I especially loved this piece as the daughter of a preacher and an ex-Christian who left the church right around the time I left home for college. I remember all sorts of shaming language about girls’ bodies that never sat right with me (“Close your legs, sit like a lady!” Cleavage is sinful, etc.), and in my adulthood I’ve had to reshape much of those anti-sex, body shaming sentiments into creative energy.

When you think about the ideal audience for this piece, who do you have in mind? There’s a lot of “shocking” quality about this piece, and I’m wondering what effect you wanted it to have and for whom? Perhaps it was more, for yourself and readers, meant to be a type of catharsis? Or a little of A and a little of B? 

When I started writing the piece it was more about having fun with these stories and seeing how far I could take it. I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, a cultish group with a literal interpretation of the Bible, and I spent a lot of reading and studying the Bible. I am no longer a Jehovah’s Witness – I also left when I got to college – but I continue to think about the Bible, the stories we were taught and the way they were interpreted for us as kids. I had a hard time figuring out what to do with all this information and writing this was a way to say these are my stories too. The Bible and the stories in it don’t “belong” to any one denomination or just those that go to church. I know there are others in that similar position of still grappling with all we were taught as kids. Hopefully, just like the characters in the story, readers are able to see the Bible stories in a new way.

As I was writing, I had a moment of realization as I figured out what was at the heart of the story. The scene I included in this piece of the preacher and old men taking the teenage narrator aside to talk about her tight clothes and to stare at her chest happened to a good friend of mine when we were both teenagers. I remember being angry but also confused. I didn’t know what to do with the information. I am a guy. I hadn’t had to deal with that kind of sexist and inappropriate interactions from men. It’s taken me a long time to truly understand what had happened to my friend and what women deal with in society and at church, a place that is supposed to be a safe haven and a place of community.

Why did you choose this sort of DIY/”steps tutorial” format for this piece? How do you see the content working within this kind of framework and how did you come to this final form?

The truth is I originally wanted to do what the characters in the story do. I was, and still am, angry about all the book bans happening at school and public libraries. I wanted to put porn in bibles and leave them around town as a way to highlight the hypocrisy of those bans by spotlighting the smut in the supposedly holiest of books! Thankfully, my girlfriend talked me out of it. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head though so I started writing and thinking about what it would take to do this. Well, first I would need to figure out what stories to illustrate. Then I would have to find the right porn, etc. It just kind of came naturally. And once I started writing in the narrator’s voice, my favorite parts were when she would speak directly to the reader. You have to do this. You have to watch out for that. It felt less like a fictional story and more like I was having a conversation with her.

When I think about sex in the Bible, my mind goes immediately to Song of Solomon, for obvious reasons. It was the “sordid” book when I was a kid reading through it, giggling with my friends. There was always a sort of eye roll from the adults when we got to this one. If you could pick some favorite Biblical passages with sexual or suggestive overtones, which ones would you choose and why? 

There are so many! The one that still leaves me shaking my head is the story of Lot and his daughters. It’s the first one in the story that the narrator illustrates because I just find it so messed up. If you are looking for straight out explicit, Ezekiel 23:20 and 21 is really the best in my opinion: “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.” It’s like something a teenage boy would write!

Something that was surprising to me as I did some research and reread parts of the bible for this story, was the possible gay relationship between David and Jonathan. I was fascinated as I reread those passages in the Bible. The two men express their love for each other, sneak around together and the Bible even describes a kiss they share. David, when he finds out that Jonathan has died in battle, says: “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.”

I don’t remember reading the Song of Solomon much as a child but, now, as an adult, I find it really sweet. You can’t help but smile when you read the way the lovers describe each other. The guy tells her that: “Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn, coming up from the washing.” “Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate.” “Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies.”

The woman’s part I think translates a bit better to our modern age. She says: “Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.”

Who inspires your writing? What are you currently reading?

There are so many! When I really need a dose of inspiration and energy, I go back to writers like Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chuck Palahniuk, Neil Gaiman and Octavia Butler. I’m currently reading Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. It’s amazing! I love writers who, in the words of Emily Dickinson, tell the truth but tell it slant. Like looking through a window from the late 1800s. The ones that get warped with age so when you look through them you can still recognize the real world but you see things in new, distorted and reimagined ways.  

Do you have anything you’re working on now? Can you tell us about it?

What I’m most excited about right now is that I finished the first draft of a novel. I’m taking a short break from it now but will start the revision process in the new year. I don’t want to share too much of it yet but I can say it is about retelling the Bible from a new point of view. I can’t wait to finish it and, hopefully, get it published and out in the world!