I was in the library bookstore looking for old magazines (10c a pop, what a deal) with which to create collage masterpieces—my emotional outlet of choice—when I saw the book that was going to get me kicked off Jesus Island.

My mom had always told me that, despite the fact that I wasn’t allowed to watch The Simpsons, I was allowed to read any book I wanted, and I had been reading things that were a bit beyond my maturity level for at least a few years. It was really helping me improve my vocabulary, and also taught me that profanity has its place in effective language, but that I was too refined to use it in my own speech. (I have since forgotten that lesson, and it has made me a much more and much less effective speaker, depending on whom you ask.) Through no fault of my own, I had developed a taste for grown-up books.

I was looking through old stacks of Glamour and Cosmopolitan—I was also permitted to read these entirely sex-based magazines because they also fell under the somewhat dubious subcategory of Books: Terrible Periodicals despite their obvious inferiority to anything I had ever chosen to read in the Books: Actual Books subcategory—when a brightly colored hardback caught my eye. The cover was a neon sign in the shape of a crucified woman; naturally I had to pick it up and examine it more closely, so as to fully internalize this haunting image for the coming evening’s nightmares. The title was Only Begotten Daughter, and the bizarre mix of feminist ideals and interest in religion that roiled inside me compelled me to ask if I could have it. My mom, in her great parental wisdom, said yes without skipping a beat. Or even looking at the book, for that matter.

Such science fiction I had never read.

It exposed me to an alternate religious universe, which, in turn, exposed the ludicrous nature of any religious universe. It was literally stunning. I was stunned to find that I had been such a fool; stunned to find that my parents had not already made this leap of consciousness; stunned that perfectly articulated, mind-controlled, prosthetic robot hands could potentially exist at some point in the future. How had fourteen years of my life gone by without my having conceived of these possibilities on my own?

An equally important milestone attributed to this book was the discovery of a usable description of female orgasm. While John Grisham—an inappropriate favorite of mine since I was 12—may write gripping litigation scenes, his way of committing sex to the page leaves something to be desired. This book, however, was opening my eyes to a world in which literature was being used effectively to describe feelings, both physical and emotional. It was like going on a bottom-pinching spree while visiting a Klimt exhibit at the Louvre. Life would never be the same.

My adolescent brain was still in the process of building up its critical thinking defenses, but it wouldn’t be long before these concepts led me to two important philosophical conclusions that still drive me today: sex is wonderful and there is no god.

As the tides carry me away from the shores, the people I left behind get smaller, but the comforting scents of science and reason grow stronger in the ocean breeze. While my childhood will always be dear to me, I can safely say that my short stay on Jesus Island will not be missed.

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