Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing, page 2
A couple years passed without major incident. Then the threats started on that trip to Egypt. But like I said, I had orders to Greece. I couldn’t even tell you which came first. But I returned to Shaw and tried to keep my head down. Some asshole sending me threats wouldn’t matter once I left.
* * *
—
A few days after the fire, my new buddy Sheriff Horton called my office. He said someone had seen a white car speeding away from the house. Asked if I knew who drove a white car. I couldn’t think of anyone. Then he asked me take a polygraph.
I’d watched plenty of television and read enough legal thrillers to know I was a suspect. I called the base legal office. The base lawyer told me I shouldn’t be too worried, but I should stop talking to the cops. Tell them to talk to her. Call her back if anything changed.
That’s when the Air Force took over the investigation. I waited as the investigators asked every airman on base if they knew Senior Airman Hough was being harassed, if they knew Senior Airman Hough was gay. She’s gay. I waited while investigators showed up at my grandma’s door in Texas. But they didn’t know she’d been an Air Force wife. She’d had about enough of the Air Force somewhere between the Korean and Vietnam Wars. They didn’t even finish introducing themselves before she slammed the door in their faces and called me.
“Lauren, the OSI just knocked on my door. And I knew it was them before they showed their stupid badges. They have a smell.” My grandma never had much patience for small talk.
I said I was sorry they bothered her. And I was.
“Never mind that. What do they want?” she asked.
“They didn’t say?”
She laughed. “I never gave them the chance.”
So I explained about the car, about the death threats. And I shit you not, she said, “Oh. Good. I was worried you’d done something stupid like have an affair with an officer’s wife.”
Here’s the thing you need to know about my grandma: when I lived with her in Amarillo, she was the only Democrat I’d ever met. I was half convinced she was Amarillo’s sole liberal, who practiced all manner of lunatic beliefs like recycling and yoga and feminism and gay rights. She caught hell for it—from the neighbors; from the old biddies at the First Presbyterian; from her own family, who regularly referred to her as “that crazy old bitch”—but she never gave a shit. In fairness, she wasn’t what anyone would describe as “nice,” or even “nurturing.” Oh, she’d give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. Then swear at you for your pathetic posture. When we were little and Mom was working late at the restaurant, she’d let us stay up to all hours watching Dallas and Miami Vice. She’d answer any question we had, with no regard for what might be age appropriate. I knew more about hookers and blow than any kid in second grade. She’d take us on archaeological digs and show us how to dig up fossils. Then drop all four of us at the dollar theater with three wet dollar bills she’d pulled from her bra because she had a bridge game. She could play Chopin without looking at the music. She held several degrees. She’d read everything. She forgot nothing. And she was one of the first people I’d come out to, before my own parents even, because I knew she would never judge me.
So while I was pissed that they’d worried her, I was a lot more pissed they’d knocked on her door for no other reason I could imagine than to humiliate me by outing me to my grandma.
* * *
—
The investigation took another bad turn when they talked to my roommate. He said I was a liar. Sometimes when we watched a movie set in a place I’d lived, I’d say, “Hey, I’ve been there.” I grew up all over the place—Japan, Switzerland, Argentina, Chile. Sometimes I forget that some people never stray too far from home. Most people know where home is. But I didn’t understand why he thought I was a liar just because I said “I’ve been there” unless I’d slipped.
It could be hard sometimes to keep my lies straight, hazard of the trade. The trade—that is, being a fucking liar, whatever the reason—keeps you apart. Even the most basic of initial friendship-interview questions like “Where are you from?” required a lie, or at least omission. But I wanted to tell. I wanted to have a story like everyone else. And sometimes, just sometimes, I’d let a little thing slip. “I was born in Berlin” or “I used to live in Osaka.” “My parents were missionaries.” Here’s a thing about me. I’m someone too. Please like me. But maybe I’d switched stories.
With all the chaos, I moved back into the dorms on base that I’d been so eager to leave. Senior airmen were allowed to move off base, and I had taken advantage of that. Off base, there were no dorm inspections, no first sergeants trolling the common areas for underage drinkers or dayroom blow jobs. I liked thinking that gave me some privacy, but I’d been wrong. I’d let my guard down, trusted the wrong people with little bits of information. Nothing that would out me as having grown up in a cult. But enough maybe to join a conversation.
* * *
—
It hadn’t been a year since Barry Winchell, an Army private, had been beaten to death with a baseball bat in a barracks hallway at an Army post in Kentucky because he was gay. I was scared before. But the worst I feared was getting kicked out of the Air Force. Even the act of torching my car seemed like a far leap from murder; a beatdown seemed more likely. That is, until June, six months after my car was torched, when I got the next note: “Gun knife or bat I can’t decide which one.”
In the months since the car fire, it had seemed whoever torched my car was finished with me. I thought they’d leave me alone now that I was being investigated, keep their ass clean and get away with it. Maybe they’d transferred to another base.
The Air Force’s investigation had stalled. My car insurance company, frustrated with the lack of an outcome, sent their own investigator. He looked at the evidence the cops had, interviewed me and a few people on base, called Sheriff Horton some names, which I appreciated, and cleared me of wrongdoing in two days.
My insurance paid off the car, a massive relief. I figured the Air Force investigators had given up trying to pin the arson on me. I’d missed my deployment date in January and had assumed someone else took my slot in Greece. But when I talked to the staff sergeant who was to be my new supervisor at Araxos, he said they’d never filled the slot. He said he’d try to push for new orders. And just before I got that new threat, true to his word, I received new orders to Greece. I thought the Air Force would let me go, if only to wash their hands of the problem.
But with this most recent note, being stuck at Shaw or getting kicked out of the Air Force was no longer my biggest fear, or the most likely outcome. The note clarified my priorities. I thought of Winchell. And I was terrified.
I called the Air Force investigators. They asked me if I’d touched the note. They took me over to their office, then led me down a hallway, into a room, told me to sit there in an office chair.
The room wasn’t very intimidating. No mirror on the wall. No metal chairs. Just a government-issue gray desk and three blue office chairs. Investigator Campbell was built like a linebacker, all shoulders and forehead. He was wearing a navy suit in mid-June. I wondered how many times the FBI had turned down his application before he took this job, Air Force Office of Special Investigations. He’d be playing bad cop. To his side was Investigator Maldonado. She was pregnant and getting into the role of good cop. Campbell waited while Maldonado tried to adjust her chair—the paddle that lowered the seat wasn’t working, so her legs didn’t reach the floor.
They switched places.
I stared at the gold cross that had slipped out of Maldonado’s blouse during the chair ordeal. She played nice, but I knew she’d push for execution if she could. She tucked the necklace back in, cleared her throat, opened a folder. I half expected her first words to be, “Should we pray?” But they just sat there looking at me like it was a game to see who’d speak first. I looked at my hands. I asked for a lawyer from base legal. Even airmen have a right to a lawyer. I said I’d already spoken to one. Maldonado said I wasn’t a suspect. I shouldn’t need a lawyer. Not a very convincing good cop.
“When did you find the note? Who left the note? Is this the first time this has happened?”
“I want a lawyer. The base lawyer told me not to answer questions.”
“You’re not a suspect. This isn’t about your car. This is about the threats. We’re trying to help you.”
And the tears filled my eyes and I wiped them with the back of my hand. I wasn’t crying. My eyes were leaking. There is, in fact, a difference. The leaking happens when I’m frustrated.
Maldonado asked me, “Why are you so upset if you didn’t do anything?”
I told them I wanted a lawyer.
They gave up after a while. Wrote some notes down in the folder. Maldonado said she had to eat something. Campbell took me to another room where another agent, a lab rat with dandruff and a yellow collar, spread ink on my hands and arms and took impressions. He pulled hair from random spots on my head for a DNA test.
I knew then they weren’t looking for who sent me death threats. They didn’t believe me. Though their initial investigation had stalled, they were still convinced I’d torched my own car.
They wanted my DNA because a rag had been stuffed in the gas tank. The rag never ignited. Whoever did torch my car filled it with gas and lit it that way after trying to light a rag in the pouring rain. The cops had found a hair on the rag. Campbell had mentioned it earlier, hoping for a reaction.
They let me go then. But I was pretty sure I was fucked. And I was really damn sure I wasn’t ever going to Greece.
One thing I learned late in life is there are people who are shocked when bad things happen to them. More than that. They expect good things to happen. There are others who tell you to think positive thoughts and focus on something pretty and the universe will hand it to you, like you have any significance, like the universe is a benevolent soul who cares about sweet little you with your pretty thoughts. Those are the same people who after something bad happens will tell you they totally had a dream about that. But no one ever calls to tell you not to go to work today because Steve from IT can’t get laid so he’s bringing a shotgun to work. No one tells you not to get on that plane. Only after your dog runs in front of a car will that friend, the friend who talks a lot about her journey, tell you she had a really bad feeling. She wishes she’d said something.
I’m not one of those people. Sometimes I think I’d like to be. I’d like to have lived a life that allows me to believe if I want something bad enough, if I visualize positivity or whatever it is these people tell you, I’ll be rewarded with an easy life. Sometimes. Most of the time, I figure it’s better to know the universe doesn’t pay out favors for magical thinking. I’ve learned, if not to expect the worst, to not be surprised by the worst. I’ll cry in frustration when my Internet’s out, but when my car bursts into flames, well, that seems about right. When I’m blamed for it, yeah, that tracks. You can call it cynicism. I call it growing up in cult.
* * *
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The Children of God was one of the many cults that sprang up in the late ’60s and early ’70s. This one was founded by David Berg, a failed Pentecostal preacher and wildly successful alcoholic. In some other timeline they might’ve locked him up in a place he’d have to wear a bathrobe. In mine, he was free to try a number of career paths—soldier, legal secretary, taxi driver, preacher—until he found his calling. Referred to as Dad, Grandpa, or Moses David, he finally landed on a lifestyle that let him wear bathrobes all day.
If I wanted to play armchair psychologist, I’d slap a label of malignant narcissist on him. Maybe he truly saw visions and heard voices. Maybe he truly believed he could talk to God. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is, in 1968, in Huntington Beach, California, while the war was raging in Vietnam and the country seemed ready to tear itself apart, David Berg started preaching to the hippies at the Teens for Christ coffee shop on the strip.
Berg’s kids were in their late teens, and he used them as bait. They’d sing a few songs, offer coffee, stale donuts, and shelter. Berg tested his new brand of Gospel: Jesus was a long-haired hippie like them. Jesus was a socialist. Jesus was the biggest radical ever. The mainstream churches hadn’t caught the youth-ministry fever yet. Those who heard him back then will tell you they’d never heard anything like him before. He was offering more than an answer to the materialism they already loathed. He gave them what they’d never known: unconditional love and purpose. Around fifty of them followed him around the country, half starved and living in buses and rotting canvas tents. They protested the war. They preached the Gospel he’d taught them: follow Jesus, forsake all. “All” meant everything and everyone from your past life.
In ’71, about 150 members moved onto a ranch in Texas, about an hour east of Dallas, called the Texas Soul Clinic. The members lived communally in absolute poverty. There was no sex, no drugs. They were high on Jesus and freezing in shacks. Berg, however, relocated himself to a sweet pad in Dallas, where he replaced his wife with his secretary (because everything’s a cliché) and took on a few concubines.
The Children of God sent out teams to colleges and universities across the country, to bus stations, anywhere they could find converts. They donned sackcloth and smeared ashes on their foreheads and lined up in front of the UN, the White House, the middle of Times Square. Time magazine called them Jesus Freaks. And kids kept joining up. By the time they left the ranch, Berg had amassed over 1,400 followers. My parents were among them.
By 1972, Berg communicated only by edicts called Mo Letters. Imagine the crazy guy who comments on your local news Facebook page, ranting about spaceships, vaccines, George Soros, and Hollywood pedophiles. Now imagine (and this was likely more difficult prior to 2016) someone following him around with a little tape recorder, transcribing all his alcohol-infused nuggets of wisdom, printing them, and sending them out to his disciples. Essentially, some drunk asshole’s completely fucking insane diatribes on every subject from car engines to shitting habits to biblical theory to dream interpretation. That’s a Mo Letter. And every word he said was law. There’s a paragraph in one—and there are entire volumes of these, enough to fill a pickup bed—where the old bastard says he only eats with spoons. Forks aren’t really necessary. Matter of fact, forks can be dangerous. At that moment, every fucking Children of God home around the world threw away their forks. Another Mo Letter declared America as Babylon, the Whore of Satan. God was going to destroy the continent, he said. So naturally everyone went to Europe—England first, then Scandinavia, Germany, France, and the rest—spreading farther as they gained followers.
Anytime the authorities or press got a little too close for Berg’s comfort, he’d get a prophecy. The first prophecy sent him into hiding, and from then on, only a few senior members would know his location. Later on, his prophecies would disband the group, change the name, move countries, continents, regroup, whatever Berg needed.
* * *
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By the time I was born in ’77, there were over 130 communes around the world and they’d changed their name to the Family of Love. That’s right about the time Berg instituted his Law of Love.
Which brings us to the main reason—aside from its more famous alumni: Jeremy Spencer from Fleetwood Mac, who vanished the night before what was supposed to be the band’s big break, a show at the Whiskey A Go Go, to join up; Rose McGowan; River and Joaquin Phoenix—the main reason anyone’s heard of this cult, by any name. Berg waited until he had his followers completely dependent. He had them sever all ties. Most everyone had kids, no jobs, and now lived in foreign countries. His crowning message was simple: Anything done in love was good. Which sounds like an Instagram caption. But it had a dark twist. Go out to nightclubs and lure rich men into bed. It’s not prostitution if you tell them about Jesus. Someone wants to fuck you or your husband, we’re all one family now. Incest, that’s just the devil making you feel ashamed. God’s only law is love, man.
A cult is your textbook abusive relationship—love-bomb, isolate, create dependence, and your victim won’t have the power to leave, even if staying in the relationship means buying into the new Gospel of David Berg. In short, in the eyes of the world, the Children of God, now the Family of Love, became a sex cult.
Enough people had a problem with his message that the press got wind of his new ministry. Mo Letters with titles like “God’s Whores” and “The Devil Hates Sex” made their way into the wrong hands. And Berg did what he did best. He got another prophecy. Fired his leadership team, anyone who spoke against him. Told everyone the cult was disbanded. No more massive communes. Europe was a lost cause. Go to the third world, what we now call developing countries. What was the Children of God, then the Family of Love, became simply, the Family.
This is probably why the memories I have of my early years in a cult look a little more idyllic than you’d imagine. We lived in campgrounds in Chile, in Argentina. A bus in Buenos Aires my dad built into an RV. A farm in Mendoza with goats. A house in Santiago with hay on the roof.
Our little family—my parents, my two older sisters, and our little brother—teamed up with another small family. Other members would pass through occasionally. But for the most part, it was just us. And we were often desperately poor.
Sometimes, when we were strapped for cash, my mom and dad would head out to a local pool hall or pub. My dad’s as affable as a golden retriever, tall and handsome in that inoffensive way that makes you trust him. And he can talk to anyone. Which helped temper my mom’s presence. Her coal-black hair offsets those pale blue eyes she’ll lock on you, making your bones shiver. There’s an intensity to her beauty, like a coiled snake. But they’d order a drink and rack a game. And my mom would biff the break. My dad would patiently remind her to watch the cue ball. And he’d strike up a conversation with the guys waiting on the table. “How about a friendly game? Sure, we can put a little money on it. Make it interesting.” No one minds taking money from a couple of dumb American tourists. That’s when my mom, with skills earned from a misspent youth in NCO clubs and Berlin dives, would attack. My dad’s not bad at pool either. But he rarely got a chance to shoot before she’d cleared the table. Beginner’s luck.
