Until He Comes: A Good Girl's Quest to Get Some Heaven on Earth
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A hilarious, irreverent, and touching account of one seriously Christian girl’s struggle to please any available savior....
K. Dawn Goodwin’s holy crusade to be the Lord’s sexiest spokesperson began at the tender—but far from innocent—age of seven. And while she always thought Jesus was kinda hot, even He could not quiet the avalanche of prepubescent lust and the burning wish for a man to find her, like Bathsheba, comely enough to spy on.
Crucified by soulless pretty girls and cruel jocks whose mission it was to make her life hell on earth, adolescent Dawn, painfully obsessed with her own ugliness, found slivers of sweet relief in dry-humping the scrawniest guy on the wrestling team and scribbling bodice rippers starring her favorite teacher. But, Praise Jesus, at least her virginity was intact.
Until college, where, thanks to a seriously sculpted Jew, Dawn’s chastity crumbled like the Tower of Babylon. Her sex marathons kept her shouting, “Hallelujah!” but with her body image in apocalyptic disarray, her future husband unable to faith-heal her as promised, and the Bible threatening an extra-crispy afterlife, Dawn would have to face down her demons. Which was okay, because they were kinda hot too.…
K. DAWN GOODWIN is the daughter of recovered fundamentalist missionaries and a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, where she majored in English and creative writing. A native of Connecticut, she now lives way below the Bible Belt with her three young children.
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Until He Comes
Gallery Books
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2011 by Kara Dawn Goodwin
Excerpts on page 186 from The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf © 1991 by Naomi Wolf, reprinted with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Used by permission of the Random House Group.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition December 2011
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goodwin, K. Dawn.
Until he comes : a good girl’s quest to get some heaven on earth / K. Dawn Goodwin.—First Gallery Books trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
1. Goodwin, K. Dawn—Childhood and youth. 2. Women—Georgia—Biography.
I. Title.
CT275.G55775A3 2011
940.54'8173—dc23
2011036576
ISBN 978-1-4516-2712-1
ISBN 978-1-4516-2713-8 (ebook)
Disclaimer
As this memoir is based on personal experiences from the distant past, events have been compressed and some dialogue approximated. Most of the names and distinguishing details have been changed.
To Mom, for knowing I could write it.
To Dad, for promising never to read it.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Girl from the Show-Me-Yours State
Chapter 2: Girl-on-Girl Socks
Chapter 3: Relocating to Babylon
Chapter 4: Church of Christ Barbie
Chapter 5: In a Cabin Down by the River
Chapter 6: Our God-Given Talents
Chapter 7: Reflections of a Mirror Addict
Chapter 8: Lunch on the Shitter (One Teen’s Walk with Christ)
Chapter 9: Thespian Sex
Chapter 10: In Wondershorts We Pray
Chapter 11: The Art of Sucking
Chapter 12: The Second Coming, Starring Sonny Crockett
Chapter 13: Soul Mates Can Be Annoying
Chapter 14: The Great Band-Aid in the Sky
Chapter 15: Won’t the Real Savior Please Stand Up
Chapter 16: America’s Next Top Girlfriend
Chapter 17: Special Forces
Chapter 18: After He Goes
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my agent, Ellen Pepus, for finding me in the desert. Yours was the most sublime phone call ever received in the self-checkout lane of the Bremen, Georgia, Wal-Mart. Thank you to Amy Tipton, for working miracles that would do Jesus proud. Thank you to my editor, Megan McKeever, for getting it, and laughing, and changing my life.
Thank you to my sissy, for holding my hand—now, then, and always. Thanks to Mom and Dad, who kept me afloat when the ship was going down. If only every woman was so lucky. Thank you to my three babies, without whom I would never have woken up and taken a stand.
Thank you to Natlie, who taught me how to follow my heart. You always told me it would fly, so I guess this is really all your fault.
Thank you to Dawn—I’m sorry for ever doubting you. It will never happen again.
“Behold, I come quickly.”
—REVELATION 3:9
Until He Comes
1 | The Girl from the Show-Me-Yours State
“Therefore will I discover thy skirts upon thy face, that thy shame may appear.”
—JEREMIAH 13:26
When we left Missouri and moved to Connecticut, I didn’t turn ugly right away. For a while, I lived with the peace that passeth understanding, because I still thought I was hot shit. Being ordained as the Child Prodigy of Attractiveness dovetailed nicely with God’s two-pronged plan for my life: to share the Good News—and my goodies—with every sinner who crossed my path.
What I didn’t know yet was that the Constitution State wasn’t about godliness or prairies or the pioneer spirit; it was about loopholes in written contracts. It was about statutes of limitations, one of which was about to cinch closed on my head. On my ninth birthday, my golden shimmer of awesome would be snuffed out, and I would be as great with fugly as Mary was with the Christ child. Not even the Holy Spirit, who was like God’s most highly anointed trial lawyer, would be able to put my humpty back together again.
But when I was seven, I was at the pinnacle of my career. Like the biblical Samson before me, all God’s power was in my hair. And much like Samson, I attended second grade at Heritage Christian Academy in Shelton, Connecticut.
Before I left each morning, Mom would roll the sides of my hair with a curling iron, then scoop them back with a brush into feathered Farrah Fawcett dog ears. I’d cover up my face and she’d dowse my head with Aqua Net, a veritable force field of Pretty.
My siblings and I would load up in Dad’s first company car, a blue 1980 Pontiac Grand LeMans, while he vigorously pumped the gas pedal in his po
lished dress shoes, trying to wake it from its eternal slumber. Over the din of flatulating backfires, Mom stood waving good-bye in a bathrobe, her breath frosting in the air.
On the ride to school, I fingered my crispy bangs and smoothed the navy pleats in my uniform. My skirt was the attaché case, and the top secret was that my yellow panties matched my blouse. Yet unlike my diary, it had no lock. Ah, the irony of the Christian girl. Yes, I was a Christian. I was Saved. The King of Kings, the invisible Captain of Team World, had not only redeemed me from eternal damnation but had ordained me with better hair. Basically, Jesus regularly borrowed my eyes to give you the once-over.
Dad pulled into the roundabout and I hopped out of the car, clicking my plastic heels across the cement. Like Victoria Principal’s protégée, the top two buttons of my blouse were always left undone. I was little, but oh I understood sexy all right. I had to, since I was the main attraction in my classroom. Inside the front door, everyone turned to admire me, to fight over who would be the next to win a sleepover. One at a time, girls, you’ll all get your turn. The director yelled “Action,” and the extras began filling the background of my peaceful, nondenominational, evangelical uberappealing Christian life. Ding.
In class, we stood at attention before the Christian flag and sang the morning doxology. Then we took our seats and Ms. White, in her modest shin-length tweed skirt and rounded bow collar, pressed pictures of lambs onto the felt board over the cutout of a burning altar. It was time to illustrate yet another bewildering obscure captain’s log entry from the helm of the USS Crazy, aka the Holy Bible.
When the smoke from the sacrifice goes up, that’s good, she said. When the smoke goes down, God frowns. See? In Genesis, Cain the farmer was smited because he burned veggies on the grill when God left explicit hints in the sky that He preferred to inhale the fat from dead animals.
I had a lot to learn about God.
The first thing was that He was highly passive-aggressive. For example, He didn’t hate you per se, just your sin. To be clear: not you, just everything you do every day. He was also very jealous and known to overreact and, say, kill your whole family while leaving you dismembered, but just alive enough to wish you’d loved Him just a teensy bit harder. And, if His followers offered the wrong kind of burnt offering, or on the wrong day, or in the wrong order, or with the wrong ingredients, or if they tried to make it a nicer burnt offering, or if they forgot and slept in, God pretty much always reacted the same way. He devoured them with death. But tie your firstborn son to forty cubits of kindling and strike a match, voilà, the Almighty lifts an unplucked eyebrow. Aha, He’d say as you raise the trembling dagger over your newborn. Now THAT’S more like it.
But the Bible lesson learned was: follow through. Don’t count on God manifesting like that, like He did with Abraham, breaking in with the Lord’s emergency broadcast system to tell you this is only a test. Live by faith, even if it means jumping off the cliff like a lemming. Making horrific requests is God’s way of saying He loves you. He just wants you to show some stick-to-it-iveness. Like with Jesus: there He was, hanging from nails, dying a slow tortured death per God’s request, begging for mercy, but God so loved the world that He leaned into the ear of His only begotten son and whispered, Don’t be a quitter. And whosoever believeth in that, Ms. White explained, shall have eternal life.
God was one hell of a heavenly Father.
And while buying me with blood was awfully nice of Jesus, He really couldn’t compete with the other men in my life, like Tommy, or Tommy’s twin brother, Timmy, and especially Jesse. Jesse was my age, supposedly a Christian, but that didn’t stop him from longing to live in sin with me. Once, he’d even whispered something in my ear about “grabbing a nightcap,” which I imagined was like taking Communion naked inside his sleeping bag. The best of both worlds. I loved Jesse because he excelled at a) planning questionable trysts, and b) smoldering with jealousy.
He was especially mad at me today because I’d shared a Bible with Tommy. And then got stuck reading the end of Genesis chapter two. Blame God.
“And she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man,” I’d read.
“Very nice,” Ms. White interrupted, marking the page.
“That is why,” I continued, enjoying the sensual purr of my voice, “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
Ms. White: “Very nice, you can stop there.”
“Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”
“Ms. Goodwin, that is enough.”
Startled, I moved my fingertips across the page, where they came to rest on Tommy’s hand. He blushed and Jesse glared at me hard from a few desks down.
“What?” I mouthed.
He immediately began writing me a note.
As punishment he was going to meet me after school in the cafeteria and kiss me. Hard. But I wasn’t worried. Being ravaged had nothing to do with Satan really. It was merely the gravitational pull of my own worldly charms, bestowed on me so I could better lead sinners to the light. Kind of like the way Christ bought us with blood; only I used Bonne Belle.
Jesse was waiting for me in the dark behind the last cafeteria table, fists jammed into his tan polyester pants. I approached and stood in front of him, feeling guilty and electric all at once. I let my book bag slide seductively to the floor.
“Hi,” he said, looking so serious he was almost in pain.
“Hi, Jesse.”
“Do you like Tommy?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Then he gave me a quick peck with dry, soft lips and ran out the cafeteria doors into the fluorescent light of the hallway. I watched him flee, wondering if we were closer now. I picked up my bag, realizing this must be how the Bionic Woman felt about the Million Dollar Man. All womanly and bionic and stuff. I shoved open the double doors and headed outside to join the pickup line, chomping at the bit to testify before my Christian BFFs. They of course gathered around me, eager to hear anything I had to say. I soothed their wide-eyed fears, took their calls, offered advice about all the pivotal milestones I’d already high-jumped. It would take them years. It was so adorable, how much they all wanted to be like me. Aw.
At three o’clock Mom picked up my older brother and sister and me in the roundabout. It was a long, boring, woodsy drive home, and also the template of my entire budding universe. Along the way, I reminisced over all the many amazing signs God had left for me. The house that was the same color as the boogers I so loved to eat, the ditch where Mom had once pulled over so I could puke up chicken noodle soup, the four-way stop where I realized that Lemon Meringue was my favorite Strawberry Shortcake doll, and the hill where I realized that all these events had one mysterious common thread—the color yellow. My life was fascinating.
Once home, I ran upstairs and slipped into my room and out of my Heritage Christian jumper. There was a green paisley cover on my dark-varnished bunk bed. Mom had arranged my favorite stuffed animals on the pillow just so. On one wall were the Curious Kitten and Orphan Annie posters that I’d gotten at the book fair. On the other wall was a centerfold of Cheryl Tiegs, posing suggestively with a bobcat. Cheryl was a gift from the old Italian grandma who lived across the street and who demonstrated various decadent behaviors not likely endorsed by the puritanical matrons of the Bible, such as feeding her German shepherd vanilla ice cream in a dog bowl. She thought since I was a good Christian girl, and didn’t have a dog, I might like this half-naked, sexually objectified supermodel, and she was damn right. Every day as I unzipped my uniform, I admired Cheryl and her lean denim hips, her hair the same wild texture and ash-blond color as bobcat fur. Someday I was going to transmutate into that, only, you know, slightly more New Testament. I’d wake up one morning and have long, blond curls that were 100 percent dandruff-free, like Christie Brinkley in the Prell ad. I’d be making out with men in tuxedos, one after the other. And oh, my colossal tits. The profile of my sy
mmetrical D cups, aching to be freed from my soft but tight sweater, would have hot guest stars swooning. They’d fistfight each other over the chance to draw my bath.
In Bible class at school, sometimes I’d color in Jesus’s beard and start daydreaming. Dang. He was kinda hot too.
Needs to work on self-control, read the note from Ms. White. It was the second warning that year.
“What does that mean?” Dad would ask, loosening his tie. All he wanted was the nightly news and a hot supper; instead he got my ominous report card comments and me, marinating in my naturally improper juices. “Bloody well better start controlling your ‘self,’ so help me.”
“Daddy, you’re not supposed to say ‘bloody,’” I warned.
He looked back, muzzled. “Yeah, well. It’s absolute nonsense.”
Things had gotten complicated since we’d left Springfield, Missouri, and moved to Connecticut. Mom and Dad had started their family in the Midwest because it was closer to Mom’s family, and also to Jesus Himself. Sure, Dad was a full-blown, pinkie-ring-wearing, blue-blooded Brit, but when he laid eyes on USDA choice Mom, he immediately opted to spend the ’60s not wallowing in free love but converting to the Church of Christ so he could legally fornicate with her. Enter us: a crossbred litter of God-fearin’ Amerikins.
Looking back at faded snapshots, I always pictured Missouri in the early ’70s as a Norman Rockwellish kind of place, where kids came complete with cowlicked hair the color of white corn, adorably wholesome little Midwestern twangs, and souls as pure as prairie snow. Missouri folks were kindly, the cashiers and clerks trustworthy, the lines short. Townsfolk had their priorities in order and likewise drove their vehicles in a reasonable manner.
But when Dad got a much-needed promotion to corporate HQ in Connecticut, my parents had packed up the station wagon, said good-bye to the relatives living at Mom’s homestead, and made the stalwart trek eastward toward the double mortgage of the American dream. As hundreds of miles of pastoral scenery gave way, a panorama of bleak, polluted, and crumbling turnpike rose up around us like the Red Sea. Brake lights flared and salt-caked cars bullied each other through one narrow connector after another, leading us onward to the inverted promise of New Canaan.