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HEAVEN'S HARLOTS:  MY FIFTEEN YEARS AS A SACRED PROSTITUTE IN THE CHILDREN OF GOD CULT

2.  A Curiouser and Curiouser World:

My father sang to me as I played on the California beach. I remember him singing one of his favorite songs. "I'll have a little talk with Jesus/and I'll tell  him all about my troubles." I guess he had a lot of problems, and so he drank  and so he sang. And that's what I remember most about my father.

His family was from Ireland. They were struck by tragedy when his mother was hit by a car and killed when he was a little boy. The story was  told to me by my father when he was drunk, and by my mother when she  tried to explain why Daddy always drank. He had let go of his mother's hand  when crossing a busy Philadelphia street. Whether she was hit because she  ran after him, or he saved his life by letting go of her hand, I never  understood. I only know that my father, and everyone in his family, were  alcoholics by the time I came around, on June 27, 1953.

My father, John, was a tall, trim, handsome fellow who had served in World War II. Since he was a very good Linotype machine operator, he  could always get a job wherever he went. But he could never hold  on to it because of his drinking. Maybe that's why we moved across the  United States and back, and I never went to one school for a whole year until  I was in ninth grade. Sometimes we lived in nice suburban houses, and then  we would move to a tiny apartment in the inner city. Often my mother sent  my older brother, Steve, and I to the bars to look for my dad. If he did not  come home from work, we went to remind him that he had a family. Since  we didn't have a TV (it was too heavy to move around), this was always an  exciting adventure for us. My memories of that early part of my life include  Planters peanuts, bright orange soda, and dart boards, set around the many  lounges my dad frequented. In the really bad days, they were on skid row.

My mother, on the other hand, was a fundamentalist Christian who had been raised in a loving family. Mother had come to America as a sixteen-year-old escaping Nazi Germany. Her father worked hard and made a good  living for his family, and although he had been a prosperous carpenter in  Germany, he became a gardener for wealthy German industrialists when he  moved to America. Shrewd and frugal, he managed to buy five homes in  America and became a landlord. My grandmother instilled strict Christian  ideals in her daughter. She was a sweet, caring lady, but I never had a  conversation with her since she never learned to speak English. She was  blind when I was old enough to know her.

My mother and her family settled in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1939. She eventually attended Temple University, but she left to work at a newspaper  office, where she met my father. Although she had six children with him,  she was not the typical 1950s housewife. When I was younger, I was always  embarrassed by my mother because she spoke with a German accent, didn't  perm her hair or wear makeup like other moms, and her name was Elfriede.  Most of all, she did not know how to take care of the house.

"Why don't you know how to cook, or keep house?" I often asked her when I was a sassy twelve-year-old. Since I was the oldest girl among six  children, many of these chores fell on me. "You were raised in Germany,  and all the German women we know cook very well and  ,keep spotless houses."

"You see, I went to the 'better schools' in Germany," she explained unashamedly. "And girls who went to those schools did not have to  learn household chores since they would have maids to do them."  Obviously, being a housewife was beneath her since she had been given the  dream of marrying above her middle-class status in Germany. But this was  America, Mom. Wake up, the middle class here is huge.

Our family was a study of contrasts. We were often poor, but we usually lived in nice neighborhoods. My father drank, smoked, and cursed,  whereas my mother was very religious and would not allow us to say so  much as "Oh my God," which was taking the Lord's name in vain. My older  brother and I, who bore most of the traveling hardships, excelled at school.  Unfortunately, my brother used his extraordinary intelligence to obtain  money through illegal methods, such as burglary and the unauthorized  withdrawal of other people's bank money. Consequently, Steve spent most  of his adult life in prison, while I spent most of my life trying to serve the  Lord. Perhaps they are two sides of the same coin.

I entered McCaskey High School, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1968. By this time I had convinced my mother that for the sake of my four  younger sisters, she should separate from Dad. I was fourteen years old.  Steve was already in a reformatory, and I was beginning to get angry with  my mom for allowing us to live such a dysfunctional life. My mom  explained sweetly that she didn't believe in divorce but she might consider  separation. I think she talked it over with her pastor, and since her six  children were all in school now, she got a job and eventually bought a house  in the town of Lancaster. She separated legally from Dad, but it only meant  we didn't move so much. He still came around drunk.

Lancaster County, known as Amish country, was removed from the massive social upheaval sweeping the nation at the time. People in Lancaster  were content. Many of them were Mennonites, and the ones who were not  lived rather well with the traditional lifestyle encouraged by Amish and  Mennonite philosophy, with little exposure to modern life. However, even  Lancaster would not escape the unrest that infected American youth like a  plague.

I was among the first to catch it, or perhaps my unrest was just waiting to express itself. I had thought it was my family's unusual gypsy lifestyle that  was preventing me from feeling like one of the crowd among my peers.  However, now that I had lived in one place for more than a year, and still  felt like an outsider, I began to wonder. I always made good grades, but I  could not find a niche. In addition, I was beginning to be known as a rebel. Popular girls were wearing  miniskirts at that time, and I thought it was more practical to wear pants. I  remember being sent to the principal's office.

"Miriam, you are a smart girl. You will probably get some good scholarships to college, if you don't cause any trouble. Now you know the  rules -- girls cannot wear pants."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, that's the rule."

"I know, but why was that rule made? I mean, don't you know that the boys spend half their time trying to look up the girls' dresses? And I believe  some of the teachers do, too. With hemlines six inches above the knee, do  you think it is a good rule to require girls to wear dresses?"

The principal was a sincere man. "No," he answered, "perhaps it is not a sensible rule anymore, but until it changes, you must obey  it."

"I believe I must protest it. If the rule is ever to change, sir, someone has to challenge it."

I protested by wearing my unfashionable farmer jeans to school, and the principal suspended me for three days. That was the rule. But I continued to  wear pants, and he never suspended me again.

I have always suspected that the real reason I wore pants was because I could not afford to dress fashionably. Wearing dresses or skirts meant  having a different outfit every day. With jeans, I only had to change my  shirts. However, the very next year the rule was changed. Girls could wear  pants. By then I had discovered that thrift stores held a wonderful variety of  lovely old dresses for literally nickels and dimes. For five dollars I could buy  a wardrobe that lasted for months and was one-of-a-kind. I was especially  fond of the 1940s-style silk dresses and anything with lace or bead work. I  became a hippie before I knew what it was to be one.

Since the hippies had not yet come onto the scene in Lancaster, I had only one good friend until my junior year. She was a Jewish girl who was  extremely intelligent, and though we came from completely different  backgrounds, we had similar interests. I would ride my bike over to her  upper-class neighborhood in my thrift store clothes and spend the evenings  discussing existential thought. We remained in contact throughout high  school. 

By the time I was in eleventh grade, a group of hippies started to form at my school. They dressed like me, or I dressed like them -- I'm not sure which -- and other people lumped me in with them. Teachers knew that if I did  not agree with a viewpoint, I would discuss it publicly. I had also taken to  hitchhiking around town, since my brief tenure as a driver had resulted in the wreck of my long-awaited car. Most of all, I began smoking dope, on my  own. I smoked it religiously, alone in my room, with candles and incense  burning and music playing. It was a personal ritual, almost sacred, and I was  reluctant to include others at that time. I also had been dabbling in  philosophy and Eastern practices like yoga. I was at the door of discovering  myself, when the hippies called at my window. They looked colorful,  exciting, and adventurous, like I wanted to be. I guess I wanted company after all.

I soon met Jan, a classmate who had recently given up her role as cheerleader and boy-with-car-chaser to experiment in the sixties happening.  A tall, thin, pretty, and stylishly dressed girl, she approached me one day out  of the blue to ask where she could buy marijuana. I was surprised she  thought I would know this information, but we became friends and we spent  the next two years together sampling the culture of sex, drugs, and rock and  roll that was born during the famous decade of the 1960s, and had come to  Lancaster a few years later. Our hippie group was small, and for a short time  I was under the illusion that we were sensitive, open, and caring. However, I  soon discovered that these wonderful free freaks were just a new teenage  clique. As in all cliques, it could be very alienating for anyone who did not  fit in, and after a short time, I knew I did not belong here either. I believe  that realization came from going to the Spruce Street house.

Someone, I never found out who, had rented a house on Spruce Street, near Franklin and Marshall College, which we used as a winter hangout. A  fantastic stereo system was set up where the main bedroom should have  been. I usually went to the music area, where there were bright pillows  thrown around the wooden floor and candles pouring their multicolored wax  over empty wine bottles. In the first months of its short existence, the Spruce  Street scene was innocently experimental, but soon drug use and underage  drinking began and decadence set in. It was a time of deep observation on  my part. I noticed that free-loving hippies were never free from one high or  another, and were certainly not very loving at all. when the music  became too hard rock, I would slip down to the kitchen to sit with the hard  drug users. In my naive state, I never knew what drug they were taking, and  they never offered me any either.

I first went to the kitchen because it was the only room where I could practice guitar. I was not very good, so I did not want anyone to hear me, and  being with the dopers was like being alone. However, after a while, I started  observing them. Candy was a few years older than me, but she looked like a  Holocaust survivor, all skin and bones, with stringy hair and dark bags under  her eyes. I knew she had been in and out of the "nuthouse," a place they sent  junkies before rehabilitation homes became popular. These were the kind of  people my older brother knew, and their lifelessness was horrifying to a  budding flower child. For a student who had studied Timothy Leary's theory  about drugs bringing one to a higher level of consciousness, I found these people consciousness-less.

The only person I became relatively close to at Spruce Street was another recluse called Mick. I was sixteen then, and Mick had already graduated  from high school, but I found out that he did not use drugs often because  they made him freak out. He had trouble handling real life, let alone the  strange world of psychedelics. Slightly short and muscular, Mick hid behind  a beard and long hair, rarely looking anyone in the eye. His primary love was  music, and he was famous for his record collection. Ask him anything about  music, bands, songs, musicians, or songwriters of the 1960s and '70s and he  came alive. Otherwise, he hung around like a wet sock slung over a shower  curtain rod. His vulnerability made him the object of childish pranks. I was  unwittingly involved in one of these.

Spruce Street had lately become a place for lovers to tryout their wings. I was still, surprisingly, a virgin, so I never made use of the room reserved for  youthful experimentation. Neither did Mick. It was not long before some of  the prank-playing boys thought Mick and I should be together. I can't  remember how we got into the room, but Mick and I found ourselves facing  one another over the disreputable bed. Mick was much more flustered than I,  and what had seemed like an innocent joke suddenly had tragic implications.  I saw that Mick's precarious position within this group could be at stake. In  addition, his own bottled-up self-esteem was about to crack wide open before  my eyes.

"Mick," I said, being careful not to look directly into his eyes. "What do you want to do?"

He blubbered something unintelligible, and I felt uncomfortable witnessing a blatant display of raw vulnerability. I walked over to the door  and locked it from the inside.

"There, no one can come in. Why don't we pretend that we arc doing it? Can you pretend?" 

His face lit up in disbelief, but I detected a sense of relief.

"What do you mean, Miriam?"

"You know, we'll turn off the light and make a lot of noises as if we were in bed, doing what they put us in here to do. They'll believe it, and I won't  tell them anything. Okay?"

He was game. He drank all the wine that was left in the bottle on the floor, and after loosening up, we play-acted without ever touching one another.  Now our tormentors were knocking at the door, trying to get in. After a while  they just left, seemingly content to believe that they had instigated a love  affair. We waited until all was quiet outside the door, and then we swore ourselves to secrecy and exited the love chamber. We have remained friends ever since that uneventful night.

Soon, I tired of Spruce Street. The sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll scene was a dead-end street as far as I could discern. I drifted toward the music  coming from Franklin and Marshall College. The campus was alive with  high-bred, well-fed antiwar protestors. After attending evening classes at the  underground "FREE" University to learn the truth about the Vietnam War, I  became a full-fledged social activist. As a good revolutionary, I started  wearing a black armband to school and inviting my friends to either quit  smoking or steal their cigarettes, since everyone knew that most of the tax  money went to the military-industrial complex. My idealism had caught fire.

By the end of the spring of 1970, the protest movement at Franklin and Marshall had degenerated into free concerts on the campus green. Music  became the medium, but I doubt that many of the listeners understood the  message. When it was time to go to a march, I was usually alone. Always  looking for something new, I drifted toward the blues music that a small  group of intellectuals started on campus in a place called the "AT." It was  there that I would cross that last barrier that kept me from being one with  others. I did the drugs, the protests, the music scene, but I had always avoided the "free love." Pot, I believed, was opening my mind to new truths, and I began to feel that  love would connect me with the community of truth seekers. Since I was  fairly smart, I practiced birth control, and then waited for the opportunity to experience "free love."

The first time was disastrous. It hurt -- in every sense. Jay had been in my philosophy class and captured my attention with his brilliant theories on  thought, but I never saw him again after the class ended. 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 far 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 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 missionnary  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 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, old-fashioned 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 !p1ior 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. I was too busy observing this profoundly concentrated boy. He left for California when the  Moratorium was over, and I don't even remember his name. But I remember  the determined look on his face. I admired his dedication to a cause, and I  thought to myself that I wanted to be as serious about an ideal as he was.  Now, with a standard to measure up to, I just had to find the right ideal for me.

Sonny was there for me when I returned, but he didn't press for conversation. He just held me in his arms like an ever-present father.  Sex was nothing for me to give in exchange for his masculine kindness.

After graduation from high school in June 1971, I went to Wildwood, a New Jersey beach town frequented mainly by young people, look for a job  in order to earn money for college. I found work in restaurant as a waitress;  all of the waitresses had to wear hot pants I hated the idea. While in Wildwood, I met a boy from Pittsburgh who told me he had been born again. He witnessed to me about being a good Christian, saying that I should not give love freely, drink or smoke, or even  listen to rock music. I should read my Bible every day and that would give  me strength to resist evil. My roots were still in Christianity; however, Christians were always so close-minded and usually boring. But this boy was  exciting, and he hung around with me, an obvious hippie. Why? Maybe there  was still hope in this Jesus stuff he talked about. Since he did not say  anything about going to church, I decided to follow his counsel. It wasn't  hard for me to give up drugs, sex, and music, and soon I felt I was on the path to dedication -- a higher ideal. Why I was such an idealist, I will never know.

Returning to Lancaster before summer was over, and before Sonny came back, I called Mick, my only friend left over from the Spruce Street gang.  Mick had started hanging out with the Jesus People, a traveling group of ex-hippies who preached about Christ. Following their lead, Mick had  destroyed all his "worldly" albums and listened only to Christian music.

When Sonny returned to Lancaster, I related the story of the Christian boy and the Jesus People. He was not impressed, but he respected my  decision to start living a more "godly" lifestyle of no drugs or sex. We didn't sleep together after that.

A few weeks later, Sonny dropped me off at the Penn State campus in Schuylkill Haven where I would spend my freshman year. In a few days, he  would be leaving for Europe, where he planned to stay for an extended  period of time, while I was feeling safe at a small campus, with a renewed  faith and two part-time jobs. We made no promises about the future, and it was an uneventful parting.

Dorm life was terrible. The girls who lived there were frivolous and uninteresting, and I did not make friends until I met Daisy. Living off  campus, she supported herself by singing folk songs at a local coffeehouse  and took classes at the college. She was a short, quiet girl who hid her bright  blue eyes and rounded face behind long blond hair. Her whispery voice  never held a hint of aggression. And her independent spirit was in complete contrast to her seemingly submissive attitude.

Daisy and I became good friends. I told her about my renewed belief in Jesus, and she confided that as a Catholic, she had always believed in God.  Since she had such fantastic memories of a visit to the Greenwich Village hippie scene, we decided to go to New York during our winter break.

A little while before the semester ended, I saw a sign on a church saying that a film about a Christian commune would be playing that night. I rode over on my bike to watch it.

The documentary film, called The Ultimate Trip, was an episode from the weekly television news program First Tuesday. It documented the lifestyle  of a group of Christians in Texas called the Children of God. I watched in  awe as ex-hippies gave their testimonies about being lost and finding peace  with God and one another in this commune. They sang songs and danced.  They read their ever-present Bibles and quoted scriptures by memory. They ate together, watched each other's children, cooked, cleaned, worked, and  farmed collectively. They said that no one had need of anything because everyone shared all they had -- and it was enough. Here was pure communism, but these people were happy, not severe, like that boy at the  Moratorium in Washington. These people were Christians, yet they looked  like hippies in long skirts and flowing hair. And they had a vision -- to change  the world! Leaving the church as soon as the film was over, I tried to hide the tears in my eyes. I felt I had just seen the living purity of Jesus' words. I wanted to be like these people -- to love everyone; to give my life for others;  to be part of a true community. Maybe, during the summer break, Daisy and  I could go out to Texas. The thought of meeting the Children of God gave  me a new vision. Life had always seemed so strange to me and somehow I  had become addicted to the unusual, the extraordinary, the mysterious. I  felt like I was searching for meaning constantly, and for the first time, I thought the search would soon be over.

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