The Fall of Judas: Sloth
He told himself the sin was not his, as he followed a man with a wedding ring on his finger from the club where he’d ventured in awkward desperation. It was not he who had made a promise to God to remain faithful to another as long as they both should live. Surely, when the promise was not his, the burden of breaking it was not his to bear, either.
He knew the truth, of course. And if he knew, so did God. He simply couldn’t bring himself to care, anymore. He needed to eat. He needed textbooks and notebooks and pens and toiletries. If his scholarship wouldn’t cover them – it didn’t – he had to find the funds elsewhere. Somewhere deep down, he still cared about his grades, so he still studied. He knew his only source of income depended on his ability to catch the eyes of strangers, and so he still kept himself as well groomed as his tight budget allowed. He knew that his body needed fuel for all of those things, and so he ate.
But he didn’t care. He went through the motions a shell, told himself that no one noticed, and took risks he wouldn’t have some months prior, consequences be damned. On the occasion that he passed a church or a chapel, he felt a sting of guilt, and carefully pushed it into a dark corner of his mind. It just wasn’t enough to give him pause, anymore. Not after he’d met a man who might as well have been the Devil himself.
He didn’t bother with the pretenses, anymore. The man walking beside and a half-step ahead of him knew exactly what he was. Knew exactly what the thin, eye-catching youth’s time was going to cost him. The time, and the use of his body. Sooner or later, likely as not the wrong person would get wind of what he was doing in the clubs. His father would be furious. He wanted to care about that. He wanted to care about the prospect of being arrested for unlicensed prostitution. But they were faraway concerns that couldn’t touch him in the here and now. The immediate concern was a new class starting, new textbooks needing to be purchased.
They didn’t go back to the married man’s home. For all Judas knew, a wife was waiting there. Maybe his client had lied about working late? Maybe he’d said he was grabbing a beer with the guys after the office closed? He definitely hadn’t told her he was going out to find someone like Judas, someone he could pay, plow, and forget about, that much had been clear from how he’d danced around the subject even when there was nobody to overhear them.
The hotel his client had picked was surrounded by a parking lot that didn’t seem in proportion to the building – the long-haul trucks parked in it like gigantic, boxy serpents, the lights of the surrounding city reflecting in their dead headlights turning those lights into gleaming, sinister eyes watching them as they approached, explained why. Judas felt a shiver run down his spine, and for a split second contemplating turning and leaving.
The sin is not mine, he reminded himself.
A trucker motel, with rooms rented out by the hour because few truckers had reason to stay a whole day, much less several. Not that Judas was under any illusion that the disinterested receptionist thought that he nor the tidy giraffe with the well-manicured nails that paid for the room drove trucks for a living.
The room was small, impersonal, and utterly utilitarian. It was there for a driver to get the hours of rest the law mandated, not for the sort of comfort that more upscale establishments offered. The sheets were clean, slightly stiff, and the mattress under them was the kind a salesman would call “extra firm.”
Judas didn’t care.
He went through the motions, stripping down and helping relieve his client of his clothing, but he wasn’t up to pretending it was something it wasn’t. The giraffe didn’t seem to mind – his fingers still dug into Judas’s fur and his closely-cropped hair as the marbled polecat nursed his length from mostly-soft to firm enough to rival the hotel mattresses.
He lay back, offering his client a fake smile, an unspoken invitation to get into the utterly unremarkable bed with him. Light glinted off the man’s wedding ring as he motioned for Judas to turn over.
The sin is not mine.
It clearly wasn’t the man’s first time; while neither of them had brought more lubrication than the saliva that now coated the giraffe’s length, he went slowly enough that the groans on Judas’s breath were mostly not from discomfort – certainly not anything so severe as outright pain. Some part of Judas, the part that had learned from months of just this sort of temporary encounters, knew he should be putting in more effort, especially since this man was not the worst sort to secure as a repeat client. Some other part didn’t care enough to make more than a token effort at rocking back against his partner’s long, slow strokes.
As they both settled into that pace, the unrelenting rhythm of ocean waves against a sandy beach, the man leaned over, planted his hands on either side of Judas’s head, just beyond his shoulders. The golden gleam of his wedding band was now less than a foot from Judas’s face, and he stared at it, transfixed, even as the gentle breeze driving the waves picked up. The faster pace, the harder thrusts, drew more moans and groans out of him, and despite himself he found himself enjoying the way the giraffe’s length filled him, the way it caressed his insides, and the way the man’s panting ruffled the fur on the back of his neck.
Inevitably as the rising tide, his temporary acquaintance moved towards climax, stroke by stroke. Judas could hear it, could feel it, could read it in the slight tremble of the man’s arms as they bore his weight. A muzzle pressed against the back of his neck, teeth finding and gently digging into his skin, and he forced himself not to flinch. Mere moments later, he felt the last couple of powerful thrusts, ever so slightly out of the established rhythm, and what would have been a rudely loud groan escaped the giraffe, muffled by Judas’s fur and flesh.
Slowly, the giraffe lowered himself, his chest coming in full contact with Judas’s back. It wasn’t unbearable; clearly the man was still supporting some of his own weight as he rested against his young lover-for-hire.
“Thank you,” the man breathed, and Judas believed he meant it.
They lay there for a while, Judas’s gaze still on that golden band, his mind, unbidden, straying to the vows it symbolized. The vows this man had not only broken, but been willing to spend his money on defiling.
The sin is not mine.
So why did it feel like it was just that?
And why did he still not care?
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