5. I poke gingerly at the hummocky grassy ground, festooned with little piles of round pellet-like sheep dung, with the toe of my blue canvass Keds sneakers. A blustery wind blows my hair and a persistent drizzle wets my face. My eyes trace the line of the ancient track that crests the hillock on which I stand and continues on to the site of an old Roman camp and fort.
I read with interest the informative little sign at my feet, obligingly placed there by the National Trust. It tells of a fierce battle in which the Romans established control over the local Celtic tribe, and how archaeological finds of ancient timbers, rusted iron nails along with broken or splintered wrist and foot bones, suggest that the vanquished defenders who survived the fighting were put to death on this very spot in a mass crucifixion ... and curiously, how one set of bones, unlike the others, were those of a young female.
Eyes closed and buffeted by a quickening wind and heavier rain, I let my mind wander back nearly two millennia to imagine one of my ancestors … a young woman with long dark hair, lying naked on her back, bound with ropes to a heavy wooden cross, while two Roman soldiers fuss about the brutal task of hammering blunt iron nails through her thin wrists and delicate feet.
I imagine the horrendous pain she must have felt and how she must have arched her back, bucked and screamed with each hammer blow; and how, when the nailing was completed and the soldiers raised her cross and plopped it in its prepared hole, her poor naked body must have bounced about, repeatedly swinging out from the wood and crashing back into it; and how she must have suffered for God knows how long, struggling to push herself up to catch a breath of air and then sliding back, scourged back roughed up by the splintered timber, blood running down her arms and sides from her nailed wrists and oozing between the toes of her shattered feet; and how her head must have lolled from side to side, sodden hair splayed across her heaving breasts with hard tumescent nipples poking out through glistening twisted strands; and how her head, once exhaustion set in, must have hung forward until her chin came to rest on her chest.
Emerging from my reverie, I am consciously aware of what a powerfully erotic effect my little fantasy has had on me. I feel that familiar tingle of arousal and note with chagrin the dark wet stain spreading from the crotch of my skinny jeans.
And what of those two Roman soldiers who crucified her, I wonder? What did they think and feel? Were they aroused or had they seen it all before? Did they molest and brutalize her or feel sorry for her?
And what of me? Why does thinking of her and her suffering so excite me? Why do I fantasize about being unfairly condemned, stripped and exposed, tormented, humiliated, subjected to ridicule, whipped and tortured, nailed and raised? Am I weird, or is there a little of this in all of us?
I wonder.
FINIS