"Norman Spinrad - Journals of the Plague Years 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

Walter Bigelow found Christ at the age of seventeen and was Born Again,
that's what the official biography says. Alas, it was only partly true. Oh
yes, I dedicated my life to Jesus when I was seventeen. But it was a cold,
logical decision. It seemed the only means of controlling my unwholesome urges,
the only way I could avoid damnation.
I hated God then. I hated Him for making me what I was and condemning me
to hellfire should I succumb to the temptations of my own God-given nature. I
believed in God, but I hated Him. I believed in Jesus, but how could I believe
that Jesus believed in me?
I was not granted Grace until I was twenty.
My college roommate Gus was a torment. He flaunted his naked body in what
seemed like total innocence. He masturbated under the bedclothes at night while
I longed to be there with him.
One morning he walked into the bathroom while I was toweling myself down
after a shower. He was nude, with an enormous erection. I could not keep my
flesh from responding in kind. He confessed his lust for me. I let him touch
me. I found myself reaching for his manhood.
He offered to do anything. My powers of resistance were at a low point.
We indulged in mutual masturbation. I would go no further.
For months we engaged in this onanistic act, Gus offering me every fleshly
delight I had ever fantasized, I calling on Christ to save me.
Finally, a moment came when I could resist no longer. Gus knelt on the
floor before me, running his hands over my body, cupping my buttocks. I was
lost. His mouth reached out for me
And at that moment God at last granted me His Grace.
As his head lowered, I saw the Devil's mark upon the back of his neck,
small as yet, but unmistakable--Karposi's sarcoma.
Gus had the Plague.
He was about to give it to me.
I leaped backward. Gus was an instrument of the Devil sent to damn my
flesh to the Plague and my soul to everlasting torment.
 And at last I understood. I saw that it was the Devil, not God, who had
tormented me with these unwholesome urges. And God had let me suffer them as a
test and a preparation. A test of my worthiness and a preparation for this
moment of revelation of His Divine Mercy. For had He not chosen to show me the
Sign that saved me from my own sinful nature at this eleventh hour?
That was when I was granted true Grace.
I sank to my knees and gave thanks to God. That was when I was Born
Again. That was when I became a true Christian. That too was when I was shown
my true calling, when the vision opened up before me.
God had allowed the Devil to inflict the Plague on man to test us, even as
I had been tested, for to succumb to the temptations of the flesh was to succumb
to the Plague and be dragged, rotting and screaming, to Hell.
This was the fate that Jesus had saved me from, for only the Sign He had
shown me had preserved me from death and eternal damnation. My life, therefore,
was truly His, and what I must use it for was to protect mankind from this
Plague and its carriers, to save those I could as Jesus had saved me.
And He spoke to me in my heart. "Become a leader of men," Jesus told me.
"Save them from themselves. Do My work in the world."
I promised Him that I would. I would do it in the only way I could