Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (26 page)

“Well, we decide together what is needed. I don’t think I need clothes. Did my clothes attract you to me?” I asked with a smile.

Salim allowed himself a rare smile and went into the adjoining sitting room.

“Have you ever been to Yves Saint Laurent?” he asked me when I came into the room, ready to leave. I thought he was talking about a small village nearby, St. -Laurent-du-Vas.

“I think I visited there once,” I replied.

“I want you to go there tonight and pick out a dress,” continued Salim. “I will meet you at Jimmy’z later to see what you have bought. Get whatever you want.”

“Isn’t that a little far for me to go tonight?” I asked, still thinking he was talking about the village.

“No, it’s right across the street. Kahlil will accompany you there,” he said with a quizzical look on his face. He was beginning to understand that I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Kahlil was Salim’s right-hand man. He took me across the street from the Hotel de Paris to two haute couture boutiques displaying the clothes of Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. I felt foolish when I realized what Salim had been referring to. Mara and I had often looked in these display windows, while she pointed out to me which clothes were tasteful and which were not. I wished she were here with me now to help me choose a dress. I wished somebody were with me besides Kahlil, and I felt awkward asking for his opinion. But since he was the only one, I asked anyway.

We went through half a dozen exotic and colorful dresses, which made me look ridiculous, and Kahlil agreed that they were not for me. Then he suggested that I go next door to the Dior boutique, which had more conservative styles. He helped me choose a few eve rung dresses, and we finally agreed on a simple black satin dress overlaid with embroidered chiffon and a sheer cape covering spaghetti straps. Kahlil suggested I buy shoes to go with it. Made of a black velvet, with very high heels, they were the most exquisite shoes I ever owned.

Salim looked pleased to see me when I arrived at the club in clothes that made me seem like a different person. That evening he introduced me to the mayor of Nice and his wife, who were sitting at the table. I showed them pictures of my son, which I carried with me at all times.

The mayor’s wife, who was American, thought this was terribly endearing.

On another occasion, Salim bought me a signed, limited-edition print by a contemporary artist he had discovered in Paris. Salim said that the painting of a nude, waiflike girl with adolescent-sized breasts, reminded him of me. She had flowers in her long hair and held a folded piece of material around her hips, in which she had collected a bouquet of flowers. A vine was entwined around her slender left arm, and she looked gently at a dove she held in her right hand. The lines of the figure were lightly sketched over a blue background. This print said more about Salim’s feelings for me than all the words he could have uttered, but never did.

I often have wondered why it was Salim, and not some fly-by-night client, who first gave me money. Throughout the waves of doubt about the concept of sacred prostitution that I continued to experience during my Monte Carlo days, it was often Salim’s special attention and our presumed spiritual connection that caused me to focus on the sacred side, and convinced my tortured mind that I was not a prostitute.

Sacred Prostitution

By the summer of 1979, we had moved to Beausoleil, the French village that is literally attached to Monaco.

In our new home we had more room, a benefit since Peter and Sheila had been sending us sisters to try out as sacred prostitutes in Monte Carlo. One of them was Sheba, an icy beauty who had recently discovered her husband’s homosexuality. To everyone’s shock, Mo was tentatively condoning homosexual relationships now. Mo had always encouraged lesbian relationships, but he preferred men to be with women. A close relationship with a young man in his own home seemed to have sparked Mo’s enlightenment, which he detailed in a letter.

Although it was not clear if Mo actually engaged in homosexuality himself, he expanded his doctrine to state that anything done in love is not sin, which left the door open for homosexuals in our group to come out of the closet. Many of them were already married with children, as was the case with Sheba, who was surprised to discover that her husband loved men more than just spiritually.

Sheba was breathtakingly beautiful, but she was aloof and uncommunicative. She soon was transferred to another home, as the leaders decided we had a good team as it was—small, together, potent, and led by our faith that what we were doing was for love. In biblical terms, Breeze represented a Delilah-type seductress, hunting rich and powerful men to use for her own amusement and personal aggrandizement.

Sharon exemplified the ever-suffering Mother Mary, ready to sacrifice when chosen. I was the Mary Magdalene, symbolizing the tortured integration of rational thinking and irrational actions. I dissociated my mind and soul from my body as I performed earthly missions of providing sexual pleasures.

In our new home, I requested that the small study be turned into a room for Thor. In anticipation of entering school in the fall, Thor had come to live with me while Cal and Mara hunted for houses. I taught Thor schoolwork almost daily. He was well advanced in math and reading, but I wanted him to learn French. In all the Family homes at that time only English was spoken, and although Thor had lived in France since he was less than a year old, he still spoke almost no French. I had Thor tested at a local Catholic school, and he placed in the second grade, at only five years of age. When Cal had still not found a home by the time school started, I enrolled Thor in the Catholic school. This was not the norm in the Family, but there were no COG schools nearby.

Unfortunately, no one took into account that Thor could not speak French when they put him in second grade. Although he excelled in math class, he didn’t tell anyone that he couldn’t understand much else.

There were no French nationals in our home either, so when Cal and Mara found a home in Antibes, and they wanted Thor back, I complied. I reasoned that most of the children in wealthy families were sent away to boarding schools by their parents, and Thor would not be far away.

I could visit him during the week and take him with me on weekends again.

If he was going to go to school in France, he needed someone like Mara who could help him with his homework in the national language.

Surprisingly, for having lived in the Family for so long, I was very concerned that Thor excel in scholastic pursuits. I think in the back of my mind, I felt that if the Family did not work out for him, he would have a good education to fall back on, unlike many of the children being raised in the Children of God at that time. Even Mo’s prophecy that Jesus would come back in 1993, making Thor only twenty years old when Jesus returned, did not deter me. Mo’s prophecies had been wrong before, like the one about the Kohoutek comet destroying America. Every time one of his prophecies did not come true, we were told by Mo that we had misinterpreted what he said, or that the Lord had mercy and gave us more time. He referred us to the story of Jonah, in which God had told Jonah to prophesy that the evil town of Nineveh would be destroyed. Poor Jonah, who didn’t want to say the prophecy, just in case it didn’t come true, had to spend three days in the whale’s belly before. he agreed to prophesy. Then the Lord forgave Nineveh and didn’t destroy the town after all. I was not taking chances with my son. He might live to be an adult, and there might not be the Children of God around anymore. Although I did not think about it at that time, obviously, at some fundamental level, I was preparing my son for life inside or outside the Family.

Thor moved back with Cal and Mara, who had found a very nice home in the cozy town of Antibes, about forty-five minutes away by bus. They now lived with another couple from the old Show Group, and Cal had a steady engagement performing at a local music club. They were settled in nicely, and their home seemed like a picture of family security. I felt that Thor would have the support he needed in education and fatherly discipline, so I let him go without any trouble, after securing a promise from Cal that I could take Thor to Monaco every weekend and on vacation. Meanwhile, during the week, I often made the one-and-a-half-hour round trip to be with him. Thanks to being free from a normal job or witnessing quotas, this was possible. As I went on long, playful walks with Thor in Old Antibes, surrounded by medieval architecture and the famous castle wall by the sea, I imagined that my life was magical.

Back in Monaco, we began an earnest study of the letters describing the “flirty fishing” ministry, upon Timothy’s insistence. An early letter, “Law of Love,” written in 1974, told us,“Are you so ruled by His Love that He can liberate you from the rules? Are you willing to lay down your life—or even your wife—for a starving brother or sister? Can a couch be your cross? Jesus said, If any man lose his life, for My sake, the same shall save it. Love God…and love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Matthew 22, 37-40)” (quoted in “Law of Love” 302c). These Mo letters were illustrated with drawings of naked women with their bodies pierced by a hook, and sexily clad women offering a hook and a look of love to admiring men, with a caption that read,“Hooker for Jesus.” The lengthy letters, describing every detail of the fishing experiences, were spiked with quotes asking if we were “willing to do anything for Jesus to help your Fisherman catch men, even to suffer the crucifixion of the hook…eaten alive” (“Flirty Little Fishy” 293). Later, when women started to get sexually transmitted diseases, our sacrifice was compared with that of Jesus,“We are suffering for their sins as Jesus did for ours in order that we and they might be saved” (“Affliction” 569, 108). However, Mo did suggest we see a doctor.

Now that we were told to accept money from our fish, the financial difficulties that had plagued the Family around the world were considerably lessened. The COG headquarters expected a lot of money from our tiny Monte Carlo home, presumably for distribution to poorer missions in third world countries. Wasn’t this the case in most nonprofit organizations? At least the poor, where my compassion always was, were receiving some of the money I made. Along with our required monthly tithe, we sometimes sent extra money to headquarters in Switzerland by American Express checks, made out to a name that we were given in our monthly correspondence.

We met our most generous givers at parties where Sharon and Breeze were commissioned to sing. At one of these parties I met Adnan Kashoggi again. We had been invited by Salim to sing for a small affair to be held in a private room in the Hotel de Paris. By the way he described the event, I understood that we could flirt. I brought both Sharon and Breeze, and from the amount of money Salim gave me for the party, I knew this was important. It turned out to be a special dinner party for a rich Arab business associate of Salim, and his girlfriend. My experience had taught me that the presence of girlfriends had no bearing on anything. As soon as I entered the dark, paneled room, I recognized our honored guest as the famed Kashoggi from the Cannes party I had attended more than a year ago. His new girlfriend was a stunningly beautiful Italian. Kashoggi did not indicate that he had seen me before, but he was visibly impressed with our music and especially our message. He wanted to know what the Lyrics meant, so I translated songs that were not in English for him.

Discussing the event afterward, we thought that Kashoggi had been making eyes at Sharon. However, when Salim met with me later that evening, he gave me surprising insight into the thoughts of the Arab billionaire.

“Adnan would like to know if Sharon is married,” he said, when I arrived in his suite after midnight, as planned.

“Yes, she is,” I answered. “However, she will be glad to spend time with him if he likes her.”

“No. Adnan would not allow that to be,” responded Salim gravely. “He will not willingly be with another man’s wife.”

“Is that because of his religion?”

“I cannot answer you truthfully. I have many friends who are Muslim, and this does not bother them. But Adnan will not do that.”

“You know that I am still married,” I said quietly, with my eyes averted. I was not sure if Salim had ever considered that fact.

“Of course I know. However, you have been separated from your husband for years, and he is living with another woman, who has his child. “

“You know that?” I asked, surprised that Salim could remember details of my personal life with all the international business affairs he was involved in.

“Yes, I know more, too,” he responded, looking deeply into my eyes.

He broke into a warm smile. “And besides, I am not Muslim. I am Christian Lebanese, remember?”

“So, what did Adnan say? Was he interested in us?”

“Yes, he is very interested. He noticed that you and I pass forbidden glances to each other. He noticed that Sharon is a mother and a mother-to-be. He also notices that Breeze could be exciting in the bedroom.”

“He can read people well,” I said, amazed at the accuracy of judgment that Adnan achieved through such a brief contact.

“Of course, that is why he does so well in business. Do you think spirituality stops at the doors of religion?”

“Well, would he like Breeze to see him?”

“Yes. A chauffeur will come for her tomorrow night. Will she be at home?”

“I will make sure she is,” I responded with my impresario authority. Of course, this transaction made me more of a madam than a manager, but it was for a good cause. Do the ends justify the means?

That is always the big question, and I had decided that sometimes it does not have a yes or no answer. It depends on what ends and what means. Witnessing to Adnan Kashoggi, who clearly had great influence over a large number of people, seemed comparable to the role of Queen Esther, in the Bible, given in marriage to a heathen king in order to eventually save her people. And as with Queen Esther, who was only one of many wives available to the king, Breeze was pursuing a good end.