The Sacred Elders, V

A Short Story
By Hilding Lindquist
Copyright © 2004 by Hilding Lindquist

“Those were the days, my friend.” I sighed as I spoke the words.

“We thought they’d never end,” Fred responded.

“You are so right.”

It was early Monday evening and Fred and I were sitting in the lounging chairs in front of my muted TV watching the scenes from the campaign for the next day’s national election, November 2, 2004, on The News Hour on Public Television.

“You know why I dislike Bush so much?,” I asked. “I mean personally dislike the man.”

“Sure, you’ve told me a million times. He’s a born again Christian True Believer.”

“You are so right. Been there, done that.”

“I know, when you were a kid. You told me. Kids only know what they know, Jack. It tweren’t your fault.”

“God, I know how he thinks, inside and out.” I paused briefly before continuing. “Well, about religious stuff. I don’t have any inside dope on being born with a silver spoon in my mouth and expecting everything to be handed to me.”

“But come on now, Jesus wasn’t such a bad guy. He grew up poor.”

“Jesus was OK, whoever or whatever he was. He kind of had a handle on the next big step for humanity.”

“That being?”

“If you’re going to live in the crossroads of the known world, you gotta be a little bit inviting to strangers, the other guy. Turn the other cheek, that sort of stuff. Be the first one to offer to try to get along. Do unto others as you want to be done to. Not shabby stuff, especially for merchants trying to make a deal.”

“Yah, so what you got against the Bushies? We’re all free market capitalists here.”

“Yah, sure, right,” I replied derisively. “It’s been my experience that born again Christians these days don’t really follow Jesus teachings all that much.”

“There is that.”

“They are in a state of denial.”

“Anything else?”

“And they lied to me throughout my youth about some pretty important stuff, all the time telling me it was the gospel truth. Now this idiot Bush has got us mired in a Good versus Evil struggle on the self-fulfilling path to the Battle of Armageddon because he believes he is doing God’s will on earth, egged on by the truly evil Cheney. And they actually believe they are telling me a higher truth while they lie to me.”

“So?”

“So now they’re lying to me about the war against terror. Back then born again Christians were lying to me about sex.” I thought for a moment, then continued. “Still are to their current crop of young’uns, if I’m not mistaken.

“Jesus, Jack, you got over any inhibitions by the time I met you.”

“Maybe so, but it screwed up my relationship with the first girl I ever loved. God, I loved her. Pisses me off whenever I think about these Christian True Believer idiots and what they keep doing to kids.”

“Get over it.”

I laughed. “Damn it, don’t have to.”

“If it means that much to you, tell me about this lost love of your life. Maybe it’ll drain off some repressed hostility. Besides it sounds interesting.”

“I’ve told you about her.”

“If you have, I don’t remember it.” He paused. “Didn’t seem to bust the boil.”

When I didn’t respond, Fred pressed. “Tell me again. I love stories. Maybe it’ll take this time.” He paused. “For both of us.”

“Beverly Johnson. Her name was Beverly Johnson. She was about three months younger than me and a grade behind. July 17th was her birthday, if my memory serves me. Thin, about an inch shorter than me, delicately beautiful. If she wore heels she was taller than me, but I didn’t mind as much as she did. She pretended not to, to the point it was kind of obvious she did. Different era.” I paused, picturing her in my mind. The old feeling seeped through me, bringing with it a low intensity emotional warmth. I consciously repressed the thoughts and feelings, knowing all to well the pain that would follow if I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to lance the boil yet.

Fred patiently waited me out.

“The 50’s were a strange ‘Leave It To Beaver’ era,” I continued obliquely, putting some distance between me and the memory closest to the deepest feeling. “People didn’t really talk about what was going on in their lives. Anything thought to be shameful was hushed up, especially unwed mothers, and things like divorce or alcoholism.”

“Jack,” Fred interrupted. “Jack, I was there. I’m seven years older than you. Skip the filler. Tell the story.”

“I had this really split personality. I was going to a fundamentalist church, born again, and I believed that sexual lust was Satan taking me over as much as I believed that I was going to graduate from high school. And, God, was I being taken over by the Devil.”

“It was strange,” I continued, “I didn’t lust after Bev. It was as if a mental straightjacket held it all in check when I was with her, but any girl that I thought might be willing to fool around, I got a hard-on so quick it was embarrassing.”

“You see,” I explained, “I felt you didn’t fuck good girls because they wouldn’t really like it. You only fucked bad girls, and you knew they were bad if they let you. If they liked it then they were wicked whores. Mostly it was just heavy petting and touching, kind of mutual masturbation, lot of body rubbing, parked somewhere. But at that age it didn’t take that much to come. Then it was an abrupt end to the petting and I drove the girl home. I still wonder what those girls thought. Like some hidden switch is thrown and the evening's over.”

Fred laughed. I shook my head in response, thinking about those absurd times.

“I didn’t do any of that with Bev. I had her on such a high pedestal that I didn’t even think about doing it with her for quite awhile. And she lived in another city, went to another high school, so she never found out about my fooling around.”

“When did you see her?,” Fred asked.

“Her family came to the same church. Her father said he wanted to attend a Bible believing church that preached the Word of God, and that ours was the best he could find, so he drove Bev to Sunday School and Morning Worship every week. His wife and their other two daughters weren’t so fond of Bible believing churches. His wife seldom came and the Bev’s sisters only occasionally.”

“Anyway to make a long story short, I graduated from high school and was going to Portland State. She was a Senior in high school. I became so obsessed with wanting to get laid that I started thinking about screwing Bev.”

“You were growing up. That was a good sign.”

“I didn’t think so at the time. I thought the Devil had possessed me. I dropped out of college, freshman year, fall quarter, 15 hours of A’s and 3 hours at B in pre-med at the midterm, and joined the Marines.”

“Jesus, Jack, what the hell for?”

“I thought I couldn’t control myself around Bev anymore, and if she saw that, then she would stop loving me, and I couldn’t handle that thought, so I had to get away to where I could screw around without her knowing it. Was I conflicted or what?”

“Yah, somewhat.”

“To make a long story short, Bev couldn’t handle my leaving, went out and got herself pregnant and married to some jerkoff. Blew me away. I started drinking, and as they say, the rest is history.”

“Youth has its moments.”

“I totally believed that if I wanted to fuck her—someone I loved—then I was doomed to hell because it proved I was giving in to Satan. If she let me, and I was beginning to think she would, then I would be responsible for turning her into a whore and dooming her to hell also.”

“What about all this repentance and forgiveness crap?”

“Yah, that too, but it wouldn’t have erased the facts in my mind. I had absolutely no clue about the physiology or psychology of our sexuality. The whole subject was taboo as far as what was really going on. It was all, ‘This is SIN. This is EVIL. If you are saved you won’t do this. You won’t even THINK it.’ Nobody talked about masturbation or penetration or ejaculation. Oral sex? Forget it. Back then, come to find out later, they were still debating whether a woman could have an orgasm. We’re talking dark ages here, Fred.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I made it into the Korean War. That’s where I was introduced to the facts of life.”

We sat there staring at the silent TV flashing scenes from the two election campaigns. Fred broke the silence.

“Ever see her again?”

“Yes, but not so it made any difference. I was hiding in a bottle by then.”

“What about now?”

“Look her up? Nah, lucky for me I got off the bottle, and went on with my life. Found true love, got kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. Some of that is out of order, but that’s another story. Now I also have a few good friends of various shapes, sizes, ages, sexual orientations, colors, ethnicities, whatever. Besides, I don’t even know if she’s still alive.” I paused. “But I can still feel the pain if I go there.”