 
### When Good Girls Do It

Edie Wright

Copyright 2013 by Edie Wright

Published at Smashwords

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This is something that was written a long time ago. Something that was written by somebody else. Something that was written by somebody who is no longer me.

But it was me who wrote it. The me then. The me then who I can't go back and erase. The me then who I love, cherish, and have nurtured. Everything's okay now. But for my reader who is me then, I hope you find this helpful.

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38-39.

Amen.

Some names have been changed.

Introduction

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. - Matthew 5:48

The thing is, I'm not an original. And if everything sounds cliché, I'm not surprised. But clichés come from somewhere and the origin of mine is this: girls like me, good Christian girls, who only want to do good and please God and be respectable are right now sitting in their rooms hating themselves for not knowing what to do or where they stand in regard to sex. And once these good Christian girls, who only want to do good and please God and be respectable, hear about sex, think about sex, masturbate in the shower or have sex, they feel guilty and yet are confused. They don't know if they're being seduced or not, tricked or not, because all the girls in their Bible study who warn them of these tricks are blonde and they aren't blonde, and the other Bible study girls have married parents and they don't have married parents, and the other Bible study girls listen to punk rock and don't know who Chewy Gomez is and don't really dance and don't really like fashion because they say it's frivolous, and because these girls, these confused good Christian girls, grew up in a town called Livermore where people are middle class and upper middle class and conservative and Republican and drive SUVs and have two kids and one dog and Pergo floors that they just installed, which was the better choice over hardwood considering the dog's nails and the kid's foot traffic, and the Christian girls don't know what's just conditioning and what's just right.

These girls don't know if their guilt is holy or not. They don't know if they're fighting against a conviction that exists or for a conviction that doesn't. They don't _know_. And since they don't know, they feel like they can't sit in church because someone will say the word repent, and even though they can go down a list of seven or eight or infinite things they've done wrong and want to change, they just don't know if sex is one of them. Everyone at church is just waiting for them to say the words "sex" and "brokenness" and "rose" and start crying an honest cry, and the good girls want to please and make right, but they don't want to be liars too, and nobody seems to care about that fact or understand that fact except for the people who already know that fact, except that these good girls don't know who or where _those_ people are inside the church because NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS.

These good girls—these good, honest, scared, ashamed, sexually frustrated, _human women_ —want to talk about this. And not just the women, men too. I want to talk about this. I want to _know_ this: in relation to premarital sex and sin, are we talking all or nothing? When we let go of one rule, do we lose them all? When the foundation of a house is shaken or a supporting beam extracted, the house crumbles. But, if you take off a single shingle, nothing really happens. So, what's where? Is premarital sex a beam or a shingle? Is it the plumbing or the difference between an Ethan Allen faucet and that discount one at Kmart? Or is it the caulking of the window? Or Pergo floors? What if, even though your whole life everyone has pointed to the red table runner and said "red," after further consideration you find it more maroon? What the hell happens then? Perhaps the rules for sex are different in different circumstances, unique in singular situations. But then that's an awfully liberal viewpoint and somehow unsatisfactory to we good girls and boys. Maybe analogies only work for Jesus.

+

He said, "I can feel you fighting against yourself," and that he would have stayed with me either way. I used to look at him sideways and skeptically, until the day that I realized it didn't matter. He could be there when I didn't want to think about anything, when I was tired, when I was done. He could be there when I thought I wanted to be bad, but didn't want to get caught and couldn't handle being judged. He could be there when I wanted to swear and I could tell him that "fuck" was one of my favorite words. He laughed and said, "Just don't say that around Sheila."

He called me "Leggy Brunette" that one time, when I leaned against the wall of Todai's and he called, "Who's that leggy brunette?" I looked down to blush, but didn't know if I should. It was serious time and I kissed him, saying, "We really need to talk." We walked outside to the F-150 and the key was already in my hand. I let us into the cab, where he held my hand to his mouth, running his lips up and back across my knuckles. My hands, his lips, his hands - and I thought of last night under the oak tree and the moon. It sounds like a fairytale, until I throw in the detail about the green pup-tent that kept falling down on us so many times that we finally just said "fuck it" (that's not a euphemism). I had on the new bra and boy shorts my mom had bought me at JC Penny, and the guilt of having this encounter on her dollar did not make me feel sexy.

But he did when he undid my jeans and smiled and said, "Mmm." We drove up to his friend's property in his father's yellow Corvette and got out and he was wearing a suit. And then he slid his hand into the boy shorts and I pushed him away at first and then didn't again.

I'm stalling.

In the cab, I made eye contact with everything on the dashboard before I told him that last night was great, really, really great, but that it could never happen again. His eyes changed to a slight hurt and I wanted so badly never to have that affect. He paused only a little longer than he would have liked and said, "Whatever you want. I'm just happy to hold your hand." I looked up at him to smile, as my eyes had been wandering about the center consul, but instead leaned over to kiss him. Lips on his lips, I kissed him absolutely harder than I was supposed to and pulled him into me, fingers sliding up the back of his neck. Even now, I can't remember if we did the same thing in the cab that morning as we did in the tent the previous night, but it doesn't really matter. I know that now. Standing leggy against the wall before, I had just wanted to avoid the lingering smell of memory while sitting in the church pew. I hoped he would take over my responsibility - share it, at least - and I could say, "Hold this behind your back and don't let me have it." And he would do that and want to participate in the game. "Ah, it could be so easy," I would think, forgetting that he had said, "Whatever you want." And that I had said...

It's amazing how those few words, without poetry or precision (or perhaps words of pure poetry, the only precision), had the immediate power to change all the planned words against them. I said what I said and it turned into action, and I finally understood the difference between mere words and incantation, between promise and what I was actually capable of. Capable, that's not what I mean. I'm capable of quite a bit, save perfection. And that's the thing. But no, again it doesn't feel right to even say that. I'm incapable of being perfect, of course. Fallen world, fallen children, I'm not suggesting an exemption from that. But breaking perfection into its parts (obedience, perseverance...well, obedience probably covers it all) makes it seem that it shouldn't be so impossible. Don't kill, don't steal, don't lie. Okay. Love thy neighbor and the Golden Rule. Simple. I can always do better, true, but the point is that I look back on my mistakes and can say, "But, you know, I could have done right." I could have, that's the thing. And since I could have, I am able to, which makes me think perfection in its parts to be attainable. But then, nobody is forcing me to do wrong at all, so why not do right? Maybe with perfection it isn't a question of capability so much as one of will. Or of want. I don't want to say want, but then what is will if not a conflict of wants? So, then, I do not want to be perfect, which is why I'm not. I am immediately disobedient.

But maybe that's not the point. Maybe what I want isn't supposed to be factor. Just do it. Or, in this case, don't. Don't have sex. Simple. You say, "I'm saving myself for marriage," and then that makes it true. It should really be that simple, and yet the want creeps in. Well, it really doesn't creep in so much as it is in and wants to creep out. "Put it in," I told him, but what I meant was, "Let it out."

I took later guilt to a therapist who asked me, "Do you really think it's possible to do all these things?" and I paused before I said, "Why shouldn't it be?" We talked about my childhood and how my aunties would say, "Go to Stanford," and my grandpa, "No, go to Cal!" They would always agree on one thing, though, as I offered up preliminary professions for myself: singer, musician, archaeologist, model (I was six). Everything I wanted to do, I should do, they would say, "After you cure cancer." And "after you cure cancer" was what I heard for the next twelve years, until I decided that I wasn't altogether great at science or math and that I much more enjoyed reading than anything else. I decided that I wasn't going to be a doctor, but it was never because I thought I couldn't. I said, "I guess I'm not going to cure cancer," but kept trying to think of ways that I could.

I laughed about these things with the therapist and he was laughing too, when he asked what I said he asked earlier and I replied much as I told you I did. He apologized that he wasn't well-versed in religion, but that from other life experiences, he could tell me that an all-or-nothing attitude hardly ever works. I nodded with a down-turned smile but wondered why not? "Never say never" and "You can do anything you set your mind to". These are the things I've been taught. And now I can't say I can't, but what's the problem there? Cant's get in the way of doing, and the doing is what needs to be done. I can't say I can't cure cancer; it would be denying a thing to be done.

Well, I'm a bitch, then. That's the only possibility. Because if I do believe that I can cure cancer, I have the moral responsibility to do so. And if I don't cure cancer without saying that I can't, well then that's just a big "Fuck you" to a lot of suffering people, isn't it? I can't cure cancer. I mean...I mean I know I won't do it. I'm not a doctor, I'm not even good at math...I...it should be a lot easier to just say that I can't. It should be just that easy, since it has really been quite obvious. I had been determined to reach that marriage line virginity intact and couldn't. No, I didn't. Determined for three whole years...my God. It sounded so noble then and yet, three years? I guess by the end of my life, it will hardly even be worth mentioning.

Listen, I'm not an idiot and I'm not some spiritual moron. Well, maybe I am, but it isn't because of a lack of dogmatic understanding in regard to such a base tenement of the faith— _the_ tenement of the faith. I know that I'm not perfect and can't be. Obviously. I know that. I know I need Christ as my Redeemer and all that. I know that. I _feel_ that, I should say. No, I feel and know. Well, which is the better way to explain it? I feel in my deepest down bones that I am not and cannot be perfect and, therefore, need to be redeemed. I want to be, too. I feel these things, but it's the matter of knowing that's harder, you know? Because even though there are all these instances of the Bible that talk about the inability to be perfect and all that, well there are parts that say, "Be perfect!" Is it a trap? Some cruel joke? That's why I had to change the verb just now from know to feel, you understand. But it still isn't quite right. I feel what I should know, but I don't know exactly what I feel. It's harder, the knowing, because words can make my mind confused. The heart is exempt from all that word crowd.

Still, maybe I can explain. It's like this: if someone tells me to aim for perfection, I consider perfection to be the mark, and, what more, for that mark to be attainable. And more than that. Like in fifth grade, when Mrs. Akin-Abbot gave the assignment to write a sentence with nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, I came back with a seventeen-line sentence and colored illustration. Or in senior year of high school when we were assigned to prepare persuasive sales presentations for economics and my group showed up in matching shirts, skirts, and ties with color charts and product samples. Or what about every other example of my stupid life that's boring, but nevertheless true? It's not as if I obsess over achieving (yes, I do) or like my world is crushed when I don't (I don't sleep well), it's just that...well, I don't know what it's just. I don't know. I like to please. I like for people to say, "Edie, I'm proud of you." I like it when people tell me what to do, when they expect things, when they tell me where the mark should be and I look at it and say, "I bet I can do even better." People come to expect things and even if they didn't before, I like to be the person to give them something to expect. For the next time. I give it to them.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm easily manipulated or something, just because I aim to please. That's not it. That's really not it, even though you won't believe me. I really wish you could see...but, no, you won't. I say these things with the hope that...well, that you will know what I mean. But you don't know me and I don't...I do...I do and I don't care what you think about it all, anyway. I mean, no, I do care. I care that what I'm saying makes sense enough that you won't feel you've wasted your time and that maybe your staying will keep me company. I guess, for right now, I just want you to understand this thing, which is that I listen when someone says, "This is what you should do," and I love it. I listen to it. I have a 720 credit score, a 3.7 GPA (that could have been higher), and I've never been pulled over for a traffic ticket. Never. And I want you to listen to that, but know that it's not as though I think that I'm perfect.

This isn't coming out right at all. I think I know what you're thinking about all this you're seeing. You're thinking, "God, this girl. Could she be more stuck up? More presumptuous?" Or maybe, if you're my mom, you're thinking, "Edie, honey, we've worked so hard on this perfection thing, sweetheart. What happened?" Or maybe, if you're someone else, you're reading, encouraging, "You can do it! Keep trying!" and pleading with the pages to make it so. What do you want me to do? What the fuck do you want me to _do_? I'm supposed to cure cancer! I'm supposed to be curing cancer and all I'm doing is sitting at my computer and typing some bullshit that is supposed to make you understand whatever the hell it is that I'm supposed to be trying to say about what? About perfection. About sex. About sex, really, but really it's about perfection. I don't even know anymore. I'll read everything back and know that I should have written more. Something better. Something more. I probably could have, but I've been distracted with...

I'm sorry I'm not curing cancer. I'm sure I could have been a better help. It's just so ridiculous. I'm ridiculous, I mean. It's me. Am I happy now?

I'm sorry. Thinking isn't always the way to understanding. It's just, it's so hard not to do it all the fucking time. Think, think, think, think, think. Sometimes it's nice to let that go.

I don't know if I can.

I just want this whole retelling to be a perfect combination of tenderness and irony. Something completely honest. I want there to be a delicacy to it. I want your heart to flutter lightly, continually straddling hope and imminence, and to finally break with the same pain that I felt, only to reexamine the situation and find connection in the pieces. Sex, I'm talking about. I think. It's hard when you realize you are human. It's hard if you've been trying so hard to overcome that, been promised and made promises that it could be done, only to find yourself equalized by a constant. And then, upon second thought, the equalizer, the constant, has a beauty of its own, perhaps more precious than what you were trying to attain. There is beauty in the dirt, love in the mire, and grace in the earth.

There is no sense to this. No biblical sense, I guess, because truth be told, I've forgotten how to remember that there aren't any holes in the Bible, that there aren't any questions that can't be answered by just flipping through tissue delicacy from one cover to the other. I've forgotten how to remember to explain translation, context, and history while simultaneously holding that translation, context, and history have nothing to do with truth. I've forgotten how to speak at all, but I guess I never really knew. And now I wonder if I have to know, if knowing is really the burden that the Lord has set upon us. We ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and yet we have no knowledge of good and evil that we don't seem to debate, question, ponder, and justify. We don't know. At least I don't know. And trying to know while knowing I don't know makes me weary. _Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest_. I am weary of trying to know. And I think God knocked me on my ass for this purpose: to remember why I have faith. It fills the gap where rhetoric fails. So there is romance left in it yet. Try explaining that.

I'm sorry. I really want to be better. If only I could say I'm a good girl. If only I could say I'm a virgin. If only I could say that I can't cure cancer...but, no, that's not it at all. If I could give someone my responsibility, have that person hide things from me behind his back, then life would be so simple. It could be so simple again. Tell me what to do. Like that. But he said, "Whatever you want," and all the mess rushed out. All the mess as I sat on the porcelain toilet, looking at my feet, forcing myself to feel unhappy. All the mess as I finally walked back to bed and laid my hand across his chest. All the mess as he woke up in the morning and caught my eyes with a "are you sure you want to do this?" and I said, "Yes," and then he kissed me and I said, "I love you," and we climbed around boxes in our too-small apartment. The mess as he walked me to Wind and Sea beach and dug me up sand crabs and picked me all the pretty flowers on the way to the car. All that mess. All of that imperfect, disobedient, non-cancer-curing mess.

Out of the overflow of my heart, my mouth speaks in a slew of messy tendrils, impossible, impossible to keep still. Tail ends of thoughts fight others wherever they meet, always chasing, hopping, dragging 'round whatever may be through all my puzzle-pieced actions. It would be impossible to clean it up now, but then I wouldn't really want to. Standing back in fatigue of chasing point and counterpoint, stripping down, saying "fuck," seeing, breathing, loving, _letting_ the overflow free, I feel what a pretty little mess it all is. And what a beautiful little mess it will be.

PART ONE: The Virgin

Dance Girl

If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. - Romans 14:15-17

I love to dance. I love to dance and I can dance. I can dance and I'm Latina. And everyone thinks I'm black. I can roll my hips out around my body so far – wind, grinding with the rhythm of the bass. Suburban mom chaperones, who huddle in gym doorways just waiting for one of the other mom's kids to show up drunk or stoned, could never understand this. They see cornrows and rhythm and think slut. Then they call the slut a slut and are surprised when the slut turns into a bitch. They tried to take everything from me. I never felt guilty about dancing until someone told me "it incites impure images into boys' minds and they're already struggling with the sex thing and you don't want to cause your brother to stumble, do you?" I didn't.

+

Aimee taught me to dance to Paula Abdul and 2LiveCrew in the add-on dining room Dad built up from nothing. I was seven and she was thirteen or so, and we would scoot out the table and chairs to the kitchen, rubbing out their imprints in the carpet with our toes. She'd say, "This is the cabbage patch" and, "This is the tootsie roll," but mostly she just showed me how to roll my hips. Legs sturdy, get low, and roll, roll, roll. Out and around and out and back in, and I copied what she did with her arms, too. We'd face the window, if it were dark, to watch our rhythmed reflections. Or else, if it were day, we would drag out the full-length mirrors Mom bought for us. Aimee would say, "You go on, girl," to me, and I then I knew I had it, especially when her friends would come to sit on our couches and she'd say, "Dance!" I also knew I had it when Mom would come in and say, "Aimee..." all exasperated and then, "Edie May! You better not let your father see that."

I stole Aimee's t-shirts and used all her make-up, and she would be mad at me, which I didn't really like, except that it all melted away on weekends she spent at her mom's in Fremont, when I'd dance like her and look like her and tell the mirror with my dancing face, "You go on, girl."

+

Brianna and I danced to "Too Close" for the talent show at Joe Michell Elementary when we were ten or so and didn't know the song was about boners. And at rehearsal, when my mom was there standing in the back of the room with Ronette, Ronette said, "You're letting them dance to this?" And my mom said, "Eh," until Ronette's daughter rehearsed "Grease Lightening" and then she said, "You're letting her dance to this?" They laughed. She made us change a few moves, though, my mom did, when the bridge sang, "I love when you shake it like that, uh, uh, uh," because we had our ten-year-old behinds leading in front and toward the crowd. She said, "Nu uh," and I whined, mostly because Aimee had shown me the dance. But then Mom won, because of course she won, and Brianna and I shook our behinds to the back.

+

Auntie Dani bought me a video for my birthday and it was a dance video by Fatima and it was signed and everything. Now I can dance like Aaliyah.

+

Mendenhall Middle School escorted me out of a dance once for "freaking," as they liked to call it, although I had been trying to argue with them to lay off. It's impossible to freak by yourself, and yet I was apparently capable of doing such a thing. And then, in high school, Dance Troupe's try-out was to Missy Elliot's "Get Your Freak On," and I made the team.

The on-duty police officer at Junction's LARPD dance escorted me out of a dance too once, pinching my wrist hard between his two pudgy fingers and holding it up high over his head. And in the other hand, he dragged this girl Nikki by her wrist too, but she didn't walk out quietly and I did, which made it easier to plead my case. He said, "What's going on in there?" And Nikki started her response with, "This bitch," so I got to go first. I said, "Look, I don't even know this girl, but all of a sudden she comes up to me all mad that her boyfriend's looking over, cuz I'm dancing with my friend or whatever, and she just starts saying stuff to me, and so I said, 'Whatever,' and then she says, 'So are you guys like lesbians or something?' and I laughed and told her 'Yeah,' and then I laughed again and then her friends were laughing too and then she starts getting all up in my face, talking about how I can't dance or whatever, and so I tell her, 'Yeah, okay, I just won the dance contest and I know you saw it,' and she said, 'That don't mean shit,' and then I said, 'Yeah, keep telling yourself that,' and then she gets all up in my face, trying to chest bump me and whatever!" The police officer, whose name is Clay, rolled his eyes and said, "So you weren't trying to antagonize her? Sayin stuff? Gettin her to come over?" And I said, "Well, once she was already over, then yeah, I guess." He let my wrist fall limp and looked at Nikki, who started again with, "This bitch." He escorted her wrist all the way out the door, sending me back to my apparently lesbian dancing friends, with a, "Next time it's you, you hear me?" I bobbed my corn-rowed head and my hoops swayed too. As I walked back into the main hall, I could hear the DJ turn, "You Ain't Nothin But a Hoochie Mama," and so I ran in and screamed, "Bitch, this my song!" because it is. And damned if I don't run in the same way every single other time I feel that beat play.

+

At Kitty's eight grade promotion party, somebody said, "I bet you can't drop it like it's hot." I said, "Boy, please," and ripped my jeans open, dropping to the floor.

At Casey's Labor Day party, somebody said, "I bet you can't drop it like it's hot." I said, "Girl, please," and ripped my jeans open, dropping to the floor.

+

My geometry teacher, Mr. Robles, took seven minutes of the class's time to berate the Dance Troupe for dancing too provocatively at last week's football game and to say how proud he was of the cheerleaders for setting a good example by not dancing that way. I thought, "That's just because cheerleaders can't roll their hips," but I liked Mr. Robles, so I didn't say anything.

+

It was Winter Formal when I first noticed Young Life leaders at the dances. It was Winter Formal and it might have been the year I had my hair in cornrows. Looking back at the Johnson's shot with David Stunkel, I see that the cornrows didn't really go with the off-white ball gown at all, but then it would have felt weird to go without them, and anyway one of the senior girls, Myra, said I was a bad ass for "rockin' it." And when we walked out of the Little Gym and back into the Big Gym, Hannah jumped out in her green t-shirt with a hand-held camera and said, "Hi guys!!!" and I said, "Hi, Hannah!" and waved and then David was a little bashful, but he half-waved, too. And then I saw Heather on the dance floor in her green t-shirt and she had a disposable camera, too, that she was snapping and flashing and snapping at the group. And no one minded; that's the thing. I didn't mind either because the DJ spun some stupid Techno bullshit, so I had a few minutes to talk. But then all of a sudden, I really did mind because the DJ threw down a different song and "you ain't nuthing but a hoochie mama! Hoodrat! Hoodrat! Hoochie mama!" bumped that bass.

It was instinctual, really, the kind of reaction I had. Except I can't really tell which was instinct: that my lungs started to fill up with, "Oooh, bitch, this my song!" or that I immediately worked to suppress it. I perked up my head, wide-eyed, and stared around the circle. David and Drew and the other David and Abe were all looking at me, and I'm sure that everyone in the Big Gym was, too. Just stopped what they were doing to turn around and look at me, the girl in the cornrows, the girl who shakes her ass, the girl on the Dance Troupe that Mr. Robles called so dirty, and the girl who was happy he wasn't chaperoning this time.

Heather snapped my picture, "Click!" and I might have eeked out a smile, or I might have just been showing my teeth. Click, click, click. Click click click click click click click click clickclickclickclickclick. And then the song was over. And all I had done was sway my hips from side to side, hips going side to side, but not around and not dropped down and not on the floor and not like Aaliyah. Or Fatima. Or Dance Troupe, or Aimee, or me. But then that's all quite obvious, and Heather and Hannah went home. Two hours left of dancing, and it wasn't that hard to snap back. And David and David and Drew and Abe were laughing, then gawking, then paying attention to their respective dates.

The following Thursday at Young Life, they played a slide show of the dance with pictures of the laughing and the lighting and the dresses and me just standing there erect.

Young Life

Young Life promotional videos show girls having fun in their bikinis, swimming in their bikinis, eating ice cream in their bikinis. As a camp leader, you aren't allowed to wear a bikini, lest the campers you are meant to lead get accidental boners they can't deal with. And even though two years prior I was featured in the Woodleaf Summer Camp Promo in my Victoria's Secret P!nk string bikini, the year I was a leader I was under one-piece law. I didn't own a one-piece, so I wore the t-shirt over my swimsuit. The older leaders weren't pleased, because the rules say, "Women must wear a one-piece suit. Everyone must wear a cover-up on the way to the pool (shirts for men). You represent God," but we were already one hundred miles from home and nobody else had proper bathing attire that would fit a five-foot-nine, thirty-two, twenty-five, thirty-six frame. My green t-shirt stuck to me wet and riding up my ribcage so that I had to work to pull it down. The male campers were increasingly interested in my participation in the dive contest, so I decided to spend the rest of the time in a lawn chair. To exit the pool, we (and by we, I mean the female leaders) were instructed to use the stairs at all times, the underlying reason being that they didn't want the broadside ass view integral to the "hoist yourself up and over the cement edge" routine to be the most memorable moment of summer camp. This is about Christ, after all.

The thing is, Young Life recruits popular, attractive men and women (boys and girls, I should say) to grace their posters with the allure of Abercrombie and Fitch - it just would like to deny the existence of upper things once their proverbial Venus and Adonis step up on their respective pedestals. And they like to forget why it was they asked you to be there in the first place.

I'm sorry, I should really explain. It's just that certain terms and phrases and groups and outings have so shaped me that I sometimes forget you might not know what I mean. Young Life is a non-denominational Christian high school youth group. (I can tell if you're a non-denominational Christian when I say non-denominational because you're nodding your head and waiting to move on. You are not a non-denominational Christian if your first inclination is to cock your head to the side and say, "That doesn't make sense." If you are rolling your eyes, you are Catholic. Don't worry, this will be over soon.)

Young Life has weekly meetings all over the country and Livermore's chapter starts at 7:44 p.m. so people don't forget. And at 7:44 p.m. for countless Thursdays past, I would walk into my high school's little theater, greeted by a loud music opener. Then my fellow wide-eyed students and I would participate in the mixer, which usually involves opposite sex pairs doing something like passing oranges down a conga line using only their necks. After the first twenty minutes passes by, everyone sits on the carpet and butchers old pop songs like "Lean on Me" and "Sweet Home Alabama," while Dan or Dustin or Jason picks out three chords on the guitar. And then some other stuff happens to fill the next twenty minutes until, finally, ten minutes is left and everyone is asked to sit down, be quiet and listen to a mini-sermon that is simply called "the talk," because sermon sounds too preachy. It is then that Ken or Jeanette or Heather or Michelle or Hannah or Kathy or somebody else who's a leader or prominent member of the group speaks directly about Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit and their personal experiences with each.

But Young Life isn't only about Thursdays at 7:44 p.m. During the school year, it's also about getting more kids to show up on Thursdays at 7:44 p.m., but in the way that showing up on Thursdays at 7:44 p.m. means a greater possibility that the students will attend the week-long summer camp Woodleaf in June.

One of the ways we advertised Young Life on the high school campus was through contests that seemed to always involve t-shirts. Young Life t-shirts are always cool because the high schoolers usually get to design them – or at least they get to veto bad designs. One year, the t-shirt was blue and it looked like the Gatorade Logo (but, of course, with "Young Life" instead of "Gatorade"). Another year, the Young Life t-shirt was red with Young Life spelled out like the Coca-Cola logo. Everybody wanted that t-shirt and so we played a game where some of the Young Life members, myself obviously included, had letters stitched onto their much-wanted t-shirts and other kids won a prize if they could find all the different letters and unscramble the phrase...which was "Young Life. Thursday. 7:44." But the t-shirt I remember most – the t-shirt that defined my Young Life experience and forever, when I think about Young Life, is there clothing each and every leader and member – is the apple green t-shirt with a swirly little blue and white design, which doesn't remind me of any corporation's brand, and the year 2002-2003 scrolled along the back. Maybe it's because this was my first Young Life t-shirt, the first one I wanted after feeling rejuvenated by the Lord's Spirit at the 2002 June Woodleaf camp and returning, a sophomore in high school and fifteen years old, to the new school year's round of weekly meetings.

I wore that t-shirt, entering the theater proudly as one of the first seventy-five students to show up to the first 2002-2003 Young Life Club. I wore that t-shirt the following summer, riding my mountain bike up and down and around Mountain Lodge (the more "spiritually demanding" summer retreat). I wore that t-shirt to school sometimes, too, when we were asked to promote Young Life or when I just wanted to wear a cool and comfy apple green t-shirt. And I knew chances were good that I'd see another apple-green t-shirt walking my way, whatever the day, as attendance for Young Life, though cyclical, was always high.

I still wear that t-shirt to bed and wonder how countless cycles of washing have never dissolved the sweet smell of the theater's dusty curtains, adolescent sweat and orange rinds.

I hope that helps.

Boyfriend

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. - Matthew 16:18

I'll keep this short.

I started to go to Young Life because of a boy named Peter. He was cute and about a year older than me, even though he was in the same grade. For some reason, I found this sexy.

Peter was religious. Is. Very. He went to Cornerstone, too, but was one of those kids who was totally "into" it. A true Jesus freak, one might say, and he would most definitely agreed.

Mostly, I liked him because he was cute.

Peter went to Young Life, and even though my mom has asked me to go there thousands of times, I never gave it even half a thought until Peter asked. Peter, my rock. He asked, I went. Again, because he was cute. He was so cute that I took to going to Young Life every Thursday and even started hanging out with his Young Life friends. There was one very blonde girl, Bethany. She was a cheerleader, spunky, and another Jesus freak. Turns out that Bethany also goes to Cornerstone and also has ADD. She takes medication for it every day, expect when she forgets. And white-blonde Bethany, she liked Peter, too. She wasn't afraid to tell me that, so I liked her from the start. When I went to Young Life with Peter, Bethany was always there, bouncing on her little carpet square and whining for attention like a puppy.

Anyway, I followed Peter around for about a month. He used to wear this True Love Waits ring, which for some reason made me think we would fool around. Why? Because he told me I was his true love. And for some reason, I thought the ring was supposed to convince you to wait for true love before fooling around, rather than just doing it the first moment you want to.

I was wrong.

About a month after he told me he loved me (which was about two days after he asked me out), Peter broke up with me over the phone. Unfortunately, I had already put a deposit on the winter retreat with Young Life, so I was stuck going. Peter backed out before putting the deposit down, so he was free to go to the other retreat through Cornerstone. I cared very much that he wasn't going. Also, I cared that he was now saying "I love you" to his new true love Kellie, who he swore would be his wife. She isn't.

Bethany was happy I was stuck going on the retreat, however. In the few weeks that Peter and I had been dating, she and I became very close friends. She clapped and jumped a lot, just like cheerleaders do in the movies, but was somehow sincere, which is why, though ordinarily I would find her behavior so annoying, she always made me smile. She said, "It would be totally dumb with stupid Peter and Kellie at the retreat anyway, and now we can just hand out and, oh my gosh, it's gonna be SO much fun, you don't even know!" I doubted her enthusiasm at the time, but one quick wintery weekend changed my mind. It was "SO much fun, you don't even know!" and I even found out I liked to talk a lot about God.

READ!

Please understand: no one at Young Life or at church or anywhere told me anything about sex rules when I was new. No one told me anything about sex for a while. I hardly gave abstinence a thought.

The Rose

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. – Proverbs 6:16-19

The first time abstinence pledges were even mentioned to me was when Bethany relayed her "rose" metaphor. This was in the very beginning of my Young Life phase, and at the time, I thought Bethany was a little bit weird for saying anything about purity. We were fourteen years old. Why bring that up?

We were at Kitty's house, spending the night. And when Bethany started to talk about abstinence, Kitty almost laughed. She, Kitty, had already given four blow jobs and a hand job and didn't really see a problem with that. It was fun, except when something bad happened with the guy, like when he stopped calling or stopped coming or stopped talking or some other such tragedy, and then it was "the biggest mistake of my life." I, on the other hand, had not done a damn thing, save let Matt Schwoyer grab my boobs. I'd also seen Derek's penis by that time, but I didn't put my mouth on it or anything. I was, I guess, a little scared of it all. Those hard wands waving their ridiculous mushroom heads at me--it was too much to take. I thought I'd be joining Kitty and start racking up sexual encounters any day, but once any boy suggested anything beyond a hot-and-heavy make-out, I backed out. Thought of countless reasons why I wouldn't or couldn't. "Not cute enough." "Not nice enough." "My parents are home." "There's not enough time." After a while, I settled on "I'm waiting for love" as the primary reason for not putting my hands down somebody's pants. That seemed to suit me, and it was respectable enough to say. Not embarrassing. And it didn't sound like I was scared. There was one caveat, of course, in regard to the big thing: sex. I wasn't going to do it, love or not, until I was at least seventeen. I thought, "Maybe by the time I'm seventeen my boobs will be big enough that I won't be embarrassed to show them to someone." What I said was, "Sex before seventeen is too young."

I guess my insecurity was a big reason I let Bethany go on. Kitty left the room at sentence number two, but I heard Bethany out. "Sex is like a rose," she said and made some rehearsed argument for keeping the rose in top shape. The argument was all about avoiding shame and disappointment, of course, but Bethany also worked in some romantic angle. "I'm saving myself for my one true love--my husband," she said. It sounded like a fairy tale. Kitty had always told me, "Don't buy the car until you test drive it," and her sisters always backed her up. That did not sound like a fairy tale. It did not sound romantic at all, in fact, but Kitty never said it was supposed to be. I heard Bethany out for a while, though I did think she sounded a bit like a woman possessed. She didn't say "like" once during her whole speech, and for Bethany that was a very strange thing.

After a while, Bethany got bored of talking about not having sex, so we started talking about having sex...in the context of marriage, of course, otherwise she wouldn't have participated. We talked about Peter mostly, because even though he and I had just broken up, we both still thought he was cute. We bet each other that Peter would be kinky when he finally had sex. We bet each other that he'd have sex toys and everything. At the mention of sex toys, Kitty came back in. She described these nipple clamp things her sister told her about earlier. Bethany pretended to be grossed out and I just laughed and laughed.

The second time abstinence pledges were mentioned to me was at Young Life's Winter Woodleaf retreat. Several of the girls had taken these pledges. None of them were over the age of sixteen. Their reasoning for not having sex until marriage was the same as Bethany's: they wanted to keep themselves pure in order to please God and avoid the shame of not having waited for their future husbands. Their wonderful future husbands. I thought that these wonderful future husbands sounded a bit like tools. Why did they care so much if their future wives didn't wait? The girls explained to me that, if you don't wait for marriage, the sex somehow is diminished. They didn't really know how or why, but they did know, for sure, that it was diminished. Tainted. I wasn't so sure. However, I was sure that I was having an excellent time at Winter Woodleaf, that the Young Life leaders were friendly and fun, and that talking seriously about serious subjects made my heart well up and my mind come alive. I liked these girls and this world. I liked how I felt when I was with them and in it. I was welcomed. It was new. "So, if they're all saying these things about sex," I thought, "maybe there's something to it." I considered the abstinence thing over the next few weeks.

+

I remember exactly when I made my pledge. I was laying on the couch in my living room. It was 3:30pm and nobody was home. I had been thinking a lot about sex in its various forms, love in its various forms (as I knew it) and all of my new Young Life friends and leaders in their various forms. I thought about how I felt about sex before I met these Evangelicals. I thought about how I never considered God or purity to play a role in my sexuality. I thought about how my the only thing my mom really told me about waiting was that not having sex in high school was the best decision she ever made. "It was the best decision I ever made, not having sex in high school," she said. "I just couldn't imagine having to tell my softball coach or basketball coach or track coach that I couldn't come out that season because I was pregnant. That would have been devastating to me. It would have been just devastating." I thought about how she also told me, "Don't have sex in Macy's" when she dropped me off to meet David at the mall. I was thirteen and her warning was very funny to me. But she never said anything about God.

That's when I realized that I would make the pledge: when I realized my mother never said anything about sex in relation to God. All of my new friends always talked about everything in relation to God. Sex in relation to God. Eating in relation to God. Singing in relation to God. Living in relation to God. And they also said that Jesus said that true Christians sometimes has to leave their families behind to follow the Truth. And they also, also said that not being a true Christian is the worst thing a person can not be. I prayed, "Lord, if this waiting for marriage thing is the right thing to do, then I want to do it. If it's what needs to happen for me to be a true Christian, I want it to happen. I'm dedicated to knowing you now; I'm sorry I wasn't before. Please forgive me and know that I will wait for sex until marriage. I will wait. Amen." And that was that.

When the subject of abstinence came up again at Young Life (which it always did), I told the group that I had pledged. They congratulated me and smiled at me and hugged me and rejoiced. They asked me if I wanted to help recruit people to Young Life, and I said of course. They asked me if I could volunteer and I said of course. I could sense that they viewed me differently now--that I was on my way to really becoming one of them: a true Christian, a real good girl.

And I was.

"The Sex Talk"

The only thing about making an abstinence pledge is that it doesn't get rid of your thoughts. I made my abstinence pledge just before I turned fourteen...and just before my hormones told me to Get. It. On. At the same time that the smell of masculine sweat had me sliding around in my panties, my religious responsibilities began to grow. I was now an established member of Young Life, no longer a new recruit. And as an established member, I was expected to act a certain way. Be a certain way. And that certain way did not include giving into the heat between my legs.

Still, I had questions. I had questions about questions. I had questions about sexual questions and sexual dogma and sexual thoughts. I had questions about what to do with my sexual urges and what to do about Matt and David and Dustin and Josh and Jeff and Brandon and Landon and Thomas and every other young, hot, athletic boy I saw on a daily basis and just wanted to...what? To rub up against. To sweat with. To fuck.

I had questions. And Young Life promised answers.

+

The seventeenth Young Life meeting is annually the same. We come, high school freshman, sophomores, juniors and an overwhelming amount of seniors to crowd on the steps of Granada's Little Theater at 7:44 p.m. for a night that promises answers. The night is simply called "The Sex Talk." My first one went something like this:

Kathy told us as we sat, some with legs crossed, others sprawled out, couples sitting on stairs reclining into each others' laps, that we would shortly separate by gender and that the girl group, the "ladies", would walk around the corner to room 512A with her. The guys would stay in the Little Theater with Ken and Mike.

After shuffling out of the double doors, quiet, giddy, awkward, we ladies found ourselves seated half in desks, half on the carpeted floor looking up at Michelle, Heather, Kathy and the other pretty Young Life leaders we had come to adore. The leaders stood in a row, natural and bleach-blonde heads bouncing like a holy line of halos. Kathy, the forty-something mom whose eldest child is mid-twenty something, is about to speak and we've all heard the story, know the story, about her pregnancy in high school, her marriage that has lasted, and the ten year age gap between her first and second born. We could have inferred, we young wise ladies, but she told us explicitly the week before: she had sex before marriage, in high school, got pregnant, and was lucky enough that her life didn't turn to shit. On the Sex Talk night, we waited for her to speak, knowing she had something to say. She started, "Now, we know that guys struggle with lust and can get turned on just by watching a girl walk down the street. But girls don't have that same problem. Girls don't really struggle with lustful thoughts. They don't see a hot guy walking down the street and think, 'I wanna have sex with him,' they think, 'I wanna marry him. I wonder what kind of husband he'd be. What would our kids look like?' But this kind of thinking is also lust, not for sex, but for marriage. So we're gonna talk about how to overcome that tonight."

The row of blonde halos bobbed its collective head. Giggles ensued, seat edges were pressured. I looked at Robin Mitchell on my right. I heard she gave head to at least one guy at our school and our eyes told each other we would rather be in the guys' room. Kathy's words dragged on, but even in their proudest moments of seriousness, they only sounded sing-song to me. Like a bad episode of Full House. Or an episode of Full House. I resigned myself to picking pink nail polish off my toes. This isn't my room.

Kathy kept going, though I can't remember any of the rest of what she was trying to say. I instead thought about David and how he looked so good at track earlier that day, all tan. All tan and skinny with those muscles and the only thing is that he shaved that hair...happy trail, I guess, and it struck me as kind of weird. But I thought about how I thought about him in his blue gym shorts and no shirt, laying down on me, which had happened before (we had dated). It was so many years ago when I asked him about those people who fooled around and he told me he thought it was "a very irresponsible decision." He sounded like a mother.

But as I was sitting in the room, not listening to Kathy and instead thinking about David, I started to feel guilty, because I had a boyfriend, Dustin--a boyfriend that I loved. The thing was, thought, that I couldn't think about those things with him in my mind anymore because of all the long conversations we had about loving each other and what that meant. "And since I love him," I thought, "I don't want him to sin" - not that I didn't love my friends, but still, not the same - and so I stopped putting him in compromising situations in my mind and even told him more than once that I wouldn't have been having sex with him anyway, even without our promise of abstinence, because without God's love, we would have never gotten so close to each other. I didn't have those loving conversations with anyone else, though, and so I was sort of free to think about David for a while, as well as some other boys, like Jeff Stickel who had that infuriatingly melting smile.

When the Sex Talk was over, we girls walked back into the Little Theater where the boys were. Bethany ran up to chat with Steven immediately, and, starting to recognize my disappointment with what was promised to be an honest and informative meeting, I remembered that night when she told me that metaphor about the rose, and then we talked about taboo stuff for a good forty minutes, even betting that Peter would be kinky and have sex toys when he was older. Why was she so happy? I saw her listening to Kathy. She was smiling and tearing up and following along. How is that possible? Does she not feel the same way I feel? Does she not struggle the way that I do? Does she know something I don't know?

I still had questions, but now I was afraid to ask.

+

"This is hopeless, really, useless."

I thumbed through the pages of a new paperback in the Christian Religion section in Borders and wondered if it could be serious. And at the same time, I tried to understand, rationalize, internalize. I felt myself slipping at the time, mostly because I didn't feel like I was slipping. In Bible Study the week before, I couldn't think of a sin to confess and I didn't want to make one up, when Rachel explained to the group that it's hard to keep God in the forefront of our minds - that we lose Him in everyday business, but that we should try our hardest to remedy that. I told the group of five that I actually didn't struggle to keep God in the forefront of my mind, that quite opposite it would be all I could do to not think about Him, the Bible, love, consequences, and self-improvement. It would be all I could do not to think about it all, not to say that I wanted in any way to stop thinking about it at all. Honestly. And I felt like a liar, even though Rachel nodded approvingly and said, "Well, I guess not everybody needs work in that area." And even though Rachel was sincere, I still felt like a "holier than thou" bitch. I felt worst because I didn't even have another sin to deflect to and there's Ana sitting across the table sobbing about sexual impurity. It's not as if I think I'm perfect, because I know I'm not. The Bible tells me I'm not. But I just couldn't think of anything recent to confess. I'm not a liar.

So, I drove my car seven days later to Borders in search of a spiritual challenge. If I had known that in a few short months I would be riddled with guilt and insecurity, I might have been reluctant to seek guilt out. The Christian books filled two-and-a-half shelves in the Religions section in the visual middle of the store. I don't know how many shelves the Muslim or Jewish books filled, but there was a lot of New Age crap crowding the space. Religion? The first book I pulled of the shelf was interesting, but I'd read the argument before in Purpose Driven Life. Read. Internalized. Applied. Done. Just like a good Christian girl. I thumbed the spines to the next interesting title "Morning Devotionals," but discovered that it was basically a watered-down version of "Servanthood: Becoming the Master's Man," which I already owned. Dustin grabbed me a copy from his Campaigners group and it requires daily devotionals and monthly, hour-long overhauls. This one only required half an hour and it had pastel orchids on the cover. Great.

I kept looking and landed on a manual for living as children of God in the twenty first century. That's not what it was titled, but I could tell that's what it was about because I had become an expert at deciphering Evangelical (or Christianese, as it's also commonly called). Devotional. Quiet time. A place apart. Being in the world and not of it. Personal relationship with the Savior. Born again. I know what these terms mean beyond what the mere words suggest that they mean.

I flipped open the cover, scanning the table of contents, and decided on the chapter about clothing. I read, "Before going out, a woman of God must envision her appearance in the eyes of her brother in Christ. Her dress should not be too revealing, lest she tempt her brother in sexual sin. Sweaters should not be so tight as to show any outline of the bra or detail of the breast. Flesh more than three inches below the collarbone should be covered." My eyes ran over the next three pages about the torso and stopped again below the waist. "The line of the undergarment must never be visible. Skirts preferably should fall below the knee, though short pants may fall to the middle of the thigh. After taking all the aforementioned precautions, a woman of God must always view her outfit in a full-length mirror, bending to touch her toes and the ceiling, making certain of the outfit's appropriateness." Blood ran upward from my painted toes, through my slender legs tightly encased in dark denim jeans, exploding in a quiet violence on my brain. Twenty first century? I checked the copyright, half expecting to find the numbers 1892. Instead, I find it's Mrs. Johnson all over again and I'm livid while she's asking me if my skirt wasn't made for a much shorter person and I remind her, organize a meeting and argument around the fact that nowhere in our school's dress code are there measurements provided for length of skirts, width of tank top straps or otherwise, and that if she'd like to continue sending Mrs. Fowler to my homeroom every morning with a ruler and a t-shirt, then she'd better get the rules down in writing.

But these rules were down in writing. "Mustn't tempt the boys at school with a spindly leg or shoulder blade," Mrs. Johnson retorts. "Mustn't tempt the men of God," the pages bleed, "lest they be overcome by their visual weakness," and, what, rape me? Buy a hooker? Sleep with their girlfriends? Masturbate? I wonder, why can't these boys and men manage their own problems? Why am I responsible for what they do with their genitalia, just because zebra hotpants make my legs look like candy? And why, if thoughts of marriage substitute as lust for women, are these men and boys not chastised for telling girls they love them, buying them jewelry, or introducing them to their grandmothers? It's just as absurd as asking me to take off the hotpants. Get a clue. And a cold shower, apparently. My world does not revolve around you.

And yet, I didn't want to do wrong by my brother in Christ. I must be respectful. I didn't buy the book, but hit my devotionals hard the next morning.

Real Sex

I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. "Expel the wicked man from among you." - 1 Corinthians 5:11-13

In all my virgin years, I wondered what sex with a man would feel like. Real sex, you know, with penile penetration and all that, not this oral, manual, whatever else type of "sex" that I never really considered sex. For a long time I thought they were just precursors (also before I knew what foreplay meant), until my mom said some off-hand comment about always being under the impression that sucking dick was a racy afterthought.

I didn't fantasize about these things, though, aside from my purposeful twilight dreams when I was nine, and then that always involved humiliation. Me trapped on the seat of a gigantic toilet so big that the width of the rim of the bowl is wider than me and the four ninja turtles sent to save me always just minutes too late. Shredder and his cronies tie me down to see how many of their cocks they can shove in my mouth at once (and cock was the term my head used, since I had accidentally come upon the fictional diary of a teenaged whore with the red red cover and her with a sparkling tiara). But not since then, not since the nine-year-old daydreams that kept me awake until four a.m., had I thought about anything sexual in serious detail besides penile penetration.

I don't remember when I stopped humiliating myself in my fantasies, though it was hardly humiliating, really, since nobody knew and it's not as though I let on in an absurd way. Maybe now it will be humiliating, but then I can always just say it was all such a long time ago. All I can say for sure is that by the time I was twelve, I was done with humiliation and anything else besides good ol' mom and pop sex. My thoughts about this were confused and hazy, mostly due to the fact that I didn't understand that the penis goes all the way up, rather than straight out, during an erection. Until I was fourteen in sex-ed class and stared fixated upon the overwhelming sketch of a fully erect penis, I was confused as to how sex happened any other way than the woman on top, bobbing up and down. Or, like in the movie Soul Food, where the guy is fucking the woman standing up, pressing her up against the wall as she wraps her legs around his waist. That made sense too, same angle. But when people talked about missionary, the most common position of sex, apparently, I was baffled and too embarrassed to admit it. Then I saw the black outline of an erection and the curved inline of the vagina, and I understood. Ah, it goes up. In and up and it can bend and all that. Finally, my wonderings could take full form now that the confusion was out of the way.

+

I used to sit in my bathtub with various objects: hairbrush handles, small bottles of shampoo, the little detachable thing that holds up the toilet paper, to gauge what this penetration process feels like. I didn't think of this as masturbation, particularly because I didn't feel different when I was doing it. No shuddering feeling of orgasm - I hardly understood what it was. No real feeling of shame either, besides the general concern for someone walking in on me naked. Once or twice, I thought that perhaps what I was doing was strange. Other times, I thought it might just be one of those things that everybody does, but never talks about. Like shaving your armpits or smelling your own farts. But mostly, I didn't think, just sat, laid, or squatted, feeling frustrated and very disappointed that sex, which I was supposed to be looking forward to, was so mind-numbingly boring. Still, I manipulated myself with every phallic bathroom accouterment I could find in the hope that I just wasn't getting it right, and that everyone wasn't lying, putting on the grand facade that sex was actually something to be enjoyed.

I finally resigned myself to the fact that sex, penetration really, just feels like being filled up. It was comfortable enough, comforting even, unless you tried to sit up or move around too fast, and then whatever was inside you pressed up all awkward, kind of scraping against your insides. My interest faded in penetration after that point, though I still felt I hadn't accomplished much. I started to take less and less time in the shower, and what time I did take, I re-devoted to hair care and general hygiene until my freshman year boyfriend and I rubbed up hard against each other in our jeans and I felt incredibly flushed. He did too, so we did it all the time: him pressed up on top of me, rubbing up and down and me upturning my hips because, for whatever reason, I just needed to. Sometimes, when the only place we could find solace was on my driveway between the car and the garbage cans, I would rub my hand over his jeans and on his cock (still the most appropriate word, I supposed) and he would roll his eyes back and lean into me. He would run his fingers over me too, but always too low, and so I would bend my knees and twist so that his hand hit me right, not wanting to be too obvious by just forcing his hand in the right spot. One night he told me, not feeling embarrassed, but rather quite intrigued, that when his hand is higher, I start breathing short and close my eyes, but when he puts his hand low, I don't do anything at all. I told him that yeah, I guess it just felt different. I wasn't quite sure why that was, but then again he didn't ask why, so I didn't worry about it. We were fifteen.

I was sixteen when Kitty told me about the first time she masturbated and now I wonder how it could have possibly taken that long. I mean, before that I remember her saying something about her sister taking a long time in the bathroom, and I was under the impression that I shouldn't touch the showerhead, but Kitty never told me that she had done a similar thing. We talked about sex and blowjobs and hand jobs and rim jobs all the time, but in a sort of jest, though she had done some of those things and I pretty much could guess about them, having seen thirty seconds of a porno once while my brother and cousin thought I was sleeping on the couch in Arizona. She told me though, kind of laughing, but also looking to help me out I think, that she was sitting in the living room with her older sisters and they asked her if she had ever rubbed around in her jeans or on her horse or up against the counter or something and by accident it started to feel kind of good? They told her that next time she should keep doing whatever it was that felt good and it would really pay off. That's all she said, but then I heard something somewhere, maybe on Friends, about letting the water hit you right in the shower. Or no, it was American Pie I think, that sounds about right. All of those bits of information once again led me and my curiosity to the shower - a place of so many disappointments - and this time proved to be no better than the last. I stood, bent over, did whatever once again, although this time I did feel silly and ashamed, but mostly because I thought this meant that something was wrong with me. I had heard horror stories about women who physically can't come to orgasm and, from what Kitty and her sisters and the girl on American Pie had to say, this is a tragedy unto itself. Just when I was about to give up again, my sister bought a removable massaging showerhead for my dad's house and then I got it. I got it and got it and stopped paying attention to my hair care again.

+

They make you sign this thing to be a Wyld Life leader - this thing that says you don't and won't do drugs, drink, or have sex. There is nothing on this thing about not gossiping or having the decency to call your childhood friend when her mother dies, but I guess that stuff is just implied. Or not as pressing.

I signed to be a Wyld Life leader at the end of my sophomore year of high school, still sixteen, because I wanted to be a leader, a good Christian leader, for these middle school girls: Dani, Jordan, Nikki, Ashley, Alex, and Jess (all of their birth years start with nineteen-ninety something.) I qualified for the position, I guess, being religiously active in my church and community, and willing to sign the no sex, drugs, and rock n' roll paper, so I led. I led when Ashley was starting to be excluded from the cluster of friends. I led when we went to summer camp and the girls did my hair up in shaving cream. I led the same week when Jordan asked if her dog would go to heaven, after learning that her mother died giving birth to her, and I led when we played Truth or Dare.

I think it's an unspoken rule that the leaders of Wyld Life shouldn't play Truth or Dare with their...well, what do we call them? Followers? I suppose that would be the counter to leader. But in Wyld Life, we didn't call them followers and we weren't presumptuous enough to call them disciples, though the leaders were instructed to "disciple." I don't remember what we called them - maybe just "kids" - but I referred and refer to my six as "The Girls." The Girls wanted to play Truth or Dare and I was supposed to be establishing our bond, so I said yes. Plus, I love the game.

Questions one through seven of Truth or Dare involved The Girls asking each other who they liked, though they mostly already knew, and various instances of humiliating choices about which of the undesirables they would rather date/kiss/make out with, etc. Question eight finally found its way to me as Nikki, with her thick black eyeliner and jeans slung low to her hipbones asked, "Have you ever been to a movie and, you know, like, not seen the movie?" The six pairs of lips faced me, parted slightly, but not emitting even the quietest of sounds. I laughed and said yeah and proceeded to name the two movies I had paid admission for, but to this day cannot recall the basic plot line: The Rookie, which I had to look up online, and the other one I don't even remember enough about to Google.

The Girls were giddy and laughed until they were tomatoes. Nikki explained that they were shocked, and the others chimed in, though I still wonder what shocked them more: that I had made out so hardcore that I can't remember a movie? or that I told them about this at all? I found out later that playing Truth or Dare with the campers (that's what we called "the kids" at camp) is not recommended because the game tends to get "compromising." I guess I knew what that meant, but I definitely didn't feel like I was compromising anything when I told Nikki and Alex that they were absolutely not going to run naked through the boy's camp, no matter what game we were playing. But maybe we weren't supposed to get to that point.

Anyway, I continued to lead The Girls after camp. I picked them up from their houses, their friends' houses, their boyfriends' houses, and school so that we could sit for an hour to talk about the Bible and Jesus and God, and they listened. I led the girls for two years and handed them over when I moved to college, telling them not to date seniors. They were fifteen.

+

I had the same boyfriend for almost three years, from the middle of my sophomore year in high school to my first week of college. We attended the same school, same church, same Young Life, and signed the same Wyld Life leader oath. His sister said he was a sellout. His parents had little time to talk. The most sexual thing we did was one time, standing in his bathroom, I made him close his eyes and pressed my bare chest to his, looking in the mirror. I told him our skin looked good together. He kept his promise and never opened his eyes. We made out a lot, slept in the same bed together once, and fell madly in love like high school kids do.

I had my masturbatory breakthrough nine months into our relationship, at sixteen. At two months, he had brought up in conversation that girls never talk about masturbating, so I told him I had done it before. He asked what I thought about and I said him, because explaining my blank, mechanical prodding seemed impossible and also not sexy. We didn't talk about masturbation much after that, which suited me fine since, once I had the orgasm thing figured out, the whole production felt entirely private and, in its privacy, wrong. Before the orgasm, jamming rods and hairbrushes and everything else inside myself just felt like another thing I did. I wouldn't necessarily talk to someone about it, but I didn't feel as though I was keeping secrets either. But once a reward was involved, I understood my masturbation as masturbation, and suddenly felt it was something to hide. I had to conceal it.

This wasn't a particularly difficult task, however, seeing as though my sexual rendezvous had always taken place in the shower. Still, stepping out to dry my hair, I would wonder whether or not anyone noticed I took a little too long or that shower number three was probably a little superfluous. I was paranoid that my father knew about me after Uncle Mike's comment that his son Sean took too long to get ready, wink wink, but this was before I realized that the same logic isn't applied to girls. Ladies. Now I know that even if I had been moaning and screaming, my father would probably have called 9-1-1 before assuming anything funny. I did not have that comforting thought then, though, and so I adopted a routine of running from shower to bedroom to kitchen to immediate chatter on the couch, hair still shamefully wet.

I went on like this for a while, trying to deny my uneasiness about my actions by drowning them, at best, in a sea of uncertainty. I didn't immediately ask for a spiritual opinion about masturbation, mainly because I already had an idea what it would be and didn't want to give up this pleasure of the body so quickly. At most, I would stifle my own questions with more masturbation, preceded by the stock prayer, "Lord, if it's wrong, make me stop. Send me a conviction so strong that I know for sure and make me stop," that didn't ultimately convince me, but at least bought me fifteen minutes of bliss. This prayer actually follows my post-sex prayers verbatim, which doesn't surprise me, though after the hundreds of repetitions the second time around, I forced myself to pinpoint the flaw. You're already going to do what you're going to do at the utterance of these words, and thank God I wasn't stupid enough to request being struck down by lighting - another popular prayer challenge that truly amounts to the same thing. Finally, at Young Life's pre-Sex Talk night (the second and final one I would attend), the secret Q&A brought up the issue. I was a little annoyed that it had come up at all, though I had been expecting it, but nevertheless I decided that I shouldn't hide so irresponsibly behind a feigned ignorance.

I listened.

The panel of three men and three women in various t-shirts looked at each other first to see who felt most fit to begin to tackle the question of the morality of masturbation. Two men, of course, attempted to answer. Though they admitted that masturbation is not spoken about in the Bible, they sited verses of the Gospels in which Jesus teaches that to think adulterous thoughts is to commit adulterous actions, to conclude that, since masturbation requires lustful and adulterous thoughts (though I wonder at the appropriateness of the word adultery in a high school group), it is, in fact, lustful and adulterous and, thus, a sin like any other sexual sin.

The logic followed for me at the time, though I couldn't quite relate. I didn't think about sexual thoughts while I was masturbating; I didn't think about anything at all, just felt. I wondered if that meant it was okay for me, but that didn't seem right. A rule's a rule for everyone. I didn't ask any follow-up questions or write them down on the secret question slips. I was afraid of giving myself away and maybe of getting my question answered directly. I left the meeting that night and continued in my routine, making sure never to picture a naked man, which, as I've already said, wasn't difficult. This wasn't sexual. It was, you know, tending to myself in some physical way. Like scratching an itch. People tell you not to scratch it, it's going to get infected, but it feels good and you want to do it and it has nothing to do with their body anyway, and can you tell me that you've never scratched an itch? Sorry.

I was concerned about the spiritual ramifications of my actions, I just didn't want to deal with them quite yet. But I guess coming five times a day makes one disinclined to want to deal with anything.

More than the significance of my soul in the matter, I was concerned with the fact that this ecstasy was coming from running water, and running water alone. Since my first successful orgasm, I realized I had abandoned all the phallic endeavors that had previously kept me occupied. I tried returning to the usual ones, only to realize that they still produced no effect. I had my driver's license at this point, so I drove down to the Safeway on Railroad by Granada Bowl and bought a small cucumber and some other things that I don't remember, because the trip was really about that cucumber. I chickened out about it, though, remembering a joke I think Derek or one of the other guys told me about "how do you make pickles?" or something like that. I didn't want to be that girl. I also didn't want to be the girl whose mom has to take her to the E.R. because she has a broom or bottle stuck inside her.

But most of all, I couldn't be the girl who goes down to Not Too Naughty on First Street and walks out with a brown paper bag. I couldn't. I worked at Country Waffles where the old men lure you in with grandfatherly kindness and then tell you they have a photographer ready to go and the old women bring in their Arthur Court trinkets from Main Street Design, which is right across the street. Also, I agreed with Mr. Willis when he said that, though he opposes taking legal action, he hopes that the doors of Not Too Naughty be closed by the decent Livermore public's lack of patronage.

Out of options, I went back to shampoo, though recently my mom had been buying Aussie brand in the purple bottles, and they were too big. I found an old Finesse shampoo bottle underneath the sink and scrubbed the grime off with a sponge. The end was blunt and the plastic seaming scratched, but I managed to work it inside myself anyway. I laid back in the tub and pushed the bottle up and down, holding the cap in my palm. Nothing happened. I broke my own rule and tried to think about my boyfriend \- nothing. Freddie Prinze, Jr. - nothing. Shredder? Nothing.

I lay in the dry bathtub and looked numbly at the ceiling. Mold was collecting. I rinsed the bottle in the faucet and threw it back underneath the counter because however disappointed I felt then, I had hopes of becoming optimistic again later. I didn't even get back in the tub for my usual routine - too depressing. My water-induced orgasms had rescued me once from thinking people liars, but now betrayed me by giving me pleasure that couldn't be replicated by a man - as he is a Finesse bottle of shampoo. I revisited the verdict Young Life had given on the issue and began thinking that they were right that masturbation was dangerous, but for the wrong reasons. I left the bathroom only to return again the next day (it was easy enough, I always seem to find myself there). What I would have liked was to have been at my dad's where the bathroom was set up to better facilitate these sorts of things, but I settled for hoisting my pelvis up awkwardly toward the tub faucet, trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid scraping my tailbone on the drain stopper. After a while, it didn't matter, and I was back to forgetting about real sex and dealing with nothing.

Rachel

Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy...Are you married? Do not seek a divorce. Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. - 1 Corinthians 7:25-28

Rachel told us she wasn't going to kiss anymore until she kissed her future husband at the altar. She was twenty-five at the time and wasn't dating anyone. Once she also told us how she used to run the long highway, thinking she wouldn't be too upset if a truck came by and hit her, killed her - not that she would jump out in front of it, no, just that if it was God's will, she wouldn't be too concerned. Six weeks later, she had been on three dates with a guy from church, and she told us she decided against her no kissing declaration. She isn't the type to change her mind for a man, for anyone, really, especially if she felt pressured to do so, or felt like she just wanted to do so to do whatever it was she wasn't supposed to do. She just changed her mind. She said, "That was stupid." And that was that.

Rachel was my Bible study leader (one of my Bible study leaders), and also a leader at Young Life, and also a staff member at church. And when she became a staff member at church, she slowly stopped being a leader at Young Life, but it wasn't only because she was busy. She said she didn't like the way Young Life advertised, as well as some other particular grievances, so she left. But she still led Bible study with Mary, Liz, Michelle, and me, and we would have tea or hot cocoa or cookies whenever we met.

Rachel graduated with an English degree from Biola University, but she went to my high school before that. Granada High School in Livermore and she told us she had dated a Mormon boy once, who she made out with on a picnic blanket. We laughed. She wanted us to read passages of the Bible before we met together and have questions ready to discuss, and also she showed us the question journal she used to pass around with her old Bible study leader. She had issues with an eating disorder for a while, though I don't know if that was in the discussion journal because, though Rachel told us we could all look through it, I never did. I knew about the eating disorder only because she told us about it, sort of quiet, when the subject came up, and I do remember how.

I used to drive my 1988 Acura Legend to Cornerstone Church's office complex on Tuesday nights to meet Rachel and the other girls in her office, after we were all old enough to drive.

Rachel's office had an Amelia Bedelia calendar on the wall and some drawings by one of the Cornelius girls (there were seven of them - Cornelius girls, I mean). I was sometimes early, but not as early as Liz, and I would sit on a wooden bar stool while we waited for the others to arrive. And then we would take our Bibles (if we didn't bring our own, Rachel had plenty, including her personal favorites) to the big meeting room that had four gray folding tables pushed together in a big rectangle. We sat in little black folding chairs that didn't have the cushions and would flip through, page by page, reading different verses of the Bible. Sometimes we would read thematically, jumping from book to book. Other times Rachel would pick a section - Matthew chapters five through six, maybe - and we would focus on that. She says you haven't really read something until you've read it three times, so we read everything in triplicate, and I guess that was the English major in her. She applauded the time she said "Thomas" and I chimed, "also called Didymus," and I still have the postcard she wrote me at Woodleaf in full and swirling cursive:

Dear Edie,

Praise God for saving and sanctifying you through His grace! It brings my heart much joy and God's name much glory to see the zeal and love that you have for God. My prayer for you is that you would continue to grow in knowledge and depth of insight so that your life continually will impact others for His kingdom. I will be praying for you and your family. God bless you.

Rachel

She wrote it after a night that I got into some argument with another camper about something that I really can't remember. I really can't remember it, but I wish I could - I was so entirely consumed by whatever it was that I was sweaty and Rachel asked me if I didn't want to take a walk with her in the cool. We walked, I remember that, through the red dirt and past the Sugar Barrel, and it was dark and Rachel was trying to explain to me the other girl's point of view, though she confided that she definitely didn't agree. And I remember having a sucker, one of those good ones that the high school kids would sell as a fundraiser (you know, those perfectly round suckers that looked like balloons and cost fifty cents each and the best one was blue cotton candy?), but, no, I didn't have a sucker. It must have just been that we walked by the Sugar Barrel and they were making waffle cones. But that's not right either. Rachel said things and they calmed me down and we went back to the cabin. And then that next day she left a postcard on my bed, and on the other girls' beds too, and mine said that thing about zeal and I felt proud and like maybe she gets me. I didn't read what the other cards said.

+

The youth group at Cornerstone Fellowship, which isn't the same as Young Life, had a series of six weekly sex talks to Young Life's famous one. I went to the first four of the series, and then asked Jeff when we would switch gears (Jeff led the talks). This has very little to do with what I have just been telling you, except for the aspect that, as the series progressed, the discussion of different expressions of sexuality became so increasingly specific, that the fourth talk ended with, "And, so, you really need to reconsider the close hug as well."

I liked Jeff, but as I sat in the back, I thought, "This is stupid," while taking notes. No sex, it started. Then no anal sex, no oral sex, no naked touching, no naked viewing, no heavy petting, no horizontal make-outs, and no making out in a dark, secluded place. After that came the "bewares," which were beware of deep kissing, too much kissing, sitting on each other's laps, spending prolonged time with the opposite sex, and, finally, close hugging. At the time, I was finding it difficult to accept all of the no's, and scoffed entirely at each of the bewares, although I didn't want to undermine the group, and so only shared that information with the people who weren't there.

I don't understand why Jeff needed to take one rule and make it twelve-thousand, and I think of the stories of Jesus and the Pharisees every time I relive that past: And you experts of the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Although, I don't think Jeff was trying to make a burden, and I do think he would have tried to help carry it if he could.

That might have been what he was doing when he told us that he hadn't slept with his wife before they had married, and that he wasn't even sure he was going to marry her until his lips, legally binding, said, "I do." It was supposed to be about trusting God, not yourself, I guess, but to me it just sounded unromantic. And Stephanie, his wife, and the other of my Bible study leaders, told us that it hurt when she had sex on their wedding night, which didn't sound romantic either, but I respected her as an example of someone normal who was a virgin until it was okay not to be. But then Stephanie hadn't said anything about the sensation of a waited kiss or a waited hug, which gave me even more reason to wonder why Jeff was going on like he was. Trying to protect us, I suppose, but then I felt I was a little more mature than that. It was just a little condescending, I felt, which is why I conveniently missed the last two sessions. My mom liked having me home more, anyway.

+

I wasn't home very often for a good two-year span, not because I didn't want to be, but because I had been so involved in the church that there was always a Thursday night this, a Saturday morning that, a Monday, Tuesday, Friday something or other, on top of several other commitments. And that's not teenage embellishment. I led a Thursday after school Bible study for first through third grade girls, attended Young Life Club Thursdays nights at 7:44, lead WYLD Life Club Wednesday nights at 7:44 (WYLD Life, the middle school version of Young Life, the high school version of Real Life, the college version of I don't know what else), led a Bible study for The Girls whenever we could fit it, attended two weekly Bible studies of my own (one through Young Life with Rachel, one through Cornerstone with Stephanie), attended the Cornerstone youth group on Sunday nights, volunteered and worked for Children's daycare whenever I was needed, and attended church services of Sunday (although sometimes I would go twice if my friends wanted to attend afternoons and my family the morning service). Also, I ran track and field and worked weekends at Country Waffles. And, oh yeah, was enrolled in high school.

There was once, when I was not home, but waiting on her office barstool, that Rachel told me she was unhappy with some things at Cornerstone. I was surprised at her news, and also her semi-confessional tone, and for a moment I wondered why, if she was unhappy with the church, she had asked me to work childcare for the four-year-olds that week. Apparently she had an altercation with some woman in the church, who had told some parent some thing that she said Rachel had said. Rachel didn't tell me what it was, just that it had been taken out of context, and that this woman told that other woman, who told another, and another, and the rest. And then Rachel had to hear it through the grapevine, had to confront woman number one (once she found out who it was), and there had to be a meeting with the Children's Ministries pastor. "And the frustrating part," Rachel said, "was that, after everything, after the meeting, this woman comes up to me and says, 'Geez, I'm glad that's over. The devil really had his hand in that one.' The devil didn't have to have any hand in that; it was all her! Pssh...but, I'm supposed to be understanding of the different women of God, right? Don't judge another's servant," And she left it at that.

Then there was another time, and I don't remember where we were or if it was just Rachel and I, that Rachel complained about this other thing. We probably were at her parents' house when she told me (or us) this, because I can see the light coming in the kitchen window and hitting the amber hardwood to the left and behind the island. My hands were one palm-down on the granite countertop and the other in a fist around my cocoa mug, and Rachel told us about the women's conference this past weekend. She said they made her go, though I bet she would have gone anyway, and I was sipping mint chocolate when she said in disgust, "And she just smiled this plastic smile and started telling her about her new book," after she had recreated the scene of a woman coming up to a conference leader (next to whom Rachel happened to be standing) in tears, talking about pain over the loss of something - my memory fails me, but it mustn't have been about something concrete, but abstract: something about a pain over a loss of faith \- probably due to pain. And this woman was almost in tears, but she didn't want to run her Bobby Brown makeup, so she stood in front of the conference leader she sought out, eyes wide against the water and hoping for a manifestation of comfort. And then the conference leader had that plastic smile, Rachel said, and started talking about her book. And Rachel told us she had to leave (even though she had wanted to maybe talk to the glassy-eyed woman) because she didn't know what to say, and because she was dumbfounded at the conference leader's concrete composure. "And this woman is supposed to be my mentor," she said. And I remember how Rachel had previously told me about requesting one - a mentor. Some older, wiser woman from whom she could seek sound advice.

"Plastic," she had said, and I immediately saw the woman's expression. I saw her clothes, her jewelry, her hair. She has maroon matte lipstick and a powdered face where nothing glows. Her eye shadow is plum and the black casing it came in says plum, too. Her hair, brassy blonde with darkened roots, is high and slightly parted, a shape of bangs falling asymmetrically, brushing her cheekbone. She smiles with wide teeth that could have been perfect white, had she not been such a coffee drinker, though how could she not be? This was her second conference in two weeks and she had had that book to finish before. She stands, in the intermission of the full-day conference, in the brown suit and pink shell she bought at Nordstrom, fifteen percent off. And then the sun is in her eyes and the next woman comes up with questions that she's supposed to answer, so she does. And the girl to whom she was assigned mentor walks off, to grab a spinach wrap, she guesses, and the one woman leaves and another starts to come. She swivels her foot in her matching Paolo's, hoping the panty-ho seaming will right itself again before she has to return to her seat to listen to the rest of the day's speakers, and won't be able to fidget.

Rachel had been hoping for someone older and I thought of Sister Anne, who kissed me on my forehead at my first communion and smelled like the worn pages of a library book. She didn't wear lipstick and I can't remember panty-ho's, but then I was quite young and anyway, I had never asked any questions. I like to think of her, though, mentor in the Catholic church with the Catholic pews and the Catholic isle I walked down before a priest told my mom she wouldn't be forgiven for not marrying in the Catholic church and we switched our Sundays to Cornerstone.

+

I met up with Rachel after I had graduated high school, after we had pretty much disbanded the group due to a lot of schedule things, and she told me she had quit her position at Cornerstone. She told me she had quit and I had been surprised, though I knew she was unhappy. I just couldn't imagine her quitting because I couldn't imagine where she would go. How do you quit a church? And what kind of job can possibly follow? She also said she was moving to Sacramento, or some such place, although I'm pretty sure it was Sacramento because I remember thinking, "It's hot as balls." She'd be a substitute teacher for a while, English hopefully, and she'd walk in the school with her red-lipped face and laugh that laugh that pierces.

Her quitting wasn't the only thing we talked about, because something had just happened with her roommate. We didn't actually talk about this that day, as I think I remember, because I want to say that Rachel was still living with the girl - the woman - when this thing happened, but right now she was back to living at home. I think.

But we talked about the roommate who was so blonde and so pretty and so thirty-four and so still a virgin. I had been surprised to find out she was a virgin the night Rachel had us girls over to watch Jane Austen adaptations on DVD because I looked at her picture on the wall and thought, "She's so pretty." And then I met her and she was very friendly and outgoing and vibrant, and I knew that if she was still a virgin, it must have been a hard road traveled. Not that I didn't think Rachel was pretty and friendly and outgoing, she most definitely is, it's just I wasn't surprised she was still a virgin because that was what she had made up her mind to be. And that's just the way it is with Rachel, so that if you ever meet her, you would completely understand.

But Rachel told me one time (yes, it was the time I'm talking about...when she said that thing about quitting her job. I'm pretty sure because she must not have been living with the roommate at the time, or else I think there would have been more conversation to have been relayed) that this thirty-four-year-old woman virgin had come home from a first date not that night, but the next morning. And she walked in to awkward roommate gazes and said yes to their eyes. Rachel told me that when she had tried to talk to her about it, tried to remind her about everything, the roommate was irritated and just shouted, "It's young girls, Rachel! Young girls! Virgins in the Bible means YOUNG GIRLS and I am thirty-friggin-four! Look it up!" I didn't allow myself to process it at the time, interrupting Rachel as she tried to work through the angle. I said, "People will find anything to excuse what they really want to do," and felt it was sufficient. And knew that it was true.

I put down the tea I had been sipping and nodded my head with adolescent finality. Rachel nodded her head too, but maybe to return to the subject later. She looked out past me for about twelve seconds. "Well, it's a good thing he wants to take care of her," she said. And asked if I wanted more tea.

Holy Human

The Lord looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one. – Psalm 14:2-3

I yelled at Dustin at his parents' house in Las Vegas for trying to fall asleep with me and for grabbing at my boobs. The falling asleep part, I knew what he was trying to do when he came into the guest bedroom where there was an air bed and not a mattress and he pretended to be comfortable. I kept hinting at him to get out and go into his own room, but then he was either oblivious or just being stubborn because he didn't move, just kept his head next to my shoulder and his arm around my neck. And then I said, "Should I go sleep in the other room, then?" and he raised his head, hurt, and walked out. Finally. I didn't like him unbalancing the weight, making me rise and fall into him like that. But then this was after a lot of things.

He called me into his room the next morning, and I must have been in a better mood, or else a more guilty one for not being nice the night before, because I came in and lay down next to him in his t-shirt that I stole before we left. He didn't live with his parents because they moved that seventeenth time and he said he didn't want to go. So it was an eleven-hour drive to Vegas from where we were and anyway, I was mad that the transmission gave us trouble in the desert. But I lay down beside him and he was sleepy, or else that was an excuse, and we kissed and he put his hand up my shirt and I had stopped letting him do that a long time ago. I waited until a few minutes passed because it felt good until I felt bad. And then I said, "Let's get breakfast," and thought he was going to cry, but not because I made him stop doing that.

+

Dustin was my high school boyfriend and when we first got together, our friends said we would ruin the group. They also said, "Don't let Dustin taint you," or else they said, "Don't taint Dustin." Kellie told me that I tainted Peter that one time, but that was when I had just started in with the youth groups. The week after we kissed, Dustin was calm even though I was a little unsure, not about liking him, but about whether or not it was God's will for me to date. In the two months before, I had decided it was not God's will for me to date two other boys, Brandon and Landon, but maybe that was just a curse on rhyming. Brandon had taken me to dinner and a movie on the first official date I ever went on. I don't remember what we saw, but I do remember his mom dropping us off because we were both fifteen. I stared at the maracas and sombreros on the wall of On the Border before our fajitas came out, wondering why it was so much harder to think of something to say here when we talked for hours making our poster board project for Spanish class in his grandmother's home office.

I can't decide whether or not finding out Brandon was not a Christian ("Not yet," Drew said, "but he's so close.") made him off-limits and therefore eventually unattractive, or if I just stopped liking him for regular adolescent reasons. Either way, I felt I wasn't going to date him. I felt that this was right with God. And I hoped that this could bring me closer to something I wanted most.

Landon I worked with. At Country Waffles, we were always competing to see who could show up first for the eight o'clock shift because if you showed up even one minute earlier than the other person, you were dismissed usually an hour before. Landon walked to work and so did I, but we came from opposite directions because I was on one side of Catalina Drive and he on the other. He was tall, gangly...very pale. He had braces. I thought he was cute.

He invited me over to his house a few times, even though he told our boss that he didn't believe in dating a coworker. He was very professional like that. He actually wore the Country Waffles maroon polo to school sometimes, I don't know why. He even wore the nametag. I didn't even know he went to my high school until I saw him walking around in that uniform one day. And then the next day I saw him in an oversized army green jacket and lots of black clothing.

He invited me over, and when I knocked on his house's big blue door, his very blonde, very beauty queen mother answered with a look on her face that suggested most of Landon's visitors were also army jacket clad, and I was so clearly dressed in a yellow polo and baby shorts from American Eagle. Landon played video games in his room and we talked about things I don't remember.

As I was rummaging through his room, I found notes underneath his bed about the Christian camps he used to go to but didn't anymore. I wondered why he kept the notes. I asked him and he said it was a long time ago and he doesn't buy into it anymore. And then his eyes were sad when said, "I don't know, two years ago. Before my mom moved us out here," when I asked how long it had been since he stopped.

I didn't kiss Landon even though I wanted to, even though he wanted to, and even though, when I was putting the shoebox back underneath his bed his face was very very close to mine and his breath was sweet on my lips, because I felt I had a different duty now, as a friend, as a Christian, to get him back to a place he had left behind. Maybe we could date in the future. He lent me his jacket, saying, "Wear it to school tomorrow." When I took it from his closet and put it on, he remembered something and went for the front pocket. I thought for sure he was going to pull out a dime bag, but instead he embarrassingly plucked a little plastic baggie of rubber bands for his braces and shoved it quickly into his jeans.

I saw him every weekend at work and slept in his jacket for three days, but then he stopped inviting me over, and maybe it was because of some Breakfast Club fear. Any adept high schooler knows that Claire and Bender would never make it work. Especially if Claire had a higher calling and Bender found a more suitable punk-rock girl to take her place three weeks later. Landon eventually quit Country Waffles and moved to Ohio to be with his dad. We never kissed and we didn't talk about God.

But Dustin was Christian, or just beginning to be, when we kissed that first time. And when I asked Annie to ask him what he thought about me, he said, "I think being with her would make me a better Christian," and my eyes were big and wide. But I wondered if God had other plans for me, especially since Mary seemed to think it wasn't a good idea, and this was when Mary cared about ideas syncing up with God and Bible study things.

Mary said no and my group of friends had doubts and I had just finished signing a promise to God (one I wrote up myself after seeing a template in my devotional journal "Women of God"). This was after dating Thomas, the one that rounded second and got a sneak preview of third, and I only wrote it because he had rounded second and gotten a sneak preview of third, which made me think I needed a physical reminder after all.

I wrote the following conditions for myself: I would not lay down and kiss, I would not make out for prolonged periods of time, I would not be alone in the dark with a boy, and I would not date anyone without God's permission and blessing. I printed out the piece of paper and signed it with my best signature, the one I had been practicing for when I got my license. When Dustin asked me to be his girlfriend, I told him we should pray about it, and he agreed. Two days later, he said he got his answer from God and God said, "Yes." He wrote this to me in a note, the only one I didn't keep, and I prayed feverishly in third block for a confirmation I never received. And I violated all the other conditions of my paper promise in time.

+

I gave up seeing or talking to Dustin outside of school for three days once. It wasn't Lent, but that didn't matter to me; this was just after we had dry humped "for the last time," I told myself determinately. I memorized Psalm 51 in its entirety because of that occasion, asking the Lord to wash away my iniquities. I don't remember it completely anymore, but if someone in the room starts the verses, I can usually finish them in a general way. I realized, then, how much of my life was dedicated to talking to Dustin as I found myself on the couch with my mom and brother and couldn't remember the last time I was there. There was a blackout the third night of my repentance, and Jake, my mom and I were in the living room with candles. Our dog Reno was running around and we were laughing at him when my cell phone rang. It was Dustin. "It's midnight!" he said, and I scolded him for seeking a loophole in a technicality. God knows our hearts.

When I broke up with Dustin, I told Rachel it was because I didn't couldn't be his Holy Spirit anymore, but that isn't fair. I just couldn't be his crutch, I didn't want to be, and I couldn't be his family anymore, and I couldn't be the one for him to lean on. And why? Because it was time for college, maybe. The trips to Monterey were over, the gondola rides were over, the drives up Vasco Road in the rain were over, and the dedication of songs was over. The first love was over. It was time.

And also I told him before we had ever thought about a romance that I would be disappointed if I met my spouse in high school and he agreed that he would be disappointed too, "How lame." And then I retracted that statement and said I didn't mean it and then knew I meant it again two years later when it stuck. But thinking we would get married helped at certain times, like on Valentine's Day when I wanted to take off my skirt and cried to him, "I wish we could just put all the promises on hold," and he agreed, but reminded me why we couldn't. And we would always say our relationship was so strong because God was at the center.

We talked about sex things frequently, though less frequently when all the "no's" and "shouldn't's" built a steady repetition. And when I asked him once, "Do you think you would be able to just let go like that once you're married?" he said, "Sure, it would be easy...like flipping a switch." I didn't know, and I told him I thought I'd still be stuck in the mindset of saying no for so long and that I just didn't see how it would be so easy to just go there. I didn't want it to be easy to just go there. What would that have said about my dedication? About my commitment? I should have more faith in the Lord, I thought. He knows how to give good gifts. I hoped He would make it easy, but then I didn't pray because I didn't want to rush God's timing; I knew full well that I couldn't.

But Dustin assured me that saying yes would be easy, and I found out for sure with a different person. But then my experiences were outside the previously discussed parameters and I couldn't ignore the deficiencies in me, so any previous conversation about marriage and sex just didn't seem to apply.

Even though we talked about everything, and even though we were in love, and even though we were supposed to be each other's best friend, I didn't talk about everything with Dustin. I wanted so much to do right by God, and so didn't want to tempt my boyfriend by sharing every single one of my thoughts. But not being able to speak to him about this, not being able to speak in church about this, not even being able to speak with my best girlfriend about this, since a year ago she stopped talking to me because, out of insecurity, I dated an asshole who was an asshole to her, I would turn to my computer and try to Google things about sex and my situation. Later, I found out that a lot of the guys turned to their computers for to satisfy their sexual frustration in a different way, but for me it was the last place to ask questions. The only anonymous place, so long as I made sure to erase the Internet history afterward. Looking back, I should have just asked my mother, but I guess I thought asking might suggest that the Church and the Bible weren't giving me sufficient answers. And I knew my mother didn't think exactly like them.

But then Google didn't help me either. Every site that popped up when I searched "Christian sex" or "premarital sex" was never good enough. Nothing helped. Nobody is actually talking about what I need to talk about, and people who give different sounding answers to the ones I have already heard are pushed to the side as "not Christian." All the regular sites, the dominant sites, say things like, "If you really have a Christian mind," and, "If you are truly pursuing a life in Christ." Or else the sites are for marriage only and say things like, "God is sexy" and other weird stuff that makes me even more unsure of what I think myself. And the sites say things like, "Well, Christ would say..." but it still doesn't seem right because Christ in fact did not say "...".

I would read and wish Jesus would come down from the heavens and sit on my bedside to answer my questions straight – except I knew I would wonder if I were hallucinating or not, hearing voices or not, especially if the answer I received was not the one I was seeking...and especially if it was. I didn't know what to think. I didn't want to go to hell. I didn't want to do the work of the devil. I just wanted to be happy, to realize the promise of life to the full, but without unnecessary restrictions.

What are the necessary restrictions? Because some of the sites say "pornea" doesn't actually translate to fornication, and Deuteronomy, the book with supposed answers, talks about dowries and rape. And Song of Songs seems like a glimmer of an answer, but then I was told not to pay much attention to it until I was married anyway, or else to read it as an allegory for the Church's relationship with Christ, not a sexual ballad between two seemingly unmarried lovers. Also, Song of Songs made me feel sad a little, since the male lover takes delight in the woman's breasts. I had prayed in the seventh grade that the Lord make mine grow evenly and at least to a handful, but this man's lover had breasts that overflowed.

Abstinence made me care a little bit less about my boobs, but not about sex in general. Does God care about premarital sex? I wondered. Or does God care about my heart, my intentions, and how I conduct my relationships, sexual or otherwise? The Bible clearly says adultery is wrong, but then committing adultery is disrespectful to your marriage partner – a betrayal of your spouse. Then Jesus says that lust in the heart is the same as lust in action, but then what is lust exactly? Is everything sexual lust? Should that be what I'm trying to fight? No poking your penis around, no opening your legs in a way that divorces sex from respect? From love? From love or from romance? Is this a cultural thing, like the church has taken shaving your beard, getting a tattoo, and covering your head to be? Is this an eating thing, where we do not want to distress our convicted brother, and so, out of love, we appease him, knowing that in the privacy of ourselves, we do not need to be as limited?

Christians act like every single answer can be found, indisputably, in the Bible...answers about everything. Does the Bible even claim that? How could it? In the Old Testament, writers refer to the Law of God as all-encompassing, but do we have the full law of God? Jesus spoke of the Law and of love, but do we have all His words? And people want to get around that by saying that the Bible is God-breathed, and I agree with that, but that doesn't erase the fact that the cannon was put together by some people much later than the books themselves were written, and only after the Church had grown powerful enough to even begin to unify. And so the men were inspired by God, okay...but is this really the point? We have the Holy Spirit inside of us, according to the Scripture, according to Jesus in the Gospels, to mediate between our souls and God. If we have that kind of power, do we not have some ability to discern? Or is the Holy Spirit confined to the pages of the Bible alone? Do we seek these answers because we have no faith in ourselves? And not ourselves, actually, but in the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit dwells in those who accept Christ as their Savior? Have we no power to discern for ourselves? Or have we just forgotten how? Or are we afraid that, if we discern for ourselves these controversial matters the whole of God's work on Earth will implode? Or do we fear that if we discern for ourselves, we have full responsibility of our own decisions, our own actions? If the first is the case, let's have more faith in God. If the second is the case, let's put more faith in Christ.

Maybe it makes no sense. I'm not sure. But I'm inclined to think it's hardly ever about the words unless they stir what was already in the heart. And if they aren't connecting...well, I assume that's why we ask for more. Listening to answers led me to questions that led to the gathering of tremendous amounts of information...and the inability to find any satisfying answers.

What does it take to be holy?

Sexually, I considered my relationship with Dustin holy – a holy two-and-a-half-year break between letting Thomas see the naked parts of me and letting Kurt have them all. I intended it to be holy as well. I don't think some of the youth group crowd thought it was holy, or else they just continued to be worried. They didn't say anything to me that I can remember, but they told Dustin that we made out too much, or that we touched each other too much, and they certainly didn't approve of us sharing a bed that once. They definitely wouldn't have approved of the pictures I took for him in the bra I stole from my sister. Brown, the bra matched the patch of carpet I cleared to lay down on for a nice backdrop. I extended my arm way up and out to take the picture, long before My Space made the pose so popular, and I put on a decent sexy face for a sixteen-year-old.

I found the pictures a year later in Dustin's desk drawer and he told me that, honestly, he never looks at them. He didn't want to see his angel that way. Not yet.

Maybe now I would be offended. Maybe now I would argue. Certainly now I can see what I meant when I told Rachel I couldn't be his Holy Spirit, but at that time, it proved how much he loved me, and he watched as I tore the seven pictures into forty-nine pieces of a holy little frame.

PART TWO: The Whore

Straddling Benches

I walked into the party in double polo shirts, knowing I smelt of him. His body wash, Axe, the one with all the commercials of girls falling all over themselves to sleep with one guy. I walked into the party in double polo shirts, one gray, one aquamarine, and smiled like nothing was different, even though everything was different and everyone smiled back at me like everything was different. Dustin said hi, I think, but then he left to go sit on the curb outside while I nervously flirted with all the boys in Matt Biggerstaff's room: Aaron, David...I think I bit David on the knee, doing anything outrageous that maybe would cover the smell of Axe on my neck.

Kurt asked me to meet him before I went to the party and I told him I had no time. He was adamant, however, and so I parked my mom's car on El Padro Drive, halfway between where I was and where I was going, and waited for him to get there. He drove the yellow Corvette, of course, parked across the street and strolled confidently over, pinning me against the driver side door. We kissed. And after I was thoroughly aroused, thoroughly ready to forget some stupid party, he smiled and said, "Have fun," and left. I must have told him the night before that this would be the first time seeing Dustin since the break-up.

Christie asked me how I was and I told her, "Fine." Michelle asked me how I was and I told her, "Fine," too. And then I went into Matt's room to find Aaron and David and barricaded myself in for two hours because I didn't want to tell anyone else, "Fine," and David and Aaron never asked. And like I said, Dustin was outside on the curb.

I didn't want to tell anybody about it for certain of my own reasons, one of which was due to not wanting to hurt feelings and the other of which was due to not wanting to explain. Or answer questions. Or re-establish the accountability partner. Or participate, really, anymore than sitting in a back room emanating pheromones and excess flirtation on long time friends who hadn't seen me in a while. Kurt and I had just begun our little rendezvous and this was when everything was kept neatly above the belt. I was flushed. I was happy. I smelled like Axe cologne.

+

The August before I started college, I would daydream about the experience and fancy seeing myself on the front cover of a newspaper, arm raised solidly in the air, a headline reading, "Campus Christian Movement Gains Momentum" or something like that. I decided to quit masturbating at the beginning of the month, saying to myself, "Okay, you've had your dark time, not let's get serious again about Christ." And by serious I meant obedient. I tried not to think about the old Catholic joke that goes, "If it feels good, don't do it." Or maybe that isn't a joke. This wasn't about "if it feels good, don't do it," but rather "if you keep having to ask questions about whether or not you should be doing it, don't do it." I was ready to get back to full obedience. No gray areas. No questions. No doubts. That way, if I was called by God to be a campus crusader, I would be well-equipped without hindering faults. That's what I thought. And I think I made it through August without an orgasm.

When I came to UC Santa Barbara in September, a week after meeting Kurt (on purely platonic terms, I assured him), I looked for the Christian groups on campus. I had heard about Campus Crusades on other college campuses, but found that, at UCSB, Campus Crusades was pretty much intertwined with a group called Real Life (which, by the name, I knew was the college version of Young Life). Happy, I signed up for the women's Bible study group held in my dorm. It was important to connect with a new fellowship now that I was away from home, I knew, because Christian fellowship is always important, but also because Rachel had told me once that, driving through Santa Barbara, she felt "a real lack of the Lord's presence." I took offense because I had just told her I had decided on UCSB as my college, but I thought her comment worth worrying over.

The Bible study leader for my dorm was a blonde college senior named Michelle (they are all always named Michelle). Her name was Michelle and she was blonde and the new group was called Real Life, but I had just recommitted my obedience, as I felt it, which meant no more preconceived notions as well. These are all God's people.

I didn't like the first meeting because we didn't open a Bible and I had come to be biblically challenged, but when I told Michelle that she said, "Okay, well let me know what you want to discuss next time and we can do that," so I felt a little better. Hopeful. And then Michelle said she would really like to have a one on one with me next week, she had time on Tuesday, and would I be interested? I said yes, of course, and we made our date for noon.

Tuesday at eleven o'clock, I was sitting at my computer on AIM. Kurt and I had started a flirtatious conversation that I decided to put to and end for whatever reason, probably to test things, by bringing up, once again, the fact that I was not interested in having sex or fooling around before marriage. I did not add "with you," nor did he directly address me, in the conversation that followed, mostly because it is much easier to take a stance when nothing is specific – nothing muddled by individual circumstance.

But he did say something about knowing he would feel weird about not having sex with someone he was in love with, and I tried to come back with my stock answer about relational love and higher love, adding something, I'm sure, about Thomas Aquinas, trying to appeal to Kurt's Catholic side. Mistake.

I asked him what about the commitment to God? And he said, well, that he had not lost his virginity to the first person he could have slept with, but waited until he was in love and the opportunity presented itself in that way. He said he had given it a lot of thought – about a day – and I almost threw my laptop out the window. A day? He wasn't meeting me on my level, I thought. And then, well maybe I'm not doing a good job reaching him. Maybe I need to reword, reconstruct, re...something. But then the little clock on my computer was clicking over 11:58 and I was getting the sinking feeling that I would have to let this one go.

Kurt, I mean. Because it was my duty to hold onto the conversation. And then I typed something, something I can't remember exactly, and at 11:59, Kurt replied, "I feel like you're judging me. I don't want anyone take something that was one of the greatest experiences in my life and tell me it was wrong." And then he said he had to go. "No, no, wait. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to judge you," I tried out on the keyboard, not wanting him to leave. I saw the time, though, and didn't want to break my engagement. I didn't want to break an engagement with Michelle, but I couldn't leave because Kurt was going to leave and I couldn't have Kurt leave. Not yet. We weren't done. I wasn't done. And so I asked him to wait, "Please, wait," and to come back online in an hour. I would meet Michelle, but I would cut her down to an hour. Who knows how long she wanted to meet anyway? "An hour," I typed. And he typed, "Okay."

I ran downstairs, the time now 12:03, and met Michelle at the University Center, just steps away from my dorm. She sat in one of the plush armchairs and greeted me with a smile. And a hug. And so I sat down next to her and she started talking to me about Christian things in a way that made me think she didn't suspect my superb credentials, and so I told her about my high school activities, the Bible studies, the youth groups, the leadership, the teaching.

Her eyes lit up. She said, "You sound just like me!" And she told about her past weekend when she and her friend just went around a neighborhood, door to door, to talk to people about Christ and sing and dance and how good it felt, but I only heard the words that didn't coincide with the ticking second-hand of the University Center clock. 12:43. It would take me three minutes to walk back to my dorm, ride up the elevator, unlock my door. Another fifteen seconds to sign back on to AIM, which gave her story another eleven minutes - two minutes and forty-five seconds for thank yous and goodbyes.

Michelle finished, though, in four minutes instead of eleven, maybe sensing the lack of connection between us, and our thank yous and goodbyes only took twenty-seven seconds. Still, I ran to San Nicolas Hall, up to my room, to my computer, only to wait seven minutes until one o'clock, only to wait twenty more minutes until 1:20, when Kurt actually signed back on. He was in a cheerier mood. I didn't want to talk about sex.

Then this happened

Images of myself standing tall on the cover of newspapers gave way to a fascination with the weekly sex column "The Wednesday Hump."

We had sex. I couldn't go to church.

The Incident

Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. - James 5:20

Before I admitted to myself that my interests really had nothing to do with other people's opinions, I had a mind to survey the thoughts of other Christian girls on the various "hot button issues" of Evangelical America in order to create a collection of what would be...well, I didn't really know.

I sent one self-made survey about abortion to my friend of six years, Michelle, who was always there in Bible study and is one of the few in our group to decide on a Christian school post graduation. Three hours later, she replied, "Are you asking in general, or because this is something close to home?" The words were hostile on my Gmail page, and not only because my laptop's contrast is too intense. Is this something close to home? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Except I knew what it meant and had half a mind not to get defensive on principal.

But, principally, my gut wanted to distance my name from that name so I wrote, "No, it's not something close to home. Why would you think that?" What I would have liked to have said was, "How could you think that?" And, more importantly, "How the fuck do you just go out and ask me that over email when if it was close to home, you should flip open your fucking cell phone and call me from your contacts list? You have my number."

"Just asking," she replied. Just asking. Just asking whether or not you had an abortion recently since, you know, the last time I talked to you, you told me you were having sex and since you said you weren't going to do that and did it, I can probably assume you'll do just about anything. Just asking, though.

Maybe Michelle was just trying her best to help a friend who she saw was slipping, capable of slipping further, and out of some compromising situations. Two weeks earlier, I had responded fatefully to her other line of questioning. Asking about my boyfriend, she also inserted the obligatory "how are you guys doing?" which, as I full well knew, meant "are you guys making sure not to have sex?" as well as other things about spirituality, but mostly about the sex.

I say obligatory because that's what we did - that's what was done as my Church-going group of friends were all trained well to ask each other this question periodically. It's called having an "accountability partner," and I probably had about fifteen. It's an excellent system until you are on the receiving end of a question you don't want to answer, especially when you just got off the phone with your best friend (interestingly never an "accountability partner") about how you're so lucky that your boyfriend is well endowed.

That's the meat of it though, see, because the questions are really just posed until one person is too uncomfortable to answer and the accountability partner knows where to dig in. I didn't let her do her job, Michelle, because I sidestepped the issue, forced her to ask me directly, and then replied, "Do you really want me to say it?" And since we were on IM, I didn't have to meet her eyes and she didn't have a chance to meet mine, so she couldn't gauge her next move. Come down hard or play nice? Is she hurting or just running wild at college? I forget what she decided on, though I'm sure it was sufficiently awkward. I thought to give her a day to process this information, but when I didn't hear from her for a week, I wondered why. IMs - no response. Phone call - she's busy. And it's not like I could have gone to visit her all the way up in Seattle, so I let myself be okay with the fact that school was probably piling up on her and she's just been absent minded. Michelle could get that way, I guess, although I don't remember any other time.

+

Before we moved to Daisyfield Drive with her boyfriend, my mom and I had one of two fights we have ever had. The previous one, some five years before, was over purple plastic pants. This one was over something else I assured her I was right about.

Because I love her, I told my mom I didn't think we should live with Steve. Because she knows me, she said it wasn't my business what she did with her body. I knew that it wasn't my business, I said, but told her that I just didn't think it was a good idea; I just didn't think it was God's plan. She got up from the couch to leave and I followed her into the hallway of our rented house, across the street from the one we used to own with Dad. I leaned on the doorway of her room, which she entered, and crossed my arms. She faced me and swung her hand to her hip as I went on about purity and marriage and everything else I had no idea about. Watching her, I lost my nerve and could hear my grand speech losing its authorial tone. She cut me off at the mention of "condone," backed by years of authority that, because of our friendship, I had greatly underestimated. She told me how I had obviously been spending too much time with these groups of people if I felt comfortable enough to come to her and throw judgment in her face as though I was not the daughter and she not the mother. She told me how I had taken this...thing (she couldn't bring herself to say Bible) to an extreme interpretation and had conveniently seemed to forget the part about not judging. I had enough adolescent stupidity left in me to remind her of the verse about chastising your fellow Christian out of love, and she exploded saying she was surprised and disappointed at how close-minded I had become. With that, she stopped talking and stepped closer to me in the doorway. I tried not to back up, telling her, "I love you. I love you. I just want you to be happy, I love you," and I did and I meant it, but I saw in her face someone who was right now completely my mother and not at all my friend and not interested in this conversation anymore. Shut it down. I let my legs give out from underneath me, my body sliding completely into the hall. She looked at me and said, "Yeah, I know," and closed and locked the door.

I sat in the hallway in dramatic fashion, though it wasn't dramatic to me, and thought about how three weeks prior she had come home from work, telling me about some silly online quiz to which she answered that I was her best friend. And now, I thought, I could never be her friend again because I had the audacity to speak to her in such a way. I quickly abandoned all my prior reasoning as to why these things needed to be said and why I was the one responsible to say them. Fucking Bible study: they made me do this. They told me that it was a good idea and that, oh yeah, I should definitely tell my thirty-nine-year-old mother that she shouldn't be having sex or moving in with her boyfriend. Yeah, that's appropriate. Because she doesn't have any devoutly Christian friends, right? Yeah, so it's my responsibility. All I said to them was that I had noticed that she had Googled birth control, fucking Google search memory, and that she wasn't married (duh) and that she was divorced, which everybody already knew, and that I felt uncomfortable about the whole situation and maybe I should just say something to her. I don't know if I would have said anything to her had we not just had a whole study unit on sexual impurity, marriage, and divorce, though, but since we did, had I really any choice? I do want her to be happy.

I knew that when I reported back to religious headquarters, I would be received much like a martyr. I had been true to the faith and the calling, in spite of great odds. I tell you the truth, if you do not hate your brother, your sister, your father, and your mother, you have never loved me, or something like that. I guess this is what that means? I love God more. I love God more than I love my mother. But God gave me my mother, yes? Or, gave me to her? And I love the Lord and the Lord loves me, but the reason I can even say love and know what I mean is due in large part to the fact that my mother let me sleep in her silk nightgowns when I was sick and tried so hard to make a lunch schedule for the family, just to suit my comfort level. That's the love I know and think of when I read Bible verses, when I read, "Love thy neighbor," and everything else. But this new act, this supposedly Biblically supported one that I thought I had been taught, left me crying in a hallway and felt nothing like silk.

+

I remembered that incident when the first person called me a hypocrite. Nick Costa, never interested in the Evangelical conversations, stood drunk in my dorm room, mocking, "I thought you were a Christian." My silver text screen saver bounced Jesus Saves Me on a highly lacquered desk. "I am." He left and I complained to my red headed roommate, who asked, "Well, you were supposed to be saving yourself for something, weren't you?" Three months later, when my father asked, "What happened to all that Christian stuff?" with sincerity over Chili's tortilla soup, I thought about the incident again and again when Juliana Haber told me I had always been her hero in high school, and when everyone started calling Jessica a slut, because it's impossible for an adamant Christian girl to ever be affected by experience and change her mind.

When I told my mother I was moving in with Kurt one summer, she raised an eyebrow and started, "Remember when you told me..." and I made her stop. Yes, I remember when. I learned to shut up. And hopefully in time, I will also learn to stand in the face of "condone" and tell others to shut up - start a whole new chain of shut up that forces people to consider their misunderstandings from time to time. You can be wrong, just shut up afterwards and think. I've almost pulled my hand to my hip to say that, but it hasn't quite reached.

+

Two weeks after I had last spoken with Michelle, I sent out that survey. It wasn't actually a shut up; it might have been a dare. She responded, but then we've already discussed that. It was the last time we spoke.

True Love Waits

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. – Matthew 7:7-8

Josh is engaged to be married at twenty-one years of age, three years after his high school graduation, to a girl he has known eight months. Before that, he was madly in love with and "engaged" to Sarah Jessick, a girl he had dated for four years, back before her mother died and she started drinking and decided to break up with him. They made out once. Before that, it was me who was reading his four-page love letters curiously talking about wedding vows he would read at his cousin's ceremony in June. I was fourteen at the time and his "True Love Waits" ring for some reason made me think I would be giving him meaningful hand-jobs in the LVTC Jacuzzi. He picked me up by the ass once, made a point to use tongue in the movie theater, and stopped being able to look me in the eyes. I followed him to Young Life meetings where I found out that he could look Sarah in the eyes fine and also that "True Love Waits" doesn't mean what I thought it did.

Some say it's cynical that I think Josh is getting married to get laid. I don't think it's cynical as much as it is wildly inappropriate for me to butt in, but I remember his tongue that once and all those glimpses at the top of his brow.

+

"True Love Waits." You could buy those rings in a catalogue, Kitty had told me, because I didn't know where people bought them. Josh had his on a silver band and then Kitty had it engraved on some dainty jeweled ring her parents bought her. She told me later how upset she was when her parents asked, "Why did we spend so much money on that ring?" after they had to pick her up from the police precinct for indecent exposure and lewd behavior in a parking lot. She was sixteen and in the middle of it when the policeman knocked the end of his flashlight on her window. She told me he gave her a long speech about decency and respectability, but didn't turn the lecture toward her boyfriend. I said something like, "What a fucking asshole," although maybe I didn't swear, because she told me in the middle of my phase of trying not to swear. But whatever I actually said, what I felt was, "What a fucking asshole." Later, much later, Kitty confided in me that she only really got the ring because of Michelle - because her closest friends were Christian and because it seemed like the thing to do. She told me that the ring made her feel guilty after, like she had to marry Kevin or else, which is maybe why the break-up was so hard. Although maybe it had more to do with first loves.

There were other abstinence things you could have too, not just the no sex rings, and at least five of the guys I knew carried credit card sized signed promise notes in their wallets. The cards had a uniform pledge on them and a little line at the bottom for individual signatures: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship." David's looked like a baseball player had signed it, and it fact he was a baseball player for a while.

I didn't have any token to carry around on my person, reminding me of my sexual promise, but then I didn't feel like I needed one. I didn't need one, I thought to myself, because my promise was written on my heart and Christ had said, "Let your no be no and your yes, yes." Simple. But then Young Life said if I wanted to be a leader, I had to sign one of these notes (I didn't get to keep it) that said I wouldn't drink, do drugs, or have sex – that I would live my life consciously and in accordance to Christ's example. The instruction manual (which I did get to keep) explained the reason for not doing these things:

"The spirit with which we do our work and live among the high school guests is extremely important...You will be under close observation by the adult and high school guests. We have a great responsibility to them, and the privilege of being Exhibit A. You are an example of Christianity in action among kids your own age; you are kids with a purpose – loving, friendly, and hard working. You will be the pace setters for the camp spirit. With these great considerations, our attitude toward our job is strongly affected. We must be at our very best both physically and spiritually. We must operate as a smooth working unit...You must represent the very best for the Savior's sake."

And in one of my Bible studies, the one with Stephanie, we read a workbook called _For Such a Time as This_ by Lisa Ryan, and the second chapter was about virginity. The entire book is centered around the story of Esther and even though Lisa Ryan said she was hesitant to talk about virginity and purity so early on in the book, she felt it was her duty, especially since she said one of the first things the Bible says about Esther is that she is "a beautiful young virgin." We read the chapter, which said what I expected it to say, though the author, a woman from another generation, assures the reader it is more information than she ever got as a young girl. And that's probably true. But still, all this talk about premarital sex being something that will make a girl unhappy, unholy, divorced from God, depressed, blah, blah, blah made me wonder what the hell Lisa Ryan could possibly know about it. She was probably a virgin until she was married. So how could she know anything? And if she heard the baggage price from someone who had premarital sex, how does she know that person isn't just unhappy for unrelated reasons? I knew when I started to question that temptation was getting the best of me. I tried to shut my internal self up and read more intensely, all the black print suddenly appearing bold.

But then there was a story (one that was supposed to be inspirational) that I couldn't accept. I didn't laugh at it, no, that wasn't my reaction. And I didn't want to change the facts of the story. They weren't about my life. But I just didn't know why it was supposed to be my example. I didn't want it. I never wanted it. I never wanted it for myself ever since I was five and had girlhood fantasies about kissing Peter Pan (the Disney cartoon one, not Mary Martin). The story in this study book, this study book that I felt and feel is really very amazing aside from this chapter, this story, was about a man and a woman at USC who liked each other, but didn't express their attraction in any way. They didn't date until everyone could see that God wanted them to be together and then they called it "courting." There was a girl in my Bible study whose parents only let her "court" and, as she explained to me the process of meeting parents, going to church together, having supervised _everything_ , I was glad I had never heard the word before.

But these two book "courters," these USC people, got married eventually and everyone was very happy that their first kiss was at the altar. I thought about my first kiss with Spencer Browning when we were caught up in a game of Truth or Dare. His teeth were on my lips and he told me I opened my mouth too soon and pushed my tongue out too far. I told him, "What do you know? You've never done this before!" and we were mad at each other for a week. But the USC people obviously had more of a relationship going on. And I bet they didn't use tongue anyway. Still, I didn't care too much for that story. I liked kissing and I had kissed thirteen boys by the time I had read it and still never had sex. And still never felt dirty.

I felt like the doctor was assuming I was dirty when I had to get a sports physical at Kaiser. She said to me, "Well, you're almost eighteen now. Have you made an appointment with the gynecologist?" I told her no, I didn't need to. I wasn't having sex or anything. Also, I didn't think it was fair that I had to let somebody who wasn't my husband poke around my vagina when I was saving myself for marriage, but I didn't tell her that part. And she started telling me about safe sex practices and I told her I'm not having sex. And she insisted on telling me safe sex practices and telling me where I could go for birth control if I _did_ decide to have sex and didn't want my mother to find out. Annoyed, I said, "I'm not having sex. I won't be having sex. When I'm married, I'll have sex, but not until then. Not now." She is attacking me, I thought. How sad that she doesn't have faith in a wide-eyed seventeen-year-old girl who has made a promise to wait until marriage. I thought to restore her faith. Or at least make her leave me alone. She looked at me through thin-rimmed glasses and resigned, saying, "Okay," and asked me what I thought, then, of my mom living with her boyfriend (I didn't know how she knew that). I said I didn't like it, "But what can you do?" And she let me trot out of the office with a head held high.

Then there was a time when Granada High School held an abstinence assembly. There was a brown-haired man, about thirty-three years of age, who spoke with a corded microphone and paced side to side. He made everyone laugh with his jokes, when he said, "If the sun don't touch it, your son don't touch it," in reference to bikini lines. He didn't have a funny joke about daughters not touching, but I guess guarding one side of the equation is enough.

But after the funny things, and after telling us that condoms don't prevent every kind of STD, he told us about his wife who got a blood transfusion in the eighties and died of AIDS – but not before giving birth to a very underweight, very precious baby girl who died of AIDS, too. Now it was just him and his son and the man makes a living giving speeches to high schools and middle schools about abstinence and about AIDS. But I mostly remember the AIDS and the tears in his eyes when he spoke about his wife being beautiful, even when her hair fell out, even at seventy-five pounds, even in her last moments when they turned of the respirator and she fought for six weeks. "That's love," he said, "That's intimacy. Don't let someone tell you, 'If you loved me, you would sleep with me,' because that's not true love. What I had for my wife – _have_ for my wife...that's true love." And true love waits.

True Love didn't Wait for everybody, though. Or else quite a few of the Young Life leaders and club members settled for less. A non-member of Young Life, but a childhood friend of mine, told me he walked in on X giving Y a blowjob. I didn't believe him. He must have been mistaken because they signed that form; I know they did.

And True Love didn't Wait very long for a recently married couple in my church who, to most of the congregation's applause and laughter, admitted they were married two months after their first date. At the time, I was skeptical of their "true" restraint. Now I hate myself for once being the seventeen-year-old in the congregation that thought anything of anyone's restraint. Still.

I thought True Love would Wait for me. After high school, I broke up with my celibate boyfriend of three years, who I always envisioned with some pristine, blonde, doe-eyed girl named Carly or something, who wouldn't say, "Fuck me," if they finally did have sex. I tried very hard to suppress the "fuck me," but it creeps up when I'm not thinking and I don't have the energy to always be thinking.

Four days after the break-up, I called the guy who could let me rest. He eventually slid his fingers between my legs and I could smell my insides while I sat in church the next morning. Until the night I finally let go, I would declare that I was saving myself for marriage. I would tell myself and anyone else who might doubt me, "I'm saving myself for marriage." That's what I was taught to say. That and, "True love waits," It's pleasing to hear these words, once my mantra, over and over and over, covering the fact that my friends all talk about marriage because they can't talk about sex, covering the fact that Josh is engaged to a girl he hardly knows, covering the fact that twenty-four-year-old Ben's wife of three years left him to audition for Broadway musicals in New York. I could close my eyes to the panic of repressed young love and make believe that I knew exactly what Kathy was saying about guys and sex and girls and marriage and true love waits, and true love waits, and true love waits.

In a weird way, I find it comforting that if ever Kurt proposes marriage to me, it won't be because he needs to get laid. It won't be because, at the age of twenty-six, he hates himself for watching porn and beating off and just wants to settle down with a woman he can fuck without feeling guilty. If ever he proposes marriage to me, it won't be just to run his hands between my thighs and to learn the way it feels when a woman orgasms while you're inside her.

"Sex is like a rose," Bethany said. My rose has lost some petals, I guess, but then I don't want my future husband to be gauging my affection for him by some fucking flower. I've given my sex to someone, without promises or expectations, asking nothing in return. Upfront I give it, not lightly, though without legal bond, because I want him to have it now. A reflection of my love. Now. And he has given his to me. Now.

And why not wait? Why not hold our roses under glass cases, a la Beauty and the Beast, and stare forever in the eye while we lift the lids together? Maybe because there are certain things I feel I had to get out of the way. Maybe because I remember wishing that I had made sexual mistakes before being "reborn" like some of the other girls, even though I had been told and even believed, believe, that it was fortunate that I hadn't. Maybe because I felt okay with a promise I had made until I graduated from high school, broke up with my boyfriend, and counted the things I wanted to do before settling down and the years required to do them.

I wish I had understood the promise I was making when I made it, but I was fifteen. I was fifteen and had never had an orgasm and had never fallen in love. And then I had an orgasm and fell in love, precisely in that order, and all I can think is that I am so sorry that I couldn't see it through, for the promise's sake, because I hate to be a liar.

Maybe because, even though I am a liar and a wretch, I had found someone who wasn't interested in my petals and could just look me in the eye. Maybe because, after a while, I just wanted to meet his gaze, to stop looking down at books. I wonder if that's what makes me a sinner. I wonder if that's exactly the sort of thing that establishes my loyalty between God and men. I could argue against it without being a liar, but there is very little time for you to mull over piles of prayer journals and Bible study questions and scribbled-in devotional journals and all the bloody little pieces of my heart, even though I might be asking you to.

I used to have the mind for it - explanatory metaphors that had every seeming contradiction eradicated, explained, tucked neatly away in the bottom drawer, fascinatingly without creases to iron out later. Perfection. I used to have the mind for it and everyone would say that to have the mind for it is to be on the right track. If it's making sense, you're doing it right. Serving the Lord right. Doing your religion justice - a real Christian, not a hypocrite. And everyone can see the hypocrite—the one that no matter how many meetings they attend, no matter how many verses they memorize or Bible retreats they spend four hundred dollars a piece on, still raises his or her hand in confusion, talking about what their dad told them or what this one other book says about this, that, and all the others. "What about the creation stories?" "What about a woman's role?" "What about capital punishment, sex, the government, friendship, marriage, food, drink, drugs, dancing, singing, playing basketball?" Don't they know it's all in the Bible? No need to look elsewhere unless you're just looking for filler, entertainment. And beware! Many people told me, "Don't read _The_ _Da Vinci Code_!" And even one of my high school friends told me to "be careful" when reading _The Perks of Being a Wallflower_. Why? Do I not have faith enough to separate fact from fiction? If I read a tenderhearted story about a group of friends, some gay, some engaging in premarital sex, all drinking, smoking, doing everything I know I'm not supposed to, do I not have strength enough to resist the bad and discover life lessons in the good? Am I not being taught well enough that I have to be so timid? So scared?

Sometimes it makes no sense. Too many holes, too much pain. Taylor's mother died and I was only seventeen and I didn't know what to say. Taylor didn't think her mom was a Christian and she was happy when I told her salvation is between God and each person, that no one gets to know for sure. "Are you sure?" I must be sure. And she smiled a smile until the week passed by and her sister died in a car crash. She didn't want to talk about God anymore, so I took her out to Jamba Juice and let her borrow my prom dress.

Or maybe the Christian book market is so lucrative because there are hypocrites to be found out and people want to be sure it's not them. Too many people in the wrong mind - you know, they act that way because God isn't with them. They think that way because they are misaligned with Christ. They are living for the flesh. They have insufficient faith. They are trying to rush the Lord's timing. They don't know how to wait. They have become the leader in their own walk and we all know what that means. We _all_ know _._ Questions? See you next week.

Josh gets married on Saturday.

The Prayers of the Righteous

The Lord is far from the wicked but he hears the prayer of the righteous. - Proverbs 15:29

I had just finished watching the new episode of America's Next Top Model, before I had become completely annoyed with Tyra, so it must have been a Wednesday. I heard my cell phone ring from the other side of my dorm room, which was really only about two feet to the right of where I had been standing. My mom's number was scrolling on the screen, so I answered. She said she needed to tell me something. She didn't start with "Hi, Baby," or anything like that, so I held the phone a little away from me, hoping that would create some sort of air cushion between my ears and what she was going to say. I would have started to guess at what her news was about, but she started talking so quickly that it gave me no chance. "You're brother is addicted to Oxycontin," and it just sort of came out like that with a Googled definition of what it is, what is means, and how it explains why he's been such an asshole. "It isn't him," she said, and I understood what she meant. I already knew, of course, that it hadn't been him - that my baby brother wasn't one to kick in the dashboard of my '88 Acura Legend or scream "Fuck you, you fucking bitch!" No, not at his sister. Not at this sister. Still, even knowing this, I had been surprised at the sudden culprit. Oxycontin, what was it? I didn't even know what is was and I felt a little ashamed that I hadn't even heard of it, this thing that was keeping my baby brother awake for nights on end. And truly awake, too - no sleep. I hadn't even heard of it, this thing that was ruining his life - this thing that was his life, enough to cause him to steal money from the P.E. lockers. No, this wasn't him. This wasn't Jake; I knew that, but I didn't know this. I should know about this, I thought. How can it be that I don't know about this?

I had been listening to my mother, who sounded almost relieved, continue in her explanation. Well, no, she didn't sound relieved, as though she was happy that her son was on drugs or whatever, but relieved in that way that parents of missing persons are relieved when the police finally locate a body. Relieved like that, but, obviously, with hope. Maybe like the parents whose child turns up after being abducted. Their child is home, even if scarred, and the parents can help them again, can see them again. And they can tell each other it will all be okay. The thing is, though, I wasn't home and I couldn't help. I asked my mom if I should come home, but of course, no, she said I should stay where I was in school and just pray for my brother. Yes, yes, of course I would - I had been anyway, ever since our parents were divorced and I'm sure even before that, though I can't recall one particular instance. But at the mention of prayer (I think that was what it must have been), a compulsion rose up within me that I was and am now ashamed of, though for differing reasons. I said, "I have to tell you something, too," and my mom didn't sound greatly surprised, though the relief may have left her voice a bit when she replied, "Go ahead. Nothing is going to surprise me now." I didn't know how to put it, to tell my mom what my compulsion was forcing me to tell her, but I managed to spit out enough garbled pieces for her to get some sort of an idea. "Are you pregnant?" she asked and I replied that no, that's not what I was trying to say. Enough hesitated explanation passed through the receiver again for her to realize that what I was talking about, first of all, was not necessarily sex and, secondly, was nothing like Oxycontin. She stopped me and told me I didn't have to tell on myself - that I was an adult. "And, besides, there is a lot of gray area to deal with," she concluded, and I gathered my breath long enough to say, "Tell Jakey I love him."

+

During the summer WYLD Life camp, the leaders met together frequently to pray together in groups. We prayed together before meals, before activities, before "cabin time." We prayed together over each other, the campers, and the facilities. We prayed together at every chance, offering our group petitions to the Lord. As the week of camp came to a close, we prayed over the satiation of the experience for campers and leaders alike, and then immediately began the military round-up of all people and belongings, making sure to right the camp and pass cabin inspections in the process. The ninety-degree San Diego heat did nothing to help order the chaos, as kids (I don't include myself. I was a leader, not a child for this week) continually broke rank to run through the sprinklers. Finally, we filed into our un-air-conditioned bus and I dropped myself into a sweaty leather seat beside Ben, one of the leaders more than five years older than I and cuter. We met eyes and exchanged exhausted brow lifts, settling ourselves down against the armrests. I didn't close my eyes, but blurred them at the floor boards, slipping into a day dream of accidentally brushing up against Ben during the trip home. "Oh, my mistake," my smile would say, except then he would take his turn to accidentally brush up against me, too. And then I would know it was a game and we would continue that way for the twelve hours home. He would ask me where I was eating for the lunch break and I would say I didn't know and then walk first out of the bus to see if he would follow and he would...

Our bus driver turned the engine over and I startled myself upright, turning to Ben in real-life panic. "We didn't pray!" I said, and scanned the bus anxiously for the other leaders. Ben opened one eye, apparently having closed them both without my noticing, and said, "What?" I reiterated, irritated, that we hadn't prayed for the bus ride home. We prayed for the bus ride here and all had gone well, but we had not prayed for the bus ride home. I looked at him and he wasn't sharing in my urgency. He didn't even look like he was going to get up. Come on! I thought. You're supposed to be a senior leader here! What the hell are we going to do? The bus is starting! Ben told me to relax. "I prayed," he said, "and God hears the prayers of the righteous." I looked at him skeptically. How did he know he was righteous? I tried my brain for a quick definition of righteous, but came up with nothing on the spot. He went back to closing his eyes (God, they were so blue) and I turned back forward in my seat. I decided to pray too, though I didn't close my eyes, lest Ben open his blue ones, see me praying and get offended - if that's the sort of thing that might offend. Still unsatisfied, I tried to spot the other leaders before the bus started moving and we weren't allowed to get up. Jeanette, the Tri-Valley Young Life head, was reclining as best she could in her seat in the back. She looked relaxed to me, save for the constant lifting of her thighs from the sticking leather. Actually, it was probably vinyl because I saw some seats cracking with the threads poking out and also because it was a bus. I couldn't hear it, but I heard the sound Jeanette's legs were making with every lift and reposition. It didn't seem to bother her, so I concluded that she must have prayed, or else she wouldn't be so content. "They all must have prayed," I thought. "We'll be okay." And I pulled up my knees to my chest.

+

Jake relapsed two months after my mom called the first time, and after she had called the second and third times to say how well he had been doing. "Keep praying," she said, so I put my face to the floor. I started, "Please, Lord. Please," and couldn't seem to get any further, confused as to how my brother wasn't better already. "Please, Lord," and then I suddenly wasn't convinced of my ability. Actually, what had made me unconvinced of my ability was not so sudden a thing. It had already been happening as I explained to my mother in my first compulsion, but then Jake had been doing so well. I hadn't really considered...

It stared low with a "no, no, no," that I used in order to stop my mind from going to that place. No, no, no, I needed to pray right now. Not think, pray. But then the no's seemed to stop coming from inside me and were instead filling up the already too-small dorm room. "No!" And I said it loud to scare the other no's away, but nothing shifted. It was altogether too hot and then I really couldn't think or pray. I tried again the "Please, Lord. Please," but I just wasn't sure. I said it louder, just below a considered scream, hoping that my unashamedness about the fourth floor overhearing my cries would cancel out any impeding transgression. "PLEASE, LORD. PLEASE!" but I felt it hit dead air. All those no's - they are all in the way, I thought. But, no, that's not what I was thinking at all. "Don't hold this against him, Lord," I said to the air. "It's not his fault. It isn't his fault that I'm not...it isn't his fault that I can't and I'm not...not anymore...Please." I repeated these words as if they were the only ones in existence, as I pressed my head hard to the inside of my elbows. "Don't hold this against him, Lord. It isn't his fault. At all. It isn't...and I can't...and I'm not..." and I worked this way until I had completely laid myself down on the carpet, which smelled like pot that must have been from the year before. Leveled, I found more words - as though my thoughts were level too and remembered to use their only strength. My sin is impeding my prayers for my brother, I thought, and was surprised at the directness. Who do you think will listen to your prayers, your requests? You shit all over your promises and your fidelity. You shit all over your promises and fidelity because...because you are a stupid selfish bitch...a whore. You shit all over your promises, you selfish whore. Who do you think is going to listen to you? It started to connect. You are out of favors and there was a place inside me that thought that if I had just been as I was before, if I had just been pure and honest as I was before, then my prayers would have weight and Jake's pain would be taken away. But you aren't that way anymore because you are selfish and a whore. You are responsible for this, you know. And I wondered if it was a test. This is a test, don't you see it? And you're letting your brother down. For what? You know for what and you know what that means. Selfish. Little. Whore. You are KILLING your brother with your disobedience and he needs you. He NEEDS you to pray and you can't, can you? No, now why would you be able to do that? You know what you did. You know what you've done. Try praying now - see what happens. You aren't there to intercede and you. know. why. I had lost the confidence to request, to petition. I had lost the confidence in the acceptance of my offerings, and wasn't this relapse proof that I had been right? God hears the prayers of the righteous don't you see what has happened? You don't count anymore.

I lay there, wallowing, one might argue, but be assured that it was out of nothing if not sincerity. But after a while, these many words too lost their connection and set to floating about, crowding me in. I couldn't get up with all these disjointed words pushing down against me, so I stayed down and stared, vacant. A blackened spot next to my nose looked as if someone had dropped a cigarette or something, clumping up the fibers into stone plastic like when you burn an Arrowhead bottle. I stared through the clump and three pieces of pink sequence glimmered behind it from the corner of the room. What light they were catching, I didn't know, but it made me think of something. And then I said, "Fuck you," but I didn't know why. It felt good, though, so I said it again. "Fuck you," and again with a little more conviction: "Fuck you." And then the thoughts grabbed hold their connections again as words flushed out from the back of my tongue. "Fuck that!" I said because my baby brother deserves to be taken care of no matter what. "Fuck that!" because I don't care what kind of person I am, he WILL be taken care of, do you hear me? Do you FUCKING hear me? You WILL heal him and you WILL comfort him and I don't care anymore what you do with me, but you WILL ABSOLUTELY take care of my brother, my heart. You WILL. And if the Lord won't listen to me, I thought, well, then I'll find someone He will listen to. I will circumvent this system, do you hear me? Jake WILL get the help he needs - the prayer he needs. Someone has to be righteous somewhere.

I went to the church that I had come to love so much (it is called Reality, so make of that what you may) and had the program volunteers pray for Jake every Sunday. If they asked about me, I would tell them not to worry right now, that I would come with my own requests maybe later, but I couldn't have prayers for myself clogging up my only righteous line of communication (I didn't say that). I went to the assistant pastor and told him about Jake too, because he spoke without a superior tone and seemed like he might know the word Oxycontin. He told me he would keep Jake in his prayers and I was sure to remind him to do so. I was sure to remind everyone to do so, as each new person added his or her signature to my single petition. "You can't ignore this," I would tell God, and try my best to be strong. I tried my best to tell God he would not ignore me, calling to present my memory of Mr. Willis's story about his friend who screamed profanities at God. "He must have been very close to Him to feel such strong emotion," he had said and I thought at the time it was worth considering. "You can't ignore this," I continued, "because my brother deserves better and you know it and I'm playing by your rules." And I tried to stand tall and not waiver, reminding God of what He is and isn't supposed to do. You can't refuse him just because I am a shitty Christian. And I thought about all the Bible times when that wasn't true. I don't give a shit, God. Do you hear me? I don't give a shit what kind of problem you have with me right now. Okay? Because Jake needs you. He NEEDS you and you CANNOT FUCKING IGNORE THAT! You CANNOT...you CANNOT ignore that because I have all these people - better people - now asking you the SAME THING and you SAID that that would work. You TEACH that that will work and you don't get to break promises like I have. Please don't break promises like I have...I need you not to break promises like I do. I am SORRY, okay? I am SORRY that I break promises like I do, okay? But I knew that I couldn't think about that right then because my baby brother was sick, and I couldn't think about anything but that my baby brother was sick and would you just put it on hold for a while? Can't you just? He is SICK, so how about you just please put my problems out of your memory and PLEASE don't ask me to do something that I can't do because that's not fair. Maybe that wouldn't be fair. This is your shit that you need to do, please, do just please do it. Please, how about you just DO what I'm having asked because you are supposed to be our Father and Christ said you know how to give good gifts, so please just do it. DO IT! You WILL! You MUST! PLEASE! Please. You must. I am so sorry, but you have to understand that I love my brother and nothing can happen to him because it can't because I love him and please let a sinner's prayer count. Please let this sinner's prayer count. In Christ's name I pray, let it count.

+

After twelve hot hours, the bus made it back to Livermore. The campers never ran out of energy and Ben never brushed against my legs.

Bethany

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. - 1 Peter 2:8

It was November, I suppose, because everyone was going home for Thanksgiving - Isla Vista, our little seaside ghetto, suddenly abundant in curbside parking a shame to have to leave behind. Mary and I drove her 1989 Honda Ron Burgundy to a Starbucks in Soledad because we really needed to pee and also we always laugh at the billboard that says, "It's happening in Soledad!" I slipped on the Payless strappy sandals posed off from my Grandma, not bothering to fasten them properly, but instead slipping in my toes in the way that requires applying unnatural pressure to the balls of the feet, resulting in a funky little shuffle. Mary waited in line for a grande Americano, which meant that we would also be stopping in King City, as I leaned against an orange wall, waiting for the bathroom. I have always liked the Starbucks wall art, saying to myself and several other people, "I really like this wall art." They're pretty much the same, all this wall art, with orange and purple and gold and brown and swirls and faded text and music. There's an air of originality, of creativity and originality on all of these walls and even though I know it's the same in Berkeley, in Isla Vista, in Soledad, I don't mind letting myself be misled so long as the pattern looks so pretty.

Thirty seconds later, whoever it was who was keeping me waiting decided she was done and opened the bathroom door and I said, "Hey, Bethany" and she said, "Hey, Edie." And then we both just kind of froze. "Oh my God, hi!" she said and gave me a hug, while I stood a little stiff because, first of all, my hugs are sacred, and second of all my stomach was flipping. It was so easy and so not as strange as it should have been to see that tiny little blonde in a Starbucks and say "Hi" exactly like it was Livermore and exactly like it was Starbucks on First Street by Noah's Bagels and OSH. But I guess that's just the natural effect of corporate chains.

+

The last time I called her was when somebody told me, though I don't remember who it was that told me. Maybe Chelsea. She picked up her cell phone, which was the same number that I had, thank God, and for a second hesitated before saying, "Hello?" Hello hesitation, probably because I hadn't actually talked to her for about three months - only a few months shorter than the day she told me she was trying to move up the social ladder. She didn't say it exactly like that, but more like, "My goal for this year is to get invited more places," by which she meant more popular places. Parties. House parties. Caravans to Panda Express at lunch. And that's all I can think of to describe, since I didn't have the same goal to get invited more places and so I don't know what more places there could be. Incidentally, I found out three years later when my roommate said, "Oh yeah, and then we got high and the cops came, so we all ran out through the backyard." Like a high school movie, I thought. I had always laughed at them, "So unrealistic."

After the "Hello?" and the "Heeey, how've you been?" I told Bethany why I had called. I said, "I heard...from somebody, I dunno....that, like, you...." and then chastised myself for lacking the confidence and finally said, "I heard you're having sex with Mike." Bethany was quiet, and I don't know why she didn't just tell me to mind my business, especially since we weren't exactly friends anymore, but I guess that's the mark of being an Evangelical highschooler - you don't realize you can hang up the phone. Bethany said, "Yeah..." and trailed off a little and, after I asked her what happened, she told me the detailed story about how she told him to turn off the lights and how she had cried because it hurt so much. "But he really was so concerned about how I was feeling and everything and he said, 'Bethany, I love you. I don't want to do this unless you really want to.' And so it was, like, really, really sweet, but then we couldn't lay around for very long because I wasn't sure when my parents were getting home and so then we had to get dressed and everything and then, like, he had to go home to work on some project or something and then I felt really, really weird when, like, my parents came home and, like, my mom was all asking me what I had been up to and all this so then I just kinda went in my room and told them I had homework and stuff, but then we had to eat dinner and, so, yeah, I had sex with Mike."

I said, "Bethany," in that tone that you can imagine someone saying, "Bethany," if Bethany was the person who told you the parable about roses and then all of a sudden you find out she's had sex. And also if Bethany was the kind of person who you knew wouldn't fight you if you said, "Bethany" in that tone. And she said, "Yeah, but Edie, you don't know," and I said, "Yeah, but Bethany, what's more important? A lifetime promise or, like an hour of some stupid physical pleasure?" And she laughed a little and said, "Oh, well, it wasn't an hour," and I was offended, mostly because I didn't get the joke, and said, "Bethany, the thing is, I mean, I know it's really lame, probably, that I would call you out of the blue and ask you if you've had sex with your boyfriend, but it's just, you know, I care about you. And we're supposed to chastise our fellow Christian in love, you know," and she said, "Yeah, I know," and sounded kind of sad, so I kept on with, "And I remember that you were the one who told me that first time that I should save myself for marriage, and that really got me thinking about it. And you were always there to support me and you helped me think about sex the way God wants us to think about it and I'm really, really grateful for that." And she said, "Yeah..." and so I went on, "And people really look up to you."

And then she said something that I really didn't expect, although it must have been my intention to get her to say something like this, to feel something like this, otherwise why call? She said, "Well, if I had known people were looking up to me..." and told me she pretty much thought no one cared - who would look up to her? And so I assured her it was so, and she said, "Oh." And then I said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel bad, but sometimes you just have to say what needs to be said, and I just wanted to tell you that people love you and look up to you and I hope you are doing well with God." And she said, "Yeah, I understand. Well, thank you for calling me. I mean, I guess at least, like, I can tell that you really care about me." And then we said goodbye. And she went on in the Panda Express caravan or whatever other secret caravan there was and I went on reading and postulating and praying for the courage to act in various circumstances. And I didn't talk to Bethany in any length until four years had passed us by.

She said, "Oh my GAWD! It's been, like, for-EVER!" And I started to laugh, looking down at her little head, eight inches below mine. And she was laughing too, which made it even weirder because that's exactly how she's always been. And then Mary came over, who never really much cared for giggles, and Bethany said, "Oh my GAWD! MARY! HI!" and hugged her, Mary stiffening because her hugs are sacred, too. And also maybe she's a little anti-social sometimes, but then we weren't expecting to be in a social situation. Just a pee and Americano situation.

I said, "Good Lord, Bethany, I haven't seen you in forever and a day. How are you?"

She took a deep breath.

"Good! Good, really good. Seriously, I've been so good. It's been like so crazy this year, and really good. Like good crazy, you know?" And I said, "Haha, yea -" "I mean, SO good." "Oh yeah?" I asked, laughing even harder now and wanting to ask her if she had taken her medication today, because she started to sound like this other day, when we were just fourteen, when she came to school having forgotten to take her medication and couldn't walk straight or stop talking at all, almost walking and talking her way into oncoming traffic. Why they let fourteen year olds walk to lunch in gaggles across a busy street only makes sense to the fourteen-year-old gaggles and I am no longer fourteen. She said, "Yeah!" And I waited a little, but she was sort of kicking around her tiny little Converse covered feet like she really wanted to be baited, so I said, "Well....that's good. Why?"

Another breath.

"Well, you know, it's like before...well, like before this year...God! It's so good to run into you, you don't even know! Because my sister and I were just talking about you in the car - huh, weren't we? - and I was like, you know I wonder what's up with the old Livermore Young Life crowd - I swear! \- and then we started talking and, like, I was thinking about high school and all that and how, like, well, you guys know how like Junior year I started hanging out with other people and, you know, it was really fun and stuff, well, I thought it was really fun and stuff at the time, and like, still a lot of those people are still my friends and stuff, but it was like I started hanging out with those people that were like mostly not, like, you know Christians - well, I mean a lot of them were Christians, but not like, well you know, like not like super interested in like, well, you know - but like I was really influenced by all that and, you guys know, I like started doing a LOT of things that I said I would never do and all that and - you don't even KNOW how weird this is, it's like fate or something and, I'm sorry, and I talking to much? I mean, I don't mean to accost you guys with like all this talking and stuff, it's just like this is so WEIRD it's like I had to run INTO you guys or something because we were just talking about this, huh Becka?, and I'm...I'm sorry, am I talking too much?" And Mary and I hardly had the ti-

"Because it's like I went to college and I like, you know my first year, I like smoked a LOT of pot, you guys. Like a lot of pot and like I did a little in high school and like drank and partied a little in high school and stuff, but then I got to SLO and like I partied a lot and pretty much acted like an idiot and stuff and I was like really bitter about a lot of things, you know? Well, you know like a lot of stuff with like the God stuff made me all bitter and like the youth group stuff and everything and so I was so bitter, even though I had no good reason to be, but I just was, you know? And it was like, well maybe I had a little reason to be bitter, you know, it's like they don't prepare you for, well, like a lot of stuff and it's like, oh my God? What am I supposed to do now! And so, like, I didn't want to get involved with any Bible studies or groups or anything and like I called that stuff a cult and stuff, like when people would ask me to come to meetings and stuff and I said, like, 'Hell no!' and like just partied and stuff, but then I felt like really empty after a while, you know? Like really, really empty and like partying just wasn't that fun anymore and - oh my, seriously guys, this is like so weird, like I can't believe I'm like talking to you guys and telling you all this right now, so WEIRD - and so, yeah, like I was so empty, you know?" "Mmhuhuh," Mary said, and I nodded something, too.

"And so, like, the second year I was kinda doing the same stuff, but I wasn't really having a lot of fun and then I just really kind of missed being, like, happy and stuff and I didn't want to feel empty, cuz I was feeling like so empty, and so then this group of girls, like they were really, really nice, and like they invited me to this Bible study group thing and so I went cuz I just felt God, like, weighing on my heart, you know? To go? And so I went and then like we went on some trips and stuff and then, guys, God really put it on my heart to do missions!" And I said, "Well that's great, Bethany." And Mary said, "Whatever makes you happy. I'm really glad to hear that you're happy." And Bethany was beaming those pretty little brown eyes out of that pretty little bouncy blonde head.

And then she said, "And I just wanted to apologize, guys, for, like, being such a bitch in high school," and we laughed because Bethany was not a bitch at any point. I said, "Bethany, what? You're so crazy - you were never a bitch." And she said, "No, really, I was like retarded for a while and I'm so glad I'm out of that whole thing, cuz it's like back then I didn't really even know what it meant to be a Christian, I just had all the answers cuz, like, my parents raised me Christian and, like, told me all the answers, but I didn't really get it or anything and I just feel like I was a total fake and a total hypocrite..." and I said, "Bethany, no. Stop." And she said, "No, really, and I'm really so sorry that I was like that and that then I was a bitch and stuff later and it's like I was just thinking about how great you were, Edie, you know, that one time you called me and, like, were checking in on me when I was doing that other stuff and like you told me how much people cared about me and how people looked up to me, and it's like that was so nice of you and you were totally right about everything, and I just really appreciate that you had, like, the courage to call me up and tell me that I was doing something wrong, and, you know, it was totally out of that Christian love and just, thank you."

"Oh...well, you know...," I said. "Of course, I care about you a lot, you know I love you Bethany." And then, "That was a really...haha...really that was a long time ago." And I hoped to God she didn't ask me, please don't ask me, I thought, about that incident in particular and I CANNOT BELIEVE that she even thinks about it anymore, although I guess I would too, and really, how sweet is she and so honest and open and standing here in front of a girl she remembers from so long ago as some sort of moral pillar, some clear-thinking girl with answers that she didn't have at the time? And here I am, I think, standing in front of her and just hoping, wanting to pray, but thinking it completely inappropriate, and maybe even a little blasphemous, somehow, to pray that a sweet girl who is giving her second testimony - her reborn testimony - not ask me about my relationship with God at this particular moment, especially in regard to this. Not this, I though, not this. Not now. And I was happy to have run into her and even felt a little pride in my past actions, they were out of love, but knowing that...well, no, I don't know that. I don't know if I would have acted any differently now...but, no. No, that's ludicrous. Of course...of course I would act differently now. No, I can't be a hypocrite. Except maybe...since it was out of love...maybe if I thought she was unhappy, Bethany - if I thought she felt empty like she said she finally had, then the right thing to do would have been to call. And so I did call. And, yes, that's good. That's what I did and that's what was right to do. And that's very good, so please just please, and I was hoping, please, anything but talk about that. Just please don't ask me that.

I could feel Mary, with whom I didn't have a four-year-gapped relationship, hold her breath, feeling sort of concerned and also probably relieved that she was no longer directly addressed. Bethany said, "Oh, this is so weird that I ran into you like this and, like, sorry for like giving you my whole testimony and whatever, but it's just like so weird, I just had to, like, you know...I dunno, it's so weird." "It's cool," I said, "I'm happy you are so happy."

Bethany smiled finally breathed. "So...how are you?"

Red Paint and Rain

Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. - Song of Songs 2:10-13

It was supposed to feel like rain.

I scribbled red on a cheap canvas bought at the Bookstore I don't know when. The red paint, too, I'm not sure where it came from, except that it came from home, somewhere back in Livermore, and probably from Way Up Art and Frame. I had a Tupperware box full of reds and greens and yellows, and whatever other colors came in the preset pack as well as gold - a lot of gold. And also bronze. But I scribbled out with my paintbrush red - the red red red that melted with the bristles I punched on such a cheap and stupid white background.

And Mary came in. She started talking while I scribbled, but I hardly heard to answer her. She sat. In the wooden chair. Mine had a crack in it, but I already noted that on my move-in sheet so the University wouldn't charge me come June. And she looked at me and at all the red that I didn't look up from and asked me, "What's the matter?" And then I punched, "Uh!" and the bristles bent back forever.

"It isn't supposed to be like this."

+

When he first came to visit me, that first time that he visited, I flat ironed to make pretty my hair and wore a Hollister t-shirt. He stood outside my classroom door, text messaging to say he was there and I felt the same as I did that time back home when he was changing in the Abercrombie dressing room and I was working, just standing outside thinking, "Lord help me," with a smile, and then Heather spritz-spritzed me with her imaginary water bottle, saying, "Ts! Ts! Cool down cat!" The little clock hand finally got around to dismissal and I fluffed up and pushed down the top and sides of my hair accordingly. He said, "Hey, there," and I walked up to give him a hug. He told me later he had contemplated kissing me right then and there, but thought against it, and I said, "Why?" We walked to his car and he carried my books, and then held my hand, and then took me on a date in the outfit I had run by the boys on floor four, asking, "Is it skanky sexy or classy sexy?" and they all said classy, although some of them added, "Why are you going on a date? He's too old for you," and other lame things. He took me to Montecito and toasted like this: "To us. To those like us. To those who want to be like us. And to the rest? Fuck 'em." I swooned.

I jumped him at the third tree, on the dark walk back from Mesa Parking, and someone should really lobby for more lighting on campus, though this time the dim set a sort of a mood. I kissed him. And then we walked a few steps. And I kissed him again. And he smiled and he took my hand and said something about getting back to the dorm room, which we did. And after shooing away Darren, who lived on the floor and answered "classy," but also other lame things, I locked the door.

I called Kitty after he left. I told her lots of things and also, "And I let him do that thing I let Thomas do...remember?" And she laughed, because she knew what I meant. "Ha! Niiice," she said and went on about how she feels like nipples are so important, which is what she went on about after I let Thomas do the same thing too. And I agreed with her, simultaneously deciding whether or not this all was okay. It happened very quickly, I thought, as Kitty started pondering why she'd found men's nipples aren't so sensitive. First we were kissing and then I let him take off my top and everything. Why? I had spent the last three years keeping that sort of thing from happening with my high school boyfriend, and even though sometimes I let down the t-shirt barrier, the undergarment fortress was kept pretty much intact. But then he and I had discussed the appropriateness of every action, and I had been little interested in that discussion with Kurt. I decided that it was okay to have happened that once and maybe infrequently again, but that I would be more mindful in the future.

And then he came back three days later. I stood in front of the mirror to count hickeys on my chest.

I'm sorry.

+

Mary waited for me to say something else, but I didn't - just punched. And when I returned back to a scribble, she offered, "It's kind of violent," but I looked up at her to say that's not what I meant. Instead of speaking, I returned to the paint, wondering what it was I was doing sitting cross-legged on my bed pushing paint. The tube I had been using ran out, so I dug my hand around the Tupperware to find another. There was none, only maroon, and I didn't want maroon. I didn't like the maroon I had and there was no more crimson and I couldn't make anymore. The white was covered anyway. I wondered what I was doing.

+

The second time, which was really the third, I went to visit him at home, driving the five and a half hours up Highway 101 and onto northbound 680. He picked me up in his car and we drove. Out to the friend's property. Out to the tent. But I have already told you this.

Afterward, I drove the five and a half hours southbound 680 and down the 101 back to college. Home—my mom said I couldn't call it that. I sat in my cracked chair that night, IMing on the computer my family had bought me for graduation. He typed something about the female orgasm and I said something about it being amazing and he typed, "Yours was. ;)," but the emoticon looked different in its AOL conversion. I typed, "You wouldn't know," or something else that was biting, and surprised myself for being that way, since I was never very biting. The box beeped a reply that read, "I don't need the theatrics," and I knew he was referring to my screaming, but I assured him I wasn't trying to mislead. I couldn't explain that screaming was the only way to numb my doubt against his hands once I stopped trying to stop them. He said, "Well, then either you get really silent or else you could tear the rafters down," and I wanted to say, "You'll never know."

He found out three weeks later in the back seat of the Jetta, which was also the place of my first successful hand job.

I thought I was protecting myself.

I wanted to be sexy for him, so I made an appointment to get a Brazilian. The lady's name was Lisa and she said, "Is this your first time?" The ripping hair made me tear up, but concentrating on the pain, I was able to withstand. Experiencing it, letting it hurt - I resigned myself to the fact that this was the world, and so the relief when she stopped was surprising and therefore better. Euphoric.

I had become accustomed to this way of pain recently, demanding body scars from Kurt and then pressing on them later. We had since jumped from manual "whatevers" to the last straw of being a virgin, as I saw it. I first gave him a blow job on my dorm bed, which seems to be one of three main places that this could have occurred: dorm bed, Jetta, hotel. But there was no money this time for a hotel. I decided the step needed to be taken, mostly due to the fact that hand jobs were boring and too messy. Also, some dorm girlfriends told me I was sitting on a gold mine after I said something about Kurt being eager to go down, and so I was interested. But mostly I was tired of lotioning up my hand and trying to keep my wrist straight while kissing. And also the mess, as I said. Kitty told me a good ring around the head is always appreciated and Mary said to pretend I was more into it than I was, and I trusted them more than Cosmo because recently an issue said something that sounded an awful lot like a penis Indian burn, making me doubt the publication altogether.

After I was done, Kurt said nothing. And then a lot later after I was done he moaned, "Ah." And then, "If I hadn't known better, I wouldn't have thought that was your first one," in the way that was flattering to me and not at all insulting. I said, "I did research," and he laughed. And then there was the gold mine thing, which turned out to be more than just interesting. And I told him, as I always did, that this was the line. The new line. No more line crossing, I would think to myself, still answering questions with, "Virgin" and assuring those who asked and didn't ask that I would keep that label until marriage.

The scars made me question. I stood naked in my full-length mirror more than once when my roommate was away and touched upon various bruises and scrapes that I begged him to inflict. Early on, it was the chapped lips I reveled in, both of us laughing on the phone to each other that salt was torture and so on. I pushed my lips out, winced at the cracking, and pushed them out again. And again. And the broken blood vessels around my neck and chest I pushed on too, as hard as I had to push to feel that they were really bruises and maybe not just surface bruises either. I sent him home with much of the same things, except the nail scratches down his back broke open bright red on his pale skin and mine were always camouflaged by the brown. At first, I thought them all surface - the bruises, the cracks, the scrapes - and they would always disappear too soon. Internal - I wanted them to go deep like the way he thrust his hands so far inside me that I could feel him for days while sitting to take notes in lecture. Our oral developments later were closer to what I had wanted, as I told him, "Bite me," and he bruised and bit my thighs while I screamed. And he'd leave and I'd lay to look at them all green and yellow and press hard until they hurt all the way down.

I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. It's that guilt that blinded - making me think it was all of everything happening to me. Only me. L-e-t-m-e-t-a-k-e-m-y-t-i-m-e-w-i-t-h-y-o-u; I'm sorry I couldn't hear it.

And then there was the time - the time, the time - before he would tell me I was his girlfriend and I wanted him to feel something bad. Something bad bad, like what I felt when he drove the five and a half hours to surprise me, to take me home for Christmas, and I thought that maybe he loved me. Maybe. Because he sang songs as we shared the sides of my iPod earphones and said, "I'm never this comfortable to sing around other people," and indicated, so obviously, that I was a special comfort. Maybe. And then, of course, I had given him all those blow jobs, and not that I was naive, and not that I expected...except that he had known they were my firsts. That they were all my firsts and that all my firsts belonged to him. But he didn't say, "I love you," then, and that was okay for me, because I looked into his eyes and he kissed me and I could think, "Maybe." And then, "probably," since I looked so good in my dark denim jeans and he said, "You're definitely the hottest girl in a long time," and I knew it was true. And then three more days went away and he started not to bombard me with invitations of coming over, which I was surprised by and so pressed him, as I drove my shitty Acura Legend to work at the Tennis Center, to tell me what we were. "What am I to you?" I asked him and I knew when he started answering that he really liked me, said that we really liked each other. And still, I pressed him because my breath was getting short - because my breath was getting short - and made him run his nice little words around until he had to peel away their putrid skin and tell me what I was so surprised he meant by them all. I asked him, "Am I your girlfriend?" And he didn't say no, but he said no by not saying yes and we hung up and it was either luck or fate that it was a slow night on the courts.

I asked my dad what I should do. And my dad, my dad who loves me and who I thought, for sure, would hate Kurt afterward, told me to lay it down on the line. "Tell him to shit or get off the pot, Ede. Guys are stupid. We are. We're stupid," and I said, "Okay, Daddy." And felt a little better. And I was a bitch to him - to Kurt - the night before, when I harassed him about a Christmas present, forgetting what I had said the week before when I thought that he probably loved me about, "Don't worry if you don't have any money right now. You can be, like, that cool uncle that sends the presents a week or two late and it's like a fun extension of Christmas." And he reminded me of that when I almost cried into my work's plastic receiver, "I'm just offended that you didn't even think of me." Although I may have texted it. And then I was frantic and asked if he wanted to hang out when I got off work, you know, maybe later, and he didn't answer for a while. And so I sent seven more messages of the same sentiment and he said, "Oh, I would love to, but I'm on BART going to the city," and I thought why are you going to the city when we're having a fight? And I was furious at the "Oh, I would love to" as if we weren't just having a fight. As if it wasn't real. As if it wasn't real at all and I had been making it up in my head and we hadn't had a fight and he hadn't told me I wasn't his girlfriend and that he definitely didn't love me, but, "Oh, he would love to." And I said, "Oh, ok," and tried to be a good girl, because I knew that no amount of pained Brazilians could overcome the unsexiness that is a desperate woman - even Cosmo got that one right. And so I sat at work for the remaining three hours, wondering why the fuck he bothered picking me up as a surprise, why he bothered singing to me, and convincing myself that he was only interested when I was three hundred and twenty miles away when he wanted a Santa Barbara vacation and a blow job. And I alternated staring at my cell phone and hiding it away in my purse, each changing of the guard eeking my mind closer to the possibility of a "her," as I had more and more felt my heart depress, "There's a her."

And so I called my dad the next day, after many hours waiting for Kurt to text me to hang out. I had hoped for maybe an apology, something like that - I didn't know, but resigned myself to something - just something! - and it took every single distraction not to talk first and be the one waiting, though I was waiting until he was the one to talk first. And he texted as if there was nothing wrong. "Wanna go to the mall with me? And I'll get you that Christmas present?" And I was annoyed that I had to pick out my own. And I was annoyed that it was already two-o'clock, and I was annoyed that he said he was helping his mom out in her classroom, and so I said, "Sure." And then I dressed myself up as hot as could be, with straight hair like the first time, and my best jeans and heals, and he said I was hot and something about, "Leggy brunette" again and was paying me compliments, all the while I was walking and wandering away, feeling better and holding my power.

In the car, after the gift, I said, "I'm not interested in being stringed along," or something with my head high, but eyes not quite catching his. And he was quiet and looked down, so I was able to continue and got bolder, "Either we're in this for real, or else I'm not interested in just waiting around for you. If it's that, then, I can just do something else..." And he said he really liked me and, "I hope I didn't do anything irreparable in these past three days to make you not want to be with me," but he didn't say girlfriend. And then he suggested dropping me off, but then we had only been together for less than two hours, and I asked if he wanted to get coffee or something, and so I think we went to Starbucks, but then he was squirming like he wanted to leave and then my breath started getting short again, so I dropped my head from its high place and asked him what he wanted to do, and he said something about going home, and so I resorted to a sort of whine and made him drive to the parking lot of my old high school and I gave him head in the car. And then he took me home.

I'm sorry for using your body as a way to figure things out.

+

I picked up the purple paint tube, maroon being out of the question, and didn't bother to clean my brush. I had no cup to wash it in anyway, no towel to dry. Mary started picking at things on my desktop: books, my orange reader, the little picture of my family in the Hawaiian flip-flop frame and, of course, the framed and unframed pictures of Kurt. The one that shows us lying in bed, me in his white Coca Cola t-shirt, was the first time he called me baby, and I kept it taped above my bed frame. She couldn't touch that.

The purple was very purple and dark and royal and I smeared it in a curved line up and down, over, over, making it all thick. And I saw the curve and thought of something and so made one coupling it on the other side, a little smaller, touching the ends and so it made an opening, and I fancied myself some sort of Georgia O'Keefe. And then Mary started looking what I was doing and then I started looking what I was doing, and so I pushed the brush harder to fill it in and then hated it and slammed things down. "This isn't how it was supposed to be!" And then she looked me in the face and said, "I'm sorry." And I started sobbing, thinking I was going to stop, but then forgetting about it altogether because she was listening and no one else was in the room and Mary knew me all the time before, even though she left all the time a while before me, but still, she was sensitive and I knew she could know where I was. And I let my hands drop to the sides of the canvas until I decided I was mad again, but couldn't really say at who.

And I said, "It wasn't supposed to be like this," again, because I was stuck on it. And then, "It wasn't even special! It wasn't even special or anything!" And picked back up the brush, but didn't make new lines, just ran back over the old ones.

+

At Spirit West Coast, it was the summertime, I think, when we drove out to Monterey, there were bands that played Christian music and it was a Christian music festival, so the bands only played Christian music. And we heard the rumor that this year, Relient K wasn't playing and that maybe it was because they had signed secular. We paid Peter's mom - Peter, Dustin (my high school boyfriend), Jeff, Sabrina, Kellie, I think, some other people, and I - the eighty-five dollars in advance for one day of the three-day festival. I was only going to stay until seven o'clock because I had to work at Country Waffles in the morning, and everyone complained that Mercy Me was going to play at eight, and so I drove my own car so I could leave. Incidentally, it was the first time I made a trip over twenty minutes, and I felt proud that I only got lost once on the highway back home.

We walked onto the raceway, which was where the concerts were held, to something like eight stages: a main stage, two semi-main stages, and lots of little stages for bands that played heavy metal, "scream-o," and good music. Way far off in the corner stage, where there was only a little ten-tier bleacher, Mat Kearney played his songs of melody and rhyme. And I listened, and I thought he was the best, but the crowd was small, and I thought maybe it was because he said "whore" in "Girl America," after I heard him say "whore" and saw a mother grab her toe-head child. But his sound was smooth still, and I thought he could cross over and then he did. And now no one cares that he said "whore" and now his crowds are bigger, but then nobody really believes me when I say, "All his songs are about God," and nobody really cares. Months later, my iTunes playlist switched from the love mix of Coldplay and Dave Matthews to Mat Kearney's "Bullet" because Kurt and I had gone on longer than I had anticipated. We laid naked and Kurt said, "Who is this? It's good." And he was the only person I knew who said it. Mat was on the radio three weeks later.

I went to buy Mat's music in the sell-tent, wanting to hear the rest of his songs, since my friends all pulled me from the main stage. (Probably not because Mat said whore, so much as his music didn't at all sound like the punky alternative crap of main stage, although main stage worship songs were good. Well, the songs I considered worship songs, which meant I already considered them good. Although I was annoyed almost all the time at Christian music saying it was worship music, always worship music, just because it said "God" and "Jesus." That made it really hard to say, "This song sounds like punky alternative crap," or, just, "This song sounds like crap. These power chords are dumb; this rhyme is too easy," because then people would say, "It's about Jesus!" and look at me like I was sad. Rachel had told me that the guy she dated was in the Christian music industry and said it was just as corrupt and money-hungry as any other music industry, and so I tried to tell other people that in my defense, but then Spirit West Coast was so nice and lovely and the air was warm and I could leave my purse on the grass for hours and it was always right there when I came back.) In the sell-tent, there were tables. And on the tables, there was stuff. And the stuff, it cost money, and the only thing I remember being free was a black CD-ROM in a green and purple case. And the lanyards. Yes, I'm quite sure those were free too.

And I took the CD-ROM, not only because it was free and I had already spent all my money on two t-shirts from the Agape clothing line and the Mat Kearney CD, but also because it was about sex and I was always interested in what Christians had to say. "What will this have to say?" I wondered, hopeful. Still hopeful that it would say something - maybe something different. Yes, of course, something different, even though I was supposed to already be content with what was already said. And I was. Maybe.

I left the concert before Mercy Me, which was okay by me, especially because I was excited to drive my longest trip all by myself and I bought Kettle Corn for the road (which cost just as much as one artichoke that I bought for dinner, which was seven dollars. Corn dogs were four). I had my purchases and my non-purchases in a plastic bag for purchases and drove three hours home, getting lost on the highway only once. But then I already said that. When I got home, it was later, but not too late, so I popped in the black CD into my family's desktop, which was old, and so it took a while to load. But when it did I saw killer graphics, easy to navigate button-links, and an overwhelming amount of statistics saying that the majority of teen suicides are committed by teens who have sex before marriage.

I'm sorry for touching your chest and separating it from your heart, for trying to separate my own heart from yours. I'm sorry that, for all the guilty reasons, I didn't give you the same trust that I would have anybody else. I'm sorry for being so guilty.

+

It was Spring Break. March. I was an adult. Eighteen. He was...older, and I was happy about that. In middle school, Mrs. Ewing, a science and, for one week's purposes, a sex-ed teacher, told us girls, in an obviously unscripted side note (well, perhaps not unscripted, but definitely not scripted by the school district) that the way to have a responsible and fulfilling sex life was to have a plan well beforehand. She gave us all the assignment, which was just for us, we didn't have to share, to pick an age that seemed appropriate to us to start having sex and then make a promise to ourselves that we would remember to wait at least that long. She gave us a minute to think about it on our own, "No talking yet," and then let us get on with the lesson plan. I decided on seventeen, "If I am in love," and that was about the age most all the girls picked. Sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, but I don't remember anyone saying marriage. And I don't remember Mrs. Ewing offering it as an option.

The rest of the hour, we played with fake boobs that were all gooey and pink and I was more concerned with the fact that I couldn't find the lumps in any of them and so was going to die of breast cancer way before I was old enough to really worry about sex. I had an age and no plan, but at twelve, and age is a good enough plan.

I was eighteen that March. I had a plan with no age. And at eighteen, a plan with no age stopped being a good enough plan and so ended around 10:30 that night and again at 10:30 the next morning. No plan, except to connect. No more taking turns, no more stopping. Connect. We ordered room service at the Radisson. Sandwiches. And we drank Spumante out of little plastic cups. I told him, "Put it in," and he asked, "You sure?" And he did, and then we both said, "We need to stop. We're being really stupid," because I when I asked him if he had a condom, he kind of laughed and said, "No." And then I went and cried in the bathroom, although it's stupid to mention now, and it was stupid then, because I cried maybe one tear, that being the only one I could force out. Mostly, I sat on the toilet seat naked until my feet got cold and he kept calling me to bed.

I'm sorry I couldn't hear you.

The next morning, I asked him if he wanted to run to the store to get condoms, and he did and he went, and I took a shower and waited, wondering why I even dressed in a short denim skirt and white button-down Express business casual blouse, just trying to waste enough time for him to return from the Quick Stop four long blocks down the street. Then the key card clicked green the light on the door. Go. And after - the real after - he said wonderful things to me that I misconstrued, but never told him until years later, and then we dressed and he told me I looked like a French model in my heels. He gathered little things from the hotel room: the Do Not Disturb sign, a little paper pad, and the condom rapper, remembering that I collect things like that and keep them in a shoe box. And when I started spiraling on the phone later that night, he said something like, "I was just following orders," except he said exactly that, and I thought about it one way then, and see it completely differently now.

+

After enough rambling and a constant coming back to the same sad phrase, Mary stopped my sobbing and my paint. I said, "That wasn't how it was supposed to be."

And she said, "Then how was it supposed to be?"

+

I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. It's that guilt that blinded - making me think it was all of everything happening to me. Only me. I'm sorry I couldn't hear you and that when you said, "You mean the world to me," I thought, "He doesn't love me." And when you said, "Are you sure?" I thought, "He doesn't want to." I'm sorry that when you said, "That was me. All alone," I didn't understand that you were trying to connect instead of banishing me to my solitude. And I'm sorry for using your body as a means to figure things out. I'm sorry for touching your chest and separating it from your heart - from separating my own heart from yours. I'm sorry that, for all the guilty reasons, I didn't give you the same trust that I would have anybody else. I'm sorry for being so guilty.

What I thought I was doing was protecting myself. What I really was doing was hurting someone else. Misunderstanding, maybe purposefully, almost every nice thing you ever had to say, I tried to build a new wall where I knew another was falling down. But then I realized I could hurt you and I was so ashamed that I had become someone who hurts the person they love. And that is definitely higher up on the sin agenda than anything else and I hated myself for being so preoccupied with everything else that I couldn't see the implications of my actions sooner. "I am not going to hurt him anymore," I said, and I knew it was time to let go of my little fire - my little self-pity fire fueled by guilt gasoline. "No more dousing; no more filling up," I said. "There has to be another way."

All the details of other sins - they didn't matter once I opened my heart enough to see the whole point of my faith flying out the window. Wake up! Keep watch! That was the real danger of sex for me and maybe there wouldn't have been any problem if I were trained to think about it another way - or not trained to think about it at all. "When I'm seventeen. If I'm in love." And the love is the thing of it that I had been ignoring. "You have me heart in your hands. Remember that." And you may have said, "Please." And I listened then, but that was later. And if I had listened, really listened before, believed, had no guilt, had no shame, it could have been a different thing. It could have been that I wouldn't have taken so long to relax. It could have been a thousand less misunderstandings. It could have been that I could have told you them all and you would have laughed or sighed or done anything, everything, to soothe me, appease them.

I'm sorry I couldn't hear you. I'm sorry I didn't let you talk. I'm sorry for the scars and I'm sorry I pressed them so hard and so deep and so hard, keeping them purple and bruised and red red red running far longer than they every should have. Far longer than they ever could have on their own.

But then you look at me with those green eyes. In the dark you look at me, in the light. And I see behind them and I hear from your perfect lips, little rubies, you know what I say, that I don't need to apologize - that I never needed to apologize. And I let myself down a little beside you and you run your hand up over my neck, my head, my hair so light. So heavy. And trickles send down around, around and down and down and down until I'm sleeping and thinking and sighing and thinking that it all felt a little like rain.

Eileen

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." – Matthew 11:28-30

The sign said something about SIN and GOD and REPENTANCE. Bright, bold letters on a thin particleboard. I saw it bobbing angrily about the University Center near the flower stand out front. A small crowd had gathered around it, restricting its movement inside a tighter radius. Then it stopped.

I could hear that an agitated debate was brewing, and despite my better judgment, or for the lack of it, I stopped to listen. When healthy people see a bobbing sign, they ignore it, intent on their iPods or cell phones or whatever else isn't religious and messy and mean. But I was still yet healthy, still drawn by the religious and messy, still not done with the mean, though I wanted to be. It crawled in my head like an earwig, gnawed at the buds of self-love and acceptance still fresh and permissive and new. The sign and the crowd made me feel guilty and then possibly courageous, guilty because they were written for me and courageous because maybe this time I'd be able to convince someone that they were wrong. The bravest thing I could have done then was walk away, of course. Trust my inner reason. Trust my gut. Trust my soul. Trust that I didn't need approval from everyone, every religious one everywhere and always, and keep moving forward. I didn't. As I walked nearer the commotion, I could see an agitated man was arguing loudly with some agitated students. Their discordance was infectious and I was not yet immune. I texted Kurt.

"There's a sign guy on campus and I think I'm gonna get involved."

"Leave it alone," he texted back, but my phone was on silent and I had already put it back in my bag.

I tucked inside the left half of the pack behind a student and an older woman. Besides the man shouting, there were two other men, both younger than their leader and silent. One of them, clean-cut and lean, held the incendiary sign face-out to the crowd. He stood perfectly erect like a soldier, eyes fixed on some tangible goal. The other silent man was less convincing. He stretched his body tall like his counterpart, thin, pale hands gripping a Bible, but his limbs were too stiff and betrayed him, more mannequin posed than soldier positioned. When the crowd grew, his posture gave, and he looked for a place to sit down.

The loud man, the preacher, was neither soldier nor mannequin, nor stoic, nor afraid. He faced the u-shaped crowd like a conductor, orchestrating an argument with the student leader of a campus Bible study while the rest of us listened.

"That's not even scripture! Let's hear you bring something with scripture!" the student leader shouted.

The preacher thumbed through his tattered Bible quickly and read a short verse. He was quickly rebuffed.

"That's not what it means! You're twisting what it means!"

I listened at first, watched with the rest, thinking to myself _Finally—finally!—I'm not hurt! I've healed here! I'm healed!_ I'm not sure if I believed it, or at least not deeply enough, because I didn't turn to leave at that, but kept standing. Waiting, I suppose—waiting for the hurt to settle in or for the spectacle to become just that to me, entertaining, or to wait for, I don't know, some vindication I could not and could never get from this crowd, this preacher, any crowd, any preacher. I was drifting in and out of listening to the conversation, finding the verses the preacher shouted harder to follow when I didn't have the page, when the second silent man set his Bible down beside the single black folding chair he had set up or found. He was very blonde and so youthful. The stiffest posture could never hide that, and now that he was all gelatin and fear, I could see that he couldn't have been two years past college graduation, yet here he was, campus crusading, party to the preacher to his peers. He looked weary and frightened, and from the moment he sat down to the moment I left in tears, there was something about him that suggested he was five years old, lost at the zoo, and in desperate need of a snack.

Eventually, Loud Man said something horrible enough that I snapped back to attention. He had been on a fresh rant about the college campus and its sinful nature, either in response to or provoking a response from a baseball-capped student who asked why he was preaching about sin like he were the only believer. Loud Man explained about true believers and hypocrites and the sinfulness and debauchery of students, especially when they are off campus and reveling the night.

And then he said, "No true Christian sins after becoming a Christian," and started citing Bible verses about trees and the fruit that they bear.

"Hold up," I said, although I might not have said hold up. What I did say was something to get his attention. The attention of the crowd came as well.

I said, "What are you saying that a true Christian never sins after becoming a Christian?"

And he repeated what he had said and started flipping through pages.

Then I said, "No, stop, I know where you are going, but does that mean you are actually trying to tell people that if they sin, they aren't true Christians?"

And he said, "Yes," so I started to laugh, mostly because the air that should have been filled with his backtracking was stagnant and needed to be moved.

He didn't amend his claim. He looked me right in the face, and I went from laughing to choking to laughing again. I tried to say something more.

"Listen, just because I drink on Saturday nights and have sex with my boyfriend, doesn't mean that I love God any less."

I had intended on putting forth some common example, some general thing to argue so as to not be emotionally sucked in, but incautiously I revealed my personal experience, universal as it is, and so had a harder time continuing. Now I was racked up and invested. The outcome of this argument would be the judgment of me.

The boy in the chair didn't look up. The soldier with the sign kept looking out. Loud Man faced the crowd and reiterated that people like me weren't Christian. Then he turned and said it again directly to my face, just so I knew. I recognized the training. This wasn't about being mean. It was about resisting the devil's sympathetic trap, the truth-choking nooses called human compassion and social decency and peace. My soul wanted to scream, "Fuck you!" but my nerves stalled on, "Wait, wait, WAIT!"

I said, "Wait, listen, what is your name?"

He looked at me and said it was Mike.

I said, "Mike, how old are you really?"

And he said some number that wasn't more than thirty.

I said, "Okay, Mike. How can you honestly say you haven't sinned?"

And he said, "I have sinned, just not since I've been cleansed by Christ."

And I said, "Mike, please, you have to be kidding me. Be honest."

And he said, "Not since I've been cleansed by Christ."

And I said, "Well, then, you're lying, and that's a sin right there."

And he said, "Not since I've been cleansed by Christ."

His voice reverberated off the cement walls surrounding the UCen. Then for a moment—a small, fast one—he was exhausted. His previously rapt eyes wondered up and out and past me, past everyone, to the sky. His face relaxed, and I took it as a chance for honesty, so I asked, "How long have you been a Christian, Mike?"

He said, "Three years."

I said, "Call me in five," but nobody agreed.

Student Leader took the momentary lull as opportunity to start shouting again. Frustration emanated from his figure like hot steam off asphalt. Some non-believer came to Mike's defense.

"Let him talk," he insisted, but it was no use. Student Leader was shouting, a short brunette girl said something too, and all the while I was standing just out and to the left, trying to command Mike's attention, stepping forward, pleading, "Mike, Mike, can we?—let us just talk." But he didn't listen.

I said, "Mike, Mike, Mike, this isn't the best way. Why are you out here yelling with signs?"

He started to get kind of quiet, though it wasn't because of what I said, and then stopped talking all at once. He stepped backward and sat down in the folding chair. The blonde boy, having vacated it as if on cue, stood miserably by his side. Mike put his head in his hands. Student Leader took it as his cue to scream.

"This man is a joke!"

Mike looked up and asked, "Have you ever open-air preached?" His voice was soft and low.

But student leader didn't answer.

And Mike asked, "Have you ever open-air preached?" dropping his hands to his sides.

And Student Leader shouted, "That's not even the _point_!"

And Mike stood up. The folding chair shot back. "Have you ever open-air preached?" he asked again, louder and looking Student Leader in the eye. "HAVE YOU EVER OPEN-AIR PREACHED?!" he roared at the crowd.

"Mike, Mike, Mike!" I started again. Though it was useless, I couldn't really stop.

He didn't listen to me, this Mike, this loud, neat-hair Mike. He stopped paying attention to me, stopped looking my way, even when I shouted, even as he paid attention to the other shouters in the crowd. I was convinced it was because of my un-general example. _He isn't looking at me because of that_ , I thought. _He isn't looking at me because of that!_

I called, "Mike, Mike, Mike, let me talk to you," just like that. "Would you just stop shouting and talk to me? This isn't the best way to be, Mike," I offered. "You can't yell at people! You can't yell!"

And then I ran away. I walked away after Mike wasn't looking at me, trying to convince myself he was just another religious idiot, just another thoughtless zealot, just another bully on whom compassion is wholly lost. But the problem was, I was crying. I was crying before I walked away, and I was scream-crying when I walked away. I parted from the crowd, not because Mike was a hotheaded, baby Christian, fundamentalist idiot who I had chosen to from then on ignore, but because I was frustrated that no one was listening to me, embarrassed that I was the only one crying, embarrassed that I had shown my uncertain hand. Student Leader didn't show his uncertain hand, his doubts, his debatable failings, so he was in the position to keep yelling. He didn't cry—he didn't have to!—just left with his fist in the air.

But I cried, and I walked away, and I was just thankful that I was wearing my wool cap. I pulled its pink pattern over my eyebrows and tucked my chin into my chest, unable to control my breathing, unable to evenly pace my steps. I had made it twelve feet before a man started following me. I looked back and he trotted up beside. I stopped, and he stopped, and he said, "Don't let him bother you."

I nodded.

He said, "I can't tell if that guy is coming from the faith or, I don't know, something else."

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

He said, "I'm Jim."

And I said, "I'm Edie."

And Jim said, "Can I pray for you?"

And I said, "Sure."

Jim put his hand on my shoulder, and he reminded me of all my high school youth groups. He was dressed like all my high school youth groups, he smelled like high-alcohol hair gel like all my high school youth groups. Had I not been crying, I would not have stayed. But there I was, crying, and a kind man offered to pray.

As Jim called out humbly to the Lord, I tried to listen. But after a few sentences, I couldn't and so called out silently something of my own. I'm not sure what I called for or why, but it was something humbly of my own. Then Jim opened his eyes, and I opened mine, and we could hear all the shouting that was still going on. The blonde boy was sitting in the chair again.

We watched the crowd from the outskirts, Jim and I. I thought he looked a lot like Jeff from my old Evangelical church. I liked Jeff. He told me I was a smart girl and he said it more than once. Smart girl. Smart girl. And at least once more after that.

It was however long before Jim spoke again. "I lead Campus Crusades. Have you ever come?"

I looked at him in his t-shirt that was every familiar old thing and said, "Yes, but...it's just not my thing anymore."

He nodded, "Yeah, it can be that way sometimes," then sighed, "But we do try here. We try."

He said he'd like to give me his wife's number, "Just in case you want to give her a call."

I pulled out my cell phone from the front pocket of my book bag. The red message light was blinking Kurt's text. I found my Add Contacts and asked Jim, "What's her name?"

"Eileen," he replied, and my fingers tapped the word.

I said, "Okay, thank you. I have to get to class."

I turned, and Jim grabbed my shoulder. "If you want to give Crusades another shot..."

I smiled, "It was nice to meet you," and then left.

+

For months, I tried to imagine what kind of woman Eileen would be, but couldn't decide. If I called, she would answer, as Jim no doubt had gone home to tell her to maybe expect a call.

"Her name is Edie. She used to come," he would have told her.

He would also have told her I cried at the sign parade. And if he told her I cried at the sign parade, he might have told her about the un-general example I gave. And if I called, she would have to say something about it—maybe that she could relate, that she knew where I was coming from—although it would be a while before I knew her true opinion. Maybe she wouldn't have one.

If Jim had asked for my number, Eileen would have called and asked something sweet like, "You want to get Jamba?" I likely would have accepted, and likely had a great time. Jim was nice; Eileen would be too. Maybe she would make a friend of me, and maybe I would go back to Crusades. Maybe I would love the new leaders, and maybe I would try to be brave.

Or maybe Eileen would just judge me, and I'd dig bloody holes in my palms with my fingernails again.

Her number sat.

+

A year and no dialing later, I was walking to the University Center to buy a Blue Book for an English exam. I had just reached the flower stand out front when I saw him sitting on the top of a dilapidated picnic table. There were five students around him, some sprawled out on the pavement, some sprawled out on the bench seats, all laughing. There was no sign and there were no silent men, just Mike and a table and the quiet. He was smiling, too.

I thought to go over and join them, but my stomach pleaded, "Leave it alone." The Santa Barbara marine layer hung thick, I bought my Blue Book, and followed the street signs back home.

I never called Eileen.
