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literal interpreter, for whom actions, thoughts and beliefs have palpable, cut-and-dried consequences; Shawn the trooper, who, beacon and map in hand, patrols his life and the lives of everyone else he knows, prodding the Evil out of the kingdom of Good; Shawn the player with action figures, who instead of staging intergalactic battles walks his dolls through the Passion, Crucifixion and Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he’s able to sustain this level of intense devotion to the Christian life, Shawn knows God is walking beside him. But more and more often, God allows the Devil and his minions to intercede. They pluck him off of the gleaming prairie of God’s country and carry him piggyback into dark places where Evil hangs in the air like car exhaust. Shawn breathes it in and becomes someone else. This Shawn steals snacks between meals. This is the Shawn who, at Camp Corinth, lies silent in his bunk, staring at the springs above him, and wonders if the defiant boys boasting about the girls they made out with, the girls whose breasts they touched in the woods, are lying. This is the Shawn who, wishing he knew what a girl’s breast felt like, caresses his nipple until it’s sore and inflamed. This is the Shawn who wishes to know that of which he condemns. The Shawn who, back home in bed, has been touching his thing, trying futilely to make it grow.
    As if reading his mind, Shawn’s mother leaves a book on his bed:
Wait . . . Until You Hear This: A Christian Kid’s Guide to Sex.
The very first chapter explores the topic of onanism. It can make you crazy; if you do it long enough, you become addicted and unable to think about anything else and then you stop washing and stop getting haircuts and flies and worms and things start growing in your head and you finally stop wearing anything but long trench coats and gloves to cover the hairy warts on your hands, and there’s a 97% chance that if you start out onanizing—it’s also called self-abuse—when you’re young, you’ll become a dirty-magazine reader and a premarital sex offender and start showing your member to people you don’t know on the street and this can escalate to things like rape and murder and serial killing. The book has examples, stories from real people who fell into the world of sex sins before they found Jesus and were born again. Shawn reads it so many times that the pages come unglued.
    Still, late at night in his room, he can’t stop the minions from pouncing on his bed and insisting that just one more time won’t hurt. Put off righteousness till tomorrow, they say, tonight, they have something to show him. They remind him of the part in
Wait . . .
that describes in scientific terms what happens to you when you onanize. You’re overcome with impure thoughts and your member grows heavy and firm with sex. Once the thoughts have taken complete control of your body and mind and soul, you enter a trance and your member rejects the sex from your being, leaving a gooey white stain on your hand. They remind Shawn that he’s never seen this stain, he’s never felt the sex take hold of his body, that all he’s ever done is yank on his thing until it’s chafed, red and bloated. Shouldn’t he just once find out what he’s missing? He tries to resist them. He protests, “It’s a sin. I don’t believe in sinning.” They laugh at him. They say that it’s a sin because it’s such fun, he’ll see. The stauncher his will, the more conniving the minions become. They open
The Way
to the Song of Solomon. What are those vineyards in bloom? They ask. Can you imagine them? He can and he does. They wear down his will. Don’t you want to arouse and awaken love? This is the Bible, they remind him, that makes it okay. Can’t you see those two breasts like fawns? Come, browse among the lilies. He reaches down and his beloved— whoever she is—dances blurry and half-formed in the olive grove of his imagination. He lets her kiss him and massage him