When I was a child, this room wasn’t a library. The windows weren’t bright and airy like now, but closed off by blackout curtains and iron security bars. The soundproof walls were covered with crimson drapes. There was a powerful stereo system with ceiling and wall speakers constantly pumping out the smooth jazz that Kelly liked. The lights were on dimmers, and during the “celebrations,” as Kelly called them, they would be turned down low. One of the attendants would light candles and burn incense. All these years later, I still can’t stand the smell of patchouli. In the middle of the room was a vast bed, far bigger than a king, at least eleven feet wide and fifteen feet long. Kelly bragged about how he’d imported it from England. He called it a super-Caesar bed, fitting because he fancied himself to be more powerful than a Roman emperor. The emperors couldn’t flit between universes.

I started participating in the sacrament called Ascending Sodality when I was thirteen, according to the original tenets of the Assembly, set forth in the secret Chronicles of the Celestial Fountain: When a young person reaches his or her fourteenth year, the parents shall deliver that young person up to the Elders, willingly and with love, the male to the female Elder, the female to the male Elder. And the youthful initiates shall cleave to the Elders, who shall teach them connubial love, and they shall be married to the Elders and the Elders shall be married to them in the eyes of the Assembly.

The Assembly was becoming a new, hip underground religion, one that appealed to the wealthy because it didn’t make them feel selfish and callous. Wealth was a sign of purity and heavenly grace. The most fervent believers, a group of twenty-two trusted insiders and their families, came to the compound to engage in Ascending Sodality.

Maybe the events of that evening happened because that morning, the increasingly volatile Kelly had engaged in a screaming match with my mother over some trivial decision she’d made without consulting him. Maybe they occurred because I was a fifteen-year-old who’d spent my entire life being the center of attention, who’d been a big star while Kelly struggled to land supporting roles. Probably he did it because he thought he could.

I hadn’t been scheduled to participate in a celestial celebration that night, so I was surprised that they summoned me to the room. As usual, I simultaneously felt arousal, apprehension, and disgust. Despite Kelly’s brainwashing, I knew innately that what I was doing—what they were doing to me—was twisted. Afterward, I’d feel a malaise, like the first vague symptom of a festering illness.

I knocked and went inside. The incense in the air felt heavier than usual. I took several breaths through my mouth so I could avoid the smell, but the smoke singed my lungs. Kelly stood in the middle of the room, fully clothed. Lying on the bed naked was a woman I knew as Greta, a wealthy downtown art dealer who had a son about my age. Greta was more attractive than most of the women—a brunette with a broad Slavic face, full sensuous lips, and aggressive, stony eyes, the darkest brown I’d ever seen. Most of the other women who practiced Ascending Sodality couldn’t hide their embarrassment or trepidation, no matter how often they’d had sex with children. Greta had no such inhibitions. She truly enjoyed young boys.

Kelly always watched these sessions, but never participated. He called himself a steward of celestial love. After a while, I got used to his presence. You can get used to almost anything when it means you get to feel good.

Kelly ordered me to undress. When I finished, Greta stood up, took my hand, and led me to the bed.

“It’s a great honor,” Greta whispered. Her face was glowing with rapture, like that of a true believer who’s just recognized the image of the Blessed Virgin in a water stain.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“He’s bestowing a great honor upon you. He’s the celestial messenger. I offered him my son, but he picked you.”

I still didn’t get it, but before I could ask her what she meant she batted her eyelashes, a gesture so melodramatic I expected a director to yell “cut.” She leaned over and took me into her mouth. She sucked on me for a while and then pulled away.

“Fuck me now,” she said. The rawness of her tone startled me. In the past, spoken words had to stay romantic and tender—exalted, Kelly would say. Ascending Sodality wasn’t supposed to be dirty or profane. I expected Kelly to chastise her for the language, but he didn’t. I hesitated.

“Put your cock inside me,” she said insistently.

Another aberration—no foreplay. We boys had been taught gentleness, kisses, caresses. I hesitated and then reached for the basket of condoms that were kept on the nightstand. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and Kelly made safe sex a sacrament.

“Never mind that,” Kelly said from somewhere behind me.

“But—”

“Never mind that!”

I wanted to refuse, but I obeyed because I was afraid of what he’d do if I didn’t. I entered her carefully, just as I’d been taught.

“Do it hard,” Kelly ordered. “Hard and fast.”

Greta looked up at me with her half-open eyes and nodded. I began pistoning inside her. She matched my thrusts, and soon I felt as if we were nothing more than complementary machine parts. As always during these so-called celebrations, my mind became numb, incapable of feeling any emotion, much less transcendent love—unless crude physical pleasure counts as an emotion.

“Don’t stop until I tell you,” Kelly said.

It wasn’t difficult. One thing that we boys had learned from practicing Ascending Sodality with older women was self-control.

I felt something tickling the back of my neck, like the legs of a large insect. I flinched. It took a moment to register that I was feeling Kelly’s hand, and I heard him say, The time has come, and I looked back and saw that he was naked from the waist down, his penis erect, and I felt Greta hump back harder in excitement, and I started to pull out and let him take my place inside her, but when I felt him press his chest against my back and wrap his arms around my waist, I realized that it wasn’t her body he wanted, but mine. I screamed.

Even sodomy involving a male and female violated Assembly edict, and Kelly preached that homosexuality was a cardinal sin. In his public statements he made no apologies for his homophobia. He had this theory—AIDS was caused not by a virus, but by the mutation of T-cells resulting from the unclean act of anal intercourse itself.

“Relax, baby boy,” Greta whispered. “If you relax, it won’t hurt so much.”

I discovered then that I was no longer a child, that I could fight if I had to. I’d grown strong in the last year, and the sheer terror made me stronger. I flailed my limbs and elbowed Kelly in the sternum with all my might. Greta shrieked, as if I had struck God. Kelly backed away. I used the brief window of his surprise to roll off the bed and onto the floor. I got to my feet, but when I tried to run I tripped over the raised edge of the carpet and fell to one knee. Kelly reached for me, but I scrambled away from him, managed to stand, and ran out the door and down the corridor, stark naked. I made it back to my room, not knowing whether anyone saw me, not knowing whether Kelly was following me, certain that in short order he’d send his crew of Assembly goons after me. I’d not only disobeyed the wishes of the Assembly leader, I’d struck him. I would be punished for my heresy. I had to get out of there. But first I went into the bathroom and vomited.