Peaks and Peek Skills - II

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Click here to read about an introduction to memoir: Journey through Memoir: Introduction .
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 non-subject:  "past in the present"
{aww ~ 10/28/09}
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As I drove north on the interstate in  August, 2009, I talked on the cell phone with Lora. She and I had recently connected on Facebook after 25 plus years, and now here we were on the phone talking about our 1978-'79 WOW Ambassador year; that year that we had been assigned to the same outreach city. That was a different WOW year than the one in 1980-'81 in Connecticut; the one when I had AWOLed and hitchhiked south; the one when after AWOLing I had taken the trip north to pick up my guitar.

Lora isn't with The Way anymore, but she apparently still holds to Way doctrines. She may have assumed the same about me. On our phone call, she spoke of how God had continued to impress upon her the vision of "Word over the world." She used that exact phrase, "Word over the world," just like in Way days.

Lora and I got disconnected when I began driving through the Virginia mountains. My cell phone dropped the call as I started to tell her about the abortion I experienced that WOW year, in 1978. I didn't get to tell her any of the story; probably better that way. Luke had fathered that life. Lora and I played phone tag after the dropped call, but didn't reconnect. Now it's two months later and I'm still "it" on the tag; my turn to call.

I even had my sense of smell in August, 2009; reminiscent of when I could still smell back in 1980. That sense was robbed from me in the fall of 1981 when I first got so sick; I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, then. Over the decades my sense of smell would return intermittently for short periods of time if I took enough steroids, or after my four different sinus surgeries, or when I underwent Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization treatments, or the time I had the online phone affair. But this past February my sense of smell had returned unexpectantly, spontaneously. This past year I had re-discovered parts of myself. I had allowed different parts of me to emerge, parts of me I embraced and even named. Something I never would have done in my Way believer days; I would have tried to eliminate those parts of me. I would have thought them devilish.

That Christmas back in 1980 when I was driving north to Connecticut, I stopped in at Luke's parent's home, in New York. I had met Luke's dad and mom in the late summer of 1979 when Luke and I drove to New York from Wisconsin. I really liked his dad. In 1979 Luke and I had taken a train into the city to visit his dad at work. Luke's dad owned an advertising agency; I think that's what he did. We all went out to eat at some restaurant; I recall it was fancy, at least for me, with dim lighting. I don't know if we were in Manhattan or somewhere else. The rest of the day Luke showed me different sights in the city. I don't recall much about the sightseeing, except that I liked the conductor's voice on the train when he bellowed, "Yonkers!" I think Luke took me to see the Statue of Liberty.

The New York trip of Christmastime, 1980, was different than the trip in  August, 1979 ~

~ In 1979 I was a strong faithful believer having just completed my WOW year which was also my apprenticeship year for the Way Corps; Luke and I had served in the same WOW family part of that year. In 1979 I was going into my first in-residence Way Corps year.

~ In 1980, I had been unfaithful. I had AWOLed from the Way Corps and the WOW field, copped out on my commitments in a shameful way. In contrast, Luke was still active Way Corps in training simply on relocation in New York at Christmas break.

He and I must have talked on the phone or something to arrange for me to stop and spend the weekend at his folks that Christmas while he was there. It was a weekend filled with sex; we couldn't keep our hands off each other. When I had to leave to head north for Connecticut, Luke informed me that he and I were no longer lovers. I was confused; I was devastated. Hadn't we just spent the weekend enraptured with each other?

I learned decades later, in 2006, that I had confused and devastated Luke months prior to his devastating me that Christmas. I don't recall telling Luke it was over between us and not allowing him to kiss me, and then later wanting him again and having sex and introducing him still as my boyfriend. Though I don't recall, I don't doubt I behaved such. I was confused trying to keep God first, suppressing feelings that would boil over only for me to then cover them, to force their impossible cooling as they continued to simmer. So was Luke, trying to keep God first.

What of our 1980 weekend rendezvous? What healthy young man and young woman still ravaged with love would refuse sex when it freely seems to avail itself, when the hormone and heart urges swoon stronger than will and so-called logic?

The months following our rendezvous and final break-up I held on through a whirlwind of emotions as I plummeted into self-numbing behaviour, trying to drown my shame and worthless feelings through sex and alcohol, secretly acting out like I was trying to prove to myself how very despicable and unworthy I was. Or was I trying to prove to myself that I was free in Christ, that God loved me and would see me through regardless of my flesh? Or did I think the one thing I was good at was sex; that I could please someone that way? I wasn't in love with any of those I seduced into one-night stands, nor were they in love with me. Some of them even came to fellowship and one guy, Micheal, took the PFAL Class. I was still teaching hot-Bible at fellowship. It was a double life - hot Bible and hot sex.

Mixed emotions. Convoluted doctrines. God first. Others second. Myself third.

It still confuses me.

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Click here to read Part I:  Peaks and Peek Skills - I.
Click here to view the memoir index: Journey through Memoir (an index).
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