Priest

The narrative escalates the extent of Tyler’s sexual transgressions. He goes from having vivid sexual thoughts about Poppy to having sex with her in the church and then at his home. Abiding by the conventions of the erotic genre, Simone luridly details their sexual encounters from Tyler’s point of view. The graphic descriptions of specific sex acts mirror Tyler’s deliberate actions. Tyler says, “I dove into her like a man possessed, my fingers burrowing into her ass cheeks to hold her open for my assault” (109). Yet Tyler isn’t “possessed,” nor does he “assault” her. With his fingers, mouth, and penis, he consciously gives Poppy pleasure. The specifics are a guide to his intentions. More so, the focus on her pleasure instead of his upends typical tropes that privilege the male orgasm over the female orgasm.

The explicit sexual detail also allows the novel to more fully explore The Tension Between Sexual Desire and Christian Morality. In Chapter 6, Tyler negotiates with himself, seeking a loophole in the sexual rules of his vocation by avoiding vaginal penetration. He says, “[I]t still wasn’t technically sex, I lied to myself, maybe it wouldn’t count, maybe I wasn’t sinning” (118). Tyler is aware that he’s deluding himself; nonetheless, his wishful thinking spotlights the litigious aspects of Christian sexual morality. Tyler presents the dynamic as a courtroom drama, where he avoids punishment due to a technicality. The absence of public condemnation heightens the discord. With no other person present to condemn Tyler, Tyler must carry the burden of punishing himself. As Tyler has vaginal sex in Chapter 9, he doesn’t put his thoughts into practice, so the back and forth between sex and religion continually permeates the story.

Millie counters the anti-sex atmosphere of the Church, encouraging Tyler toward Finding Fulfillment in Spite of Restrictive Norms. As an older woman who “adopted” Tyler when he first arrived in Weston, Millie is a motherly/mentor figure for Tyler. She’s perceptive, intuiting that Tyler and Poppy have a romantic relationship. Unlike Tyler, she’s not torn between sex and religion. Using a humorous and wise tone, Millie says, “I’ve lived a long time, and a man and a woman wanting each other is by far one of the least sinful things I’ve seen” (131). Yet Millie is a secondary character. She’s not God or a powerful part of the Church. While her opinion presents a positive view of sex, it doesn’t mollify Tyler.

Simone diversifies her story through references to Bible verses and theologians like St. Augustine and C. S. Lewis. Millie quotes from Lewis’s book-length defense of Christianity, Mere Christianity (1952): “The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins […] that is why a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute” (130). Lewis doesn’t outright champion sex within the realm of Christianity, but he points out that sexual sins play an outsized role in the moral imaginations of many Christians, largely because they are commonplace, obvious, and tangible, while more serious sins like self-righteousness and lack of compassion are far harder to identify. Arguably, Tyler abides by Lewis’s formula. He’s honest about his sexual desires, and he ultimately stops trying to fool himself or Poppy.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis compares Western society’s supposed preoccupation with sex to a hypothetical society’s preoccupation with food. If a society were constantly thinking about food to the exclusion of all else, Lewis believes that an outside observer would correctly conclude that something is wrong with them. In a sense, Lewis proposes moderation. Neither Tyler nor Poppy is interested in self-restraint. At the same time, Simone builds out their relationship so that it’s not exclusively sexual. What initially draws them together is the mutual fulfillment of their sexual desires, but Poppy’s sincere interest in helping the church raise money is proof that their compatibility extends beyond obsessive sex.