gym tower and so we always made sure someone was sitting in front of the penis while we harmonized. God does not like the dick. Geoff was our ringleader. He lead a weekly bible study that, while always incorporating different bible verses, pretty much always boiled down to the same message: “How to control your sexual urges.” Occasionally, some of us bible-study-groupers would pair off in our free time and practice. Throughout high school, Geoff came up with all sorts of activities to protect us all from “The Three Ds” (Drinking, Drugs, & Dark Corners.) In addition to playground sit-n-sings, we had movie marathons, potluck dinners, bonfires and dance-offs. Our Friday nights were filled with games of Ultimate Frisbee or Car Tag, a sport where Geoff would borrow his parent’s minivan and drive around the Barnes and Noble parking lot with the door open as the rest of us tried to run and dive into the open door. No one ever died, and we thanked God for that.

Geoff and I drifted apart a bit in high school, when I started dating his arch-nemesis, Jake. Geoff often jokingly referred to him as “the anti-christ,” which I thought was silly. Jake was the youth leader at another church in town and, even though they didn’t have a building and had to meet at the high school, he was totally not the devil. Jake also sold pot and cheated on me with JAMIE KELLY (hell no I didn’t change your name, bitch), but I didn’t listen to Geoff’s protestations. I was in love. And, in retrospect, a huuuge prude. My mom always said Geoff was in love with me, but she was wrong. Last week I was in New York for work, and I made plans to meet up with Geoff, who I hadn’t even seen since high school. Before we met at a SoHo bar, I warned my co-workers that Geoff was a bit of a religious fanatic. I imposed a three-drink limit, dug out a turtleneck, and begged them not to respond to any questions regarding my current church attendance or battles with lust. But, as it turns out, I had nothing to worry about. Turns out that Geoff is now an atheist. And a woman. Funny how that worked out.