Station in the afternoons and we would catch the same train to the East Rand. I would get off at Boksburg Station and she would get off a few minutes later at the Boksburg South Station. She was always warm and friendly towards me, and when we happened to be together alone, in the absence of Sheldon, our relation was always perfectly Platonic with no hint of any kind of undercurrent or flirtation. Because there was nothing between us I always felt comfortable and natural in her company, and she seemed to enjoy the discussions that we had while sitting together on our train journeys home. To be in an emotionally intimate or a physically intimate romantic relationship with Cheryl was beyond my imagination. It was a possibility that never ever entered my mind. To me it was something that could never happen. It did not even cross my mind. It was something I never entertained, not even for a split second. I could never fill the role of Sheldon and I would have to be like Sheldon in order to capture someone like Cheryl if ever that was a possibility and anyway she was totally in love with Sheldon.
One Sunday morning when I arrived at the church I noticed that Sheldon and Cheryl were not sitting together. It was clear that they had broken up. I didn’t say anything and Sheldon said nothing, he made no effort to volunteer anything about the breakup. One of the elders in the church who happened to live in the same street as Cheryl gave her a lift to all the church services, so she kept on coming to church Sunday after Sunday in spite of having broken up with Sheldon. Usually after the earlier youth service the young people, including myself and Sheldon, would all stand outside in the sun on the lawn next to the church entrance chatting and socializing before the main morning service at 10.00 am. However, after Sheldon and Cheryl broke up, she stopped attending the early morning youth service. She only came to the late morning service. We would all be standing outside in the sun when Cheryl arrived with the elder. One Sunday after she got out of the car, instead of going straight into the church as she normally did she walked over and joined our group. It was late March, the season had passed the autumnal equinox, Easter was around the corner, the days were getting cooler, and on this particular morning in spite of the bright sunlight there was a slight chill in the air. Standing in the sun, we made a space for her in our circle. Sheldon did not greet her or make eye contact with her. I was acutely aware of the tension between them and it made me feel uncomfortable. I glanced at her face. Her gaze was directed at Sheldon. I could not help notice that she was looking at him with an imploring stare on her face. On her face there was this hurt heart-rending expression of pleading, of entreatment, like a vulnerable or wounded animal. He steadfastly avoided making eye contact with her. He was hard and as indifferent to her as a slab of solid cold granite. It was weird, I noticed everything, and nothing escaped my eyes. I was not sure whether the others were aware of the silent and barely visible dynamics going on between Sheldon and Cheryl. I could not understand why he was punishing her. Then suddenly it struck me like a bolt out of the blue, like a revelation about something unbelievably shocking, it dawned on me that they had had sex. Being an English and philosophy major I knew that this should not have shocked me, but you have to remember my psychological and emotional context, we were not only fundamentalist Evangelical Christians, we were Pentecostals and holiness was a value everyone held in high esteem. Sexual immorality was frowned upon and discouraged. I often looked at Cheryl’s face and I could see a faint shadow of wantonness hidden in her demeanour, it was a natural wantonness, and there was a mysterious beauty to it, it actually make her more beautiful this almost mystical flicker and flash of wantonness. I was aware of this incongruity in her demeanour and comportment which seemed to reveal, inadvertently in unguarded moments, this hidden attribute or predisposition of a wanton harlot, which always seemed to magnify her beauty, which made her attractiveness sublime in a way that I could not quite fathom or understand. It could have been my imagination, or a trick of my imagination, but I was a student of John Locke and I had an interest in the perception of primary and secondary properties, and I was interested in the dispositional powers of properties whether they be in objects or in humans. So I did wear the philosopher’s hat, even if it was in secret. I could also see that Sheldon had become a stained man, a man who had transgressed, who had given-in to the weakness of the flesh. I was actually shattered by this realization. In my naivety, in my unbelievable innocence and almost childlike gullibility I could not believe that they had done this, that they had committed the actual physical act of having sex, that they had committed this biological act which had welded their flesh together in the most intimate manner conceivable. She was no longer a virgin and nor was he a virgin.
Even though I was doing a BA in English literature and philosophy at the time, I had become completely out of touch with secular reality by succumbing to the hold of religion. I was living in a parallel universe. The world of my studies was completed divorced from the world of my life as a Christian. I lived in two worlds that were separated into two water tight compartments, and there was no communication of ideas between the two worlds, so in a real sense I was living the life of an intellectual schizophrenic, with two worlds of conflicting ideas which co-existed separately in my brain. For example, in philosophy I wrote essays and examinations that criticised and refuted the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments for the existence of God. Yet in my other life I was saturated with an unassailable belief in God’s existence as the foundation of my reality.
At that moment, when I first realized that they were no longer virgins, which happened while I was standing in the weak autumn sunlight, the scales fell from my eyes and I began to see the world with new eyes. I could now see and experience the real world as I should have been seeing and experiencing it in the first place, that is, through the prism or lens or filter of English literature and philosophy. It was like a third rebirth. I had already gone through the Christian born again experience, which was a kind of second birth. Now I was having another rebirth, which left me devastated. I could no longer keep all the subversive ideas of modernity in strict isolation, quarantined in one separate water-tight compartment within my mind. And on top of all this I felt betrayed by Sheldon’s action. His action unhinged me emotionally and mentally, it opened the locked doors in mind which had for so long prevented the conflict and confrontation of incompatible ideas and beliefs. This is what I meant by the falling of the scales from my eyes. I felt sorry for Cheryl, in my mind I was on her side, I felt empathy towards her, and I was angry with Sheldon, and I was also disappointed in him. I was experiencing the strangest emotions of being let down by two people that I cared for and also respected, and whom I had held in high regard. Their breakup had affected me badly, and I was becoming aware of this, it had created a stressful and unpleasant situation for me, it had put a strain on my relationship with both Sheldon and Cheryl because I liked them both, and I did not want to choose between them.
After their breakup, Sheldon and I continued to go on our regular runs and meet for our joint gym training sessions. I never asked him what had happened between him and Cheryl. But he said things which hinted obliquely that they had had sex. He said his relationship with Cheryl had burnt him. He also mentioned that she had continued to write him letters on a regular basis after their breakup which I found strange. In the letters she wrote about the fact that what they had done was actually beautiful. In her eyes the act that they had engaged in was beautiful and was not something that should have been the cause of their breakup. He did not give details about the beautiful thing that they had done. In my mind I continued to take Cheryl’s side. My sympathies were with her. She was right. What they had done was beautiful. I came to believe that they had done nothing wrong and that he had treated her appallingly. But I did not express my opinions to him. I listened in silence. I had undergone a mind change which Sheldon was not aware of. I had become increasing critical of the mind set or mentality of Evangelical Christians and Pentecostalism. I had also become politically radicalized and I was leaning more and more to
wards a materialist or physicalist view of the world and the universe. Anyway I managed to successfully hide my changed mind set and the revision of my beliefs that I was undergoing. I couldn’t leave the church, my life had become too deeply entangled with the Evangelical Christian community which had become like a family to me. My own biological family was completely dysfunctional and I had found a substitute home in the church in spite of the fact that I was reading books like Monod’s Chance and Necessity and Dawkin’s Selfish Gene. I had now accepted evolution as a fact and I was drifting into Marxism. I managed to keep my opinions to myself and I went through the motions of being a Pentecostal Christian even though I had stopped believing in Evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity.
The breakup between Sheldon and Cheryl seemed to be final. Sheldon began dating other girls and Cheryl kept on coming to church, and the relationship between Sheldon and Cheryl gradually returned to a level of civilized cordiality.