Shooting in the Dark

my table, another one when she was coming back with dirty pots. And it wasn’t just a look she’d give me, what she’d give me was a look that said something.
    I’ll tell you this as well. There is no such thing as sexual morality. Sex is just sex. Sex is two people or two animals, birds, fishes, whatever, that are brought together by a chemical rush. There’s no morality involved. Morality becomes involved in cases of life and death, in social and personal conduct. Two people having sex, that’s something else. God is not a Victorian prude. He doesn’t judge someone who acts out of perfectly normal instinctual behaviour.
    She isn’t a glamour girl, Miriam. That first time I saw her I thought she was about twenty, but it turns out she’s twenty-three. All the girls in that place wear white blouses, and it isn’t until you see them together that you realize how many different kinds of white there are. Miriam never gets around to ironing her blouse, so it looks as though she’s slept in it. Anyway, she had that on. I can’t remember anything about the skirt, I think it was probably nondescript. Black? What was most striking about her was that she had no breasts. She does actually have a pair of small pigeons, but that morning, what with the wrinkled blouse and everything, she seemed to have the chest of a young boy. She has short hair, curly, but the greasy atmosphere of the café makes it shine. And she has this weird jaw: her bottom teeth and chin protrude.
    She’s not ugly. I know she sounds ugly from my description. But she isn’t. I wouldn’t say she was beautiful, either. She’s pale, though. Without make-up, her eyes are small, and her lips are the same toneless shade as the rest of her face. That’s what I noticed about her that first day.
    We have to take notice. We have to be aware. We have to watch. That is why He gave us eyes. That is why the elect are never blind.
    For two months after Marilyn Monroe’s suicide in 1962 there were over three hundred more suicides than would have been expected during that period. I know things like this because my research was directly concerned with the association between the media and crime. What specifically interests me are the images of violence portrayed on television and in films and the relationship between those images and the violent behaviour that is endemic in our society.
    Many of my colleagues insisted that there is no proven relationship between the images and the reality, but that does not explain why so many more people committed suicide in those two months following Marilyn’s death. We also know that when a major heavyweight boxing match is televised, reported murders will tend to increase by 12 to 15 per cent over the following three days.
    Not all scenarios are as simple as the one on the motorway. Life is a complicated business. Life and death are as complicated as heaven and hell. This is because we have free choice. We can be good or we can be evil. It’s up to each one of us to decide. We can watch a child die, or we can decide to sacrifice ourselves so that the child might live. We can make those kinds of decisions. God will stand back and watch us while we make those decisions. He will not interfere.
    He will hope in His creative mind that the child who is saved is of more value than the one whose life is sacrificed for the child. We will all hope that. None of us would like to think that a good man has given his life so that an evil child can live and grow into an evil adult.
    But suppose something like that happened, what would be the reaction of those in power on the earth, the rulers and the priests? Just suppose. And don’t think for a moment that it hasn’t happened, because in this world fact and fiction are completely interchangeable. To you it might well be fact, but to God it is all fiction. Everything stems from an idea He had.
    Miriam didn’t have a boyfriend, so she was glad to get me. She’d had a boyfriend for a year once, but he got depressed and all the fun went out of it. She’d had a couple of one-night stands since then, just for the sex, but that’s no way to live your life. With me she gets it regularly, and I never get depressed. She wants us to get married, and I can’t think of any reason not to do it. We’ll have to wait, of course. I’ve still got other things to attend to.
    This isn’t simply an animal thing; Miriam and I are on the same wavelength. We are spiritual pilgrims. I am an