Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (4 page)

Then I met him in the “AT.” With sounds from a blues group called the Black Cat encircling the dark, smoky room, marijuana joints were shared and Boone’s Farm wine flowed freely. I danced solo to the music, oblivious to anything but the movements of my body, and, finally exhausted, I sat down on the wooden floor with a group of boys passing around a pipe, surprised to find Jay among them. We talked until closing time about the ideas we had learned in our class, and, turned on more by his mind than his body, I walked home with him to listen to music in the privacy of his bedroom. I was seventeen years old, but since sex had never been a top priority for me, I really didn’t know much about how to do it. I was surprised by the pain.

“Shit, I didn’t know you were a virgin,” Jay said almost contemptuously.

“This isn’t free love,” I thought,“it’s free sex.” I remember standing by the window in his attic room, and looking out on the darkened road.

I suddenly recognized it as the same street where my sister had been born years ago—Ruby Street. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I left him silent on the bed and walked home alone through the empty, rain-drenched streets. As usual, my mom and sisters were in bed. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t talk to them anyway. Sex was a taboo subject in my house. I could picture my mom screaming and calling the pastor if I told her. I had no curfew and my mother thought I was mature enough to do what I wanted, so I walked the streets all night with a mixture of happiness to have had the experience and sadness to be alone again.

Feeling alienated from the drug and music scene, I looked around for something to feel close to and thought I would return to the familiar pews of the churches. I remember riding my bike one day to a church that advertised a special youth meeting with an internationally known missionary speaker. I was hopeful that perhaps my old love for religion would be reignited. After all, I wanted to be a missionary when I was a child, and I had asked Jesus into my heart when I was a twelve-year-old at a Bible camp. As I held hands with a dozen other campers around a campfire, a feeling of euphoria came over me. I felt I had been chosen by God for “His Ministry,” but I was not sure what that meant. Having gone to Sunday school and church camps until I was a teen, I’m sure it was a Christian concept I had internalized. I never thought it would be easy to be a Christian, in fact, I felt that perhaps I had left the church because it was too hard to obey all their rules. Maybe now I would be like the prodigal son/daughter. I imagined the missionary welcoming me with open arms. Ah, how wonderful it would be if someone pure hugged me. “What a friend we have in Jesus.” In my state of hopeful anticipation, it never occurred to me to dress up for church. I wore my jeans, the ones I had carefully embroidered to fill up the holes, and a lacy, oldfashioned blouse covered with a tapestry vest. My long blond hair was hanging free, barely brushed, and I wore no makeup or jewelry. My unkempt appearance became brutally obvious the minute I walked into the church, which was only a few blocks from where I lived.

Once inside, I walked hesitantly up to one of the front rows and took a vacant seat beside a group of girls about my age. They were all dressed nicely, with nylons on their legs and shiny shoes. I looked not only ragged next to these polished specimens of American youth, I looked dirty. My beautiful embroidery, which I had always admired for its colorful appearance, now looked dull and shabby.

A young boy with buzz cut turned around to whisper something to the girl next to me. She giggled and inched away from me. Was she making more room for me, or was my presence repulsive? I realized that most of these young people went to my high school, but I did not recognize anyone. Did anyone know me?

I focused my attention on the missionary. He was regaling us with his stories about his work in Africa. He launched into a diatribe about the sins of the youth in America, and how we were so lucky to have good parents who raised us differently. I kept my eyes on him the entire time, hoping he would look my way and notice the deep desire I had to serve the Lord. He glanced at me once briefly and never looked my way again. In fact, I felt that he avoided turning his eyes to the section I was sitting in altogether.

The missionary finished his talk. An extra collection was made, but I had no money to drop in the basket. The young people got up to sing some songs led by a young man playing guitar. The service would soon be over. I felt my heart beating excitedly. After all the wonderful songs about helping others and loving the world, surely someone would come over and talk to me. I had so much to ask, so much to convey, and so much I wanted to learn.

People started leaving. The girls next to me got up and went out the other way so they would not have to pass by me. The boys in the front row walked by without looking my way. Still, I remained in the pew. I would not leave until the church shut down. I wanted someone to talk to me. I wanted to feel like I belonged.

Finally, an older man came over to me. He handed me a paper that seemed to be the program for the evening.

“Young lady, you can go downstairs if you want to, but I am going to close up here, so you will have to leave the pew.” Tears had come to my eyes without my noticing it and I could hardly read the program.

Did it say that there were refreshments being served downstairs? Is that where everyone went?

“No, thank you,” I said, now visibly crying. “I want only food for the soul. Do you happen to know where to get that?” He looked at me curiously, and I suddenly felt sorry for him. He did not have a clue what I meant.

I continued my quixotic quest after that church experience, but with less hope. Definitely, there was something different about me. I did not seem to fit in anywhere. I was an outcast like my poor brother, only I had not chosen the crime track. Fortunately, all my younger sisters were “normal.” They were content with the typical little-town life that Lancaster offered. Maybe being in one place had helped them, or being raised without an alcoholic father always around. I didn’t ask why then, only what—what do I do now?

Meanwhile, back at the hippie scene, Jan had a steady boyfriend, and we took different paths. She wanted to live a love-and-peace lifestyle with her “old man,” and I was headed for college. Since I would have to get some scholarship money, I started staying home in the evenings to study.

“Miriam, we got a new history teacher at school today,” my younger sister, Karen, told me one afternoon. “You would really like him. He talks like you, and he has long hair.”

“What do you mean he talks like me?” I asked Karen, who was in junior high.

“oh, he talks about ideas, and tells us to think about things and discuss the subject with each other. You know, like you tell us to do about the Vietnam War and all that stuff. I think he is against the war too.”

“Surely he did not say anything against the war in school?”

“No, but he brought in some newspaper articles that said things about America that were not too good. In fact, some of the kids said they were going to tell their parents.”

“No way!”

“Well, he lives right down the street from us—about three houses down. I thought you might like him.”

When I finished my homework, I walked outside our town house and looked down the street. All the houses were exactly the same in the group of ten. The only difference was what the residents put on their porch.

Three houses down, the porch was empty, but what gave him away was the VW bug parked in front. I knew that it would appear odd for me to introduce myself uninvited, but if this man was anything like me, as my sister said, he would not mind. I walked up to the door and knocked.

“Yeah?” said a young man of about twenty who answered the door.

“Hi, I live a couple houses down.”

“Yeah?” he said again.

“Well, my sister said that her teacher lived here and…”

“Come on in,” he said to me as he called up the stairs. “Sonny, some hippie chick’s here to see you.” I walked into a living room similar to ours.

There were two other older boys sitting on the couch watching television. One motioned for me to sit next to him. He was a big fellow with curly black hair, and he smiled as he put his hand on my shoulder.

“My, you are a young one, aren’t you?” he said, sardonically sizing up what appeared to be jailbait.

“I’m a senior,” I said, not sure what he meant. I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable around these boys, who obviously were more sophisticated than I was, and I hadn’t been prepared for a roomful of older males.

A man with shoulder-length, brown wavy hair was coming down the steps.

He had a slight build and wore a full mustache. I remember thinking he had a nice smile.

“I’m Sonny,” he said to me as he extended his hand to welcome me,“but I guess you heard of me as Mr. Economopoulus.” I was glad to stand up and move away from the bear grinning at my side.

I introduced myself and then sat on another chair, feeling tension inside me caused by indecision on whether to stay or run away.

However, Sonny looked safe.

“So…you’re Karen’s sister. You don’t look like her.” It was evident he was trying to make small talk, but he seemed interested.

“I look like me,” I retorted, knowing immediately it was a stupid thing to say.

The other boys howled with laughter at my less than brilliant comment, which made me feel a slight desire to crawl into a hole. I was beginning to think it was not such a good idea to be here, but Sonny smiled in a way that made me feel comfortable.

“Well, let’s go up in my room and we can talk there,” he said casually.

That drew a round of catcalls.

“Remember, she’s a minor.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Or maybe I should say, don’t do anything I would want to do.” I followed Sonny upstairs to the front bedroom. He had music playing and a few albums Lying out on the floor.

I looked at his collection.

“Who do you like?” he asked.

“Dylan, Crosby, Stills and Nash…”

“Do you like Carole King?”

“I never heard her.”

“Well, you’ll have to listen.” I sat down on the floor while he put on an album called Tapestry. He sat behind me on the bed with his knees touching my back while he told me about his musical tastes, his graduation from elite Franklin and Marshall, his work as a teacher, and his desire to go back to graduate school. He was twenty-four years old and from Massachusetts, and I remember feeling special to have a handsome college graduate interested in talking with me. It was my first intimate experience with someone so educated to whom I could relate. Up to this point, I had always felt a chasm between myself and the radical intellectual. But then, I was still relatively new in this counterculture predicted by contemporary visionaries, such as Paul Goodman, Allen Ginsberg, and Charles Reich.

My own vision included a major societal shift from war to peace, from hate to love, from bondage to liberation. I don’t know if Sonny felt the same way, but I saw him as a fellow freedom fighter. When he offered me a pipe of marijuana, I took a hit. I still wanted to believe that smoking pot was a ritual between the enlightened, and maybe love would secure the connection. I let him take me to bed without any resistance.

Since I was no longer a virgin, it didn’t hurt anymore. With relatively little experience under my belt, I knew that it should feel good, but I had no idea what an orgasm should be like. Therefore, I never knew if I had one or not.

“I guess it is getting late for you,” he said, as he rose to change the album.

“No, I don’t have a curfew,” I replied. “And my homework is finished.”

“So, you are conscientious about your homework. Tomorrow you can bring it over here if you like.” I spent many evenings at Sonny’s house after that. I told my mother I was at a friend’s house, which was not a lie, he had become my best friend. Associating with Sonny, I was introduced to many of the Franklin and Marshall graduates, mostly rich kids from New York and New England states, and I met the members of the same blues band that I used to listen to in the “AT.” Although it was nice to be accepted by this group, who were not only “cool” but wealthy also, I knew it wasn’t due to my merit as an individual but only because of my close friendship with Sonny. That troubled me, whereas I should have been basking in my newfound fellowship with the privileged.

I admired Sonny’s intelligence, but more than anything I appreciated his gentleness. He never pushed me to do anything, and never belittled any of my viewpoints. Instead, he told me his own views without getting patronizing or offensive. He challenged me to think about what I was saying, but he did not criticize my youthful nonsense. And at seventeen, one can be very stupid.

Even though I came to Sonny’s every time I was free, I did not consider him my boyfriend. I did not tell anyone at school that I was seeing him, and he never gave me a ring or necklace, or anything that signified we were “going out.” I was too inhibited to ask why this was, but I eventually assumed that he realized I was too young to make our relationship public, or perhaps he thought that since I was seven years younger than he, I still had a lot to experience. I thought I did too.

“I want to go to the Moratorium against the war in Washington,” I told him one spring day.

“You know I can’t come,” he said.

“I know, but I thought I would ask.”

“Even if I did not teach, I would not go to the Moratorium. I have different ways to express my discontent with government policy.”

“And so do I. But I want to go for the experience. I want to be part of the movement to stop the war.”

“You are part of it right here. Go if you want to, of course. But how will you get there? Who is going with you?”

“I’m taking my sister, and we’ll hitchhike.”

“I can’t tell you what to do,” he said with a sigh.

I knew he did not approve of me hitchhiking, but he would never say it.

The Moratorium, held in April 1971, was a huge peace march against the war in Vietnam. I went to Washington to participate, slept on the Quaker church floor with hundreds of other dreamers, and was detained in a park by the National Guard. While there, I met an intense boy who read Chairman Mao religiously. I never saw him smile. Of the thousands of young people who came to Washington for those days, I met no one else.