A Career Choice

"We are so proud of you, Charles," Amy Goodness told her 19-year-old son, beaming a scintillating smile at him.

"It really is quite an accomplishment," Reginald Goodness added.

"I can't believe you got a scholarship for a film study of the sex life of the monarch butterfly," Sheri, his 18-year-old sister said.

"I sure didn't plan on it," Charles said with a laugh. "It was just an assignment for my videography class that was supposed to demonstrate understanding and use of various focal lengths and film speeds. The professor is the one who submitted it. I didn't even know he had done it until I got this letter," he said, holding up an envelope. "To me, it was just a great chance to work with really good equipment and experiment with macro videography and macro photography."

"I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised at your choice of subject matter," Reginald said.

"Oh, Dad, I can't believe you're still so hung up about any mention of anything sexual," Sheri said. "It's only butterflies! If it weren't for sex, there wouldn't be any life, including us."

"Now, Sheri, you know very well that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints frowns on any mention or display of anything sexual," Amy said.

"Mom, the Mormons are so out of touch with the here and now," Amy said, exasperation in her voice.

"That's disrespectful, Sheri," Amy said, bristling with indignation. "Your father has been a church elder since you were a child and I've been a religious studies teacher for over 20 years in the church."

"And I mean no disrespect at all towards either of you," Sheri replied. "The church does many good things and I know how much you and Dad help others. But I'm talking about historical facts. Joseph Smith was a crazy man addicted to sex. He didn't care who the woman was, whether she was married or not, whether she was very, very young or old. He only cared about having sex with as many women as he could. He never saw a woman that he didn't want to have sex with. He 'married' 50 of them."

"I cannot believe that I am hearing this from my own daughter," Reginald said indignantly.

"You object to hearing the truth, Dad?" Sheri asked. "Is that what the church has taught you, to stick your head in the sand like an ostrich whenever you hear something that you don't like, to ignore inconvenient reality?"

"Sheri, where is this anger coming from?" Amy asked, a shocked look on her face.

"I am just sick and tired of the hypocrisy, Mom," Sheri replied. "I'd find it all much easier to accept and believe if it weren't so wrapped up in hypocrisy. There is so much good about the church, no matter how unsavory its origins. At the same time, why do Mormons have the highest suicide rate of any religion? Isn't suicide one of the biggest sins?"

"It is one of the gravest of sins," Reginald said. "But for many, it is even a greater sin to knowingly live possessed by the devil."

"Oh, please," Sheri snorted. "Possessed by the devil is nothing more than a semantic excuse for not having any self-control and giving in to baser instincts that harm yourself and/or others. Being weak is not being possessed by the devil, if there is even such an entity, it's just being weak and using the devil as the bogeyman to blame for that weakness."

"If the church stopped trying to sell the devil as an excuse and instead focused on the very real psychologic problems that people face and dealt with them, I think we'd see a lot fewer people killing themselves because they don't see any other way out, because in their minds, they're possessed. And the church doesn't have any sort of an exorcism process to get rid of the so-called devil, so people know that there is no help and they kill themselves. Even the Roman Catholic church has an official exorcism and they're about as barbaric as they come. They at least try to help instead of just looking the other way while people kill themselves. Doesn't that make you feel the least bit ashamed? How many people do you know who have taken their own lives?"

"Sheri!" Amy gasped, jumping to her feet, all 5'2" of her body shaking, her blue eyes beneath her cap of blonde curls flashing.

"Do you really so blindly, unquestionably accept everything?" Sheri asked, rising to her feet to face her, the spitting image of her mother, but a couple of inches taller at 5'4". "Have you abrogated your right and ability to think, to question? Well, I haven't. I'm starting to question a lot of things."

"Sheri, how can I help?" Reginald asked softly. "What do you want or need from me?"

"I don't know, Dad," Sheri replied, shrugging her shoulders. "But I've been thinking about things for a while now and, well, it just came out. I don't mean to disrespect you or Mom, but I do now question a lot about the church, among other things in life."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I have no idea what has gotten into her," Amy said exasperatedly to Reginald when they were alone.

"Oh, I don't know," Reginald replied.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Amy asked.

"Did you never ask yourself about the things that she brought up?" Reginald asked.

"Of course not," Amy replied indignantly, raising her nose just a bit.

"Why not?" Reginald asked mildly.

"Why not?" Amy sputtered. "Why would I? I accept the church's teachings. I teach the church's teachings!"

"Blindly, unthinkingly, just as Sheri suggested?" Reginald asked, blinking behind his glasses.

"I don't need to think about such things," Amy replied. "I trust the church to teach me what I need to know. Don't you?"

"Oh, yes, certainly," Reginald replied, "to a degree. But I haven't limited myself to only those things that the church would have me know."

"But you're an elder of the church," Amy gasped.

"Which in theory means that I'm wise, not stupid," Reginald replied. "How could I possibly counsel others if I don't have any idea of what it is that they're going through or feeling."

"But what she said," Amy said.

"Was mostly true," Reginald replied, smiling. "The church doesn't like to talk about such things, but they are what they are."

"I'm shocked hearing you of all people saying such things," Amy said.

"How many people do we know that have taken their own lives, Amy?" Reginald asked her somberly.

"Too many," Amy replied quietly. "Far too many."

"Our church has created a system of control and repression that has no safety valve," Reginald explained.

"But there is prayer!" Amy protested.

"Yes, there is prayer," Reginald agreed. "And God knows I never stop praying. But the Lord works in mysterious ways and at a time and place of His choosing."

"What are you saying?" Amy asked.

"People who can't handle the pressure, the strictures of the church, either leave the church to one degree or another or they kill themselves," Reginald replied. "Our numbers are not growing and haven't been for a long time. Our missionaries are being refused in more and more countries around the world."

"But Sheri..." Amy began.

"Is more typical of the new generation," Reginald said with a sigh. "The youth of today either reject the church, for good reason, I believe, or they become mindless sycophants who want to be told how to do everything and have no interest in taking a proactive part in their own lives. They aren't truly spiritual, they're lazy."

"Reginald!" Amy gasped.

"Have you ever noticed how all of the casino and bordello parking lots just across the border into Nevada are always full of cars with Utah license plates?" Reginald asked with a laugh.

"Not particularly, no," Amy replied.

"With 90% of the population of Utah nominally Mormon, that's a lot of Mormons looking for a safety valve that they can't find in this state," Reginald said.

"Do you have a point that you're trying to make?" Amy asked.

"Just that I've also thought of Joseph Smith's proclivities with respect to the church's current stand on anything sexual, which is to pretend that it just doesn't exist," Reginald replied. "The two seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, as though the church is trying to make up for his actions by going as extremely in the opposite direction as possible today. It makes me wonder how much of the church dogma is spiritually based as opposed to politically expedient."

"I had no idea you even thought of such things," Amy said.

"Don't you think you're being just a little bit hypocritical now?" Reginald asked.

"Reginald!" Amy exclaimed, her cheeks coloring slightly."

"You enjoy sex," Reginald pointed out. "Why is one okay and the other not?"

"I don't know what you're asking me," Amy said.

"Well, you enjoy sex and don't stop yourself from enjoying it, right?" Reginald asked.

"Reginald!" Amy exclaimed, her cheeks coloring even more.

"Well?" Reginald persisted.

"Yes, I enjoy it," Amy said. "You know very well that I do."

"This is the kind of hypocrisy that Sheri was talking about and I find it hard to disagree with her."

"I've never thought of it at all," Amy confessed. "I've been content with what I had and didn't see any reason to do anything to change that."

"That's where Sheri is different," Reginald said. "She's not content with the straightjacket of the church and she's not certain what to do about it. Right now, she's acknowledging it. It's what she does next in the evolution of her thoughts that should prove decisive. All things considered, don't you think that you're overreacting just a bit?"

"But she's our daughter!" Amy exclaimed, exasperated.

"Yes, she most certainly is," Reginald agreed, nodding his head.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"What was that all about?" Charles asked his sister when they left their parents.

"I'm sorry, Charles," Sheri said. "I didn't mean to rain on your parade."

"You didn't," Charles assured her, smiling down at her from his 6', his grey eyes smiling beneath the same head of dark hair as his father. "I just never realized that you felt like that. You sure blew Mom's mind."

"To me, Mom is the worst," Sheri said. "Sometimes I think that she's a brainless nothing, just parroting the bullshit that she's been fed."

"Wow!" Charles said, laughing as he entered his bedroom, Sheri following.

"You didn't say anything," Sheri said, sitting on the edge of his bed as he sat in his computer chair.

"No, I thought it might be a good time to be invisible," Charles agreed. "If I told them what I thought, they might disown me and kick me out of the house."

"What!" Sheri exclaimed.

"I've had a lot of the same thoughts that you expressed," Charles told her.

"Is that it?" Sheri asked.

"Between us?" Charles asked, invoking their private, secret agreement.

"Always!" Sheri assured him.

"I think the whole religion thing is pure bullshit," Charles told her. "I see it as nothing more than a regressive attempt to control people. It's the most successful mass mind-control scam ever perpetrated."

"I cannot believe that I am hearing this from you," Sheri said, truly shocked. "You've always been so...so...so establishment."

"Never judge the book by its cover, Sheri," Charles told her. "You know that. Like Mom."

"What do you mean, 'like Mom'?" Sheri asked.

"Do you really think that she's such an uptight, mindless prig?" he asked.

"I've never seen anything to make me think any differently," Sheri replied. "She never stops preaching the party line."

"It's her security blanket," Charles said. "You take that away from her, I'd bet there's nothing but a very scared, insecure woman hiding her true self from everyone in an attempt to fit in."

"What makes you say that?" Sheri asked, intrigued.

"Just a feeling," Charles replied. "Did you notice that even though you were mostly attacking Dad, that he was the one who was relaxed, not the least bit upset with you, that it was Mom doing all of the defending, protesting?"

"Well, yeah, I did," Sheri replied. "I thought that was a bit strange."

"I didn't," Charles said. "I think Dad's got his head screwed on the right way. But he's got a job to do and he doesn't have anything else to fall back on if that were to disappear. I think he carries the church's water only as much as he has to, stays away from the more controversial nonsense."

"I never noticed," Sheri said.

"I've noticed," Charles said. "Tonight confirmed it for me. He should have bitten your head off, instead, he was reasonable, understanding, even curious about why you felt the way you did. Only someone very sure of themselves would have been able to do that, unlike Mom. She's living a totally fake life, therefore she was the most threatened, though she's probably not consciously aware of it herself. I'm sure that she got an outlet."

"How did you get so smart all of a sudden?" Sheri asked.

"Well, I am a straight-A student," Charles said, laughing.

"You didn't learn this stuff in school," Sheri replied, laughing with him.

"No, definitely not," Charles agreed.

"You've had a camera in your hands ever since I can remember," Sheri said, changing the subject. "I really am proud of you for winning the scholarship."

"That's why I'm so smart," Charles confided.

"I don't get it," Sheri said.

"You can't be a good photographer or videographer without being a good observer of life," Charles explained. "I'm always studying people, watching and trying to read their body language. Mom's body language doesn't agree with the rest of her act, whereas Dad's mostly does. Have you ever heard him say anything really stupid like Mom?"

"Not really," Sheri replied slowly, though I haven't actually paid attention like that.

"I have paid attention," Charles said. "Dad's pretty solid on basic doctrine, but I've never heard him say anything about the more outrageous stuff, one way or the other. He has to be circumspect, of course, but if he really believed it all, he'd have said something at some point, and he hasn't that I can recall."

"You sure can't say that about Mom," Sheri said.

"Exactly," Charles agreed, nodding. "In some fundamental way, Mom's living a lie. It's almost as though she's trying to convince herself in some ways. I never notice that kind of insecurity of self in Dad."

"How is that possible?" Sheri asked.

"Here, look at this," Charles said, turning to his computer and typing on the keyboard.

"Charles!" Sheri gasped when she saw the suggestive photos that filled the monitor, close-ups of what appeared to be intimate body parts.

"What are you seeing?" Charles asked, a smile on his face.

"Charles!" Sheri replied, her cheeks flushed.

"Just tell me what you see," Charles insisted.

"It looks like someone's private parts," Sheri said as she looked at the four photos.

"Just like Mom, this is causing you to see something that's not really there," Charles explained. "Every single shot is of an elbow or a knee."

"But it looks like..." Sheri started to say.

"Go on, just say it," Charles encouraged her.

"Well, it looks like a girl's, you know, pussy, or her ass," Sheri said, flushing.

"I promise you that you are only seeing elbows and knees," Charles assured her, quickly typing. "Anything else you think that you're seeing is a result of programming that's been done on you by life," he added as the photos on the screen seemed to all zoom out at once to reveal two elbows and two knees.

"Charles, that's just amazing," Sheri said, leaning closer to look at the photos. "How did you do it?" she asked.

"Well, that's a whole different story," Charles admitted, some color coming into his cheeks. "It took a lot of study, experimentation, but I think I could take a picture of a very intimate part of your body and then one of your knee or elbow and you wouldn't be able to tell me which one was which."

"I don't know," Sheri said. "I mean, this is pretty suggestive, but it only made me wonder."

"Now who's full of shit?" Charles asked with a laugh. "I'll prove it," he said, quickly typing, the monitor changing to show a photo. "What are you seeing?" he asked.

"It's a woman's breast," Sheri replied.

"Is it?" Charles asked, typing again and the focus on the photo zoomed out to show that it was just a bent knee. "What's this?" he asked, another photo filling the screen.

"God, Charles," Sheri gasped. "Who did you get to pose for that?" she asked.

"I can't tell you that," Charles replied. "What is the photograph showing?"

"It's a pussy," Sheri said softly, her face flaming. "And it looks wet."

"She is wet, but it's not her pussy," Charles said, a big smile on his face as he caused the photo to zoom out, showing that it was a photograph of a bent elbow. "I sprayed some water on her to get that effect."

"God, Charles, you're amazing," Sheri gasped. "It's practically pornographic."

"Depending upon your mindset and programming, you might just think that," Charles agreed.

"But how did you do that, think of it?" Sheri asked.

"Lots of study and observation," Charles replied.

"You've studied naked women?" Sheri asked, a smirk on her face.

"Exactly," Charles replied, smiling at the shock on her face. "I'm 19, Sheri. I'm not a virgin."

"Oh!" Sheri said, her cheeks flaming. "I...I...I didn't think..."

"Is this embarrassing to you?" Charles asked. "Are you..."

"It's not exactly embarrassing," Sheri replied, "but it is...provocative."

"And?" Charles asked.

"You shouldn't ask me questions like that," Sheri protested. "I'm your sister."

"This is between us, Sheri," Charles reminded her.

"Still," Sheri complained, her face flushed. "Um, how do you study for pictures like these?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

"I'll answer that, even show you," Charles said, "but you have to answer my question first."

Sheri looked decidedly uncomfortable, a light beading of sweat appearing on her upper lip and forehead as she squirmed under her brother's unrelenting gaze.

"No," she said softly. "But I'm an adult. I'm 18."

"Actually, this is easier because you're not a virgin. Here, look at this," Charles said, quickly typing and the photo on the monitor changed to four photos. "What do you see?"

"They look like your butterfly pictures," Sheri said after a moment's study.

"All of them?" Charles asked, smiling when Sheri got up from the bed to come over and look closely at the monitor.

"Yes, I think so," she replied, standing up.

"Describe it for me, okay?" Charles asked.

"Well, it looks like just before it's going to turn into a butterfly," Sheri complied. "You can see its dark head sticking up."

"No way!" Sheri gasped when Charles quickly typed and the four photos all zoomed out, revealing that one of them was of a breast with an erect, dark nipple, the other three larval butterflies.

"What do you see?" Charles asked, the four photos on the monitor changing in response to his rapid typing.

"Mouths with the tongue sticking out the side a bit," Sheri finally replied after closely studying the monitor.

"Oh, my God!" Sheri exclaimed when Charles zoomed the photos out to reveal that one of them was of a shaved, clam-shell pussy with the large, fat clit sticking out from between the lips, while the other three were exactly as Sheri had described.

"How many girls have you taken these kinds of photos of?" Sheri asked, turning to look at him.

"Only three," Charles replied, shrugging. "Just think how different people appear. Well, they appear different under the clothes, too. The larger a sampling I have to work with, the better I understand what I'm trying to do. But I can't just ask someone to pose for me, not with the kind of pictures I need to take, want to take."

"Wow," Sheri breathed, turning back to the monitor. "Do you have more?"