JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 36

36. THE THREAT OF LOVE

The young man nodded at Eve as he brandished his firearm. The two weapons of our culture, Eve thought: the Bible and the gun.

“Violence,” the young man repeated, this time more to himself, as though he was going along with one side of a tough debate, and was still getting used to an unusual decision he wanted to follow without being fully prepared to accept all its consequences.

“Do you know this young man?” Eve asked K.

“I do.”

“Do you have any objection to his objection?”

“I do and I don’t.”

“Maybe we should talk,” said Eve. “Explore a few avenues.”

“There is nothing to talk about,” said the young man.

“Would you mind putting that gun away? You can congratulate yourself. The session is as good as over, isn’t it? Your intervention has been successful.”

“I’m not putting this gun away until he is released from your clutches.”

“Mr. K came here of his own accord, looking for help and a new focus regarding his psychosis.”

“Psychosis? Since when is love a psychosis?”

“To be precise, healthy sexual love is only possible between a man and a woman in a state of marriage.”

“Sexual love is a broad spectrum. And our love is more than sexual. It’s a true love. We love each other deeply, widely, and finally.”

Finally. An odd word, Eve thought.

“Your view is a deviant one, isn’t it?” she said. “You need help.”

“I don’t need help. You need help. This whole society needs help. It is sick to the core. It pushes its Goddist agenda on innocent people to pigeonhole all humanity into a narrow-minded, perverse and deviant view of its own. You think you can outlaw love. I don’t believe in good and evil, but this comes as close to anybody else’s definition of evil as I can see.”

The young man was clearly insane. Suffering from some irregular form of paranoia. Articulate, but twisted. She could not yet tell how severe his paranoia was, though it was severe enough to send him forth armed, professing his readiness for violence.

“I’m not the one waving a gun around here, am I?” Eve pointed out. “Who is the deviant one in this room?”

The young man looked at her and put his gun back in his belt. He held his hands up. Hmm, he could be persuaded by reason, even in the midst of his paranoia.

“I represent love,” he said. “You represent the hate of love. Its banishment. How can I fight for my love without a weapon in this terrible world of repression?”

He burst into tears. “How can you be doing this to me?” he asked K. “You know we love each other. Why do you want our love destroyed? How can you do something so selfish to something so pure and selfless and beautiful?”

Selfless love sounded like a contradiction in terms to Eve, but she held her tongue. She wanted to hear K’s answer.

“We have so much pain, Jonathan,” K said to the young man. “This may be love, but it is all pain. Should love mean so much suffering?”

“It is only suffering because of those around us. If it were just us, it would be joy. You must exclude the world to make room for our love.”

“I need the world to live. We both do. We cannot live without the world.”

“I will die without you. And you are killing yourself here.” The young man slapped an electric cord. “This is attached to your cock? Don’t you think it’s rather medieval?” He turned to Eve. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a black hood? Like in the Inquisition?”

Eve smiled. “This is science, not superstition.”

“Superstition, that’s a good word. Thinking that love is deviant is a specious mode of superstition.”

Eve marveled at the young man’s turn of phrase. He had the idiot-savant quality of a truly disturbed person. “I would like to see the two of you for a session together,” she said.

“We are here. You are seeing us together.”

“When did your deviant relationship start?” She found herself falling into her therapeutic role as a matter of self-defense.

“I refuse to discuss our relationship in your superstitious terms.”

Eve asked again, omitting the offending word. “When did your relationship start?”

The young man hesitated, and then answered. “Three years ago.”

“Under what circumstances? How did you meet?”

She wanted to keep the young man talking while she decided what to do. He still had the gun. Maybe she could cool him down to the point that she could leave the two of them alone for a moment while she called a Patriot Unit.

“Are you interrogating me?”

“I was just wanting a little more focus. You speak with such fervor about your love, don’t you? I just wanted some understanding.”

The young man smiled. “These are the first civilized words out of your mouth.”

Eve returned his smile. “You seem capable of civilization yourself.”

He snickered. “I am. But these are difficult circumstances.”

“For me, too. I wish you didn’t have a gun.”

“I’m sorry. I thought I might need it. I came to rescue my lover.”

“Your lover is not being kept captive by me. He can come and go as he pleases.”

“I thought you might have him locked up.”

“I’m with the Bureau of Behavior Design and Management, not the Department of Prisons and Manufacture.”

He seemed to relax a little. Eve continued. “So how did the two of you meet?”
“In a bar. There was a Patriot Unit raid. They took us in. We spent the night in the same jail cell. The next day they took our names, registered us with the Bureau, and let us go after making appointments with the Bureau for reprogramming.”

“How are your appointments going?”

“I’ve stopped going.”

“You’re breaking parole, aren’t you? A Patriot Unit will come after you.”

“They already have. I don’t sleep at home anymore.”

“You’re on the lam, as they used to say.”

“I guess.”

“And now you want to drag my patient into your Civil Disobedience, and make him liable for imprisonment, too, don’t you?”

“I want to save both of us from this madness.”

“I suggest the two of you come to see me together, tomorrow. Bring your paperwork regarding your Patriot trouble. I’ll see what I can do to keep you out of jail.”

She wondered why she was being so lenient. Whatever the young man was doing, it was a crime, and she was putting herself at risk by offering to intervene on his behalf. But she had never had an openly recalcitrant patient before. By holding the threat of prison over him, she might gain the plum of a really tough case. There was a reputation to be made.

K looked at the young man.

“We’ll come,” he said.

“We’ll come,” the young man agreed.

“I am holding you responsible for him and his whereabouts,” Eve said to K.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be here.”

“Without the gun.”

K looked at his lover. The young man smiled. Suddenly he looked very young.

“Without the gun,” he agreed.