[January 1, Year of Restoration 41] - My beloved brothers and sisters I write in this journal that you may have a record of the tribulations of one humble servant of the LORD as a reminder to hold to the Iron Rod of the Gospel. That many of you have been infected with the Rust and the Canker and scattered upon the face of the Earth grieves my spirit. For the sinners every plain place is made rough now but yet the profane is not entered into my heart and I long for the LORD to keep the Pure in our rightful place in the Holy of Holies at the heart of America, what place is an island in a sea of Corruption. Therefore I write in this journal that the Pure may be reminded that the destruction of the LORD's people in the New Zion is prevented by the righteousness of but a few Pure of Heart.
The Church and the Brethren and the Society of Mothers and every Pure of Heart, all of us keep detailed records which every day we write in our journals. And so the Church since the Restoration thereof has its history written so many times and it is our law and honor to make all the records totally agree in our orthodoxy in which all our faiths are one perfect faith inasmuch as each and every one of us can understand the Doctrine each according to his ability. But yet it comes to pass that the Pure, even the Chosen, can fall into the hairy mitts of Lucifer, and it is with that dreadful fate in mind that I dedicate this journal to the LORD. Amen.
[January 1, later] - I, Yeshua, was born in the Mothers' Hospital to a Sister Hamblin, a Churchmother. Brother Sorenson presided. He put his smooth white arms under the Purell dispenser and the deacon pumped the lever. He inserted his forearms into the special gloves that allowed him to reach Sister Hamblin inside the bubble. He washed and anointed her belly with iodine. The Twelve, their smooth gleaming heads lined up in the window, turned their backs according to the ceremony. Brother Sorenson made the incision. There was the Clean Issue of Blood. Brother Sorenson spoke into the intercom and the Twelve turned back around, each in his dark suit and white shirt and business tie representing complete agreement. Brother Sorenson pushed his gloved hand into the incision and pulled me out.
[January 2] - I shall write a brief version of my pre-Ordination life: This is what happened, the same as we always did it: Sister Hamblin was taken away and I was left in the bubble. Sister Hansen, the attendant who cared for me till school, swaddled me and fed me formula. I was born on the Sabbath, an auspicious sign. To spend a week in the bubble uncorrupted we considered the longest possible Grace Period. So I began my life a full week without corruption, cared for through the bubble. There is no greater induction into the World: to be spared the defilement of the birth canal through the Clean Issue of Blood and to spend a full week in the bubble is to linger at the very feet of the LORD for as long as the Ordinances permit before entering into corruption.
[January 5] - The following Sabbath Sister Hansen fed me my last untainted bottle of formula and unzipped the bubble. The air of the World, teeming with corruption, entered and I became mortal. Thus must we all begin our Mortal Probation, drinking unto ourselves the microscopic seeds of death. It is our calling to remain free of blemish and sin despite our infection. The cunning plan of the Devil is to infect all men, and the Sacraments of the LORD are the Way to Purity. Sister Hansen dressed me in the white jumpsuit. She walked me down the corridor from the Mothers' Hospital to the chapel. The Twelve were waiting in solemn silence outside the chapel doors. Each in turn, Elder Nebecker last, touched their right hands to the panic bar and then to my lips. Several of the men wept in silence, grieving their complicity in my corruption. Then a deacon opened the door and Sister Hansen carried me into the chapel where the assembled Pure sat in near silence, heads bowed. The Twelve gathered around us, standing in a circle, and each placed his left hand on the shoulder of the Elder to his left. Their right hands they extended into the center of the circle, and Sister Hansen placed me on the twelve white upturned palms. Then she left to sit with the women. [In those days we still kept the women from the men in the chapel, as the LORD required.] None knew which of the Twelve is the father. The deacon drew lots, and there was a sudden fervent murmur of surprise and reverence as once again Elder Nebecker was chosen to pray. A great and portentous sign that God had chosen me for a marvelous work and a wonder. The Deacon held a microphone to Elder Nebecker's mouth. The ancient Patriarch spoke, [I imagine his voice now: low but sonorous, shaking slightly with age and emotion.]. He was moved by the Holy Ghost. He prayed: "Dear Heavenly Father, in the name of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood which I bear, I lay my hands upon this baby boy to give him a name and a blessing. The name by which he will be known throughout his childhood upon the corrupt Earth is" [he paused for a few seconds, his breath raspy through the p.a. system, his forehead creased in deep meditation, and then he spoke with great, voice-shaking emotion] "Yeshua". [The congregation gasped, and some glanced around with their mouths wide open, but quickly returned to reverent silence.] Elder Nebecker continued: "And the blessing I bestow upon you, Brother Yeshua, is this: that you will live a long and dutiful life in the service of your Heavenly Father and the Church of His Son, and that you will find great joy in your purity, and in the fatherhood you will merit, and that at the end of your days you will pass from this corrupt Earth into the whiteness of your Father's Mansion without delay, and take upon yourself the mantle of Incorruption. Amen."
[January 9 - I need to be more diligent!] - Elder Nebecker then presented me, Yeshua, to the congregation, holding my tiny body high. Then he took the vial of Gentamycin off the silver tray and blessed it and used the dropper to put it down my throat. I cried. Then the Streptomycin. Then the Meropenem, the Cefalexin, Cefoxitin, Cefotaxime, Ceftobiprole, Vancomycin, Lincomycin, Daptomycin, Azithromycin, and the several other Sacraments of Purity, and thus was I, Brother Yeshua taken by the Brethren onto the path of Incorruption.
[January 10] - On my twelfth birthday, I was brought to the temple school to be presented to the Teachers and was inducted into the Scouts. By this time I had grown as required: my head was a flawless dome of shining white, never exposed to the sun; my body likewise white and hairless, and my belly round and soft. I had earned all ten CTR rings and wore them on my flawless pudgy fingers. I recited the Ten Commandments perfectly, then the Articles of Faith. I pledged allegiance to the Church. The Teachers were impressed, and elected me President of my class of eleven other boys. I received the phylacteries and the Teachers hung them as required on my forehead. Then they placed the Urim and Thummim on the bridge of my nose and snugged the elastic behind my ears. I performed the washings and anointings, kneeling before each classmate's feet with the boiled water and the Purell. As President, I spent each sabbath in prayer and washing, and was responsible for the disinfecting of the dining table every morning. My hands became red and raw, a sign of great responsibility and attainment.
[February 2 - My current responsibilities leave me exhausted every night. I will write when I can.] - I showed promise as a student, always popular and accomplished, but never proud. I rose through the levels, and, in my sixth year, I was called to be President of the student body, and was the first of my class to be ordained an Elder of the Church. By my eighteenth birthday my purity was so highly regarded that I was chosen to serve as a missionary. After the training, six intensive months, I was given the Garment, the Gloves, the Boots, and the Mask, and was sent, with brief ceremony, through the gates and into the World. To avoid speaking impure words, the Teachers had told me little of what to expect, so, as all Elders before me, I was dismayed by what I saw: stretching away before the gates were buildings of all kinds, each with its own color and design, and cars of every description, and people with coarse, hairy, brown skin and angular builds and full heads of hair. Powerful smells assaulted me. I gagged behind my mask. But I took strength in the Lord and walked forth to do His bidding.
[March 1, YOR 43] - Brothers and sisters, I did not write in the journal during my mission. Now that I am back inside the compound, I will resume my record: The last two years were full of disappointment and trials, but also of joy and certainty. I came to love the World, and to feel at home with its people. I loved their customs and their language, and I loved to sit with them at mealtimes. I loved the smells and colors of their food, though I could not eat it. I taught hundreds of them, and loved speaking their language with fluency and precision, and I baptized three of them into membership. My finest moments were when I administered the Sacraments of Purity to these fine converts, and I found joy in imagining the antibiotics going about their work of cleansing. I lived with the new members in the Terrestrial Apartments that flanked the gate. Their year of purification and isolation and inculcation was a challenge to behold, but I felt buoyed by the Work. As the converts' skin whitened, and their hands and bodies softened and their hair fell away I felt deep gratitude to have been called to be an Elder of Zion and witness the Hand of the Lord as He scrubbed the converts of sin.
[March 5] - My dear brothers and sisters, it is with great humility that I report to you that it has come to pass that my efforts were rewarded this morning with a most prestigious calling to the Outer Darkness, the zones so far from the compound's gates that few servants of the LORD had ever been called that far to bear the Lamp of the Gospel to the sinners. More later.
[March 5 - later] - I will be reporting to the Inner Precinct to begin further sacred training within the week. I will continue writing when I have time. I will pause now only to report that the Spirit is working upon me that my every moment the Refiner's Fire burns in my bosom and the veil is very thin for me now, my dear brothers and sisters. I know that the LORD has personally called me to His great work.
[September 10] - Of the few hundred missionaries, only twelve were called to the Darkness. Over the last six months we have been in temple seclusion. the Teachers of the Church have prepared us with exacting lessons on the more holy and secret forms of purification. We performed these most sacred rites inside the temple and there received new names, never to be revealed in the Corrupt Earth. In these ceremonies we also received the name of our Earthly father, and I was deeply humbled and thrilled to learn that Elder Nebecker, now very old, is my father. In deference and humility I shall continue my mission as Elder Yeshua, and kept the great name Nebecker close to my heart.
Tomorrow we leave the compound for the Outer Darkness. Though the LORD continues to calm me with His Spirit, I feel fear at facing Satan, yea that Terrible Devil, in his corrupt and profane Waste.
[September 11] - I learned early this morning at the door of the Holy of Holies that I will be going to the ends of the Earth, so far that the umbilicus of the Church will be stretched dangerously thin. The Sacraments of Purity will be delivered to me only once a month, and I will live without contact with the Ordained. I will take the Gospel to a place that had not seen Purity since before the Fall. The thought comes with a frisson of fear and righteous pride. I ponder my sacred role as intermediary, as the chosen Lamp-bearer to the gentiles.
[September 11 - much later] - I am exhausted, but I cannot sleep, so I will write of today's rushed events: after a last review of procedures and a farewell prayer meeting with the Brethren, a white bus came for us twelve Elders. It drove us out beyond the neighborhoods we'd known and along a highway above flat miles of potato fields. The smell of dirt welcomed us to the outer lands. After many hours the bus stopped and one of the Elders got off. An attendant handed him a white case and re-boarded the bus. The Elder, as instructed, turned his back on us and marched briskly into the small town, showing no hesitation.
[September 12] - We slept last night on the bus. Today three more Elders were delivered to towns in the Darkness. We drove through a large city.
[September 16] - Several days have gone by and I am the only Elder left on the bus.
[September 18, Port Townsend, Oregon] - Yesterday we drove and drove until we came to the sea, where we turned up the coast into a forest of dark and dripping trees. Finally, the bus stopped in this tiny town, a mere crossroads in the woods, the sea faintly visible down one of the roads. I disembarked between a faded service station and a tiny, moss-stained house. I took the proffered white case, turned and walked. I listened to the bus hiss and groan back onto the highway. When it was gone, I took the instructions from the case and unfolded the map. It directed me to a low house in a garden. An elderly woman, her skin deeply and repugnantly wrinkled, her hair white and brittle, came out, and avoided staring at my gloves and mask. She greeted me politely and handed me the lease agreement, and I signed. It was all prepared. I settled into a small cottage behind the garden and allowed myself a look around before Homecoming Prayers. The garden smelled of sugar and rot, but it was beautiful. I smiled at the leaning white lilies. Purity in corruption, I thought. A dog watched me through a fence, and I palmed my pepper spray. The night darkened and I went in to prayers.
[October 10] - For the last several weeks I have pushed through my shyness and introduced myself to the people of Port Townsend. Most have been polite. Some have been aggressive in asking about my Protections and ask if I am sick, but without solicitous concern, just hostility. Some Mexican boys laugh at me every time I walk by, but I practice forbearance and just smile in what I feel is an aloof and dignified way. On Friday night some drunk girls teased me and asked me up to their apartment, but I politely declined, to much snorting and giggling. I find few opportunities to teach. People make excuses, or turn indoors from their summer evening drinking to avoid me. I endure homesickness and isolation but I do not feel shame, for the LORD has said that His servants shall be reviled for their purity.
I should tell you how I maintain my Purity. Every month a white refrigerator truck meets me at the service station and I get a new cooler of Purity Sacraments. I do not speak with the driver, per protocol, but it is comforting to have that brief contact with the Church. They also bring boots, gloves, masks, en other things I may need.
[November 6] - Last night a family that has been polite called to me from their porch as I walked by. I had seen candles, but hadn't seen people in the dusk depth of the porch. They invited me up and sent a boy to open the gate. I imagine the smooth dome of my head, my starched white shirt, and my mask and gloves glowing in the moonlight as I walked toward the dark porch. Candlelight danced on the porch ceiling. Moths and bats darted. The boy jumped up the stairs, and I spoke into the the near-black "Good evening". Several voices answered. A glass clinked down. A woman stood into the light. Tall, straight, a long dark braid slung under her neck like a noose. She held her hand out over the parapet. "I'm Jenny", she said. "We've seen you walking." Without thinking, I reached my gloved hand to her, my first handshake with a sinner. As our hands touched I felt, and suppressed, an urge to recoil. But I squeezed back to the pressure of her grip. I admit I felt a sudden wave of shame at the big white glove, so exaggerated and disembodied in the moonlight. I laughed quickly, awkwardly. "Germs", was all I managed, to my chagrin. She and her invisible companions laughed lightly, uncertainly. I felt a sudden, unaccountable warmth and affection, maybe for being invited so kindly after these weeks of isolation. I spoke into the dark "sorry, I can hear you but I can't see who's there." I pointlessly, theatrically, shaded my eyes with a gloved hand. There was soft laughter and several chairs scraped back and dim shapes stood into the candlelight. Two men, another woman, others behind them. For the first time in my life I felt warm gratitude and shame side by side, and marveled at the mysterious workings of the Spirit.
We sat together on the porch. I spoke little. They drank a bit. I could smell the wine. They passed a fragrant pipe around, and I caught glimpses of them in the red light that surged when they inhaled. Hair; wrinkled skin; sharp, angular shoulders and arms; one man missing two fingers. I told them a very brief version of my mission, and they were polite, but I didn't want to say more, and they changed the subject. The woman, Jenny, went in and came out with ice cream. I declined, as always, but I felt a wave of homesick regret.
[March 12, YOR 44] - Months have passed. I see Jenny often, and she is always friendly. I walk by her house weekend evenings hoping to be invited back, but it never happens. I spend my days walking every street systematically trying to bring the Gospel to every citizen of Port Townsend.
[May 1] - I have walked farther and farther afield, knocking on doors, trying to teach the Gospel, but I have had little success. I use highlighters on my map to keep track of where I've been. I keep appointments on a little weekly calendar. I rarely say much about the Gospel at all, though I try from sunup to sundown every day, stopping only for prayer, rote-learning, meals, and laundry. I spend hours of every day walking the streets of Port Townsend praying for comfort and guidance. My brothers and sisters, I humbly admit to fatigue, loneliness, and some discouragement but I hereby recommit to not letting Satan get his foot in the door. I find comfort in the Spirit and in this Marvelous Work and a Wonder.
[August 4] - This summer has been the most difficult of my life. In June I knocked on the last door in town. I have prayed for comfort, but Satan puts a nagging thought in my mind: Why do the Brethren keep me here if I have visited every house in town without once teaching the Gospel? I know they know best, but I have wrung this town dry. In my humblest moments I know that the LORD has a plan for me here and I must focus on the comfort I feel when I consider that He knows all and will not keep me here without a righteous plan.
[September 1] - Brothers and sisters, I write today with fear and humility in my heart. Today I went to meet the refrigerator truck at the appointed time, but it didn't arrive. I waited all day. I called the emergency contact number, but there was no answer. Finally, I came home and opened the first day of my emergency backup supplies.
[September 9] - The truck still hasn't come. I've gone back and called every day but there's never an answer. Have they forgotten me? Is it possible that they sent me a message and I didn't get it? Am I supposed to be in a new proselytizing area? I am now nine days into my emergency supplies.
[September 12] - Today a recorded voice told me the number had been disconnected. I panicked. I am down to eighteen days of antibiotics and Purell. I don't know of any way to be in touch with the compound. I have only a few masks left, and I've begun to treat the few remaining protections very carefully. I taped a torn glove. I glued soles from an old pair of boots onto my newest ones, to extend their life.
[September 15] - Today for the first time since Sister Hansen unzipped the bubble, I skipped a dose of the Purity Sacraments. The LORD knows I do not disdain his commandment, but rationing seems prudent now, and of course the Brethren have left me no instructions.
[September 18] - I've been taking the pills every other day. I am not leaving the house, and I pray the LORD forgives me this sloth.
[Sept. 21] - I cut the doses in half. This morning I awoke early to itching on my arms. A red rash has spread up my arms and around my torso. My eyes are watery and itchy.
[September 22] - The itch is a torment, but I dare not scratch, lest sin enter the skin. My stomach began to cramp this morning.
[Sept 24] - I've gone 2 days without eating and am in and out of delirious with fever. A putrid taste and the stench of corruption. Took a shower the soap agony on the broken skin, but the water soothing. Ran out of bottled water drank straight from the shower. The cramps so bad hours on the toilet. Fever ebbed and surged, a tide of nausea and weakness. When I am lucid, I am filled with dread at the progress of sin through me, and pray to be rescued and often I am so sick I cant pray I don't feel hope I prayed to God that the truck would return bearing the Sacraments. Emerging from delirium now
[25] - today horrified to find myself in bed, soiled and reeking, with the old woman, my landlord, leaning over me, washing me with a cool cloth. My impulse was to recoil, but I had no strength. She shushed me, and continued her cleaning with obvious distaste. Soon a doctor arrived. Then an ambulance. I awoke sometime later in a hospital, clean and fresh, but with tubes in my arms. I was strapped to the bedrails. I spent hours obsessing in terror at the punctures in my arms, at what must be entering my lungs with each inhale, at the thought that people, sinners, had touched the skin while I slept. A nurse entered, wearing a mask. She avoided eye contact, just took some notes and unstrapped my arm so I can write, then restrapped me then left.
[September 26] - Later yesterday a doctor with some staff, all masked, came in. The doctor told me I was stabilizing after some very serious infections.
[September 29] - They just removed a tube from my arm. Then the tube from my nose. I drank the water they offered, through a straw. Then juice from a foil box. I feel some strength. heartened. I feel small and hard, bony and angular my body is like not mine.
[October 2] - Today a nurse helped me into a wheelchair. The contact was intensely intimate, almost excruciating. She wheeled me out to a rooftop deck in the sun. I didn't protest. I didn't want to do anything embarrassing near her and shame wracked me. I sat for a short while, enjoying the sun and breeze, till she wheeled me back inside, explaining that the skin wasn't ready for more.
[October 9] - Nurse takes me out every day. I've begun to color, first pink, now brick red. I hardly recognize my own arms. I can see veins protruding, and the underlying bones, and the new color. There's some hair. Short blond wisps at first, now brown and coarse. I eat their food, similar to what I've always known, but prepared by sinners. i've done a little walking and exercise.
[October 10] - Today a social worker came, to talk about family support and payment for the hospital stay. She knew the rudiments of the Church, its doctrines and practices. They have tried to contact the Church, but there was no way. They found news of an FBI raid on the compound. The members of the Church were taken into special medical care, and no real organization remains. I am crushed by dread. It comes in waves. I feel alone but am trying to remember that my brothers and sisters are still out there though I am deeply saddened to picture them forced out of the compound and into the Lone and Dreary World. I will be released from the hospital soon. I don't know what to do except try to go home.
[December 1] - I'm back at the compound. I hitchhiked, ate with strangers, spent days crossing the country. When i arrived i found the compound sealed, with notices of legal proceedings on the rusting white gate. The local newspaper reporter who had covered the story directed me to several members of the Church, most of whom are still in medical care. Many members, especially the old, did not survived the transition to sinfulness. The germs overwhelmed them. I met with as many Church members as I could. I am not allowed to meet with the surviving High Priests, who are in detention. My appearance shocks the members. In outward appearance I have crossed over completely, and my tan and hair and leanness make me unrecognizable. It is always a grave shock to the Pure when one of the Chosen takes on Corruption.
The government has set up a tent in front of the gate and staffed it with social workers. Some of the healthiest members of the Church congregate there every morning. This morning, with some others, I approached the social workers with questions about food and the future, prompted by a gradual realization that the Church no longer exists to protect and provide for us. Approaching the social workers as supplicants required a humility we could barely muster, and each of us broke down sobbing at what we saw as a profound reversal of roles, in which the teachers have become students, the Elders have become revealed as juvenile, the Chosen have become like beggars outside the gate. The social workers speak a jargon we were slow to understand: they used a brisk, relentless vocabulary of words that appear nowhere in the scriptures. "Job" or "employment" mean work, more or less. We're coming to understand that, in the Darkness, each will work for his own money and will prosper according to his own merit. A cold and bracing doctrine. They speak of nutrition, healthcare, housing, transportation, the law, support groups, shopping, jobs, education, government programs, race, poverty, neighborhoods, distant cities, voting, the news, foreign countries, the draft, the wars, drivers' licenses, taxes, fees and penalties, bank accounts, credit. We require patient explanations for each topic. I have never experienced such anxiety in my life. I wake up every night panicked about my new life without the Church. With my experience in the World, no matter how narrow and sheltered, I am becoming a sort of unofficial translator and mediator between the social workers and the members of the Church.
[January 1, YOR 45] - The director of the government program offered me a job. I got a Social Security number and an identification card, and for the first time have revealed my secret surname, Nebecker. I'm taking a driving class. When I got my first paycheck I opened a bank account and spent hours comparing the balance to the prices of items in the grocery store, until I began to get a sense of what my money was worth. I've become friendly with a few of the social workers, and one of them helped me make my first purchase, a can of cola. I took out my account book and made an entry deducting the cost of the drink from the balance. The social worker laughed and slapped me on the back, and I felt a wave of warmth and gratitude and momentarily forgot the prohibitions against contact with sinners.
[March 8] - Our Protections are failing. Masks torn, boots worn through, and our gloves became so reinforced with tape that we eventually had to abandon them. There are no replacements.
[May 11] - The members of the Church have gradually dispersed to new jobs and group homes and lives they can barely imagine. My work in the tent has tapered off. My talents as a communicator and organizer are widely appreciated, and this morning the Director took me aside to encourage me to go to college. This felt like the kind of accolade I had so often received from the Church, and I am resolved to treat this new possibility the same way I prepared for my mission: with humility and tremendous focus and reverence.
[August 11] - All summer I carried the course catalog of the nearby state college, and read over and over the descriptions of every course of study until I came to focus on just a few. I passed over nursing and pre-med, with all of their daunting science requirements, and enrolled in psychology. On the Director's recommendation, and with government assistance, the college accepted me with the condition that I spend an intensive year remedying the deficiencies in my education. In the compound I had entirely missed the sciences, literature, and history.
[September 1] - I started college today. Overwhelmed.
[September 21] - I am amazed to learn that my Gentile peers can barely memorize, that they write in the colloquial, that almost none have read the scriptures, and that most seem to hue to an unconscious scientism and an equally unreflective and dogmatic racial and religious relativism. My pieties and habits of thought are in constant tension with the unspoken assumptions of my peers and teachers. I feel embattled and afraid for my faith. But I study hard. I took the advice of my guidance counselor and focus on learning the material whether I agree with it or not. I see my education as a very serious game, with arbitrary rules and requirements, and grades are the score. I study hard every evening, and am determined to win. My peers party and flirt and chase entertainment while I force an entire high-school education into a single year.
[November 3] - I am reading Huckleberry Finn. I like math. History is very hard. I have to adjust my entire way of thinking if this gentile story is true.
[December 25] - Alone in the dorm for Christmas.
[May 21, YOR 46, same as 2014] - The psychology department accepted me as a regular student when I completed this trial year with straight A's. This spring my loneliness has been almost too hard to bear. Very few people even acknowledge me. Eye contact is rare. I am a pariah. I have gone over a month without properly celebrating the Sabbath, and I am afraid this is depression.
[June 21] - It is true that my academic success has gone to my head. I see it as evidence that, as a mere novice, I can beat the Gentiles at their own game. They are lazy, complacent, aimless and so undermined by the Spirit-sapping exhaustions of lust, gluttony and loud laughter that the collapse of the Church can only be explained as a Judgment of God. I must be wary. Pride is a tool of the Devil, and leads to sin.
[October 16] - Things have changed. The student newspaper asked to interview me right before midterms. I received a call from the editor asking for an interview. I kept my guard up, the same well-practiced defense the Pure always used when, for example, a sinner offered us food: we had elaborate manners around protecting ourselves from corruption. When the editor called I reflexively brushed her aside because my time is precious. All my focus and energy are on perfect grades. I study every day well into night. And the student paper is so amateurish and concerned with the liberal pieties and the entertainment media, which I have always abhorred that it gave me some satisfaction to disdain the paper and refuse the interview.
The next day I was walking to class, alone crossing the quad as usual, when I turned at the sound of a person jogging up behind me. A gangly young woman in what looked to be an oversized and masculine brown corduroy suit approached at a good run. She met my eyes and I understood she meant to talk to me. I was almost immobilized by a sudden susceptibility, as though my well-practiced defenses had suddenly collapsed. I felt almost naked, as I do even now merely writing these words. I was in the middle of the quad, effectively alone, and I longed for the mask and gloves. My reflex was to hug my book bag to my chest and sidle off the walkway and look away, hoping she would continue past. But she stopped and fought for breath for a few long seconds and then spoke. I replay it like a movie.
"Sorry. Sorry. You're Yeshua Nebecker?"
"Yes. I. Yes."
"Sorry. June Orr. The editor sent me? From the Steward?"
"I. Yes. I thought..."
"I'm sorry. Is this a good time?"
I angled away from her. Tried to find something to look at. She kept circling to stay in front of me, and I kept turning toward the psych building.
"I have class. In a minute."
"It's okay. I can walk with you."
"I. I think."
"I won't take up your time. I'll just walk. You've got, like, ten minutes before class."
And so we walked. This allowed me to look somewhere not at her, which was a relief. Her shoes were eccentric. Square-toed boots, some kind of caricature of dressy boots. She wore sky-blue fingernail polish, though her nails were short and ragged. I saw these things in glances. She continued:
"I was hoping I could ask you some questions? For the paper?"
"I told your editor I am too busy right now. Midterms. And..."
"That's okay. I can do it later. Like next week? I can just make an appointment."
I don't know why, but I agreed. Maybe just to make her go away. I was so uncomfortable I had to suppress an urge to just run. We made an appointment and I immediately began thinking of ways to get out of it. She thanked me and backed away, smiling. Her teeth were very big. Black curls around here head. Very tall and gawky.
[October 20] - I've kept that image in my head all week. Or, rather, it's kept me. I can't get rid of it. In my trig midterm I thought about her. While studying the French Revolution. While falling asleep. In the shower.
[October 22] - Appointment with June's in two days. This morning I was donning the Garment when I thought of her and I felt shame. I haven't worn the gloves, boots, or mask since they wore out. The phylacteries I keep mostly flipped up on the brim of my hat. But the Garment, the crucial Protection, I've kept as a secret reminder of my calling as one of the Pure. Nobody knows but me. I wash it in the sink when nobody else is around, and wear it damp after each washing because I have only one left, and no way to get more. It's begun to fall apart. My brothers and sisters, it shames me to admit that I stood there naked with the unmediated air on my skin and looked at that pathetic gray and worn-out rag and I was ashamed. For the first time in my adult life I went out without the Garment, just my coarse gentile clothes against my skin. And it is with great humility that I confess to you that the cool zipper against my Procreator, and the freedom with which it swung and its visibility, as I imagined it, through my pants, all combined to bring me to a great state of excitement many times today. My mind wanders from its proper contemplations of the Glory of God and I entertain a great lust in my heart. Picture, if you will, a young man barely in his 20s, on a warm fall day when many female students were in shorts and tank tops, freshly freed from the long hours of midterm exams and newly aware of the complete autonomy and excitability of his Procreator. Today I was ecstatic. Beside myself. My mind was utterly addled with sex, unable to settle on anything else.
[October 24] - And it still is two days later. I'm about to go to the student union to meet June Orr. My mind has changed. I no longer resent this interview. Early this morning I began to long for it.
[October 24, later] - Crossing the quad the hundreds of bare brown legs were a torment to me. I couldn't redirect my eyes. My heart pounded, my mouth watered, my Procreator tried mightily to push its way out of my pants, and I pictured only skin and big white teeth and black curly hair. My hands shook and I panted. I limped across campus grinning like a dog. My tongue likely lolled. A kind of unreflective confidence guided me through the doors and into the central lounge, and I instantly picked June out from the crowd, sitting hunched over a sticker-bedecked laptop at the far end of the busy room. The sight of her brought a moment of fear or caution, but I was able to suppress it and cross the room with my new certainty. I stood before her. She looked up at me through comically thick glasses. Her eyes, enormously magnified, showed something I interpreted as submission or fear. Her lashes radiated out from pale blue. She blinked. She smiled her toothy smile. She stood like a ladder unfolding, her shoulders bony and narrow in the manly brown jacket. Heat came off her, and humidity. I inhaled and leaned toward her. She, my dear brothers and sisters, leaned away.
We found a quiet corner and sat and talked.
"We want to feature you in our Student Profiles section in two weeks, so I thought I'd ask you some questions."
"Okay."
"This usually takes an hour or so."
"Okay."
"Sorry I tracked you down like that. On the quad?"
"That's okay."
"Okay."
"..."
"Alright then. So. You grew up in the compound?"
And the shame returned. In my few days of constant turgid arousal I had somehow forgotten the obvious reason June had this assignment: I am a freak, one of the Pure, and I'm the first ever to attend State U. Other Student Profile pieces I've seen introduced the son of a Somali warlord, a Tibetan monk studying physics, a 90-year-old great grandmother who wanted to become a poet, and other exotic outliers. Of course the questioning would go immediately to my strangeness. Diversity, they call it. The condition of being invited into mainstream society because of your exotic type, not because of any personal attainment. I sat there with my shrinking Procreator, blushing and suddenly shy. It occurred to me in that moment that the Garment, the Sacraments, the temple, the compound, the Church itself were microcosms of the Doctrine of Chosen Separateness, and each one was a kind of barrier that forbade contact and stifled desire. Or a kind of prophylactic. We are in the World but not of it. Germs and long brown legs cannot be entirely avoided, but we, the Pure, can put on the Breastplate of Righteousness and protect our purity from infection. I dared a long, direct look at June's face as she waited for me to speak. She blinked. Her smile tightened to hide her big white teeth. She looked down. I saw her in that moment: skinny, angular, gaunt. She licked her lips. Her hair shifted across her forehead. She drew her frail shoulders forward. Color spread up her neck, blotchy and pink. Shame shallowed my breath. My hand shakes as I write this. It is possible to encapsulate a worldview so compactly that you can hold it in you as you'd hold a closed book. I held it one last time. I saw its nacreous round perfection. I heard its ponderous amens. I smelled its antiseptic whiteness, its chlorine inertia. One last moment I held it and then I dropped it and I turned to her mouth, red and chapped and full of teeth, and I was, forgive me, born again.
So I close my eyes and see a red vinyl lounge chair in the noisy student union as the fulcrum of my life. There was before. There was that moment. Now there's after. A construction of memory, of course. In that moment I knew I'd chosen a new way, but I couldn't feel it. There had been shame. Then there was that moment. Now there will be years of dread and second guessing. But that moment was silent, unmoving, pivotal.
I looked at June's mouth. She looked at the floor. She shifted to cross her gawky legs. Distractions returned. The noise of the room intruded. June's assignment nagged. I needed to adjust my Procreator where it was pushing painfully against my zipper.
June continued:
"Can you tell me something we'd like to know about yourself? Your story?"
"Umm. This may take a while."
"That's okay. I've got like a week."
"It may take longer than that."
"Oh."
"I mean. I am. Okay, so, it is not what you'd say is a story that is just, how do you? tellable? About how... With beginning, middle, and end? I mean linear? Linear."
"..."
"I'm sorry. So. Okay, picture here I am like a house with no foundation. Or no. I'm sorry..."
"I just want you to start. I want to help you start saying this."
"..."
"You have a story and we are curious about it. I mean..."
"My story is not something..."
"Sorry."
"Okay."
I said let's go outside and walk. She said ok. She looked relieved. She smiled, which relieved me. We went out. She had to lean hard to push open a door, that is how skinny. She is my height. I followed her out and close behind her I smelled soap. We walked around the quad. I told her a little about my birth and she was silent, and in her silence I thought I understood for a moment the grave strangeness of our practices: the hidden father, the assigned mother, the surgical birth, the bubble, the row of plump white witnesses looking on from the window, the gloves, the Purell, the prayers, the antibiotics. I had a good idea. I suggested she tell me parts of her life and I would follow up with the corresponding parts of mine. This might highlight differences, but it could also help her understand my reticence.
We spoke for two hours and agreed to keep talking tomorrow.
[October 25] - Yesterday, that hour, and then another, we talked about her family and my Church congregation, her hometown and the compound, her dog and my fear of dogs. And today we spoke more. I dropped my guard. I trust her. She didn't mock me or make fun of me, of course. She seems genuinely curious and interested. She is gentle. A few times she laughed at what I said and then apologized and I take this as a sign that, though she feels my story is strange, she is tolerant of its strangeness and disinclined to judge.
[November 1] - Spoke w/ June several times this week. Every day. It's become obvious that the newspaper article has become a thin pretext for our conversation, which has moved far beyond what a brief profile piece could cover. Today she said
"I told them I'm not writing the piece."
"Oh. Why?"
She kept looking at the ground and her voice took on a new tone. "I recused myself."
This was a new word to me.
"Recused. Like a judge? I mean, I just think journalistically and objectivity-wise I am not writing a profile about a friend."
"Oh. That's..."
"I mean, so, it's like it's not my story to tell now? Now that I'm. I feel too in it. To write it like a reporter at this point. These walks and telling me all that now I can't write it. In good conscience. Or really feeling good about it?"
This is where the awkwardness and the longing came together in one sharp point. This flitting around friendship, her shift of allegiance toward me and away from her assignment, left me flustered and happy, both. I couldn't think of a word to say. Then I worried she would think I was rejecting what she'd said, so I just said "Thank you.".
We walked. She wanted coffee, so off we went. I don't remember what prompted me to tell her about that night almost two years before when strangers had invited me up to their porch. Maybe it was a way to explain my loneliness. I described my Protections seeming to float in the dark that moonlit night, and the first hint of shame that I think was prompted somehow by Jenny's voice, her friendly invitation, her offer of food, my inability to really join the group because of my separateness and strangeness.
[January 1, 2015] - It is a mystery to me how some people move so quickly from nice-to-meet-you to intimacy. June and I have moved incrementally. So much of our conversation has been oblique that sometimes I haven't been entirely sure what we're talking about. We've spent more and more time together. We studied for finals together, though she found my focus and drive exhausting, and cause for some amusement. Somewhere this last month she began kidding me gently, telling me jokes. She has a sense of humor I find challenging. It's filled with references to popular songs and shows I don't know. It involves contorted faces, wild and abrupt gestures, mimicry, silly noises. I had never known a grownup who did any of this, and I have trouble, sometimes, taking her seriously. But her humor is a welcome to me. It dissolves my loneliness. It minimizes my strangeness. In the Church we used to have a ritual that I never understood till June started joking with me: once a year, right before Resurrection, we would gather with the youngest children at the outer gate of the temple and remove our boots and throw them in a big pile by the gate. Then we would throw the gates open and let the kids run around the forecourt for an hour in their white bare feet. We called this Profanation. It was a way to introduce the kids to the temple, but to do so I guess we had to ritually defile the place, because kids weren't usually allowed in. I told June, and she said, simply "Fuck", and laughed out loud. I was shocked for a moment, until she said "I just profaned you.". I admit I blushed. Later, at home, I pictured myself as the temple. In my mind I opened the gate and let her in. I know. But, like I said, we move incrementally. This was a big step for me. It took me down a notch, loosened me up, and I felt happy.
[April 19] - This spring we've fallen into a comfortable pattern of eating lunch together in her apartment. I work in the library shelving books. She spends mornings making healthy snacks for a vegan coffee place next to campus. She likes to dress up. Every day she wears a long skirt and a high-buttoned ruffed blouse and a frilly apron, like a Victorian matron. But always those ugly square-toed boots. I walk in every day when she's clocking out and we walk the block to her place and have sandwiches or soup. The cafe owner, a sort of white Rastafarian who feigns affability but is known for sudden, spectacular rages, has taken to calling me Elder, which I find irritating. Today I asked him to call me Yeshua and he apologized in a way that struck me as insincere. Over tomato soup and grilled cheese I mentioned this to June.
"You got nothing to be jealous about with him, you know." She said.
"I'm not jealous."
"Okay."
"I just think he's a hypocrite."
"Of course he is."
"He is self-righteous about his ethics. His ideas about animals and his ostentatious way of telling customers how he splits his earnings with his staff."
"Which he doesn't."
"Right."
"So he's just like everyone else and you don't have to let him rile you."
"Okay. He's just irritating."
"I know. So am I."
"You're not"
"And so are you."
"Okay."
[May 4] - I've gradually met June's friends. They've accepted me pretty easily. Not the big deal I'd expected. I had expected endless awkwardness. Tonight there was a party after a gallery opening. We left the gallery as a loud group. Some of them had been drinking wine. They were very boisterous and lewd and there was much hilarity. June was in on it, so I was at the edge of the group with my hands in my pockets feeling left out and unliked. June was telling some kind of joke that included many sound effects and silly voices. She had her arm draped over the shoulders of a girlfriend of hers, a stocky woman who plays on the University soccer team. While everyone was laughing at the punchline, which I didn't get at all, she swung her other arm over my shoulders and lifted her booted feet off the ground. We walked on with June suspended between us, her skeletal frame dangling like a marionette, almost weightless. Brothers and Sisters, you will understand, but the World will not, that we had never before touched, except incidentally. Her arm around my neck, her hot ribs against my arm, her laughing in my ear, her smell of soap and patchouli brought me to abrupt and sudden arousal, so that I had to put a hand in my pocket to hide it. We went a block or more like that. Then June dropped her far arm off the soccer-player's shoulder but kept hugging me. She made a show of mirroring me. She matched my pace, and, to my shame, put her hand in her pocket. I thought she knew, but she just kept joking. I could see the late sun through her teeth. I could smell the wine. The wine in her disinhibited me, too, and when we got to the party June handed me a plastic cup of vinegary wine and I drank it, quickly. Without hesitation.
Over the evening I drank a few more glasses, of course the first alcohol of my life, and was very drunk. I even danced. A loud hilarity continued for hours until one by one the partygoers sunk into chairs too drunk and exhausted to keep dancing. June and I danced slow. I put my hands on her hips, sharp and bony through her clothes. She pushed her forehead into the bridge of my nose, and her nose against my lips. And we slowly adjusted this closeness until our lips were together. I shook. My hands on her hips fluttered. She whispered shushing noises to me. I felt her teeth with my tongue.
At her apartment she pulled me by the hand upstairs, up the stairs i'm sitting on now. We fell asleep pressed together on her bed. I woke up an hour ago, in the black early morning, spinning and desperately thirsty and sick. I gulped water and let myself out as quietly as I could. I stood here in the hall for a while. I leaned against her door for a long time, reeling. My sacred calling, which I've been neglecting for a long time now, pulls me toward the stairs, but the thought of June's kiss holds me here, writing this ludicrous story, drunk, propped against falling in this dark hallway, at the top of these stairs.
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