Chapter 1

“Happy Birthday, Frank! Now, make a wish! You only turn eighteen once!” I heard Mom tell me, as if I needed a reminder that I was now what I called a “half-adult.”

That wasn’t a term that Mom liked hearing, mind you. Uncle Taft, my mother’s elder brother and the “golden boy” of the family, liked it even less. It was one of a number of “disturbing black sheep tendencies” as he liked to put it. Well, Mom was kind of a “gray sheep” in the past who was busily trying to “reform” of late to be in her brother’s graces, as he was the bishop of our ward, too. Yep, you guessed it. We were LDS, Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons as many still called us.

“Very well, then,” I winged it, knowing that nothing would happen, so why not indulge my craziest wish.

That was when Uncle Taft handed me several pamphlets from the Church. Yes, that Church. The one to which I was baptized and ordained to the first level of priesthood when I was twelve and didn’t know any better. I had been pressured into going to seminary for the past four years and had managed to become a priest of the next level when I was just sixteen. The pamphlets were about three major things, of course: the necessity of “purity,” meaning abstinence, the need to embrace rather than rebel against the Church’s teachings and community standards, and the need to serve as a missionary for the necessary term.

“You can have a great future in God’s work and His plan, Frank. That’s what our Heavenly Father wants for you. You don’t have an earthly father in your life and that is rough, I don’t deny that. Our Heavenly Father can still look out for you. You started well, getting baptized, getting the first two priesthoods, and attending seminary. Some of your recent bad habits need to go, but we can counsel you and work with you to improve your spiritual growth,” Uncle Taft rather gratingly reminded me that Mom was a single mother still trying to get a temple recommend.

The rumor was that Dad was mysteriously deported before he could marry Mom (or that’s the version that I heard from my cousin Stella). Money changed hands, possibly in an illegal fashion, and before I knew it, Dad was back in Israel. Yes, that was right. My father was an Israeli, or so I was told. Why he never contacted me, whether he was Jewish or Arab, Muslim, or Christian, well, there was a lot of idle gossip, chatter, and speculation. There was precious little in the way of data or evidence. Mom was surprisingly tight-lipped about it for a woman.

At any rate, Mom was treated as a mix of “prodigal sister” come home and as a charity case by most of the family. I was regarded much the same way by extension, getting extra scrutiny as to my “bad habits” and “attitude” by the likes of my uncle and the other counselors in our ward. On paper, I was an equal member of the seminary, but in practice, I was the resident redheaded stepchild.

“So, what did you wish for, cousin?” Stella pressed me, her hand sliding rather suspiciously down the back pocket of my pants.

“Now, now, you know that if I tell you, it won’t come true,” I chided Uncle Taft’s often flirty cocktease of a daughter.

How a girl like her ever came from my uncle’s loins was such a mystery to me that I often joked that Lucifer finally found his body of flesh and bone. Yeah, that joke only amused Stella, even when I told it to her face. I still had no idea if she told her father, but I highly doubted it. After all, it would raise some awkward questions, wouldn’t it? How did she end up with a name like that as a bishop’s daughter, for that matter, was a real puzzle. I still missed more than half of the pieces, in fact.

“Yeah, that’s kinda naughty of me, isn’t it? Maybe you should spank me,” Stella blurted without thinking.

“Stella, that is not funny! That’s a very dirty thing to say, especially to your own cousin. We want him to choose the right and you’re not helping at all. I don’t care if you’re eighteen, too. That only means that you’re a young lady now, and young Christian ladies shouldn’t flirt with boys, let alone their first cousins!

“Besides, if you get a spanking, it will be from me, and it won’t be fun for either of us! How are you going to find a godly, Christian husband to be priesthood holder and head of a holy household, speaking that way? Short answer: you won’t. You’ll draw lechers, deviants, and reprobates instead,” Uncle Taft scolded my cousin now.

“Listen to your father, young lady. God has anointed him bishop, after all. That is a sacred calling and a worthy testimony. Speaking of such, maybe pray for a revelation on how best to keep your mind holy, pure, and chaste, so you can be a virtuous woman, such as found in Proverbs 31. This is what we get for giving you such a profane name. I really wish that we had given you a holier one, but at the time, I was into Streetcar Named Desire far too much,” Aunt Katie rebuked Stella as well, annoying me far more than her daughter did.

That was when I snapped and said, “Yeah, well, I wish that Uncle Taft was gay. Then he would understand what it’s like to be tormented by what he can’t have.”

All of the sudden, to my complete surprise and that of the others, Uncle Taft’s facial expressions changed and he walked over to Uncle Roy. Roy was the husband of my Aunt Nora, who was always suspiciously a bit too loud about his manliness at times. He dressed like Sam Elliott and had a similar mustache. He was very lean, as opposed to the pudgy Uncle Taft, who now kissed him on the mouth. Before any could stop them, the two men, stout pillars of the local Mormon community in Scottsdale, Arizona, just made out like bandits and left a path of clothes en route to the guest bathroom in Uncle Taft’s house.

“Well, well, what was that about holiness, Aunt Katie?” I smirked, even as I added, “I wish that you would revert to your more ... worldly ways that you practiced in the past. I’ve heard some rumors, you know. In fact, I wish that you would disrobe in front of me. Completely. Down to your birthday suit. That sounds fun, doesn’t it? See what I wished for ... the ability to wish things into existence. I hope that it still comes true. Let’s test it, eh? I wish that Aunt Nora would strip to the buff. Totally naked, just like Eve!”

Before any could object, both aunts were naked as jaybirds and stood shivering in the dining room. It was New Year’s Day as well as my birthday, after all. Yeah, I drew the short straw there. Then again, I smirked as I recalled that in at least one version of events, the Roman Dictator Sulla was born on New Year’s Day. That wasn’t such a bad outcome, was it?

You and me, Lucius Cornelius, I thought. You and me. We are both Felix ... fortunate. Lucky, after all. Maybe I could be a dictator, too. Evidently, I had some new powers, didn’t I? Time to use them. I walked behind Mom and slid my hand up her dress, lifting it to pull her panties down to her ankles. Why the hell not, right? Why couldn’t I have what Dad had been denied? Why couldn’t I make Mom my bitch? She was already A bitch, so she was halfway there.