Swallowing, I picked my way back to the bed. As I’d thought, the floor was covered in beer bottles and discarded clothes. A mess of papers and a pen were scattered in the corner, and a guitar stood propped against the night stand. A prescription bottle of pills stood on the edge of the night stand, gleaming white. Doubt began to creep over me. The person in the bed was surely evil, if this was the way they lived… I brushed the thought away, and finally pulled up alongside the bed and peeked at the person who lay there. I gasped. It was a man. A shirtless man. I’d never seen a shirtless man in the flesh before. It was…strange. He was young, with a boyish face and dark hair. Jewelry, more jewelry than I’d ever been allowed to wear, gleamed against his skin. His ears twinkled with rows of earrings, a curved spike jutted from his eyebrow, and even his lip had a piercing. I hadn’t known that pierced lips happened. And he was covered–absolutely covered–in tattoos. Thick black lines, thin, dancing shapes, sharp jagged patterns–all of them flowed over his skin, dipping and diving and rising again over the landscape of his body. His muscular chest and well-formed arms were more ink than skin, and even his throat had been decorated. I knew what the Church taught about tattoos and piercings. That our bodies were temples from God, and that tattoos and piercings desecrated God’s gift to us, as if someone had painted graffiti all over a temple. I knew they were wicked. I knew they were wrong. So why does this temple look so good covered in graffiti? I wondered hazily…