Be Prepared
Copyright© 2025 by Han Jansz. van Meegeren
Chapter 11
“What!?”
“She is Ted Neeley,” I repeated. “He played Jesus in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’. The film’s success turned Neeley into a cult figure. While many actors move on from a signature role, Neeley embraced it. Through the late 1970s, 1980s, and beyond, he continued performing Jesus in stage productions around the world. Ted Neeley literally spent his life singing ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’ Isis is the same. She has played the role of a porn star all her life. Most porn stars quit after a short time, but ISIS has played the same role in so many films that we all think she’s nothing more than a pair of great tits. But she’s just a woman. Strong, afraid and insecure at times.”
“Do you really think so?” Jennifer’s wheelchair rocked back and forth, similar to how she would pace. After putting my cake in the oven, I sat on the chair, which brought me to Jennifer’s height.
“What about you? Are you looking forward to having sex with Drew?” I asked her. She coloured.
“That’s a very direct question.”
“And a very relevant one. If Isis comes here, and I think she will, she will try to fuck Drew’s brains out. I asked her to. You know he will have sex with you because of this childbearing rule. It’s easier for men; they are wired to spread their seed. So I repeat my question: are you looking forward to fucking Drew?”
“No. Perhaps ... Yes. I would be nice to feel again, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
Almost every roller coaster I know starts with barely any movement at all. Just a gentle shift. The roller coaster climbs, slow and steady — click-click-click — and you don’t even notice, not really. It’s just friendly conversation. A shared smile. A glance that lingers a second too long. Harmless, you say to yourself.
But the climb continues. Little things add up: laughter that feels too easy, touches that feel electric, thoughts that drift back when they shouldn’t. Still, it’s all quiet on the outside — composed, careful — but inside, something is building. Tension, curiosity, confusion, maybe a flutter of something unnamed. Higher and higher. Click-click-click.
And then — without warning — the track vanishes. Impossible to breathe. And you’re falling.
The rush is instantaneous. Dizzying. Terrifying. Wonderful. Your world tilts, everything you thought you knew about yourself spins, tumbles, and flips upside down. You’re gripping the sides of your seat, laughing and panicking at once, heart pounding with something wild and alive.
This wasn’t planned. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But I was in it now. And there was no going back to the ground I used to know.
I
Was
Falling in love
With my husband’s mother.
There it is. On paper. I have never been in love. With a woman. It’s so. Very. Confusing. I hate it. I love it. Am I in love or in lust? I want her. I need to feel her body. She’s mine and mine alone.
I wanted to possess her and protect her all at once. I am the one who tells her all the time that we have to learn to be obedient to Drew’s guidance. He is the Master of our house. But I don’t want that. Not for her. What I want is her obedience. I want to be the Sun and the Moon and the Stars for her. I want her Earth to revolve around me, not him.
I am Drew’s concubine and always will be. But I want her to be mine. Her constant nudity fuels my desire to devour her mouth, kissing her yielding lips until they hurt. This merciless and impossible love, or lust, whatever it is, is just as hopeless as Jack and Rose in Titanic.
Following Superman’s flight to the stars with my mother clutched in his red cape, my little brother left dangling from its tattered edge, like the ballast must have felt, I had my own lapse into promiscuity. I was falling in love with Drew, who took me with him for long silent walks. At the same time, guys whose names or faces I don’t remember took me noisily behind the bicycle shed at the back of the schoolyard. I was as hooked on rough sex as Drew was on watching porn. From the day my mother ascended to the heavens above, I have spent every single weekend at the Giraut’s residence. And summer vacations. And Christmas and New Year. And birthdays. And I lost count of how many boys I have fucked. Never made love to one of them. But I encouraged them to do things with me they were too shy to do with their girlfriends. By the time I got a reputation, Drew had moved on to University. I could hardly be angry with my Dad for fucking every woman with two legs. I could hardly blame my Mom for fucking her way to the colonies. I mirrored the very flaws I condemned.
My love for Drew grew every day — well, to be honest, every Saturday and Sunday. I know how that sounds. I am a calculating bitch that fucks around on weekdays and falls in love in two days in between. It wasn’t like that. Drew has to grow on you. I don’t think it’s possible to fall in love with the nerdy young guy at first sight. Three times a day he would tell me how beautiful I looked. His mother taught him to notice how girls looked, and to comment on it if he honestly thought they looked nice. He noticed when my hair was different. Without my having to tell him, he felt when I was feeling sad, he would hold me with no reservations in his arms, and paid no attention when his hands landed in places that could be considered transgressive when it involved any man other than Drew. His aim was to make me feel better, and most of the time after a hug that could last an hour, I felt better. He was always nice to me, and gentle and caring. He nursed me when I had a cold, bringing everything from a sudoku puzzle book to chocolates, from ibuprofen to panty liners. I learned from Joyce slowly but surely how to predict his behaviour, perhaps because he was so predictable.
There comes a day when the wind shifts, and you know you are standing in the doorway between who you were and who you will become. That pivotal moment came to me about six months ago. The week between Christmas and New Year I spent — like the two years before — with Joyce and Drew. One reason I loved being here with them was that I could talk about anything with Joyce. Not only did she teach me to cook and bake, to make my own clothes, and how to be persistent when someone sold me something of poor quality; but we spend many evenings just talking about life and, of course more pressing, all the things we heard and saw on the news about the threat of alien invaders.
We were watching a talk show on TV. The subject today was the patriarchy that was forced upon us by the Confederacy. The volunteers, mostly men, who took concubines, mostly women, with them to the colonies. A woman, the talk show host, was making a case about the unfairness of such a society.
“I am proud to present to you Mr Choi, a Kung ‘ Fu Tz, if I pronounce it correctly, and that means a follower of Confucianism, and Reverend Wilson, a Catholic priest. We are pleased to have you here from the East and West, prominent spiritual leaders with us on the show today.”
“Perhaps we can start with the most important issue here, the oppression of women whom the Confederacy reduces to child-bearing factories in the colonies. Mr Choi, what is your take on that from a Confucianist point of view?”
“Well, in his book Lessons for Women, Ban Zhao wrote that a woman should obey her father before marriage, her husband after, and her son in widowhood. It’s what Confucius taught us.”
“Suppression from the cradle to the grave,” the talk show host concluded. I think the Western world is slightly more liberated than that, wouldn’t you agree, Reverend Wilson?
“In the book of Ephesians 5:22, the Apostle Paul says: ‘Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord’ and in Colossians 3:18 in the instructions for Christian Households you will find ‘Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.’ We seem to link both obedience to the moral order. As does the Confederacy in modern times.”
“I disagree strongly that women in the colonies would be just there to have sexual intercourse and bear children. Yes, it’s obviously important to bring offspring into this world, because without children we would become extinct as a race. But the role of women, as confirmed by the Confederacy, is for the women to teach children propriety, diligence and humility.” Mr Choi said.