav and they’re nibeyot and katcheyot. A few times I thought I was getting somewhere with a psychic girl but they always go weird on me and stop being friends. That’s also the reason you won’t let me have a prostitute, isn’t it? It doesn’t exactly help having a father who doesn’t believe in korbarim! Of course Trulism doesn’t allow psychics to have sex with each other but sexual morals seem to have been utterly abandoned, thanks to my father, so perhaps if you won’t let me have a prostitute, the school could bring in an anavah or something.”

I was fairly sure he was a katchey, they’re moderately powerful, mostly mind reading and foreseeing the future. I think he was trying to foresee the future. ”Sorry but you can’t have sex with a psychic.”

“Some of the other psychic boys fornicate psychic girls!”

“There are issues you don’t understand here. What you plan to do is going to cause a lot of trouble.”

“So I’ve just got to put up with this and my epigenetics will be set with no self confidence and fornicating poor social skills because, well the school seems to be fornicating ignoring the rules and my father doesn’t fornicating believe in korbarim and you’re fornicating sticking to your rules about not letting psychics fornicate each other. I’m just going to demand my school treats me fairly, isn’t that the Trulist way?”

“I’m sorry but I can’t help you,” he said and then jumped over me again, his robes fluttering and showing frilly underwear, and walked away sadly. “I must take the moral high ground and obey the rules.”

“You’re a pimp who uses religion as an excuse for prostitution!”

“I’ve got another idea,” said Dad and started leading me out of the temple, holding my arm gently.