Fleeing Fundamentalism Page 15
“Right, hon,” Robert said, rolling his eyes. “Those slick-shoed liberals are always doing something unethical—not a moral man in the entire party.”
The distant streetlamp cast what looked like moonlight onto the water, and a silvery glow across everyone’s skin. We looked beautiful, we thought, all of us young and taut-skinned and part of God’s amazing creative handiwork. We drank more Bombay Sapphire while our laughter mixed with the sound of crickets, and Robert carried on about the corrupt Democrats and the liberal media. Holding our drinks above the water, we listened to the notes of a slow, bluesy jazz song by Ella Fitzgerald as it floated like candle smoke out of the expensive speakers. David smiled contentedly at the head of the hot tub, and then, before I knew it, he was standing above us on the fragrant cedar, looking like a magnificent lion. He paused for a moment to let everyone stare at his powerful naked physique. He was the untamable cat, the fearless leader and sexual conqueror, in complete control of his pride—mind, body, and spirit. Now that he had triumphed, he paced slowly, lazily around the pool, content as all eyes gazed leisurely over his beautiful, glistening skin. David was the great restless beast, at last satisfied. But I had a feeling that before long he would be hungry for flesh again.
I darted a glance at Susan who was staring straight up at David, the tiny spider lines that usually fanned out around her eyes were gone, loosened by alcohol. Her skin looked alabaster and a tranquil expression, one mixed with admiration and awe, glazed her eyes. After months of listening to David’s sermons, Susan seemed to have erased his girlie-show past from her memory, and now she often commented to me about what a great teacher of God’s Word he was. I could tell by the look on Susan’s face that by this point anything he might suggest carried the authority of Moses.
David and I didn’t speak of the incident the next day, but I could see a new buoyancy to his step. He loved this life of doubles, opposites: Pastor Dave striding confidently up to the pulpit, orator extraordinaire, effective counselor—the Halloween mask of amiable minister in the tailored suit of Dr. Jekyll, morphing effortlessly the next second into the dark-cloaked Mr. Hyde. The temptations of both—the sacred and the profane—great, seducing dividers embraced in the same flesh.
Although I should have, I didn’t feel much remorse about my own hypocrisy. I no longer believed in the Bible or in the church—or even in the possibility of God, for that matter—and I justified my duplicity by telling myself that a similar pretense thrived in Fundamentalism: ministers preaching on iniquity and hiding a closetful of sins from the world; obese pastors condemning every sin of the flesh except gluttony; self-righteous church members using an error filled Bible as a weapon of censure. Solely as an act of self-preservation, however, I did start to worry that someone from the church might discover our hidden life. The humiliation, the loss of income, would be devastating. And since I was sure that now, with the taste of blood on his tongue, David would insist on nude hot-tubbing as a weekly adventure, I decided I’d better protest before it was too late. The next Saturday night as we flew down the freeway with our church drinking pals, David said, “Hey, let’s go back to Robert’s and relax in the hot tub.”
“I’m really tired,” I said, “I have to get up so early tomorrow morning.”
“Come on, Carlene, you’re always the stick-in-the-mud!” Tina called from the backseat.
I had to come up with a better reason than that. Everyone needed to get up early to make it to Sunday school class. “Hey, you guys—I’m having my period,” I said, putting an end to the conversation.
I looked across at David in the driver’s seat. His brow was crawling while his mouth had become set in concrete—I knew the look. Though he hadn’t moved a muscle, though to the entire world he was the most spiritual, patient preacher in the universe, he was puffing himself up inside, full of rancor. He always got his way, whether it was a matter of silverware drawer orderliness, my weight, or what we were having for dinner. He was angry, highly irritated that I wasn’t going along with his plan like every other fun loving person in the car.
After we dropped our companions off, David pulled back onto the freeway and hit the gas. “You are such a pain in the ass; I know you’re not having your period!” he hollered as he accelerated to eighty. Then suddenly he slammed on the brakes and skidded the car to a dead stop in the middle of the freeway. Vehicles swerved by us in a blare of honking horns. David opened the car door and leaped out, running across the four-lane highway and down into the ditch. I sat paralyzed for a moment and then, with a knee-jerk survival impulse, leaped into the driver’s seat and slammed down on the gas, leaving David in the gully. I was still trembling hours later when he burst into the house. “So what the hell did you leave me standing there for?” he screamed. “It’s a good thing I was able to catch the bus in Lynnwood. It was the last one running for the night.” I sat in silence, huddled on the couch in the dark living room, remaining as lifeless as possible, holding tightly onto my mind. Our life had descended into madness, and I felt a sense of the Dionysian orgy let loose, and us dancing in the flames of what was sure to consume us: abuse of trust, spiritual hypocrisy—the flames of hell itself.
Our descent continued when David asked Hal and Tina, the most malleable of our drinking circle, to join us the next weekend for a getaway to Orcas Island. Hal and Tina worshipped David, and I knew that he sensed he had his tabula rasa before him. They came to every church meeting and hung on his every word; they taught Sunday school and attended Wednesday night Bible study. He could seduce them, possess them, and carve out his pleasure on their soft sandstone wills.
By the time we arrived at our rented cabin at six that evening, we had been drinking since noon and were already seeing double. By late evening, Jack Daniels had completely stolen our minds, and Tina was in full party mode, moving her shapely hips inside her floral sarong. She’d taken off her shoes, holding them in her hand as she danced, pressing her toes against the floor as though she were trampling grapes for a new batch of pinot noir. Standing next to her was Hal, with a narcotized stare and rumpled cotton shirt, three drinks past his limit, blinking myopically. I was just as far gone, my hair covering my face, swaying in place and shaking my arms like a Hindu mystic, to an Aerosmith song blaring from the tape player David had brought along. Only David seemed the least bit in control when he coherently said, “Why don’t we have a little fun and swap partners?”
In a drunken stupor I thought, Why not? I’d already steered my life into an iceberg—maybe sex with Hal would warm me. Suddenly I felt nausea radiating inside me, going deeper, getting fiercer and more intense. I clenched my teeth and ran to the bathroom, to hang my head over the toilet while, in a freezing, sweating instant, my insides spewed up the night’s whiskey. I could hear the vomit splattering onto the sides of the toilet, feel it splashing back up into my face. I stumbled into bed and fell asleep.
Later that night I awoke to hear David giving Tina instructions on how to undress me. She had taken my shirt off and was kissing my neck and chest. David laughed. “Go ahead, take all her clothes off.” I pushed them away and crawled deeper under the covers. In the pitch dark of my drunkenness, I thought, Well, David, you’ve always been a creative sort—wife-swapping with a little lesbian twist.
The next morning came hurtling out of the sky like a missile aimed straight for my brain. I opened my eyes and stumbled into the bathroom. There to greet me was the image of a hunched-up old woman who, at twenty-eight, looked finished, already tasting the bitterness at the bottom of her life. Mascara had melted like wax down my colorless cheeks, and lipstick smudged my clown painted face. I hung my head over the toilet and threw up again, trying to expel the cesspit of self-loathing that festered inside me. You are as hypocritical as the worst of the religious charlatans, I told myself. If the wolf in front of you is David, the precipice at your back is your own deceit. I sat on the toilet and thought about the act of lying. The major problem is that it infects your entire life. No matter how hard
you try to contain it, pretty soon it’s spurting out through every seam and buttonhole, spewing like a broken sewer, overflowing into every crack and flooding places you never thought it could reach. I threw my head back and slumped against the toilet. I was sick of the taste of lies on my tongue, sick of the sound of them in my head, in my voice. It’s beyond stupidity when you lie about God, I thought. If He does exist, you’re in deep shit; if He doesn’t, you may as well get into a new line of work. But here I was, doing just that, faking spirituality like faking an orgasm, too gutless to stop the sick drama.
But breaking free wasn’t so easy. I was actually becoming afraid of David. Now that drinking had become a way of life with us, I was petrified at how it transformed him. Once he began his descent into drunkenness, each swallow let loose another jackal, a new legion of demons locked inside him. The impeccable self-control on his face slackened. I could see a brooding rage replace his usual veneer of calm, and he looked at people as though they were pieces of furniture. Once it started, I knew he would soon drag me into his torment, beginning always with a litany of insults. “You are incapable of showing me any real love.” “Your parents must have starved you of affection; you can’t seem to show any to me. I bet you’d like to screw Robert, though, wouldn’t you? Come on, admit it.” “I can tell you don’t like to kiss me; you are so frigid.” Although David’s verbal badgering was not as physically threatening as the assaults his dad had perpetrated against his mother, once he was drunk I was never quite sure that it wouldn’t escalate into that. Over time I grew so desperate that I actually hoped he would hit me, just to give me tangible evidence that everyone’s beloved pastor was not the man they believed him to be. One night in an effort to obtain such proof, I waited until he was stumbling drunk, then stood toe-to-toe with him after his barrage of accusations and screamed, “What the fuck do you want from me? We have sex almost every night, and still you’re never satisfied. If I’m so worthless, then just hit me, smack me right here in the mouth!”
Anger flashed across David’s face as a vein the width of a child’s finger rose in his ivory forehead, as if his heart and brain were exploding at once. Then suddenly he stopped himself, stood back, and calmly said, “I’ll never give you the black eye you need to leave me.” Leaning down, he kissed me on the cheek and walked out of the room.
But most of the time I wasn’t so brave. After long hours of taunting, I would simply acquiesce, confessing to whatever offense he’d leveled: not enough affection toward him, too much conversation with some man after church, ketchup stains on the fridge, five extra pounds. We would have sex, and he would fall fast asleep, contented, triumphant, satisfied again. The whole thing sounds revolting and pathetic, but if a person has never been a codependent, it’s hard to understand how it happens. It comes much like the science experiment demonstrating a frog’s compliance. When placed in a pot of water, a frog acclimates to its surroundings. If the water is incrementally heated, the frog slowly adapts and will eventually die without leaping to freedom. That’s how it happened with me: I gradually accepted the control and growing disrespect until one day I no longer felt the will to save myself. Instead of wondering why I didn’t put up more of a fight, I began to believe that the free-spirited farm girl I had once been simply no longer existed, that she belonged to another time. Few vestiges of her remained, her spontaneity and strong will having been replaced with the skills necessary for survival.
I continued my routine for months, entertaining, singing in choir, homeschooling the kids. Each Sunday David would preach a moving sermon, then step down from the pulpit and into the aisle. I always sat on the outside of the second row so that once he reached me I could stand and join him. We’d move past the smiling, often tearful faces—those who had just repented of some great sin—and stand near the back door to shake hands with the congregants as they left, uplifted for the week. Everyone who walked by us, and even those who didn’t, thought our marriage was perfect: David was always affectionate and attentive toward me, never missing a chance to compliment me in front of a crowd. “My sweet wife is such a support to my ministry,” he would say, or “My wife is as lovely as the day we met—I am such a lucky man!” These accolades would prompt the women in the room to smile wistfully and comment on my great fortune in being married to such a loving, devoted husband and spiritual leader. I would nod and say, “Oh, I’m the lucky one.” One lie, fifty lies—who was counting?
Then one day, a stunning young woman named Carrie walked into the back of the church, and I sat up straight up. Maybe she was my salvation, my one remaining loophole. If David had sex with her, I could be free of my marriage and the people who made up my entire support system would not reject me. In their eyes I would have justification for leaving. If I had the emotional support of my family and friends, I knew I could survive even financial poverty.
Over the next few months, I realized that, yes indeed, Carrie might be my ticket to freedom. From day one, Carrie always wore provocative outfits to church, her red silk dress being my favorite—red, the color of life, of blood, of the sexual chase. Its scandalously scooped neckline exposed her generous, swelling breasts. She accentuated her tiny waist by cinching it tight with a wide crimson belt. As she walked slowly and deliberately up the center aisle looking for the perfect seat, she let her hips sway ever so slightly, like an actress on the way to the stage to accept her Academy Award. She would select a spot in the front pew, snuggle down into it by shifting her weight from hip to luscious hip, then cross her shapely legs and gaze up at David while he sat on the platform. As he stood to approach the pulpit, she’d keep eye contact with him, then lean forward to exchange her hymnal for a Bible just at the moment when David’s eyes were glued to her tanned breasts spilling over the satin fabric. David pretended that he didn’t notice her voluptuousness, but I observed with delight that his eyes widened significantly.
Carrie soon asked David to counsel her and her husband, Ralph, through their failing marriage. Each week they would arrive at his study, Carrie looking radiant while sad-sack Ralph, slumped and tired, plopped his body down in the chair as if it were a burdensome bag of sand. The fact that Carrie didn’t come in earnest gave me real hope. She had confided to a mutual friend that she was madly in love with David and wanted to sleep with him. When she and her husband separated and Carrie started showing up for individual counseling, I was elated and made sure not to interrupt her therapy sessions. My heart gathered real hope during one of their meetings, as the clock inched past the designated hour—an hour and fifteen … twenty … twenty-five minutes—only to have my hopes plummet when David came waltzing into the kitchen, his face beaming with amusement.
“You’ll never guess what just happened. Carrie Jenson just made a pass at me.” He shook his head, laughing. “I told her it would probably be best if I didn’t counsel her anymore.”
I tried to act shocked, shaking my head back and widening my eyes to conceal the disappointment. My escape route had vanished. There’s no way out now, I thought.
Eight
A Way Out
IT WAS IN OCTOBER 1988 on a typical Sunday, when David stepped up to the pulpit with effortless poise. I watched closely, waiting for a flicker of doubt to cross his dignified face—any sign that he might feel a twinge of guilt about the double life we were leading. But since deception is by its nature invisible, it hadn’t disqualified either of us from the ministry. In the place of truthfulness, David radiated self-confidence, over the years his face taking on the chiseled beauty of a stone monument, as if determined to live up to its own importance. “Turn your Bibles to First Corinthians 11,” he said with a smile.
I had to give David credit. He had played the situation with all the mastery of Itzhak Perlman on a Stradivarius. Everyone was delighted with him: the church board, the congregation, our clandestine drinking buddies. The old guard loved him because he’d limited new members to only a few positions on the board, keeping the balance of control firmly on the side of the
founding elite. He was preaching solely out of the Bible, but delivering his sermons with such oratory exuberance that the elders felt they were getting that good old-time religion but wrapped in exciting new cellophane. Even better, he had the mettle to critique Christianity in his fiery sermons, which made everyone feel open-minded and discriminating, but he did it without assaulting the fundamentals of the faith: biblical inerrancy, women’s submission, eternal hellfire, and the sinfulness of the entire universe. He stirred things up just enough to stay out of trouble while still making the congregation feel as though they were embracing a modern, intellectual faith.
He also kept his appearance immaculate, which set him apart from other Fundamentalist ministers in the district, who often looked pudgy and exhausted, with expressions and attire that bagged like Goodwill underwear. Not David, whose Hart Schaffner Marx suits molded to him, reinforcing his aura of authority. His hair had grown parallel with his dignity, with flecks of silver gleaming in its once jet-black sheen. As he stood in the pulpit, I watched his lips and eyes smile in collaboration so convincingly that I almost bought the act myself. The corners of his mouth turned upward as he surveyed the crowd, giving only the faintest hint of the endless secrets we had to keep. To the undiscerning, the grin looked playful and good-humored. David had found the perfect audience, and it wasn’t surprising to me that within the ranks of Christian Fundamentalism David’s reputation was growing—he was a star.
The congregation flipped their Bibles to First Corinthians, chapter 11 and then focused their attention back on their handsome minister. I looked down the pew with its open church bulletins lining the row, the Sunday morning homily “Biblical Guidelines for Communion” in bold print at the top of each page. Under the outline that followed, ample space appeared for parishioners to take notes. I thought of the stacks of church programs piled in Christian offices and studies throughout the city, the faithful saving the snippets of wisdom they contained—as I had done so many years ago in Bible college when I first heard David preach his sermon on Joseph. Ever clamoring for nuggets from God, we were like open-beaked baby chicks, eager for the good news to drop in.