05 - Eva

(Codes for this chapter: male teen/female teen, male adult/female adult, consentual, heterosexual, true story, polyamory, first, oral sex, anal sex.)

Eva perplexed Pastor Deveraux, her father. He really did not see children as being much different than adults. It was a continuum, analog not digital. So, he never treated his three daughters as being other than shorter, less physical adults with shorter attention spans.

Being a preacher was a lot like going to high school permanently. Lots of things you just had to do to prepare. Lots of reading and study and discussion. With Sunday morning services being the final exam.

Before they were of school age the Pastor took his girls with him to his church every day. His wife, their mother, worked there as well, she was kept very busy making appointments, managing his schedule, finding things, organizing things, and cooking.

Eva loved the church, the building, its contents. The way there was a story behind everything. Especially the library and the hundreds of interesting books within. The Pastor’s BA was in Textual Criticism, literally disassembling a work and examining it critically, carefully, to unlock its original meaning.

Original meaning was so important to Eva. If you believe that scripture exists to guide you, well isn’t it really important to get the instructions right. She was reading at the second or third grade level when she went off to kindergarten. All three days of it.

AUGUST 1958

The teacher had said, “don’t you want to do this,” when what she meant was, “Would you please do this.” Whatever it was, Eva did not “want” to do it, and so she said “no,” and then kept doing whatever she had been doing.

It was an ugly parent-teacher conference where the teacher lost a logical argument with a five-year-old in front of the principal and the little girl’s father. Then having lost the argument she persisted in talking, making her blatant idiocy clear to all present.

It was an epiphany for Eva. Unlike the others in the room she was actively listening to the words being spoken. In doing so she frequently caught the principal and teacher disseminating. They were not interested in teaching her. They were interested in breaking her, and subjugating her to their will, to their arbitrary whims. No thank you, not interested.

In 1958 the State of Texas did not require Kindergarten attendance, so Eva did not go back. She had a one-year reprieve from the mundane reality of modern public education. A year of reading texts typically given to freshman seminarians. A year of shadowing the Pastor and his wife, of learning how to organize and run a church. Eva’s little sisters Lillian and Claire would just start school at the first grade.

MAY 1974

Eva perplexed her father the Pastor. So, it did not come as a tremendous surprise when Eva arrived at her sister Claire’s high school graduation unmarried in the eyes of Caesar, and in a very pregnant condition with her entourage. His daughter Lillian and Punch, the husband they shared, along with George and Kristin, Jamie and me ... He was happy all of his daughters were there, but he knew he was in the minority.

Eva studied, Eva knew what the text said, be it KJV, NIV or ASV. Eva constantly butted heads with the folks who just barely skimmed the ‘Cliff’s Notes’ edition of the Bible and who semi-diligently attended services every Easter and Christmas, that is when they could remember where the church was located, in a town of 1,600. You know, the folks who can’t differentiate Methodist from Episcopalian.

The Pastor knew his daughter was doing good works at Azusa, her mission in San Angelo, although it was a tad Pentecostal for his church’s governing body. He just wished Eva could see what it took him years to figure out. That people have serious flaws, like cracks in their character. To move them you have to get into those cracks from the oblique. Pushing on the front door only closes those cracks.

He wished that Eva would get a real diploma from a real seminary so that people could see her as a real minister of God. He did not have to agree with her, or agree with all of the choices that she had made in life. He just wanted others to respect her.

He knew he was biased, but he still could not find one “wrong” thing that Eva had done. Not one thing that she had not thought through, or a thing that she had done that could not be spiritually justified. Even though often it was not the majority opinion. The Pastor wondered to himself, “did Saint Joseph feel this way as a parent.”

Claire, on the other hand, was simply furious at her sister. Furious at both of her sisters, but mostly at Eva. Claire thought that Eva could get Lillian to do anything. If Eva had wanted Lillian to strip at Claire’s graduation, and then dance a naked dance at the podium, it would happen. Eva could then find some vague, obscure, scriptural justification for whatever she had just done. People talked, they talked about Eva and Lillian and Punch being together, and not in a nice way.

Claire had unkind thoughts. Eva was just there flaunting it, her belly bump. The ‘never been married ordained minister’. Even that, it was a BS correspondence course ordination. Not from a seminary, even if it was legal. Flaunting the bump Eva’s technically out of wedlock child put there by Punch, legally Lillian’s husband.

With Lillian’s knowledge and consent. Heck, Lillian had told Claire that she was there when Eva conceived. There! There, probably cheering. “Rah, rah, rah, give her an ‘F,’ give her a ‘U,’ give her a ‘C, give her a ‘K’...” Unbelievable, Lillian had told her that she ‘assisted’. That she had ‘fluffed’ Punch. Until that day Claire had not known the word. Now she simply wished that she had never heard it. That image kept popping into her head, why? She didn’t want to picture her sister doing that.

Lillian what, on her knees? Naked? All three of them naked probably. Lillian taking Punch’s penis into her mouth. Making it ‘erect’ as they said in health class, “I mean ewww,” even if he was her husband. Eva and Lillian had said that Claire was sheltered. Just because she had never actually seen or touched a real penis, or even seen a picture of one. It was hard to visualize one from those poorly drawn text book illustrations. Like the joke about blind men describing an elephant.

More than likely ALL of them were there. ALL of them naked. Lillian’s husband doing her sister, putting a baby into her womb. Hey! Sell tickets, why don’t you. All of them naked, touching each other. Kissing, touching each other’s things, kissing them. “Arghh...”

If Claire asked, Lillian would probably ‘lend’ her Punch for the night.

“Oh, Lillian dear,” she imagined saying. “I seem to still be a virgin on the night of my high school graduation.”

“No problem at all, little sis. My big stud of a man would be ever so eager to put his thing into your thing. Get rid of that whole hymen thing. That virginity thing. That ‘good daughter’ thing. The pent up angst, stress and frustration thing. Oh, and as an added bonus, nine months from now you can present mom with a second grandchild fathered by Punch. Then she will finally notice you.”

There was just something really wrong with that whole concept. And Eva, Eva would find some old book in dad’s library that made reference to Jacob marrying some previously unknown third sister, a third first cousin, to justify it. Of course her name will probably be Meira, one who shines.

Claire had tried to explain to Eva and Lillian that what they had done, the two - no, three of them - just wasn’t done, well at least not anymore. That people talked about them. But nobody could tell anything to Eva. Eva listened to input alright. She considered, pondered even, what was said to her. She was happy to discuss it. But the darned “truth” was always more important than what people thought. In the end, Eva did what Eva thought was right or justified. To heck with the consequences.

Eva, she was a force of nature. Claire could see Eva, standing like Jesus, casting the moneylenders out of the Temple. Eva, she was so brilliant and at the same time so clueless, like, well like dad she thought. No wonder he did not ever seem to care what anybody said about her.

Just last month Eva had told her that Punch was Jacob, she was Leah, and that Lillian was Rachel. That if the State of Texas had allowed it, she Eva, would have married Punch first. FIRST! Before Lillian, because that would have been the proper thing to do. THE PROPER THING TO DO! Calling Lisa and Jamie Bilhah and Zilpah and explaining to Claire what a handmaid’s carnal duties consisted of. There was Eva, throwing gasoline instead of water on a fire again.

Claire thought back to Eva at thirteen, when she was nine. Eva attending the public meeting held to decide what to do with the public Nativity display that had always been put up in December. An atheist asked that it be removed. Ministers, including their father asking that it remain. Eva, speaking before the council and audience, agreeing that it should remain...

But Eva, as always, not leaving well enough alone. There were twenty votes for the display and only one against it...

Eva, pointing out that the city had it all wrong. That the creche it was displaying was being displayed in the wrong month. That according to scripture ... Then handing out the mimeographed sheet she had prepared documenting her proof ... Jesus had been born in late September.

Dad, dad tacitly encouraged her once again. By bringing her to the meeting, and by not reining her in or stopping her. When dad was asked about her behavior by the other ministers, he simply said, “you know that she is right.”

Claire wished she was half as brave as her big sister. She wished that she didn’t care what anyone else thought. But that was not her. She was the ‘good daughter,’ never making waves. Always making responsible decisions.

It might be fun borrowing Punch for the night. He must be good at whatever perverted games they all played. He had his own little harem following him. Even a couple of lesbians, all kissy face, smoochy, smoochy with him. She liked Jamie and Lisa, they were pals. But you know what they say, love the sinner, hate the sin.

Claire had made the mistake of saying something similar to Eva last week. When Claire had asked them all to not come today. Eva, always analytical, asked which sin Claire was referring to. Claire said homosexuality of course. Eva, tenderly touched her sister’s head, kissed her sweetly and said that nowhere in the Bible was homosexuality labeled as a sin.

Claire responded with the story of Sodom. Nope, said Eva. Back in the time of the Bible folks were living in an inhospitable desert. God told people to share, to be nice to guests. But the people living in Sodom did not listen to God. They were greedy and inhospitable. That is why God destroyed Sodom.

Claire said Onan ... Nope, Eva explained. Living in the desert was tough. God told his people to multiply. Onan offended God by choosing not to procreate. Onan’s brother had died. God told Onan to plant his seed in his dead brother’s wife. Onan chose not to listen to God. It did not end well for Onan.

Besides, said Eva, you don’t have a penis. The fundamentalists who quote the whole Levidicus “not lying with a man as if he is a woman” are completely inconsistent. First it doesn’t even apply to women lying with women at all.

Then there is the fact that those same fundamentalists say that oral and anal sex are wrong between men and women. So logically, if a man is prohibited from having oral or anal sex with a woman, then, when a man lies with another man as if he was a woman that man would be inserting himself in another man’s vagina. Clearly impossible...

So, when a man lays with another man and has sex, that man is laying with a man as if they were both ancient Greek warriors like Alexander, or Irish poets like Wilde.

“Arghh.” Claire thought, Eva has a quote or a justification for everything.

Then Eva just had to tell her how much fun it was to have someone, obviously Punch, put his thing in her ass. How much fun it was to have someone, obviously Punch, put his thing in her mouth. How much fun it was to have someone, obviously Punch, put his mouth on her thing. Ewww! She would just DIE of embarrassment.