JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 39

39. PEOPLE AT THE PARTY

Eve saw immediately that she was one of the older females at the party. Adam saw that he was one of the younger men. The men were mostly in their sixties and older. The females mostly in their twenties. Conjugal concubines. What used to be called trophy wives.

One incredibly handsome young man in his twenties. Perhaps even more handsome than the young females were beautiful. Perhaps standing out because he was the only man that young. Accompanied by an older female in her fifties (only two females there were older than Eve) who lent him out to groups of younger females.

This older female laughed a lot. She was on familiar terms with all the men.

Eve’s eyes locked on her. “That where I want to be,” she thought. She wanted to make it her business to be noticed by this female. She wondered what she would say if she met the female.

Joshua Grant spotted Adam. He hailed him from afar.

“Adam! Come here. Meet Ezra, the guy who gave me the idea to run for president in the first place. Ezra, Adam here is going to head up my first task force. He’s going to get a bunch of academics to put their heads together to find me an issue to run on. An academic brain trust. The best and the brightest. Have you been thinking about an issue for me, Adam?”

Adam hadn’t. He looked at Joshua’s expectant face. Oh, God, with this man I’ll have to be on the job 24/7. A dim thought had hovered in the back of his mind. Now it sprang full force into his head. No time to really think about it. Forge ahead, Adam.

“Excuse me for essaying a preliminary thought, but I imagine it might be worth focus-grouping this little notion I’ve had,” he said, buying time for his thought to take full shape.

Eve looked at Adam, and back at Ezra, who wore an eye patch. Ezra’s good eye had a twinkle in it, but also a hard, solitary sheen, as though it was defending itself against the intrusion of the onlooker’s desires -- a mirror in which you were not allowed to stare at your own need. His face was craggy and weather-beaten, as though he had spent many years at sea, peering out at the horizon. He gave an appearance of seasoned strength. The jaunty, untamed air of a mountain tiger. Sinewy and lithe. Risky and dangerous to know. An eagle hovering. A serpent coiled. His hair instantly braced, like the hair on the back of a wolf when challenged. His forbidding nature was softened by an insouciant way he had about him, fierce and proud yet saucily flirtatious, an outlaw in exile among the sedate of the civilized. She knew him. He had changed a lot. The eye patch, for one. Adam looked soft and tentative against Ezra’s very defined bearing.

“Keep talking.” Joshua looked at Ezra. Adam had an inkling that Joshua was using him to challenge Ezra in some way.

“We call ourselves the United States Under God. USUG. I imagine you could make an issue out of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could argue that we should change our name.”

“What are you talking about, Adam?” Joshua began to sound disappointed. I could lose my task force job as easily as I got it, thought Adam. He saw Ezra’s tongue slip out of his mouth and lick his lips -- a lion spotting prey, anticipating the stumble of this little antelope called Adam before he fell down at their feet.

“You could argue we need a name that represents the heart and soul of the people better.”

“I hope you’re not going off on some damn East Coast intellectual tangent here, Adam.”

Sink or swim, Adam. “Here’s my notion for your issue in a nutshell. You want us to change the name of our country from the United States Under God to the United States Under Christ. As a nation we follow a specific God, not just a general idea of God. We follow Christ, who died for our sins. We are a Christian nation. Informally we like to call ourselves Jesusland anyway. We should call ourselves the United States Under Christ to proclaim loudly that we are a Christian nation. Otherwise it’s tantamount to pandering to other religions who believe in God but not in Christ.”

“What do you think, Ezra?” Joshua threw the ball to Ezra, but his eyes were twinkling.