Purse snatch
by John-Ivan Palmer
[ fiction - september 05 ]
Francis Loyola Bishop was helping to purify America.
As a lawyer, he worked closely with the Family Heritage Union, The Legion of Decency, and the Christian Family League to purge the magazine racks in the local drug and convenience stores. They pressured the superintendent of schools to ban all magicians and puppet shows from programs in the district, citing the prohibition in Deuteronomy 18:10 against “enchanters and wizards.” They took photographs of people going into the Naughty But Nice book and gift store, and if they were driving a company van or a delivery truck, the drivers were reported to their superiors. They insisted the drivers be fired and if their employers refused, their businesses were boycotted.
It worked.
Under Bishop’s direction, a special committee was assigned to obtain visitor’s permits and inspect the local school libraries, singling out “inappropriate” books like Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy’s Roommate, novels in which young protagonists defy authority, anything by J D Salinger, Judy Bloom, and especially Charles Darwin. At the high school someone found a stray copy of the Koran, donated by an exchange student from a country that didn’t know Jesus, and had it removed on grounds of “school security.” These books were all replaced with ones that put Christian thought and living in a positive light.
Although some in the community thought the decency committees were going too far in their zeal, they didn't dare say anything or put up a protest for fear of being branded satanic and anti-American and eventually forced to move. It was a slow process, but with persistence and legal strategy from Mr Bishop, their goals were achieved one by one.
He watched these developments with superior aloofness. Even though he represented the various organizations and prepared legal briefs and sympathized with their causes, their relentless methods did not necessarily arouse his emotions. His detachment accounted for his success in arguing his client’s cases, and his success was why they kept hiring his services. When the wreckers tore into an abandoned night club he helped shut down, he viewed the dilapidated interior, with all its dirty little secrets now exposed to the sun and open air. Bishop’s personal lusts, however, were of an entirely different nature, completely hidden and untouchable.
Francis Loyola Bishop had a purse fetish. A purse, setting on the couch in the waiting room of his law office, aroused him as would to someone else a completely naked woman. And an open purse... well, it was as bold and lurid an invitation as he could possibly imagine.
For the 42 years of his life he always had this fetish and could not remember being excited by anything else. Scarves and gloves were a mild stimulus, mostly because they were matching accessories to purses, but if they were carried inside the purse, they might as well have been a breast or a buttock.
While in law school he became so overwhelmed one day that he actually snatched a purse from a woman on the street, then ran home and pored over the contents until his pleasure could not be satisfied any more. But being a man who kept the commandments, he returned the purse to its owner by mail along with a $50 bill and a note of apology for any inconvenience. It was his version of a hot date.
Bishop, however, was so inured to following the exactness of protocols laid down by others that he put his return address on the package. This resulted in a court order for six months of psychiatric counseling.
To the first psychiatrist, a man whose shoulders were always covered with dandruff, Bishop revealed his strict upbringing in a Catholic family of 15, sharing a bedroom with five sisters, and 12 years of parochial school, although he no longer considered himself a practicing Catholic. The psychiatrist tried using hypnosis to bring Bishop into more mainstream desires, using magazines from the very bookstore he helped to close, but the psychiatrist became irritated at Bishop’s lack of progress, saying he was “resisting.”
His second counselor was a Christian psychologist, with a tight little clutch purse, who tried to sign him up for 20 sessions designed to “Christianize his penis,” but that failed too.
The third counselor talked him into attending a men's awareness group, but Bishop saw the men as sexually confused victims of life, like the one who lost his job and his family as a result of parking his pie truck in front of the Naughty But Nice bookstore and going in to buy a gag gift for his brother-in-law.
After six months of treatment with a series of counselors, Bishop felt less impulsive, and prided himself on his moral character. He self-righteously proclaimed that he never engaged in fornication, and he resolved to dedicate himself to making sure no one else did either.
Although he had little interest in women per se, they were a necessary and sufficient condition for him to have successful congress with a purse. Could it be shown with certainty that an obsessive love for purses can satisfy the deeper needs of the human soul? For Bishop, department store purse counters were an essentially shallow thrill, shallow as the shrink wrapped rawness of the products the Family Heritage Union was working so hard to eliminate. In order to satisfy him, purses needed a human dimension, that is, they had to be owned by a woman and filled with a woman’s personal possessions. He was horrified by the thought of fondling a purse that might belong to a transvestite, as that would bring up the disturbing thought that he might be committing a homosexual act.
“Mr Bishop,” said his secretary, “there's a lady here to see you. Mr Bishop? Mr Bishop?”
There entered a white vinyl shoulder bag attached to a familiar client from the Family Heritage Union. She was bringing in new evidence that the high school librarian was not only an atheist but a lesbian. She wanted to know what legal options were available to get her fired and replaced by someone hand-picked by her committee.
“Yes, of course,” said Bishop, eying what swayed tantalizingly from her shoulder. “You can leave your purse and coat on the chair and we'll go in the conference room where it's more private.”
They went into the adjoining meeting room for “more privacy” whereupon Bishop excused himself, doubling back to his office and the white shoulder bag on the chair.
He fell to his knees and rubbed his face all over the shoulder bag’s cool, smooth surface. Then he ever so gently spread apart the cold metal latch. He felt such a cascade of excitement that his face became red and flushed, and he thought his cheeks would explode. Tearing himself away, he buttoned his suit coat to cover the front of his pants, then returned to his client in the conference room.
For some time there had been whisperings within the Christian Family League, one of his best clients, over the fact that Bishop was in his 40s and never married. He was not displeasing to look at. He was wholesome and clean-cut and faultlessly mannered. He made good money as an attorney and drove a nice car. As a bachelor, women were always assessing him. But dating had its problems.
He was an intelligent man and enjoyed dog races, square dances and bingo, but it all seemed to lead to one dreadful inevitability. A brief hug or kiss on the cheek was tolerable, but putting his lips on the mouth of a human female repulsed him beyond description. It was all so unnatural, so un-purselike. The sexual openness of modern women terrified him, which gave him something in common with many of his clients, so he gravitated toward the functions of conservative churches.
One night, at a Bible fellowship square dance, he met a young woman named Agatha Grundy, who carried an especially interesting purse.
“Would you be offended,” she said, “if I left you for a few minutes to talk to someone privately? We’re organizing a protest over that volcano movie at the Imax. You know it’s just propaganda for evolution. We shut that movie down in South Carolina and Texas and we’re going to do the same thing here.”
“Please do,” said Bishop. “In fact, I will even watch your purse for you while you're gone. And take your time.”
“Such a courteous man!” said Agatha. “I couldn’t be more blessed.”
It was a vinyl swagger bag with interestingly gathered side panels and a flap pocket that pouted open invitingly. With his thumb and first finger he spread open the knob closure and slipped his fingers inside, feeling the pressed-together folds and yielding softness of the side gusset. The sensation was so intense he had to remove his hand before he embarrassed himself publicly.
Later that night when he drove her home and parked in front of her house, she said to him, “Would you like to join my Bible study group?” She edged closer to him, but kept her purse between them as a kind of barrier. As it pressed against his upper leg, Bishop let out a soft sigh. Thinking this reaction was over her, she grabbed his head with both hands and intruded herself into his oral cavity. He pushed her away, then wiped his mouth. At first she was shocked, but then apologized profusely for yielding to the temptation of the devil and asked him to forgive her. Before they parted, they joined hands in prayer.
Bishop’s difficult challenge was to get close to women's purses without having to get close to them. His luck began to change when he met Gert Butcher at a fundamentalist hayride.
“You're the first man I've met in ages,” she said, “who is not thinking of just one thing.” Bishop smiled modestly as he rubbed gently against her shoulder bag nestled in the straw.
“Do you ever read Dennis Prager’s column on the internet?” she asked him as the wagon slowly rocked under the moonlight. “He says that Jews retreated from the world and became interested only in their own affairs, separating themselves from Christians. They brought persecution down on themselves. Isn’t that interesting? I probably shouldn’t say that or some liberal might think we’re anti-Semitic.”
When the hayride was over he was delighted that Gert didn't force any kisses on him, so they went out again to a pro-life lecture and slide show. When she set her purse on the floor between them, it happened to touch his ankle. “Is my purse in your way?”
“No, not at all,” said Bishop with old-school courtesy. “Not at all.”
After a few minutes he leaned over on the pretext of tying his shoelace and rolled up his pants leg and pushed down his sock. He remembered nothing about the lecture and slide show except the cool feel of purse on his bare ankle.
Bishop was relieved Gert did not force her lips upon him, and she was relieved that he agreed with her on the sinfulness of premarital sex - even marital sex for that matter (except for procreation). “First and foremost,” she said, “I’m married to Jesus.” This impressed Bishop. He thought for a moment of using that as an excuse for his own celibacy, but with his trained legal mind he quickly saw that it might self-implicate him in the rumors that were already circulating.
He saw a lot of her purse over the next few weeks, as they went to church functions together and participated in various committees to promote Christian values in the community. She associated with women like herself who, it turned out, were sexually conservative and carried purses. Nice ones.
It was through Gert Butcher, the wife of Jesus, that Francis Loyola Bishop finally reached that apotheosis of happiness he so often thought about. She brought him to a rally on the Capitol steps in favor of a bill that would allow people to sue libraries over books that offended them personally. Nearly 20 picketers marched and chanted. While the women in the group carried signs, they didn't like to carry their purses, so Bishop, ever the eager gentleman, volunteered to watch them. All of them. His thoughts were those of Dante upon the threshold of Paradise, “There is not one drop of blood in my veins that does not throb.”
And so it came to pass that Bishop became a yoke-fellow in the modern fundamentalist Christian movement, accompanying bused groups to rallies and meetings. He gave lip service to the issues and recruited new clients even though he avoided the marching and the shouting. But that didn't matter. He was more than a vocal ideologue. He was a necessary cog in the wheel of the family values crusade - the all important purse-sitter.
While his adjuncts were out with bullhorns and butyric acid, battling the monsters of birth control and abortion, he remained on the bus with his abundance of dark warrens in which to probe his ardor, stretching open the puckered drawstrings of tote bags, fondling eyelets and turn-locks as foreplay to the deep penetration of little niches and inside pockets. During those all-night vigils outside the homes of families who wanted to euthanize their thanatoid loved ones on the verge of springing out of bed fully cured, Bishop could operate under cover of darkness. With his proprioceptive termini, he probed the internally concealed handkerchiefs, tissues, gloves and headscarves, rousing up the elusive scents of gum, tobacco, wax, and perfume. He inquisited until there was no more means to do so, even though the desire persisted. If purses could fulfill the scriptural proclamation to multiply, Bishop would have engendered an entire Sax Fifth Avenue. But he was a moral man. A Christian man. He was totally trusted as if he were God incarnate. He never took one item from the many purses in his harem. If anything, he left a little something.
And that was how Francis Loyola Bishop finally found salvation. He was needed and admired. He was blessed with financial enrichment. If several dozen people locked arms in civil disobedience in front of a clinic that pushed condoms on children, they couldn't very well carry their purses with them as they were hauled away to jail. Eventually they would need their identification and bail money.
And that’s when the respected Mr Bishop could always be counted on to come with their purses.
