HE DID. But of course acclaimed director Alfonso Arau filmed the naked lady riding on horseback behind her lover. As written. Of course he did. And it seemed to take forever; was it in slooooow moootioon?
I looked around at the faces of my young wards, which were, to the man, rapt with attention. My heart, it skipped not one beat, but two, even three. Though naturally, I kept my face blandly composed. All the while, I was thinking that I was surely going to hell for corrupting young men consecrated to God above.
I called upon the New-ager in me. I wanted her to come and rescue me from the attack of Catholic-ness that flooded me as I looked to the screen and to my students and back at the screen, wondering if the scene would ever end, if I could just get their faces back to looking normal, even bored, with literary discussion.
No such luck. The New-ager Linda, who would have calmed me, assured me with a blithe “You are contributing to their education of the world, and how it imitates art and vice versa... ” – she was next door in the auditorium. She was laughing like a banshee, doubled up in mirth. She stuck her tongue out at me, refusing to come to my rescue.
So Catholic me had to go this alone. I prayed for God to wipe from my students' minds what they had just seen on screen. I prayed that they would remain innocent children. I prayed for the earth to swallow me up then and there, immediately. The earth did not cooperate.
After that class, I came upon one of my co-faculty, a young priest whose name escapes me, who was always but always good conversation. I said, “Father, something just happened.” If that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Catholic confessional, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” that's because it may as well have been.
I told him what had just occurred in class, ending with my apprehension that perhaps my students were not ready for such an erotic display onscreen, even if such came from literary material that had already been thoroughly studied in class.
The young priest, he listened understandingly, and gave me his dispensation: “Ma'am, it's alright. It is literary, it is art, it is part of the exposure they need.” He smiled with great kindness, and the New-ager in me, from the auditorium yelled, “Didn't I tell you that already?” Even so, I wanted to be told to say recite a prayer three times to make up for my idiocy.
A nod now to Bishop Rudy Beltran who died last year – he was our Rector. And a nod to Bishop Andy Cosalan, who taught Spanish then. A shout out too to the then young priests who did wonderful work in training what one of my sisters says of young seminarians: “They belong to God.”