This story begins when I was 18 years old. That wasn't very long ago, but so much has happened to me since then that I feel much older. I have gone through experiences that set me apart from everyone else I know. In truth, I feel set apart from everyone else on the planet. I can no longer take reality for granted.
When I was 18, I was a fairly normal teenage boy except in maybe one respect. I was a deeply committed Christian. This wasn't because I came from a religious family; my parents are not religious and neither is my sister. I discovered my faith when I was 13 in a religious studies class at school. I read the Gospels and I was profoundly affected by them. It struck me as the most astonishing fact in human history that God loved the world so much that He sent His own Son to die and be redeemed, that we all might have eternal life. I don't know why I was so susceptible to this idea, but I was. I embraced it completely.
Discovering that I believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and accepted God's love was like what I think falling in love must be like for other people. I remember the sheer bliss of knowing that I was saved. I revelled in the knowledge that I would have eternal life and it pained me that my family and friends didn't seem to want to know -- that, in fact, they thought I was strange and preferred me not to talk to them about the need to embrace the love of God.
It got more difficult as I tried to persuade my schoolmates that the word of God was real and that Jesus wanted them to accept Him. More than once, I suffered at the hands of boys in school (and some girls) who thought I was a religious nut, or a moralistic prig, and who wanted to take me down a peg or two. I was beaten up a couple of times. I was also humiliated. Once, in a swimming class, three girls ganged up on me and pulled my swimming trunks off me while I was in the pool. The teacher had to intervene while I stood up to my neck in the water, vainly trying to cover myself with my hands while the other kids laughed at me. Another time, the school had a sponsored custard pie fight for charity and I took part in it, because, well, it was for charity -- and to my shame and embarrassment, all the other kids who were taking part selected me as their victim. I later found out that when they discovered that I was going to be taking part, it didn't take them long to agree that I would be the only one who got hit with a pie. That's how much they disliked me. I was trapped against a wall and deluged with custard pies until I was so plastered in goo and shaving foam that, again, a teacher had to intervene. I actually had to take a shower and borrow some clothes, my own were so filthy.
What really galled my classmates was that I accepted this kind of thing on the grounds that a good Christian turns the other cheek , and martyrdom was an honourable thing for a true believer. When my classmates were made to apologise to me, I even forgave them, although I still felt the shame of being humiliated in such a messy and embarrassing way. Behaviour like this did not earn me a lot of new friends, although I still had some friends from before I had become a Christian. With my close friends, I eventually made an agreement that we just wouldn't talk about my faith because they didn't want to hear about it.
This hurt me, but I accepted it. Like anyone, I didn't want to be entirely alone. I remembered my friends in my prayers, and my tormentors too. The bullying I sometimes received wasn't as bad as some kids suffered, and I always tried to bear that in mind. I was just made to look like a fool from time to time, but some kids were really hurt, and in the end I wasn't the most satisfying victim for the bullies because they realised that whatever they tried to do to me couldn't really hurt me.
Nevertheless, I grew up feeling lonely. I tried going to churches, but I was never very comfortable with the kind of people who went to churches. It seemed to be more of a social club for them, and a lot of them had political and social opinions that I thought were wrong and offensive. I also didn't like the terrible songs and the relentless cheerfulness of the places I went to. Eventually I stopped going. My faith increasingly became a matter between God and myself.
Needless to say, I didn't have a girlfriend. My attitude to sex was that I should save myself for when I had found love and had got married. I knew some kids in school who were quietly gay and lesbian and I thought what they did was wrong, but on the other hand I knew that it was very difficult to form a strong argument about it based on what the Bible says, because the Bible says so many different things about so many subjects and it doesn't always agree with itself. So I kept my opinions to myself, but I also kept away from the kids who were doing things that I regarded as being sinful.
I found that the best way to feel close to God was to be on my own. I loved being outside and in touch with God's creation, and I took to taking long walks by myself at the weekends. As I got older, and my friends began to form relationships and have flirtations, all of my feelings about love and happiness were sublimated in my love for the divine creation, my appreciation of the natural world that God had created. I could take a walk in the fields near my house and it would fill me with love for humanity, just being close to the earth and growing things.
It was my love of nature that eventually led me to discover the woods, and it was in the woods that the thing first happened to me that would turn my world upside-down, and utterly change the way I existed and what I believed.
Was I totally ignorant of sex? Pretty much. I knew about masturbation and on two occasions, when I was fourteen, I did it, but I was so consumed with shame about it that I wept afterwards. I knew it was wrong, but it had felt good -- and yet I knew that that was merely the lust of the flesh. Because I deliberately refrained from masturbating, I was prone to having wet dreams and these disturbed me greatly, because it was as if I could sin in my sleep. As far as possible, I tried to be unaware of the urgings of my body. My body was merely the vessel of my immortal soul and I knew that my soul could be polluted by my body if I gave into the flesh. I even showered and bathed with my briefs on, so that I wouldn't see myself in the flesh; afterwards, I would cover myself with a towel, take off the wet briefs, throw them in the laundry, dry myself and dress beneath the towel. After a while I grew used to always having clothes on. It made it much easier to ignore my body.
I suppose I'm not bad-looking. I am average height, with short dark hair and on the slight side. I have never been much of an eater, because that too is giving into the flesh. My features are fairly regular. When new girls came to the school, they would sometimes take an interest in me until they found out that I was a Christian, and then they would generally avoid me.
So, through having no physical contact with girls or even with myself, I became pretty good at fighting off the desire of my body. That's why what happened to me was so devastating.
It happened the day after my eighteenth birthday. It was a warm Saturday afternoon and I had decided to go for a walk. I packed up a rucksack with water, some fruit, a map, a compass and my Bible and I set out from the house. I was wearing my favourite summer walking clothes, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts and trainers. I liked the feeling of the sun on my bare limbs. I didn't think that it was a fleshly indulgence because I had long since been able to experience it as God's light shining on me.
The woods were about five miles from our house, and they covered a steep hill. They were largely untouched by man, being the remnant of an old forest. There was a nature trail in them and a couple of clearings with picnic tables, but most of them were fairly inaccessible, unless you knew what you were doing. I did some orienteering and was good at reading maps and making my way through undergrowth.
By the time I got to the woods, it was hot and I was sweating. I was glad of the shade as I made my way up the hill. At first I followed the nature trail, really just a dirt path through the less thick part of the woods, but half way up I decided that I'd like to leave the trail and really see what the woods had to offer.
That was my fatal mistake. I had no idea, then, what the woods had to offer, and had I known, I would never, ever have gone in there. I would have remained in my innocence -- maybe just a bit longer, maybe for the rest of my life. I could have died as an old man in the serene knowledge that I would wake up in heaven. Well, that's not how it worked out.
I stepped off the trail and made my way through the trees. At first, the trees were quite sparse but the undergrowth soon got thicker, and after a while I was having to tread carefully. But I liked the exercise. I drank water as I went, to stay hydrated, and I ate fruit to keep my electrolytes balanced. Sometimes I had to make my careful way through thorn bushes, and I smiled to myself as I thought of the biblical significance of thorns -- these were obstacles I had to pass to reach salvation.
I don't know why I kept walking, but I went on for a long time without turning back. I should have circled around at some point, and got back on the trail, but I didn't.
As I went deeper into the woods, the atmosphere became more and more close and thick. I was sweating freely and I often had to run a hand over my forehead to wipe perspiration away. But my limbs were singing and my heart was full. I breathed deeply, smelling the rich forest scent.
On and on I went, inhaling the smell of the trees and flowers and earth. It was almost intoxicating. I felt wonderful as I made my way through thick ferns and hanging vines and pushed deeper and deeper into the enclosing trees.
At last I stopped, in a small glade with an opening high above in the tree canopy, that left a little light shining on the forest floor. I looked around, eager to take a break. The ground was covered with creepers, and here and there were large purple flowers, hugging the ground, with succulent leaves and a rich scent. I didn't recognise them straight away but they were so beautiful that I sat down to take a look at them, and to rest my weary legs for a moment.
Ten minutes here, I thought to myself, and then I'd better start think about heading back.
I lay on my belly on the ground and examined one of the purple flowers. There was a low hum in the air, as if bees were around, but I couldn't see any. I touched the petals with my fingers. The flowers were crown-shaped, about six inches across, with purple petals that became a pinkish-gold towards the centre of the flower. The stamens were large, among the largest I'd ever seen -- long, rather thick and with a bulbous tip, lightly dusted with a waxy-looking pollen. As I examined the stamens, turning them over with my fingers, I had the strangest impression that they seemed to get bigger from me touching them. But it had to be a trick of the light. Still, they were at least three inches long.
