Salve Regina

I'm a musician and from my earliest days I have found church music to be incredibly erotic. I don't mean any and all hymns, plunked out on a tuneless piano and halfheartedly hummed by a sleepy congregation. No, I mean centuries-old chants and masses, in Latin, with strings or with organ. There's something about the way the music leans, the way it rises and falls, the reverence of it, that makes me wriggle in my seat.

I work for a church that still has music like this every week and on one occasion there was a young seminarian present, assisting the old priest. I was singing in the choir loft and that week we were singing my favorite mass - the Orbis Factor. It was particularly moving that day and my skin was buzzing. At one moment, as I was singing the Gloria, I looked down and the young, dark, tall, stormy-looking seminarian was looking up at me with flashing eyes. I looked at myself and realised that I had my hand in my shirt.

Perhaps it's not just the religious music that turns me on.