PUNK PROSE: My Body is a Temple for Naked Girls by B. Hudson

At this point, I can’t remember if I’m in counseling because I like to starve myself or because I like to cut my wrists at night and fall asleep to the sting. My parents tell me I go because they don’t want to lose me, but I am already lost. They don’t seem to know this. I exist in fragments and pieces, and the lady in front of me would do little to assemble them. 

“Are you cutting yourself? I will have to tell your mom if you are lying.”

She inspects my wrists with their faint scars and old wounds. I stare at the clock while she does this. When she is satisfied, I pull down my gray hoodie sleeves. I have won this session between me and the Christian lady. My cuts are etched on my upper thighs and sides. My body cannot be taken away from me, and even though my parents meticulously counted every knife, they did not count the one I swiped from Belk. 

The lady, like every week, opens the bible. This time, she tells me to treat my body like a temple. A temple should not be cut, and it should not be starved. 

“Don’t you know God lives within you? The Holy Spirit?”

I think about this often. Is God a tiny little man living in the core of my chest? She uses the term spirit, so I picture God as mist flowing within me. Panic sets in as guilt over other things I’ve done consumes me, but I’m a child, and she is the only person I can ask to alleviate my guilt. 

“How does God feel about masturbation? Does that hurt his temple?”

 I had watched YouTube videos about the word for rubbing my private parts, so to know this word made me feel adult. 

She is silent. 

She tells me to write down a list of questions and ask them when I return next week. So I do. 

1. Why doesn’t God like masturbation?

2. If I don’t watch porn, is it still wrong to touch myself?

3. Why did God make it feel good? 

I don’t write on my list that I’m masturbating to girls. I never give the Christian lady the list. Instead, I ball it up and make sure it’s hidden deep in the trash, buried with my shame. We never speak of it again. Yet I wonder, if I only masturbate to naked girls on Mondays and Wednesdays, does it make it okay? Does God take a couple of days off and go to other temples?

--B. Hudson