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“You’re not fucking me,” Lauren said. She was on the pill, but she’d always said that she liked being so close
without a condom. On top, I looked into Lauren’s eyes, making it last. After, she told me that I was the only guy
she has ever let come inside her.
So, when Lauren said that we shouldn’t go much further, I stopped. I put my shirt back on. I hadn’t come over to
fuck her.
And later when I was idling in front of Lauren’s, a half-hour drive from my parents’ house, and no matter what I
did my car’s lights wouldn’t work, all I could think about was my father’s letter:
Now that you’ve been with Lauren awhile, I wonder whether you’ve thought about your future with her, how your
relationship with her is unfolding. And have you given thought to the various aspects of intimacy that you and
Lauren are cultivating—social, emotional, spiritual, physical? And whether you have established any boundaries to
physical intimacy?
My father is the copy coordinator at Campus Crusade for Christ’s corporate magazine Worldwide Challenge
(they always use the trademark symbol). My parents have been missionaries for longer than the 30 years
they’ve been married. From them, I grew up with the commandment to save sex for marriage. But my parents
don’t know that their youngest son, who Mom introduces as her “baby,” has a pack of thintensity
ultrasmooth lubricant Trojans in the pair of motorcycle gloves that are next to his Swiss Army Knife and
Good News Bible in the drawer of his bedside table.
Bottomline: My father’s letter was way too late.
I turned off my car’s engine and I thought of all the possibilities: I couldn’t drive home in the dark on the
interstate; I wouldn’t ask Lauren to drive me home; and I wasn’t going to call my parents to pick me up. It was
respectively illegal, unfair, or ridiculous. I realized I’d already made up my mind, because the car’s engine was
already cooled down.
I walked back to Lauren’s front door. Her dad was gone on a hunting trip that weekend with her brother.
Lauren was alone and I was about to ask to stay over. I couldn’t think of anything else.
So, I knocked, Lauren answered, and I immediately started to explain that, “It’s probably a fuse or the switch,”
but before I could finish Lauren said, “Stay.”
I knew I had to call home. My parents have never imposed a curfew, but I’d never not come home before, even if
that’s meant unlocking the front door as quietly as I could at 3am to my father sitting in the front room reading
some proofs and him saying, “I hope you had a good time. I’m glad you’re back, safe.”
My cell phone had died, too, so I had to use Lauren’s to call home. And as my parents’ phone rang, I prayed to
God: Hey man, I haven’t asked you for too much recently and I know we don’t talk a lot, but you know I’m listening
and if you could, this time, would you hear me out? I realize that this is an emergency prayer that I could’ve used
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