Out on a strip of near-rural highway spotted with car dealerships sat the dusty yellow building, flanked by a modest parking lot. On Thursdays evenings, the lot filled around 6 p.m. and stayed that way until late at night. On Sunday, there were cars all day. Passerby, if there were any, would hear the faint sound of synthesized pop gospel emanating from the structure and only then realize that it was a church.
Before my first visit, I was instructed to wear a long skirt and no makeup. My short hair wasn’t appropriate, said my friend, Brian, but he shrugged and added, “You’re growing it out, so it’s fine.” He’d given me a long list of rules at his church with which women and girls were expected to comply.
To this day, I’m not sure what compelled me to go with him. I wasn’t terribly religious and I was very firm in my acceptance of evolution as fact — something that Brian was very concerned about, he said. “I’m trying to help you get saved, and you can’t believe those lies,” he’d tell me in our nightly phone calls.
He was persistent and focused in his attempts to wear me down, and he succeeded. When a male wants something, he asks for it again and again, sowing seeds of doubt in your mind until you wonder why you were opposed to the thing in question. Suddenly, I found myself looking for long skirts while my mom and I were out shopping.
