Strongholds

by Vanessa Davis Griggs

  As they went into Pastor Landris’s office, Bentley’s arm was still linked around her.

  Chapter 25

  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

  —Romans 12:2

  “Good evening,” Pastor Landris said as Marcella and Bentley came in and sat down.

  “Good evening,” the couple said.

  “You both know my wife, Johnnie Mae?” Pastor Landris nodded as he smiled at his spouse, who was seated at his right-hand side.

  “Of course,” Marcella said, smiling at Johnnie Mae. “You came in the conference room when we came forward to become members here. Sister Johnnie Mae Landris, a.k.a. Johnnie Mae Taylor. I’ve read a few of your books. I happen to be an avid reader.”

  “That she is,” Bentley said before she got the words out of her mouth.

  Marcella flashed him a disapproving look.

  “So you’re Bentley and Marcella Strong,” Pastor Landris said.

  “Yes,” they replied lovingly, and in unison.

  “Is that the name you’d like for us to use during our conversation today? We just want you both to feel as comfortable as possible.”

  “Marcella and Bentley is fine with us. Neither one of us has a nickname or anything like that,” Marcella said.

  “When is your baby due?” Johnnie Mae asked Marcella.

  Marcella smiled and smoothed down the tight-fitting dress that barely disguised her basketball-looking tummy. “August nineteenth,” she said with enthusiasm. She looked over at Johnnie Mae and nodded. “Yours?”

  “August fourteenth.”

  “That’s something,” Bentley said as he shifted his body a little and crossed his leg. “Our babies could end up being playmates in the church nursery.”

  Johnnie Mae smiled. “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, let’s first have prayer and then we’ll get started,” Pastor Landris said. They bowed their heads as he prayed for God to lead and guide them into all truths and His perfect will.

  Pastor Landris looked at Bentley, then Marcella. “Bentley, according to my file here, you were the one who scheduled this appointment. Also, you asked if it would be all right if your wife came along with you. So what seems to be the problem you’ve come here to talk about?”

  Bentley uncrossed his leg, resituated his body, and sat up straight. “Well, Pastor Landris. This is a bit difficult for me to talk about. Also, I wasn’t expecting your lovely wife to be in here with us.” He nodded in Johnnie Mae’s direction.

  Pastor Landris raised his hand to stop him from saying another word. “Does my wife’s presence bother you? I asked her to come today because I felt it would be good having a woman here with your wife—”

  “Oh, no, no. I’m sorry,” Bentley said. “I’m a little nervous, so I guess that didn’t come out quite right. I’m glad she’s here. It’s just been hard for me to talk about this with anyone. I really didn’t want to come in and talk about it with you, but I know I need help. I don’t want to lose my wife and family over something like this.”

  “I understand. You do know whatever we discuss in this office will stay strictly between us. It is not our policy for anyone associated with Followers of Jesus Faith Worship Center’s staff to ever disclose confidential information or discussions with anyone outside of possibly another counseling staff member if additional advice is needed. That begins from the time you make your appointment until your last good-bye out of whoever’s office or presence you were in. We don’t betray a confidence here. And should I find out someone has breeched a confidence, they will be dealt with,” Pastor Landris said as he alternated his fixed eyes between the two of them. “I hope this puts you a little more at ease.”

  Marcella glanced over at her husband, then back to Pastor Landris. “That’s what I told him. He does have another concern as well.” Marcella glanced quickly over at Bentley. “You might as well tell him that, too.”

  Bentley looked as though he didn’t know what she was referring to.

  “About his judging you harshly…” She bobbed her head, trying to prompt him to take it and run. “You know…by not allowing you to possibly ever work in the church or ministry or be over a ministry you may be qualified for even after you overcome this.”

  Bentley turned his gaze from his wife to Pastor Landris and cleared his throat. “I’m concerned you may view me negatively after you hear what I’m dealing with.”

  “Is it that bad?” Pastor Landris said.

  “Well, it may be in your eyes.”

  “I’ll tell you what: you tell me what it is, and we’ll go from there.”

  Bentley began to iron both legs of his pants down simultaneously with his hands. He looked over at Johnnie Mae, then Marcella before looking back at Pastor Landris. “Okay.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “When I was around thirteen years old, my uncle introduced me to pornography by way of magazines. Somewhere along the way, I got hooked on porn.”

  “I see,” Pastor Landris said.

  “When you had that special altar call after you finished your teaching series on strongholds, I came forward and was prayed for. I’ve even been to the special Wednesday night Bible study and the Deliverance support group, but nothing seems to be working. At least, not the way I’d hoped and prayed.”

  Pastor Landris picked up his pen and wrote something down. “Well, something is working, because you made the step to come here and confess all this to me. Now, have you gotten rid of the various temptations out of your house and from on your job?”

  Bentley laughed a little, mostly from being nervous. “Oh, I did that right after I came to the altar. I stayed up until the middle of the night so Marcella wouldn’t find out I had all that stuff in our house to begin with. I drove to a Dumpster in somebody else’s neighborhood, if you can believe that, and dumped every bit of it.”

  “How did you feel when you did that?” Pastor Landris asked.

  “Honestly? Like I had just lost someone I loved deeply,” Bentley said. “I almost drove back and climbed inside that Dumpster to get all my stuff back.”

  Marcella gave him a look as she began to visibly frown at him. “Someone you loved deeply?” Marcella asked. “Someone you loved deeply?! You’ve got to be kidding me. I just know you are kidding.”

  “Marcella,” Johnnie Mae said. “Allow him to get this all out without you judging what he’s saying. He needs to feel free to tell the truth, because the truth will help set him free.” Johnnie Mae nodded at Marcella to calm her, then to Bentley for him to continue.

  Pastor Landris put the fingers of both his hands together and pointed them toward Bentley. “Go on, Bentley. You were expressing how you felt when you took all that pornography to the Dumpster.”

  “Yeah,” Bentley said as he sneaked a look at Marcella from the corner of his eye. “It’s hard to explain, but having pictures of naked women somehow made me feel accepted. I felt like I belonged, and in a strange way…like I was truly loved. You see, Pastor Landris, Sister Johnnie Mae, I grew up a loner. The kids in my neighborhood didn’t care to play with me. I could truly identify with poor Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and all the other misfits. I was geeky. Too smart, I guess. Too much acting like white for a black boy from the ’hood—they were some of the cruel words said about me.”

  “‘Acting like white.’ You mean, because you were smart?” Pastor Landris said.

  “That and because I spoke well. You see, my mother always emphasized speaking ‘good English’ as she put it. She wouldn’t let me get away with double negatives, splitting verbs, using slang, or talking as if I ‘fell off a turnip truck,’ as she termed it when people sounded a little too country.”

  “So you say your uncle was the one who first introduced you to pornography?” Pastor Landris asked. “Why do you suppose he did something like that?”

  “He thought I was spending too much time with my head in
books and on the computer. He felt I needed to become a little more rounded…balanced…normal.”

  “How did you feel when you first saw that magazine?” Johnnie Mae asked.

  Pastor Landris looked at her as though to ask why she would even ask a question like that. She saw his questioning look and said to Bentley, “I just want you to go back to that moment when you were choosing between life and death, so to speak, by looking or choosing not to. In this case, death being death of a certain innocence.”

  Marcella looked at Bentley and waited for his answer.

  “I didn’t like it. It felt wrong. I was embarrassed to be seeing things I wouldn’t normally see. But then there was something about it that aroused me, I guess. And at some point, it made me feel good to feel like these women didn’t have a problem with me like other people seemed to have. It was confusing at first. Still is, to be honest.”

  “But you do realize those women weren’t and still aren’t real, don’t you? Not really. At least not to you,” Marcella said in a frigid tone. “You didn’t then, and you don’t now mean anything to them except for all the money they can suck out of you.”

  “See, Pastor Landris, that’s precisely the point I was making earlier about my wife,” Bentley said, looking directly at Pastor Landris while seeming to ignore his wife’s spoken words.

  “What?” Marcella said, also directing her gaze toward the pastor. She then looked over at Johnnie Mae. “What? What did I do? Why are all of you looking at me like that?”

  Johnnie Mae softened her face even more. “Marcella, men don’t like for us to know this about them because they want to present themselves as the big, strong, don’t need anybody type. Sometimes we women say or do things that can really bring a man down, and they won’t tell us we just hit them below their belt or that we just hurt their feelings or heart deeply. What they will do though, is look for ways to bring themselves up. You telling Bentley the women weren’t real to him in the context in which you just did, probably hurt him and embarrassed him just now more than you will ever imagine.”

  “The women in those magazines don’t relay the message that they don’t care to the men who are looking in them,” Pastor Landris added as he addressed his comments to Marcella. “Bentley is dealing with a problem that so many men and some women—in church, out of church, in the pews, in the pulpit, and in the streets—do on a daily basis.”

  Pastor Landris looked at Bentley. “Bentley, what I just said to your wife is not to excuse your behavior. You have a wife; you need to tell your wife what you need and allow her the opportunity to fulfill your needs instead of you going outside your marriage for that. God designed and intended for it to be done this way. You must let your wife know when you need to feel like you’re ‘the man.’ You know what I’m saying here?”

  Bentley laughed and shook his head. “I know, Pastor. And I hear you, but it’s hard to do that. I feel like I have to grovel for attention or you know—”

  “I don’t make you grovel for that!” Marcella said with a look of sheer disbelief.

  “I’m not even talking about what you’re thinking about, Marcella. I’m talking about having to grovel for you to make me feel good about myself.”

  “How am I supposed to know you don’t feel good about yourself? I myself thought you had a pretty healthy ego. You’re always in the mirror, posing like you’re Hercules or somebody. Hercules, Hercules,” she began singing, clapping her hands and bouncing up and down the way the character did in the movie The Nutty Professor.

  “Marcella,” Bentley said, saying her name sweetly as he cut his eyes over at Pastor Landris to try and gauge what he was likely thinking right about now, “you don’t have to tell everything.”

  “And don’t be cutting your eyes over at Pastor Landris,” Marcella said. “You came here about a problem you have so you could get help, and we’re going to stay on course. Have you ever thought about or considered how degrading porn can be for women?”

  “You mean the ones who pose for the pictures?” Bentley asked.

  “No,” Marcella said, almost singing the word, “I mean the ones who have to learn later in their marriage that their husbands are sneaking around looking at it because they are obviously not enough to keep their own husband’s attention!”

  “Marcella, please,” Pastor Landris said. “Let’s try to keep this on as much of a civil level as possible, okay? The goal is to reach a resolution, not to inflame the situation even more.”

  “It’s okay, Pastor Landris,” Bentley said. “But since Marcella wants to go there, I’d like for her to tell me why she reads erotic fiction, and why she can’t miss one of her soap operas for even one day. She tapes them if she’s going to be gone while they’re on. And don’t let me call her while General Hospital is on…or what are those other three soaps you love so much you can’t miss? Yeah, that’s right: All My Children, The Young and the Restless, and One Life to Live. Call during one of these, and she won’t give you the time of day. All you’ll hear if she talks to you at all is, ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Hmmm.’”

  “Now see, that’s why I didn’t want to come here with you,” Marcella said. She turned to look at Johnnie Mae, then Pastor Landris. “I knew he was going to figure out a way to turn this around and make it about me. Reading a book or watching soap operas is not the same as watching naked women. Would somebody please tell him that? Pastor Landris…Johnnie Mae, will you please explain to my husband, there is a difference?”

  Johnnie Mae looked at Pastor Landris; Pastor Landris looked at Johnnie Mae. He then nodded for Johnnie Mae to proceed with the answering of this one.

  “One definition of porn I’ve come across recently,” Johnnie Mae said, “is material intended to arouse sexual excitement.”

  “Okay, so now this little session has become about me and Bentley being sexually aroused outside of each other.” Marcella crossed her leg and started pumping it back and forth. She crossed her arms across her chest. “According to your definition, I can’t read the Song of Solomon in the Bible anymore because a few of those chapters do something for me, too.”

  “Marcella,” Bentley said with a sound of exasperation, “now you’re just being silly. No one is attacking you here. The only reason I brought up what you do is to try and get you to see things from my perspective. The way you feel about some of your books and your soap operas is the way I was feeling about those magazines, videos, Internet, and television programs. I wasn’t hurting anyone. It was entertainment to me. I never thought about how it might make you feel to know I was looking at those things. Just like you probably don’t think about how I feel when you read certain books.”

  “All right then, Bentley.” Marcella turned to Pastor Landris. “Do you mind?”

  “No. Go right ahead.”

  “Tell me how my reading a book with words only or my watching a soap opera or two could possibly affect you the way you looking in a magazine with photos of naked women or watching pornographic videos affects me.”

  Bentley looked at Johnnie Mae, then Pastor Landris before turning his attention back to Marcella and then Pastor Landris again. “I’m sorry, Pastor Landris. Maybe this is not going in the direction you had intended. I shouldn’t have brought up anything about what Marcella does. This is about me, and I know that. She and I have touched on this subject about her already, and I shouldn’t have brought it up in here.”

  “Just answer my question,” Marcella said sternly. “We’re here with our pastor and wife. We’re putting all my business out there even though you are the one who originally came here with the problem.” Marcella looked at Johnnie Mae. “Don’t you agree he should answer my question?”

  Johnnie Mae nodded. “Actually, I do.”

  Marcella looked over at Pastor Landris; he nodded as well. Marcella turned back to Bentley. “Everybody here seems to agree you should answer my question. So tell me how my reading a book with words could possibly affect you in the same way as you looking in a magazine with photos or vi
deos of naked women affects me?”

  “Okay…It shows I’m not good enough for you. It tells me our marriage is not enough, not exciting enough to you.”

  “What are you talking about? Whoever said you weren’t good enough or our marriage wasn’t good enough for me? They’re books, Bentley. Fiction. Fic-tion.”

  “You read those novels about people having ‘off-the-hook-chandelier-swinging sex,’ I believe those were the exact words you used to describe some of them. You watch people on television and fantasize about how you wish you and I, or maybe even you and somebody else, could be together.”

  “How do you know I fantasize about how things could be with us?” Marcella asked.

  “The same way you claim you know I’m fantasizing about something I don’t feel I’m experiencing in our relationship because of my porn addiction.”

  “That was a low blow, Bentley.”

  “Okay,” Pastor Landris said. “I think you both get the point of all this.”

  “There’s a point?” Marcella said. “There’s a point?”

  “Yes.” Pastor Landris sat up straighter in his chair. “Taking intimacy outside of the marriage can be detrimental no matter who is doing it or how it’s being done. Wrong thoughts in the mind can destroy a relationship that has such great potential. If only the parties involved would direct their energies the right way, things could be so much better for and between them.”

  “Okay, Pastor Landris,” Bentley said. “I don’t really want to focus on what Marcella is doing that I might have a problem with—”

  “And I don’t want to focus on you if I really have problems I need to address myself. I just never saw it that way”—Marcella looked around the room—“that is…until just now. I didn’t see how I was reading about things other men were doing to other women, wishing it was me. I told myself I was getting information to help me be a better, more exciting person,” Marcella said. “Or that I was just being merely entertained.”