41. The Sacrifice

Because every good story needs a sacrifice and something lost. Jesus – devilish handsome, funny and sweet, an electricity coming off him like fire – god we’d had fun that summer; the sparks of something forbidden, an escape from a commune that had taken over and a marriage I hadn’t meant to make. In the normality of the Director’s house I laughed and ate ham and felt like just a girl. Jesus was my escape hatch and now he was missing. My husband at home – generous, majestic, kind, who loved me, who’d waited saying not a word while I’d gadded about without a thought in my head for him. And I didn’t think of him that night either, the night before the show. I remember the lights being low in the Director’s kitchen, it was dark outside when the Producers arrived, angry, not looking and looking at me. It had happened before, a missing Jesus, but before there’d been no heathen. Hurried conversations of which I was not a part, a car sent off to a den in Brixton. I went home. The next day I turned up on set, walkie-talkie and boots and so did he in robes and readiness for sacrifice and resurrection, chastised, head down, concentrating. I left him with the costume ladies and went to check props. The Producers in a Gator pulled up beside me. They told me to get off the land. Christianity was not happy. I returned to the commune, a stone circle almost built, a husband who knew, who called it before I did, had the guts I didn’t. We had been married for less than a year. He suggested we end it with a trip, we took acid in the recording studio, This Is Hardcore powering from the speakers, my Angel man and I who wasn’t mine anymore, who never had been, who I’d thrown over for a Christ with a wicked smile. There were endings coming, my marriage, the stone circle, a Wiccan life, the commune but Christianity wasn’t done with me yet. First, they sent a priest and a mallet.The Literary Obsessive is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe