Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (45 page)

Eventually, I had to deal in my own conscience with the complex issue of annulment, which even the Catholic Church allows in exceptional cases. I believe my marriage was an exception. When I asked Paolo what he thought of our marriage in the Family, he said that he saw it in the context of the “one wife” view that the COG held. For that reason he never gave me a ring, and he called me a “mate” instead of “wife.” However, he did not join to share with other women, and he did not particularly like that aspect of our beliefs. He accepted it perhaps because he too was a former hippie who was willing to try out alternative lifestyles.

Once out of the Family’s doctrinal hold, we both discovered our true personalities. Paolo is basically a traditional man, with a conservative outlook, and capitalist proclivities, which have helped him to develop a successful business. I am a nontraditional woman, with a radically liberal outlook, nonmaterialistic values, and an eternally questioning mind that attracts me to scholastic pursuits.

Even though we are worlds apart philosophically, I do respect his beliefs and his chosen way of life.

My dear children are the only reason I could continue to live during my most despondent times and despairing moments. I hope when they read this book (which they are not to do until they are eighteen years old), they will understand that the woman I am writing about is not the mother they know, the mother who they complain is “too protective,” “too oldfashioned,” and “doesn’t know anything.” They don’t know me as the Jeshanah in this book, although they are aware that they were born and lived in the Family. They have also gone to the reunions and have met the children of other ex-members. They have heard the stories, and they have probably heard my story from other people. I remember Thor’s heartbreaking reaction to hearing about me from his father. Since I will probably never be able to sit down with each one and tell them my side of the story (they would never sit still that long), this book will eventually let them know why I was at one time a Heaven’s Harlot. But most of all, they should know that it was worth it all in order that I might have had each one of them, and that it has only been through them that I know how to love.

Thor, my firstborn, who explains life to me better than anyone, is now half a foot taller than I but still asks for hugs and kisses. I see him as a performer, scholar, philosopher, and mystic, but he would say that he’s only living a life.

Before Thor left to study in Germany for a year on an exchange program, I spent some time alone with him. Both vegetarians, we talk after a leftover meal of broccoli and pasta. The night falls, and we stay there talking about alienation and meaninglessness, about Jesus and other spiritual masters, about Eastern religions of the heart and Western philosophy of the mind. I tell Thor about the little old lady I see when I meditate who informs me that she is wisdom, and I ask him what it means to climb the spiritual Himalayas. As I listen to his answers, I know that he is going farther than I. On the morning of our last day together, I am worried about his future in Germany. Besides the fact that I will miss him again, it seems like an unnecessary difficulty for my son, now twenty-four and working on his doctorate in math, to be an exchange student in Berlin. He doesn’t even speak German, and the scholarship he will receive is considerably less than he got in America.

“It’s the mountain, Mom,” he told me, with a smile that remains in my mind forever. “The mountain was there on my path so I had to climb it.”

I knew exactly what he meant. I had been coming to a deep abyss, knowing that I must cross it.

Although I have not been a perfect mother, I have been a flexible one, and I have imparted the concept of an expansive God to my children.

This was so wonderfully illustrated to me when we were answering questions one night around the dinner table. Jordan, at twelve years old, wondered why the American Indians were close to nature, living in tents and eating the food from the earth, whereas the Europeans lived in houses and were advanced in technology. The answers offered by her two sisters were that Indians were closer to God, or that God wanted to see how different cultures would be.

The next question came from Michelangelo. “What is the meaning of life?” asked my ten-year-old.

I did not answer him—he was so young—but as I asked him to answer that himself, I remembered when my own search began.

Three of my children were born in Europe, and the first two were raised there since they were one year old. In the summer of 1997, I took my four younger children to Europe to visit their paternal grandmother and to rediscover their roots. Back in Italy, visiting the places where we had lived, my kids had the opportunity to explore and remember who they were as young children, and thankfully, their memories were joyful.

Meanwhile, my memories, like cobwebs in a corner of my mind, were glistening in the misty light of the past. While in Italy and France, I recalled the gray ghosts that I had left in those places, and who were waiting there to greet me. Some of them I dismissed, and they vanished.

Others clung to me, begging for existence. Sometimes I gave in, such as when I saw Salim walk by while I was sitting on a bench in Monte Carlo, drawing pictures of exotic trees.

I don’t think he recognized me, although he looked back my way three times while walking at a quick pace with another well-suited gentleman.

He himself had changed considerably, but I knew his eyes.

Salim was not always in Monte Carlo, I don’t remember him ever walking anywhere, and I was only there for one day, so the fact that he passed by was too fortuitous to be a coincidence. Thinking over the reason for this, I decided I should let him know that I was writing this book.

He had been so helpful in finding my son years ago, for which I will be forever grateful. Therefore, I left him a note at the Hotel de Paris, not even sure that he still had a suite there. The concierge recognized his name immediately and said he would give the note to Salim’s secretary. I wrote that I was visiting the area and, if he had time, I would like to talk to him about a book I was writing. I was not sure if he would remember who I was, and all I had for a return address was “in care of” the American Express office in Monte Carlo, since I was traveling. When I checked back the next week, there was a message from him with a phone number to call.

It had been over ten years since I had last seen Salim, and I was a little apprehensive about what he might think of my contacting him again. But I thought he deserved an explanation for my actions in the previous years. I thought he might like to know that I had finally broken free from the cult’s clutches—for surely he must have known that I was in a cult. And most of all, I wanted him to know how much I appreciated his help in finding my son and to tell him that Thor and I were together again! Still, I was nervous when he answered the phone.

“Hello, this is Miriam.”

“Who?” he asked in a thick Lebanese voice that I recognized immediately.

“Miriam. I left you the note. I used to be called Jeshanah.”

“Oh yes, I remember. Yes, I was surprised to get your note. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you. I—”

“Yes, can you come see me?”

“Well, yes, I’d like to talk with you.”

“I don’t want to talk. I hear you are writing a book, but I don’t want you to interview me. You know…I want to relax with you…like we used to do.”

“Oh, Salim,” I laughed rather heartily, so thoroughly unexpected had been his comment.

“I don’t do that anymore. That’s what I wanted to talk about…”

“Well, I really don’t have time to talk, you see. If you want to relax with me, give me a call. Otherwise, I wish you the best of luck with your book.”

“Okay. Well…thank you…Goodbye.” I hung up the pay phone in a daze. I was so sure he was a friend that I never thought to question his motives. Why was I so naive? Going back to the hotel room, I was thankful that the children were in Italy with their relatives. It gave me time for contemplation and meditation, and I desperately wanted to explain myself to me.

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice,“because I’m not myself, you see.” Alice in Wonderland told this to the Caterpillar, who sat on the mushroom smoking a hookah. She had been through quite a number of changes and found it hard to explain who she was. I also found it difficult to explain myself. I remembered a Zen saying,“There is no better explanation than actual experience. ” Sitting quietly on my bed with a view of the terra-cotta rooftops of Nice, I relived the experiences of my lifetime in my mind, observing and absorbing each impression. As I contemplated the concept of meaning, I asked the question,“Who defines the meaning of anything?” Continuing along this line of questioning, I arrived where I really wanted to be.

“Who defines me? Who will give meaning to my life?” I should, of course! Perhaps that was one of my first mistakes. I had lost the meaning I gave to myself, the definition of me, and I accepted other people’s meaning. No wonder it never fit right. I arose from my bed, and in the light of the midnight moon, I walked down to the beach, searching for a memory of me. Intuitively, I knew that the beach at night had been the scene for many of my turning points. Perhaps the memory of who I was and who I am would come back to me through the timeless rumbling tide of the sea. She once took my thoughts far away, but eventually she would wash them ashore again.

I listened to the waves’ steady roar, mentally searching the shore for my memory. An illuminating awareness surrounded my thoughts, and I understood that I had lost not my soul but my self during those years in the cult, yet I have tried to explain myself through the story of my experience. And the story has now come full circle, I was back at the same place where I had stood twenty years ago, when I let my own thoughts drift out to sea and accepted the concept of sacred prostitution.

Whenever I had tried to define myself during those years in the cult, someone always took the self-defined me and threw her overboard.

Now I had taken back the captainship of my soul, but it was a long process finding the self that had been thrown out to the sea. It required the coordination of time and space and thought and intuition.

It took crossing the ocean and talking to Salim on the phone before I understood that I still had to reclaim a part of me that had been lost somewhere in Monte Carlo. It meant meditating for hours as I let my thoughts take wing and fly down into the abyss of nothingness where meaning can be created. And I had to follow my intuition to go back to the sea. That starry summer night, standing alone on the windy pebbled beach the Cote d’Azur, where it all started, I called my self back.

Eventually, she came—a cold, shivering, confused young girl, but still alive, just as my soul had still been breathing underneath the wardrobe.

I took my trembling self inside the warmth of my heart. I understood her perfectly. Wide-eyed, innocent, and silent, she had been waiting to be reunited with my body. Before calling Salim, I was still a naive, peace-loving woman who craved deep friendships and believed in idealistic love for others. I had been the clueless girl who had idealized the Family and desired a close relationship so much that I allowed them to define who I was. Now I was the captain of my soul—not a captive of some other person’s ideology. This time, when Salim made his offer, I answered with my own words, as one who knows who I am.

After discovering my childhood secrets and taking control of my “house,” I now could affirm who I was.

“No, I am not a prostitute!” Those words were spoken for me and from me—a woman who had found her soul. Those words said that I was now creating my own identity, that I was not an object of sex—not for my father, or husband, or a millionaire, or a leader, or even “God.” In the process of defining myself, I have had to establish precise moral imperatives. For instance, never have I condoned any form of abuse of children, especially sexual abuse by adults, or even sexual promiscuity among children. Nor have I ever been anti-Semitic, however my involvement with the Family might seem to negate these positions. As I have tried to explain, and as has been confirmed by many ex-COG members who have written about their experiences, we had willingly given up control of our lives when we joined the cult. The majority of us were still in our teens. All of us were extremely idealistic—and in a practical sense, extremely naive—and I believe that most of us had been sexually, emotionally, or physically abused as children. We were victims as children, and as adults we unconsciously chose to continue to be victimized.

However, I do accept responsibility for having manipulated men, for having allowed the emotional and physical abuse of my son, and for having permitted him to be exposed to sexual issues at too early an age.

I take responsibility for having allowed perversions in the group to continue by not taking a definite stand against what I read in the Mo letters, but when it came to a point where the perversions were in my own home, and I believed they might be perpetrated against my own daughter, I finally realized what responsibility meant. I was not willing to be responsible for child sexual abuse in my own home, so I left it. That was the breaking point for me. Abuse victims, we often read, continue the cycle by becoming abusers themselves. If only they would take responsibility now for their actions, the cycle could be broken. I intend this book to be an act of taking responsibility for my behavior, of setting an example by one person who did break the cycle.

I want to be absolutely sure that the above point is understood, especially by all ex-COG members who now live with the torment of hiding/explaining/forgetting/remembering what they once gave their lives to. living in a closed society, we unconsciously reinforced each other’s sentiments, believing that everything we did was for love, not for lust or vanity, until at last, we were worse than brainwashed— we were selfless, beings totally vulnerable to manipulation. Valuing only some abstract ideal of love, we had little respect for ourselves, and therefore little respect for others. Fortunately, the lives of my children held greater value for me, and thus I was somehow able to snap out of my ideological stupor.