My husband, The Reverend, presided over a strip mall congregation in The Church of The Message. He caught me in behavior he found . . . inappropriate, flew into a rage: disciplined me as he had never done before; ravaged my body; anointed me with his "personal" Holy Water; re-christened me Jezebel. I was taken to The Underground Church, a basement room in which the altar was an X rather than a cross, in which penance was exacted and redemption granted, in which pain and pleasure melded into a confusingly powerful amalgam to which he quickly addicted me. Then he introduced me to The Message-an improbably endowed giant of a man whom it was my destiny to . . . receive. I desperately wanted to; I just didn't know if such an encounter would be . . . survivable. I was determined to try.