Growing Up Evangelical: That Time I Let My Dad Think I Was Looking at Porn Because the Reality Was Worse
The internet was a wild place in 1997.
This summer, I’m moving my Medium pieces over here. I have a lot of reasons why that platform doesn’t do it for me anymore, but that’s another post for another time.
These slightly-edited-from-the-original CNF stories (with new media) cover my favorite topics: twisted aspects of evangelicalism, my odd marriage, and exploring my sexuality. Enjoy!
Morality is a tricky business. In one household, it’s normal to tell an inappropriate joke or indulge in a cultured show on PBS while the same activities force an exorcism in another home. This is especially fun when the flip-flop is present within the same family.
For example, my family. Instead of giving me more freedom as I matured, my parents tightened the reins of legalism. As the oldest child, I was the usual suspected heathen, and apparently, less able to handle temptations and secular evil with age.
During my childhood in Miami, we were not religious at all. At the Catholic church behind my house, I occasionally went to CCD class. As a kid, I jammed out to Color Me Badd and played my Super Nintendo for hours on end.
I obsessed over the lives of West Beverly High’s finest on 90210, believed I was the key to solving murders featured on Unsolved Mysteries, and creeped myself out with an animated series like The Head or Ren and Stimpy on my very own TV in my room. When I felt bolder than usual, I learned about young adulthood from the Real World roomies.
All while I was maybe nine, ten, eleven years old.
When my family moved to the Savannah, Georgia area and found Jesus, that season of decadence was over. I guess Mom and Dad thought my elementary school self could handle sexual scenes and sensual music, but then, as a teen, it was time to censor every sliver of flesh or assumption of the supernatural that didn’t derive from the Christian God.
And my parents were ready to pull out the big artillery and show some muscle when it came to every teen’s first true love, music; what I saw as an escape, they viewed as an opportunity to make a righteous move in a spiritual war.
Don’t get me wrong. As a parent with a teen myself, I like to know what my son’s listening to and address what’s appropriate and what’s not.
“Um, are you fine with the way women are depicted or described in this song?”
I don’t want to ban anything, but I will talk about it. Because of this, he will share his “bangers” with me.
Now back to me as a teen, the years I could only listen to Christian music and the oldies station. (I secretly loved “Lightnin’ Strikes” by Lou Christie but never admitted it to my mom.) We had one TV in the living room and another in my parents’ room. When they weren’t home, I stole the remote from my younger brother or sister to switch the channel to MTV.
With a measly boombox in my room, I was supposed to play my DCTalk and Jars of Clay CDs, but if I could get the antenna situated just right, I could pick up the alternative rock station broadcasting from Jacksonville. I was so proud of myself when I learned I could record songs from The Toadies and Silverchair on taped-up, old cassettes.
But I was ready to step up my game. My high school crush in ninth grade was Nick Hexum of the band 311, and I smuggled contraband into our home like their self-titled album and Transistor. I even made a Nick Hexum collage at the library when I skipped lunch. I know, so rebellious.
Well, my dad put a computer in my brother’s room upstairs because times were a-changin’ and I needed the internet for school work. I guess he didn’t trust my teenage mind to traverse the web, and that’s why it got a home in my younger brother’s room who had no desire to even touch it. The internet was pretty boring for kids back in 1997–1998. (Prodigy circa 1995 was epic!)
One day, I was on the band’s website listening to music and viewing pictures of the group. I heard my dad heading up the stairs. I knew I didn’t have enough time to go to another web page because it took forever to load, so I just turned off the monitor. (Genius move, right?) He came into the room and approached to see what I was looking at.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, gesturing to the black screen. I also had nothing, no paper or book, in front of me, looking like Martin Short’s Clifford when Charles Grodin hollered at him to just look like a human boy. (Seriously, watch the clip. Reader, I put it here because I love you.)
So possibly, maybe, if I’m remembering correctly, I looked damn suspicious.
“You were looking at pornography!” my dad said as if waiting for the day he could state this just-a-matter-of-time accusation.
“What?! No, I wasn’t!”
“Then, what were you looking at?!”
My eyes shifted around as I wondered what on the bare-wall internet would serve as a reasonable substitute. There was no way I could say I was looking at an alternative rock-rap secular band from Omaha, Nebraska. My mind stayed empty and figured this would be a bad time to ask what was for dinner, so I gave no info at all.
In the end, my dad moved the computer downstairs to the dining room.
I took a break from the computer for a bit and went back to the trusty television set. My quick fingers over those remote control buttons were more reliable anyway. Once, he almost caught me in a daze analyzing the disturbing images from Radiohead’s animated music video for “Paranoid Android.” Almost.
Anyway, I never told my dad the truth about the blank computer mystery. It seemed much worse than pornography at the time, so I just let him go with that.
I’m going to wait until we have a really special father-daughter moment, like after dismissing one of his conspiracy theories or that I’m a deconstructing exvangelical.
Desiree McCullough still loves Radiohead but not so much 311 anymore. She proudly streams her music on YouTube Premium instead of Spotify. Her Gen-Zer thinks this is cringe. Find out more about her at desireemccullough.com or check her out on Twitter.