When I met Kivvy, I was in my late twenties and working as a youth pastor at a large evangelical church. Not the youth pastor, just an assistant youth pastor, a position I'd felt stuck in for five years. I did my best for the kids, but they didn't find me very interesting. I'm tall and plain-looking. I have a slow, serious way of talking. I can't tell jokes. I don't pick up on popular culture. To be honest, I'm not good with people in general. I'm better with facts and figures.
My relationships with women hadn't been any more impressive. The ones I met were all church ladies. Three types showed any interest in me: subprime young husband-hunters, single moms scouting for a father substitute, and divorced older women looking for a young man to mother. I dated some of each, but they didn't turn me on. I didn't turn them on, either. My sexual adventures were few, restrained, and short.
Kivvy landed on me as a counseling job. She had barely turned 18. Her parents were staunch church members, but I couldn't recall ever meeting their daughter. She had never attended any of our youth functions or my Bible classes. I was given to understand that she had been in increasingly serious rebellion for over two years. Truancy, hanging out on the streets, sexually active, using drugs. Her parents thought she might be a lesbian. They had used all their leverage, including threats of no college and non-support, to get her to agree to sit down with somebody for a review of where her life was going. They would have preferred a more senior pastor, but I was the only one with time available then. I'd done this kind of counseling before but never with great success, so I didn't promise much. I said I'd meet with her once to try to open a dialogue. Anything beyond that would have to be at her request. The parents asked if they should accompany her. No, I said. I want her to feel free to open up.
I didn't think any more about it until Kivvy showed up at my office. She turned out to be tall, skinny and awkward, with an enormous cascade of crinkly red hair. There seemed to be as much hair as girl. Her face was long and plain, like mine. She had a wide mobile mouth, and blue eyes that looked everywhere but at me.
My very first thought, I'm afraid, took me by surprise: I'd like to fuck her hard. I'd had sexual yearnings for specific women before, but never so immediate, and never in those crude terms. I promptly banished the idea. I had a job to do.
Kivvy wasn't about to help me do it. She was monosyllabic and evasive even through a simple conversation starter. Getting basic family background was like pulling teeth. She apparently thought she was going to get out of there faster by frustrating me. After a few minutes, completely on impulse, I decided that I wouldn't play her game.
"Who's the last person you had sex with, Kivvy?"
For the first time she looked straight at me, her blue eyes open wide and her mouth working without anything coming out. Finally she gave a kind of choking laugh and said, "What business is that of yours?"
Before that day, I would have answered, "I want to help you" or some such platitude. But, with her, I shrugged and said, "I just find myself . . . curious about you."
She looked at me for a while longer. I looked right back, wondering what the hell I thought I was doing. Finally she took the bait. "OK. The last person I fucked was a black boy who calls himself T.H.E. If he has another name, I don't know it. Who's the last person you fucked?"
I was stupid not to have foreseen the question, but instinct told me to just blurt out the truth. "I masturbate," I said, as coolly as I could. "Unfortunately, it's all I have."
Somewhere inside, there was another me, watching this scene with horror and thinking, This can't be happening!
A slow smile spread over Kivvy's face. There was a little triumph in it, but also a little understanding. "Well," she said. "You're the last person I would expect to use that word."
I thought for a moment. "OK, our cards are on the table. Are you willing to talk about sex, then?"
"Wouldn't you rather do it?" she shot back.
"Well . . . not now, not here."
"But you want to?"
"Everybody wants to. But there has to be an element of judgment. And commitment."
"In other words, right now you'd like me to tell you how I do it, so you can go home and masturbate thinking about me."
"Well," I said slowly, "whether that's true or not, Kivvy, how would you like me to think about you?"
She laughed, this time with pleasure. "Ooooo-kay, pastor. You don't have to be such a lawyer with me. Actually, there's a game like that I've played with some of my friends. Everybody has to tell a fantasy they have about somebody else in the circle, until somebody breaks down and starts touching herself. Or himself. Once they start, they have to finish. It can be fun. But first, you have to tell me: are you cut or uncut?"
This pushed it into a different zone. "I'm . . . uncircumcised," I said uncomfortably.
