I Held His Arm
He holds my deepest secrets
He was a Texas cowboy with an adorable acknowledgement nod, and I wasn’t shy.
Our ‘Social Media’ in the cult was BlackBerry Messenger. There were strict cult rules surrounding it, for example, we couldn't change our profile picture too often nor could we write status updates.
My BlackBerry Messenger lit up with his name, Henry; now, why would he want to talk to me, I wondered. I wasn’t the young woman he had become all puppy-eyed over. However, she had recently broken his heart, and he had become friends with my childhood crush. One plus one equals three or something like that. 😉
Our time zones were an hour apart, and he would wake me with that damn BB Messenger ding every morning at 6:00 a.m., and there wasn’t a morning in which I did not reply. He quickly (secretly) became my best friend, and I was his. It was against the cult rules to be texting as we were, we weren’t in a relationship, but my fucking god, did it ever feel good.
Cowboys are what cult girls were raised to acclaim—cowboys and Indians was our childhood game. My oldest son Emerson’s first trip to Lammle's to purchase a pair of cowboy boots, Levi Jeans, and a cowboy hat happened at six months old. The love for all things Western was shoved down our throats. The prophet William Branham claimed that God chose a cowboy's humble life.
Not only did I have a real Texas Cowboy to call my bestie, but he was also a musician: a guitarist and singer. Many mornings, when I opened our chat, he sent voice notes of him serenading me with a new song he had written and composed. I knew the “Sunday Special” he would sing weeks in advance. Our friendship made me feel special. It wasn't forced; it was genuine. I was the luckiest. Some mornings, he would send voice notes of him screaming, “WAKE UP!!!” If we were allowed to swear, I can guarantee he would have recorded, “WAKE THE FUCK UP!” There was no sleeping in with Henry, and I wouldn’t have changed it.
I was sixteen, and he was seventeen. I stood innocent in the realm of boys, and here I was, building an unbreakable friendship with one. Day in and day out, hours upon hours, we confided, laughed and cried together on our BlackBerrys. We shared photos, made fun of each other, and, over months, became each other’s BAE. (As the kids say.)
There was not a day that was off-limits to our messaging. Moments before we walked into the cult for a service, we would say, “Talk to you after.” We exchanged thousands of messages; I was his goodnight, and he was my good morning.
He knew my deepest secrets, and I knew his.
Tight jeans were his weakness. Us cult girls wore skirts two sizes too big. Curly hair was mine, and he was brunette.
While there were no romantic feelings (or maybe there were, and we were too awkward or blinded by our infatuation with others to admit it), Henry's mom went to her friends, telling them how she wanted her son to choose me.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, he did choose me, but that’s when what we had spent months building began to dissipate.
I'll get to that part.
First, we were both graduating in 2009, and it was the first “public” cult event wherein girls could touch boys. Before your minds reach the gutter, for a minute of our human touch-deprived lives, we graduating ladies were allowed to hold onto the arm of our prom date and walk down the two-storey cult staircase to our designated seats.
It was our sexual awakening!! I remember practising with my mom how to hold his arm. Vaginas pulsed, and the penises began to erect. What the fuck is happening to my body?!
Henry asked me to be his prom date over BlackBerry Messenger, and I typed, “Yes!” without hesitation.
Henry and I repeatedly told each other how we longed for Jesus to postpone the rapture so that we could experience graduation and me holding his arm.
Purity culture. It scared us. It created horny monsters, unrecognizable in the face of ourselves, and we had no parental guidance on recognizing our new appearance.
99% of cult young people fuck around before marriage. The more you restrict, the higher the desire is to break the rules; Mix teenager hormones with doomsday, it’s a recipe for human excitement!
He flew to Edmonton so we could discuss our prom plans and hang out. Where I went, he went. We drove in the same car with our friends. If he went bowling, I went bowling. “Hey, you're coming out tonight with me, right?!” - he would beg. But in doing so, the young woman who had previously broken his heart became a witness to our friendship, and she became weighed down with jealousy.
That ‘bunny’ shouldn't have been in her Christian garden, but she didn’t heed to the instructions of that Sunday School song.
The four bunnies that don’t belong in our Christian gardens are envy, jealousy, malice, and pride, but I would argue that those are the bunnies preoccupying Christian gardens. I digress.
My “Yes” to his prom proposal was the impetus for her projections of regret. She blamed me. Her brother, my first boyfriend, blamed me. Everyone who found out blamed me. Eve was the reason for falling in the Garden of Eden; henceforth, every woman is to blame for everything wrong. Soon, she found out about the serenading, and she became unhinged.
Now, she wanted him.
Fights erupted—our dynamic altered. Henry no longer serenaded me, and our conversations slowed.
He wanted her. His mom wanted me. I wanted my best friend.
Graduation day arrived, and my hairstyle was that of tight-wearing jean cowgirl Carrie Underwood. Disappointingly, he filled the day with ignoring me and texted the young woman who now wanted him. I was adorned in a custom short polka dot gown, with hundreds of hand-sewn Swarovski crystals, trimmed with a hot pink ruffle, and he was in a polka dot and houndstooth tuxedo; I held his arm and walked that cult staircase as goosebumps shot through my body like cocaine.
Our lips never touched and our naked bodies we kept hidden from each other. A fully clothed hug or two happened though.
I graduated as the valedictorian of our class but lost my best friend.
Two years later, he was the best man at my wedding, and due to her jealousy and not allowing any other girl to stand with him at a wedding, that jealous young woman, now his wife, was my matron of honour.
In 2012, we both became parents, his wife and I giving birth two months apart; their baby was a girl, and mine was a boy.
A few months ago, I ran into him for the first time since 2018 at Costco, and we acknowledged each other.
“Hey, Bre.”
“Hey, Henry.”
Ex-communication can try as it might but as he walked past, he gave me that cowboy nod he had given me all those years ago.
*To protect identity, names have been changed