Was this display of hedonistic wantonness supposed to be the example of what the world should be more like? If it was I wanted no part of such a world, where everything that had been created so perfectly had now been reversed into shameful self degradation of an individual's created glory and purpose.
It was as if in the height of immoral decadence, which was on display all around me, that the beauty and rightness of one man and one woman enjoying each other had been twisted into a thousand disgusting lesser forms of affectation. Why would a man hunger for something other than the beauty of a woman, and why would a woman settle for the affection of another woman, when only a man could ultimately fulfill and complete her deepest needs?
I thought of my mother and father and the way they had been with each other. My mother had been a beautiful woman too, but she would have looked completely out of place in this hall. Not for any lack of beauty on her part, but simply because she wasn't the kind of person to share herself with anybody else other than my father, who she had sworn herself to. Often as a boy I had covertly observed instances where she would simply look deeply at father or say something softly to him, which usually resulted in an unexplained absence by both a short while later, that would often last hours.
Witnessing how they had been with each other had both relaxed me and made me want the same in a relationship one day. My mother hadn't had to dress as these women did or display half the open eroticism that they displayed to completely overwhelm my father. I had never seen him once regard another woman other than my mother. What they'd had was special in a way that wouldn't and couldn't be understood in a place of such moral reversal and discontentment with what was naturally ordained to be.
The beauty of these women only went skin deep and knowing that helped me to disregard any earlier desires I'd had for them. The women that had drawn seductively toward me seemed to sense the change in my demeanor towards them, and like candles extinguished their looks of open invitation disappeared and were replaced with disinterested looks of hostility as they moved away to partake in pleasures elsewhere.
Feeling the weight of the spirit of the place lift off of me with my denial of it I noticed something about the place that I hadn't seen before. In the bare open areas of exposed wall between the rich tapestries, shadows danced.