“It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass Read Online Free PDF

with it,” I enjoyed
assuring them, fantasizing that they admired my willingness to be the Handmaid
of the Lord. Besides, I thought but
wouldn’t admit aloud, when a man sees
another woman on the sly, it’s disrespectful and deceitful, because the wife
has no control. But when he sees another woman with the full knowledge and
support of his wife, everything is aboveboard. It gives the wife control. It
accords her respect.
    Or so I told myself. I conveniently overlooked the coercion
part, the part about how the Lord would destroy me if I didn’t cooperate. It
was kind of like telling yourself you had control over gravity and that you
were only staying earthbound out of choice.
Wife-hunting as a couple
    The cool thing about being a First Wife, or “a Sarah” as we
called them, was that your husband couldn’t just show up and surprise you with
a new, hotter-than-thou sister-wife. Husband and First Wife were to work
together as a couple, a team, in choosing and recruiting. A husband was
required to obtain his First Wife’s permission before he could take additional
wives, and she maintained veto power over each of his choices. There was,
however, a Catch-22. A First Wife had those rights only if she didn’t exercise
them. Otherwise, she became “the transgressor.” Her husband was then “exempt
from the law of Sarah,” which meant he was free to proceed without her
permission. More than one man in our cult had availed himself of that canonized
caveat from the Doctrine and Covenants to abandon his family and start a harem
in Manti.
    Harmston said that “helpmeet” as used in the Bible meant
“helping” prepare your husband to “meet” God. He wasn’t even close to right,
but then, Harmston the prophet felt no need to double-check his pronouncements
against biblical scholarship. The more wives and children a man had, Harmston
explained, the more ready that man would be to meet God. It was an attractive
deal for everyone, since in turn the man would drag his wives and children to
heaven along with him. I was eager to be a helpmeet, so Jeff and I prayed
together for God to reveal the women besides me whom Jeff should marry.
    God is quite the prankster. Many of the First Wives in the
cult received divine revelations saying their husbands could only take on
plural wives who were fat, ugly, or both. I shopped for wives for Jeff the same
way I shopped for his clothes, with an eye toward choosing what I thought he’d
like.
    A fellow female cult member who did much the same thing
admitted something insightful to me. Painfully aware that her husband didn’t
really love her, she sought to win his affection by generously recruiting hot
wives for him. “I thought if they were gorgeous, everything I’m not,” she said,
“maybe that would make him happy, make him appreciate me, make him love me for
giving them to him.” When I asked how that strategy was working out for her,
she said, “He’s too busy having sex with them to give me a second thought.”
    Jeff and I prayed until God came through by bringing an
eligible woman to our attention. A man moving to Manti in search of plural
wives for himself had brought with him an attractive, single daughter not quite
20 years old. Jeff did not seem to find the prospect of bedding a pretty woman
who was 14 years younger than me the least bit off-putting. The more we
discussed her and prayed about her, the more we experienced tingly feelings.
Like the Mormons, we took tingles for a “burning in the bosom,” a sure sign
that the Holy Ghost was telling us to proceed. Never mind that a sumptuous pot
of chili induces tingles when you’re hungry enough. Considering the burning
sensation many men in our clan experienced when looking for additional wives, I
can say with authority that the bosom on men is located much lower than on
women.
    Assured that God wanted this young woman to marry into our
family, we invited her father to one of many dinner bashes we enjoyed hosting
in our