Survivor

Listen, I say. I'm not alone here. All around me are caring nurturing volunteers giving their time.

'Do it,' she says. 'Lick my tits.'

I say she's taking advantage of my naturally caring nurturing nature. I tell her I'll have to hang up now.

She says, 'Put your mouth all over me.'

I say, I'm hanging up now.

'Harder,' she says. 'Do it harder. Oh, harder, do me harder,' she laughs and says. 'Lick me. Lick me. Lick me. Lick. Me.'

I say, I'm hanging up now. But I don't.

Fertility's saying, 'You know you want me. Tell me what you want me to do. You know you want to. Make me do something terrible.'

And before I can even take myself out, Fertility Hollis screams a ragged howling porn goddess orgasm scream.

And I hang up.

I Timothy, Chapter Five, Verse Fifteen:'For some are already turned aside after Satan.'

How I feel is cheap and used, dirty and humiliated. Dirty and tricked and thrown away.

Then the phone rings. It's her. This has to be her so I don't pick up-All night long the phone rings, and I sit here feeling cheated and don't dare answer.

About ten years ago I had my first one-on-one session with my caseworker, who's a real person with a name and an office but I don't want to get her in trouble. She has her own set of problems. She has a degree in social work. She's thirty-five years old and can't keep a boyfriend. Ten years ago she was twenty-five and just out of college and she was swamped with collecting the clients assigned to her as part of the federal government's brand-new Survivor Retention Program.

What happened was a policeman came to the front door of the house where I worked back then. Ten years ago, I was twenty-three years old, and this was still my first posting because I still worked really hard. I didn't know any better. The yards around the house were always wet dark green and clipped so smooth they rolled out soft and perfect as a green mink coat. Nothing inside the house ever looked depreciated. When you're twenty-three, you think you can keep up this level of performance forever.

A ways back from the policeman at the front door were two more police and the caseworker standing in the driveway by a police car.

You can't understand how good my work felt up to the moment I opened that door. My whole life growing up, I'd been working toward this, toward baptism and getting placed in a job cleaning houses in the wicked outside world.

When the people I worked for had sent the church a donation for my first month's work, I was beaming. I really believed I was helping create Heaven on Earth.

No matter how people stared at me, I wore the mandatory church costume everywhere, the hat, the baggy trousers with no pockets. The long-sleeved white shirt. No matter how hot it got, I wore the brown coat if I went out in public, no matter what silly things people said to me.

'How come you can wear shirts with buttons?' somebody at the hardware store would want to know.

Because I'm not Amish.

'Do you have to wear special secret undergarments?'

I think they were talking about Mormons.

'Isn't it against your religion to live outside your colony?'

That sounds more like the Mennonites.

'I've never met a Hutterite before.'

You still haven't.

It felt good to stand out from the world, just mysterious and pious. You weren't a lantern under any basket. You stood out righteous as a sore thumb. You were the one holy man to keep God from crushing all of the Sodom and Gomorrah seething around you in the Valley Plaza Shopping Center.

You were everyone's savior, whether they knew it or not. On a sweltering day in your heavy blah-colored wool, you were a martyr burning at the stake.

It felt even more wonderful to meet someone dressed the same as you. The brown pants or the brown dress, we all wore the same lumpy brown potato shoes. The two of you would come together in a quiet little pocket of conversation. There were so few things we were allowed to say to each other in the outside world. You could only say three or four things so you wanted to start slow and not hurry a word. Shopping was the only reason you were allowed out in public, and this was only if you were trusted with money.

If you met someone from the church district colony, you could say:

May you die*** in complete service in your lifetime.

You could say:

Praise and glory to the Lord for this day through which we labor.

You could say:

May our efforts bring all those around us to Heaven.

And you could say:

May you die with all your work complete.

That was the limit.

You'd see someone else looking righteous and hot in their church district costume, and you'd run through this little handful of conversation in your head. The two of you would rush together and you weren't allowed to touch. No hugging. No handshaking. You would say one approved bit. She would say one. The two of you would go back and forth until each of you had said two lines. You kept your heads bowed, and you each went back to your task.

Those were just the smallest parts of the smallest part of all the rules you had to remember. Growing up inside the church district colony, half your studies were about church doctrine and rules. Half were about service. Service included gardening, etiquette, fabric care, cleaning, carpentry, sewing, animals, arithmetic, getting out stains, and tolerance.

Rules for the outside world included you had to write weekly letters of confession back to the elders in the church district. You had to refrain from eating candy. Drinking and smoking were forbidden. Present a clean and orderly appearance at all times. You could not indulge in broadcast forms of entertainment. You could not participate in sexual relations.

Luke, Chapter Twenty, Verse Thirty-five:'But they which shall be accounted worthy ... neither marry, nor are given in marriage.'

Elders of the Creedish church made celibacy sound as easy as choosing not to play baseball.

Just say no.

The other rules just went on and on. God forbid you should ever dance. Or eat refined sugar. Or sing. But the most important rule to remember was always:

If the members of the church district colony felt summoned by God, rejoice. When the apocalypse was imminent, celebrate, and all Creedish must deliver themselves unto God, amen.

And you had to follow.

It didn't matter how far away. It didn't matter how long you'd been working outside the district colony. Since listening to broadcast communication was a no-no, it might take years for all church members to find out about the Deliverance. Church doctrine named it that. The Deliverance. The flight to Egypt. The flight out of Egypt.