“I try to be. For God.” She coughed and took a small step
back. “So, you’re here because you’re worried about your lesbian friend and the life of sin she’s living?”
“I heard that Reverend Fuller’s church has programs to help
people like her. Camps, even. Is that true?”
“Yes, we do have some programs. There’s the New Paradise
program. It involves intensive reorienting therapy.” “New Paradise? Sounds promising.”
“It’s a program that helps homosexuals return to an existence like that of Eden and the Garden of Paradise.” “So, it’s a nudist colony?”
“No, silly.” Chastity blushed and giggled. Then she slapped
a hand over her mouth to silence herself. “In Eden it was Adam
and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
“Poor Steve. He can stay with me.”
“Sir?”
“The New Paradise program?” Kingsley prompted. “Right. Yes,” she said, clearly relieved to get off that train
of thought. “In the New Paradise program she’ll undergo
intensive therapy to help her understand a woman’s place in
the world.”
“Which is?”
“Underneath men.”
“Women belong underneath men?”
“Of course. Women are submissive to men. That’s the biblical model of the family.”
“I’m a man,” Kingsley said. “And you’re a woman. So you
should be under me?”
“In a biblical way,” she said, stammering again. “That’s my favorite way.” Kingsley stepped closer, close
enough he could feel her body trembling with nervousness.
But this time she didn’t take a step back. “I’m worried this
therapy won’t be enough for my friend. She loves to seduce
straight girls.”
Chastity’s blush deepened.
“She is in deep sin, then.”
“So very deep,” Kingsley agreed. “She has short hair and
dresses like a man.”
“That’s awful. A woman’s femininity is a gift from God.
Women shouldn’t even wear pants as they disguise her womanliness.”
Kingsley glanced down at the shapeless dress she wore.
Sam in her suits looked more womanly than this girl in her
house dress.
“I agree. I try to get her to take off her pants, but I haven’t
made any progress yet.”
“Shameful. She should take her pants off for you. I mean,
she should wear dresses. All women should wear dresses or
skirts. That’s what I mean.”
“Skirts do make it easier for me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Tell me more about the camps. I might be able to trick
her into going to a camp.”
“Well,” the young woman began. “There are a few of them,
and they run for twenty-eight days. There are three sessions
every summer. We have camps in Texas, Colorado, Ohio and
Pennsylvania.”
“None closer than that?”
“There was one upstate,” she said, lowering her voice as if
imparting a secret. “But it closed down ten years ago.” “Upstate New York would have been perfect. Why did it
close?”
The young woman raised her empty hands. “I heard…” Kingsley leaned in close, very close, as close as this poor
plain virgin girl had probably ever been to a man. “What did you hear?” he asked, putting his mouth at her
ear and letting his breath tickle her neck.
“I heard a camper died there,” she whispered. “Suicide. It
wasn’t Reverend Fuller’s fault at all. The investigation cleared
him and the church of any wrongdoing. You see, suicide is
nobody’s fault but the person who commits it. But still, they
shut the camp down.”
“That’s too bad.”
“But there’s still Pennsylvania. Do you think your friend
would like to go to camp in western Pennsylvania?” “I think she would like it as much as I would like it.” Kingsley would rather have his testicles soldered to his eyeballs than
go to a sexual reorienting camp in western Pennsylvania. “Oh, good.” Chastity smiled broadly. “Then wait here. I’ll
get you some brochures.”
She walked off, and Kingsley pondered the possibility of