Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions

by Cami Ostman

  Sex was something never discussed at home. Once or twice my mother had alluded to a passionate relationship with my real father, but I wondered whether when she found “the Truth” by becoming a Witness she simultaneously lost her mojo. I didn’t really know anything about how sex worked but I had two images in my mind, both gleaned from movies. One was the moment of recognition, a magnetic, unstoppable falling into each other, and the other was the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz—he needed an oil can to keep him happy and moving.

  I was a lonely fledgling, just starting to see myself reflected in the response of others. I allowed myself to believe that I would be recognized, met, by an interesting man, and I wanted to have the oil can ready. The familiar When? When? When? pulsing through me was developing a lustier tone.

  One morning he arrived, pushing the office mail cart. He was dressed in a nubby silk shirt, leather pants, and Frye boots. I was immediately attracted to his delicate face, jutting cheekbones, dark pointy mustache and long black curly hair. He was d’Artagnan, Richelieu, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

  He was also tripping on acid, and the rolling cart of alphabetized hanging files he pushed near my desk was not cooperating.

  “Well, hello Miss,” he whispered conspiratorially. “I can’t seem to find your mail. What’s your boss’s name again?”

  “Alwyn. David Alwyn”

  His eyes spun like roulette wheels. He was genuinely confused. “So what letter would that begin with?”

  “‘A’ . . . uh, the first one.”

  Instead of responding to that information he sat down on the corner of my desk and shook his head, sighing, “Nevermore. Nevermore.”

  “Why are you quoting Edgar Allan Poe?”

  “Nah. It’s Verlaine. Can’t you hear it?”

  Le ver est dans le fruit, le réveil dans le rêve,

  Et le remords est dans l’amour: telle est la loi.

  Le Bonheur a marché côte à côte avec moi.

  Ain’t it the truth?!

  The worm is in the fruit; in dreaming, waking;

  In loving, mourning. And so must it be.

  Happiness once walked side by side with me.

  “Mon Dieu!” I murmured, shocking myself that I managed to swoon and blaspheme simultaneously.

  He reached into the top basket, grabbed all the mail that was in the file marked G, kissed it, handed it to me, and then sauntered round the corner, out of sight.

  Over the next weeks Lee asked me out a few times, usually dinner in Chinatown at Hong Fat, where the steamed dumplings made up for the notoriously rude waiters. We saw the midnight show of El Topo at the Elgin, our movie tickets guaranteeing a contact high from all the pot smoke wafting through the aisles; we heard Richie Havens’s driving guitar at the Fillmore East. The more time I spent with Lee, the more I felt the arrow of my self sharpening, becoming bolder, more confident.

  When I learned my roommates would both be away for the weekend, I worked up the nerve to invite him over to my place. Blocking out my mother’s voice intoning dire warnings against the sins of the flesh, I took some cash out of my savings account, went to the lingerie department of Bonwit Teller, and purchased a floor-length, forest green negligee with a plunging neckline. Lee had introduced me to Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and The Story of O, tomes definitely missing from the Kingdom Hall reading list. I wanted to read everything and then do everything, with him. All of my programming began to unravel.

  He was living in the Chelsea Hotel with a California heiress, a situation that presented a conundrum for me. He made no bones about his disdain for monogamy, declaring it “a patriarchal construct that cuts people off from what gives them the greatest pleasure—the freedom to love without restraint.” I wanted him to guide me in freeing myself from all restraints. I just plain wanted him.

  Despite my best efforts to avoid it, the apostle Paul’s pep talk to the Colossians flashed across the screen of my mind the day of our date like a PSA from heaven: “Keep your minds fixed on the things above, not on the things upon the earth . . . deaden, therefore, your body members that are upon the earth as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite, hurtful desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of those things the wrath of God is coming.” Slipping into the green negligee, I canceled my spiritual insurance policy, the throbbing “When, When, When?” replaced by “Now, Now, Now!”

  THE SHOCK OF NO longer being a virgin was immediate and dizzying. The “no-backsies” permanence of my fall from grace produced a terrifying and stomach-churning sensation, like the held-breath anxiety of being pushed on a swing from a colossal height. Feeling completely exposed to Jehovah’s (and probably, in her own omniscient way, my mother’s) scrutiny and judgment, I took shelter in denial. When Lee left the next day, I told myself that what had happened between us, the whole long night of conjoined naked choreography, was only a prelude to “the real thing” but was not actual sex. It had been so easy, so instinctive. If I’d actually committed this forbidden act, why wasn’t it accompanied by the smashing of stone tablets, the blast of Joshua’s horn? Where was the manifestation prophesied in the seventeenth chapter of Revelation, one the entire borough of Queens would surely have witnessed:

  “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries . . . I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns . . . This title was written on her forehead: MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

  But lo, the Earth did not shatter, and the sea did not swallow me up. The police had not knocked at my door, nor had the downstairs neighbors. There was nothing in the paper about it. I began to feel somehow both lighter and fuller, with the knowledge that there was no going back. As far as I could tell, God was fine. I was absolutely sure that I was too. My mother, however, was another story.

  Lucky Cat

  Kyria Abrahams

  It’s my first Halloween in Massachusetts and I’m doing what I imagine all twenty-seven-year-old ex–Jehovah’s Witnesses do, wandering aimlessly through the streets of Cambridge and crying because I was never allowed to celebrate Halloween as a kid.

  I’m dressed up as Maneki Neko, the Good Luck Cat with one paw in the air that sits on Chinese take-out counters and oversees your egg rolls. To illustrate: I am wearing a white sweater, a head-band with ears, cat whiskers drawn on with eyeliner, and a red pet bell I bought at CVS. All I need is somewhere to be. Where’s the party at?

  When I first left “the Truth,” I thought all worldly people ever did was get drunk and have parties. As it turns out, evil sinners are pretty low-key. Most adults don’t even go out on Halloween. But me, I’m drinking brandy from a flask while dressed up like a Japanese cat. It didn’t occur to me this could be a disturbing sight, a grown woman with a bell around her neck, drunk and crying at other people’s children.

  I see girls dressed up as princesses and I want to write poems about them, how lucky they are to be “normal.” Parents wrap their forearms around their kids and lead them away from me, never breaking my gaze. These reactions will make an even better poem. People probably think I’m a pedophile. Misunderstood, as always.

  Despite the holiday, I like where I live here in Cambridge. I have hardwood floors in my $1,500-per-month apartment. I can afford this because I taught myself HTML and Photoshop and now I am a web designer. As of 1999, web design is becoming one of those jobs you actually need a college degree for. I never graduated high school, so I’m lucky. It seems I got in just under the wire. I got in on the ground floor.

  Three years ago, I was disfellowshipped from the Pawtucket, Rhode Island, congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses for cheating on my husband. I was twenty-three at the time. We had been married for five years. I’d realized on our first anniversary that I’d made a terrible
mistake. I told my husband I didn’t love him anymore, but that didn’t matter. As a Jehovah’s Witness, you aren’t allowed to get a divorce. What God has sewn together, let no man tear apart. We made a commitment before God, and so, before God, we stayed married for four more years. Eventually, I found a friend of a friend and quite unceremoniously fucked him in a hotel room. After that, I was free to get a divorce. I was also thrown out of the religion of my birth.

  WHEN YOU’RE DISFELLOWSHIPPED IT means no one can talk to you or hang out with you anymore. If I’d wanted my friends back, I could have gone to the Kingdom Hall three times a week and sat in the back, with my head down, looking repentant. But I didn’t want them back, I wanted to be free. I wanted to be worldly. Now, I am worldly. I do the things I wasn’t allowed to do as a good Jehovah’s Witness. I listen to techno music, I smoke pot, I have sex with whomever I want. I refinish my own furniture, just like the artist I always was inside.

  I am eccentric, naturally. My parents did not allow me to go to art school because Armageddon was coming. So I’ve decorated my home in a way that reflects my inner creativity. I am free to do all of this now. For example, my kitchen tabletop is a magazine collage. My bookcase is a wrought iron-bed frame. How did I turn it into a bookcase? Well, I just threw books on top of it. Instant bookcase! Who would do that? Someone who was never really a Jehovah’s Witness, that’s who. Someone who was always an artist.

  I AM:

  — A stand-up comedian.

  — A performance poet.

  — A pot smoker.

  — An artist.

  I AM NO LONGER:

  — Married to a Jehovah’s Witness.

  — Stuck in a religion I hate.

  — A bored housewife.

  — Obligated to be a good Christian.

  WHEN I TELL YOU that I don’t remember marrying Dennis, a man who is twenty years older than I am and with whom I never have sex, I’m not exaggerating. We got married a few months ago, but I don’t remember why. I do, however, remember how he asked me to marry him. It wasn’t romantic, I admit. I had to double-check the next day to make sure he had really asked.

  We had just left the Laugh Studio in Porter Square when he proposed. We were aimlessly walking home in silence. Suddenly—and he doesn’t stop or look up or anything—Dennis blurts out, “So, are we getting married or what?” The next day, I confirmed that he had, in fact, asked me to marry him.

  You would think I’d remember what happened after that. But the next thing I know, it’s Halloween. I’m married for the second time.

  My ex-boyfriend Leo spent money to see a therapist because he was sexually molested as a child. He was my second boyfriend, Dennis was my third—and is my second husband. I am sure I would have married Leo if he had asked, too. Leo explained to me once that “losing time” is actually pretty common for someone who has suffered trauma. But I don’t think of what I’ve been through—leaving God and everyone I grew up with behind me—as trauma, I think of it as an escape. I was so bored in that stupid religion, so bored with my nerdy Christian husband who listened to Broadway musicals and wore polyester pants. I wanted to get out, so I did. Yes, I lost my friends and family, but I did what I needed to do. I did the right thing. I cheated, I was freed, and I left. How could that be traumatic? That’s a good thing!

  Dennis and I got married at city hall and my mother drove in from Rhode Island after I told her how much she’d love him because he reminded me of Dad. Dennis even has the same hat as my father, and I just can’t get over it, it’s like we were meant to be. We’re both outcasts, weirdos, freaks. When we met last year, we said to each other: Let’s be freaks together.

  The only problem is, I don’t want to be a freak anymore. And he doesn’t seem to care.

  After the ceremony, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant that gets all their ingredients from a local farm. The Italian restaurant also owns a holistic doctor’s office diagonally across Massachusetts Avenue. This is the world I live in now. It’s a grown-up, classy world! It’s a world where regular people watch R-rated movies and use Ouija boards and sleep in on Sunday mornings instead of knocking on people’s doors to tell them about Armageddon. This is how people who aren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses eat dinner after they get married at city hall.

  I WORE A WHITE sweater and white pants for my wedding. Tonight, I put on the same white sweater to create my Good Luck Cat.

  Dennis is a professional stand-up comic, out doing a Halloween show in Maine tonight, so I’m home alone. He headlines shows at clubs, but I’m just an open-miker. He’s a closer, the main event. I go to the club four or five nights a week and hang out with my friends, all of whom are stand-up comics. We get drunk and make fun of everyone else.

  Dennis and I made love twice before we got married. At this point, I think we’ve had sex about four times total. I have sex with some of my friends, instead. I worry that they think I’m the kind of girl who would cheat on her husband. I’m really not that kind of person, it’s just that I made a mistake in getting married. Still, I think they judge me.

  One time, this girl said to me: “You’re like the only girl in this group of guys and they all want to fuck you and you don’t know it.” But I knew that wasn’t true, because I was fucking only a few of them.

  My husband is embarrassing, also called “gay” in Boston, which means he’s retarded. I’m afraid people think we have sex just because we’re married.

  I THINK I KNOW how I ended up married to this weird old man. I know how I made such a terrible mistake. I started getting into Wicca shortly after I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I had experimented with a spell to bring on my one true love. It involved lighting candles and pouring salt on the ground. I did it in the kitchen. Now I am starting to think the spell is the reason my life is in shambles. I didn’t know what I was doing and I hadn’t believed it would work, so I had attracted black magic. The Jehovah’s Witnesses had been right. Demons were out there, I shouldn’t have toyed with them.

  MY HUSBAND GOES TO Costco and buys a case of his favorite toothpaste and then lines up all the tubes on top of the door frames in his bedroom. The room has an ugly folding table instead of a desk, a bed, and all this toothpaste.

  When my friends come over, I shut the door to his bedroom. When we get drunk and high, I open the door and make fun of how weird he is.

  WHEN I FIRST LEFT the Witnesses, my new circle of friends was comprised entirely of performance poets, but I’m over that scene now. I’m a stand-up comic and I only hang out with other comics. Slam poets are even more retarded than improvisers, and improvisers are totally retarded. I’ve never really seen an improv show, but it seems cool to hate them. I see improvisers around town, anyway. I haven’t really experienced much since I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and sometimes I just pick random things to love or to hate.

  I DO A LOT of speed-reading of important books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I fast-forward through John Cassavetes movies and watch The Matrix.

  Comedy. This is where I belong. I want to be Bill Hicks or this new girl Sarah Silverman. I’m pretty outrageous with the things I say. I’m what you call a “cerebral comic.” I rant and stuff. All I have to do is catch up on politics and history and then I’ll be able to really let ’em have it. I just need to watch The Matrix again, figure out what else I don’t know about the world, and fill in the holes before someone figures me out.

  I’m so damn close to being normal.

  INDUSTRY PEOPLE COME TO the Comedy Studio and they watch our sets, which means they watch us perform and they don’t go to the bathroom. I’m learning phrases like “television clean” and “the perfect seven-minute set,” because seven minutes is what you’ll get if you go on Conan.

  The club has Conan auditions and it’s blowing my mind how close I am to being what I always wanted to be. Three years ago, I was in a cult; now I have the chance to be on television.

  When I first came into the comedy scene, I felt like I was doing a go
od job at making people like me. They couldn’t really tell I was different, maybe just quirky. I hid the fact that I had only been to one rock concert in my life, that I had never done mushrooms, and that I’d never voted.

  I was doing such a great job that some of the more successful comics invited me to the studio where they recorded Dr. Katz and all the Squigglevision cartoons. Even Oprah was getting a cartoon. My friends were all getting jobs doing voice-overs and I thought maybe this was the answer to everything.

  I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, now I would work for Oprah.

  But then I had to go and do something really stupid, like find a Wicca voodoo spell on the Internet and throw salt on my kitchen floor and marry this weird guy who was twenty years older than I am. After that, no one invited me back to the Dr. Katz studio again. Now people were standoffish; they said things like “I couldn’t believe it when I first heard you two got married,” or, even worse, “I don’t care what anybody else thinks, I just think it’s so great that the two of you got together. Love knows no bounds.”

  And that’s when I knew I’d fucked everything up and nothing would ever be okay again. All because of that salt, because of demons. I never should have left the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  So I take a razor and I carve ALONE into my arm. It hurts me that they judge me.