I figured if I kept trying, if I got used to it, like any other unpleasant task—running or cleaning toilets—I could learn to enjoy it, or at least tolerate it. And if I could, there was no need to ruin my life by being a lesbian. I could get married. I could have kids. I could be normal. I just fucking wanted to be normal.

   It was weird, according to the others in basic training, that I’d been a virgin when I joined the Air Force. Although whether or not I technically was a virgin according to the manual, who fucking knows.

Dry-humping doesn’t count. Thank fuck. I had this on good authority from experts on exactly where to draw the virgin-slut line: the basketball team from Amarillo Christian School. (I was homeschooled. My stepdad, Gabe, had cut a deal with the principal to allow us to play basketball. Forced socialization for two homeschoolers who’d still forget not to hug strangers. Whatever he paid, it was too much. There were only seven girls on my team. Even though I sucked, I was a body on the court, a tall body.)

Amarillo Christian School was run by the Church of Christ. If you’ve ever wondered what’s wrong with Texas, they’re as good an answer as any other, especially in the panhandle. The church doesn’t allow dancing, drinking, or even instrumental music. Go to a Church of Christ wedding and they’ll sing “Here comes the bride,” after which they’ll stand around a room drinking off-brand soda. Lubbock, two hours south of Amarillo, was a dry county until 2009, largely because of the Church of Christ. Just past Lubbock, you’ll find Anson, Texas, the inspiration for Footloose, because until 1987, dancing was illegal.

They’re fundamentalist nutjobs, but their school was cheap. And so the student body at Amarillo Christian was a pretty even mix of good Christian kids and slightly more worldly though also Christian kids who’d been expelled from local high schools. Who could claim virginity was a constant debate.

   The Church of Christ kids were sure anything beyond oral was real sex. The worldly kids were pretty sure anal was allowed. Everyone was iffy on consent.

I knew better than to ask for a specific ruling on the state of my virginity from the Christian school kids. But I remember a moment, on a basketball trip to Abilene, Coach Rhodes decided to give us an impromptu sex talk, in case the sights of Abilene-fucking-Texas sent us into hormonal manic episodes. She stood there clinging to the seat backs in one of those warm-up suits coaches buy at a coach supply store and asked us all if we thought it was okay to let a guy feel us up. She knew some of us didn’t come from solid Church of Christ homes. Some of our parents drank beer. Some of our parents were divorced. Some didn’t attend church at all. You can’t expect people like that to vigilantly guard their daughters’ sexual purity. She told us if we let a guy feel us up, we might as well give it up right there.

The freshmen boys, separated from us girls by a single row of bus seats, not cool enough to join the senior boys in the back of the bus, giggled. The lesson for them was clear: try to get away with what you can. A girl doesn’t stop you, that’s on her. I wasn’t sure whether “feel up” meant up a shirt or up a skirt. Either way, I let someone else answer. It was still novel for me to hear an adult tell me not to have sex.

* * *

—

   The only reason anyone’s heard of the Family, the Children of God, is the same reason I wouldn’t tell anyone I grew up in the cult: it was known as a sex cult. For a long time, until NXIVM, it was the sex cult. (Their marketing was better. Didn’t occur to us to brand anyone, damnit.)

In the Family, kids were encouraged to express themselves sexually. When a four-year-old boy tried to mount a four-year-old girl, the adults would say, “Oh, how cute.” When twelve-year-olds were caught in bed naked, the adults might tell them to be careful—the Systemites wouldn’t understand. When an adult groped a preteen girl, she might freeze; she might be called unloving and told to be more receptive. She’d learn, eventually, to only freeze on the inside.

An edict was sent out around the time I was born, one of our prophet David Berg’s rambling diatribes, this one called “Child Brides.” In it, we got to hear Berg detail one of his dearest memories—a nanny who’d suck him off when he was maybe three. One of his less fond memories was when his mom caught him masturbating and made him wait until his father got home, and finish in front of his dad.

I don’t know what made Berg who he was. I don’t fucking care. I care that about thirty thousand kids were raised in his sex cult where the manual for raising children, the Davidito Book, showed adult women groping a toddler, Davidito, Berg’s heir. It showed naked three-year-olds miming sex with one another. I care that the entire body of literature we were raised with was about sex. I care that in Heaven’s Girl, a book written just for us preteens, the pivotal scene is a fourteen-year-old girl being gang-raped by Antichrist soldiers, and loving it. I care that girls as young as fourteen were sent out to “Flirty Fish.” I care that for a time, kids were passed around between adults for their regularly scheduled “sharing nights.” (While we’re here, “thanks for sharing” will always mean something different to me.) I care that I spent a good deal of my childhood taking care of the inevitable babies, pacing the halls with them at night while they screamed for their mothers. I care that they only ended Flirty Fishing because of the AIDS crisis. I care that when they did ban sex between kids and adults, only because of legal problems, they never bothered telling the kids. Really depended on whether an adult gave a shit about the new rule. Who were we going to tell? I care that we were taught girls who didn’t eagerly participate were selfish. That satisfying men was a girl’s duty. And of course, if satisfying men is your duty, sort of rules out being a lesbian.