So You Call Yourself A Man. Carl Weber

      Brent

      After eating twenty-four-ounce steaks, drinking German beer, and smoking twenty-dollar imported cigars with Sonny and James as we reminisced about the good old days, I finally arrived back home about 8:00 that evening. First thing I did when I hit the door was grab my Bible from the coffee table and get down on my knees to pray. My mind had been consumed with lustful thoughts ever since we left the airport. It didn’t help when, after his third beer, James finally lightened up from the funk he was in and started talking about the bachelor party he was planning on throwing me. Even down on my knees about to pray, I still couldn’t shake the thought of all that beautiful brown flesh they were going to parade in front of me. I loved those guys, but they had a way of bringing out the devil in me.

      “Dear Lord,” I said, lowering my head in prayer. “Please forgive me my lustful, heathenous thoughts that have consumed me. Father, please help me to be a better Christian who is not obsessed with the flesh but with Your glory….”

      I prayed for almost thirty minutes, finishing up my prayer with a hearty, “Amen.” It was echoed by a female voice behind me.

      “Alison,” I stammered in surprise. I looked up at my bride-to-be, who was dressed in a flowered church dress and matching hat. She must have let herself in with the key I’d given her. “How long have you been there?”

      “Long enough to know that we need to talk.”

      She sat down on the sofa solemnly. I swallowed hard, studying her face as I pushed myself up from the floor. I wasn’t sure how much of my prayer she’d heard, but there was no doubt she’d heard enough for me to be concerned. Alison was a good woman and we shared many interests, but because of her size and weight she was insecure about my love for her. The last thing I wanted her to hear was me testifying to the Lord about lusting after flesh.

      “Talk about what?”

      “About us,” she said flatly, patting the cushion beside her. “Now sit.”

      Hesitantly, I walked over to the sofa and did as I was told. I placed my hand on her thigh then stared in her pudgy but cute face, hoping to soften the mood with my eyes. Alison was a large woman, probably a size 20 or more, but her size didn’t matter to me, because she had a heart of gold. I’d never met any woman who could make me laugh the way she did. We were both into watching sports, and we could talk about almost anything. Even more importantly, she was just as devoted to the Lord, if not more than I was. In my eyes, she was the perfect woman, and the only woman I’d ever even considered taking as my wife.

      “You’ve been thinking about sex again, haven’t you?” Her voice was calm but demanded an answer. I lowered my head in shame, unable to give her a reply. Alison, like me, was not a virgin, but had taken a premarital vow of celibacy when she accepted Christ into her life.

      “Brent,” she said, putting a finger under my chin and lifting my head. I avoided eye contact, even though this time when she spoke her voice was softer. “Brent, please, baby, look at me. I know it’s hard, and I understand. I have the same urges and feelings that you have. I love you, Brent.”

      I turned my eyes toward her. Without a word, she placed her hand on mine and leaned forward. She kissed my lips gently, and instinctively, I kissed her back. I was shocked when her tongue parted my lips. Alison and I didn’t French-kiss because we both agreed that it was lustful and would probably lead us down the road to breaking our premarital vows. I broke the kiss in protest, but she grabbed my head and forced her lips back on mine, sucking the air from my lungs as her tongue explored my mouth. For a few seconds, I savored the kiss and my hands roamed her large, soft body, but then I broke it abruptly. What we were doing was wrong.

      “Alison! What’s gotten into you?”

      She grinned wickedly as she removed her hat, closing the gap between us. I’d never seen her like this, and the insatiable look of lust on her face made me move a foot back on the sofa. “You’ve gotten into me, Brent. I love you, I want you, and we don’t have to wait anymore.” She took my hands and placed them over her breasts. When I realized what she was doing, I pulled them back and moved another foot away.

      “Alison, I can’t…we can’t…this is wrong. We made a vow to God. The Lord says…” I went to reach for my Bible, but she brought my hands back to her breasts.

      “I know what we promised God, Brent. But ours is a good God, a merciful God, a forgiving God, and I’m sure He’ll forgive us if we break our vow this one time. We only have a week before our wedding, and you need this. We both need this.”

      She reached into my lap, massaging my penis through the thin material of my pants before unzipping my fly and pulling it out. She stared for a moment, then looked up at me and smiled one last time before lowering her head. A warm wave of pleasure overcame me as the words, “Lord, please forgive us,” quietly escaped my lips.

      It was a little after 9:00 the next morning when the smell of bacon woke me. Not long after that, Alison walked into the bedroom carrying a plate in one hand and my favorite coffee cup in the other. She was naked except for the top sheet of my bed, which she had wrapped around her large torso, and a grin that told me she’d had the time of her life.

      “Good mornin’.”

      “Mornin’,” I replied as she stepped up to the side of the bed.

      “I made your favorite breakfast. I even made you homemade biscuits just the way you like them.” She lifted the plate.

      “I can see that.” I smiled, looking over the plate like a hungry wolf before taking it out of her hand. “What’s the occasion?”

      “I just wanted you to know how much I love you. How much I enjoyed myself last night. You know, I never had a man make love to me the way you did last night. It was as if you knew my body better than I did. Just thinking about it gets me warm and tingly all over.” She shuddered, then rubbed her arms, trying to rid herself of the goose bumps that appeared.

      I lowered my head, trying to conceal an ego-driven grin. I was happy Alison was pleased with my performance, but I wasn’t surprised. Ever since I first started having sex as a teenager, women had been pleased with my abilities in bed. Funny thing is, all I was doing to them was what I wanted to have done to me.

      “If I’d known it was going to be like that, I would have insisted we did it a long time ago.” She gave me that same wicked smile from the night before as she placed the coffee cup on the night table. I watched as she loosened the sheet, letting it fall to the ground. I stared at her soft, naked body, then shook my head as she reached for me.

      “Alison, we can’t do this again until we’re married. Now, I think you should get dressed. We both have some praying to do before we go to service.”

      4

      James

      I pulled my UPS truck in front of Michelle’s mother’s house. I was nervous as hell about seeing her, so it took a good five minutes before I got out of the truck and knocked on the door. I’d asked to have my route changed after we stopped messing with each other, so it had been quite some time since I’d been here. Despite the obvious reason, I was also concerned that seeing her might bring back some old feelings like in that Fantasia song, “Truth Is.” We’d had some good times in that house, but I was hoping to keep those memories suppressed. Back in the day, Michelle could make me stand at attention just by looking at me, and the last thing I needed was to find myself sexually attracted to her after all these years.

      Thankfully, my concerns disappeared when she answered the door in her beat-up old sweats and hair rollers, like she had in the old days before we started fooling around. Seeing her in her less made-up state made me question why I’d ever messed around with her in the first place. She wasn’t ugly by any means, but for lack of a better word, the aura she used to have was gone. She couldn’t hold a candle to what I had at home. It’s amazing what a little loneliness will do to make a man think an average-looking woman is the woman of his dreams. Of course, at the