Ritual and repetition make the patterns that end up defining life and funneling common desires towards a safe abstraction. Eileen recommends Alice read Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic” because she also has theorized about the non-physical importance of sex as a human experience. There are also those who direct their unfulfilled erotic longing into religious ritual and devotion. The exclusivity of a romantic relationship mirrors a consecrated devotion to a higher being. Both religious devotion and romantic relationships involve dedication and desire.

After attending Mass with Simon, Eileen admits she finds the Mass “strangely romantic.” Alice responds that the parable of the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with her hair is bewilderingly erotic, maybe deliberately so, as eroticism—more often called eros in philosophical discourse—is a nonrational, almost spiritual drive that, depending on whom one asks, either brings humans down to a common level or helps them transcend their humanity by leading them to divine realities. The two women struggle to articulate eros, sometimes getting only close enough to paraphrase it as a diminished version of itself: sentimentality. Alice remarks, “[P]ut simply, I am fascinated and touched by the ‘personality’ of Jesus, in rather a sentimental, arguably even maudlin way.