"Sacrament" by Gwydion (gwydion@writeme.com). This story came across like one of those foreign movies I used to watch when I was in college: It wasn't what I would call enjoyable, but I knew it was good. But I couldn't say why.

The gist of the story is that a woman who is a maid in a hotel has a serious guilt problem; and she's working hard at suppressing her sexuality, which she considers to be the root of her sinfulness. One of the guests at the hotel is a former priest - not only an ex-priest, but a depraved ex-priest who has his waste basket filled with filthy pictures of men abusing women. The former priest counsels the woman, and in a sort of sacramental sexual ceremony he helps her atone for her sins. The experience rejuvenates her - and him.

The story is reminiscent of a Graham Greene novel - the old whisky priest theme from "The Power and the Glory." This story is not jerkoff material, but it seems reasonable to believe that serious stories have a place on this newsgroup.

I have frequently maintained that the bdsm stories don't ring true to me, because I find it hard to understand how a person can express love for another by being deliberately cruel. I have also often stated that from my own background the closest thing to extreme bdsm as a form of love is the theological insight that God somehow redeems people by making them suffer. One of the great Catholic classics is the medieval "Imitation of Christ," and it focuses on this theme. Priests still preach this insight from the pulpits, and I think these priests are generally full of crap. The same theme runs through many of the American Puritan literary classics (e.g., "The Scarlet Letter") as well as the literature of many nations and cultures. I personally reject that concept of God, but I'm sure many readers of these reviews will find it to be familiar. These readers (and these preachers) may be right, and I may be wrong. What this author does is make a little more explicit than most authors the relationship between religion and certain sexual activities as a form of purification.

I have a friend who acknowledges that "Schindler's List" is probably a great movie; but she has no intention of seeing it, because she "has enough problems in her own life without watching a movie that dwells on man's cruelty to man." I'm sure she wouldn't be interested in this story either. If you feel that way, you might want to skip this story. Read something frivolous and uplifting like my own "Virtuous Reality."

This story made me feel uncomfortable, but it was still an excellent story.