JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 46

46. RACHEL

It was dusk. Eve and Rachel met in the park, Eve with her fake “A.” They sat on a bench. Eve had walked through Grand Central Station, which was full of Muslims waiting in long, patient lines with their belongings, being sent somewhere.

“I’ve met a man,” said Eve.

“Great. Have you…?”

“Not quite. I didn’t even take my clothes off, but I did him, didnt I? We haven’t actually gone all the way.”

Rachel chortled at Eve’s teenage expression. “So you like him.”

“That’s not really the point. To be precise, I just want to have sex with him. Once I’m comfortable with it, I can focus myself on looking for a man I can marry. I’m treating the thing with him like I’m my own patient -- the subject of a scientific experiment. Something precise, controlled, and impersonal.”

“Does he know this?”

“How could he? He’s a typical Jesusland man. Actually, I mean it to be less than merely impersonal. Cold. That’s the right word, isn’t it?”

“Cold? You can’t run away from emotions, Eve. They have a way of coming up, especially once you start having sex. What’s he like?”

“He’s an academic. Higher up in the echelon than me, but not high enough.”

“Oh.”

“He’s in the field of Intelligent Design. A scientist of dead things. Of the past. A fossil person.”

“That could be interesting.”

“I think not. You and I, we’re scientists of the future, social engineers. We work at changing the living society.”

“Don’t knock the past. You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from.”

Sometimes Rachel could commit the blandest clichés.

“Mind you,” said Eve, “he may get to be the host of a TV program.”

“That’s better than being an academic.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think he’s right for me, do I?”

“Why not?”

“I think he’s needy.”

“Really? A turn-off.”

“Big time. On the other hand, he took me to a great party, didn’t he? But afterwards he went off with the guy who’s going to do his program. So I shared a cab back with Esther Todd, didn’t I?”

“Oh my. You’re moving up in the world, girl. This man might be very useful.”

“It’s possible, isn’t it? How is Mary?”

“She’s great. I read her a story about a kitten that wants to grow up to be an astronaut. I know Mary is only three weeks old, but I like to imagine I’m teaching her already.”

Eve was still smarting that she couldn’t attend Mary’s birth; the whole thing had been a matter between Scarlets, with a Scarlet midwife in a Scarlet apartment block on a street of Scarlets.

“Do you need money?” It was said in rebuke; not as a kind enquiry.

“Eve, please.”

“I know you don’t make a lot, and I know it’s difficult now with Mary.”

“I don’t need charity. Stop offering.”

Rachel was very proud. Other women in her position often sold themselves for extra money, even though they weren’t V-dolls, but Rachel didn’t.

“It’s so unfair, isn’t it?” said Eve. “You being a Scarlet.”

“You’d better not let the Bureau hear you say that.”

“But it is unfair, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to be the cause of you having Non-Sanctioned Notions.”

“I only have the one. Maybe one other. Dating a guy just to have sex with him -- that’s not Approved, is it?”

Eve was lying. Wanting to be equal with men was Non-Sanctioned, too. That was really what it was about. And it went to the heart of sex, too. Men were allowed to enjoy sex, but females weren’t, unless they were married. Was that fair?

Rachel answered with a prim, pinched look on her face. “You’re right about how wrong it is to date a guy just for sex -- it’s not just Non-Sanctioned, it’s plain immoral. It’s not fair to the guy.”

“What do guys care? Their entire focus is to want sex, isn’t it?”

“Maybe that’s how they are, but you can’t use them as an excuse for your own immoral behavior.”

“Why am I the immoral one? So are they.”

“One Non-Sanctioned Notion is enough to get you in front of a Patriot Board,” replied Rachel. “And then it’s goodbye to your big ambition to become a ruler of men.” Rachel put a sarcastic spin on her last utterance. Clearly she didn’t believe Eve would ever become a ruler of men. Eve was a little shocked by this answer. Was Rachel threatening her? Eve looked at her friend. Rachel was a Scarlet: how dare she talk to a Beloved like this? Didn’t Rachel know that a Scarlet like her was powerless against a Beloved? What made Rachel think that she could be anything but submissive to a Beloved? Didn't she know that I, Eve, have the power to get her classified down to V-doll, as much as I may have the desire to help her become a Beloved again?