Maria

July 1980
Athens, Ohio

I’d retraced all of my steps in Athens, but it was a small town and there were not many places I hadn't been, except for The Ridges, and I had no intention of going there.

A Korean professor at the university, Dr. Kim, invited me to a party, which I went to. Almost everyone there was Korean. They were fascinated I was with the Unification Church, but they were extremely skeptical about Rev. Moon.

They liked me, that was clear, but Dr. Kim said he believed I was a good person anyway, that it had nothing to do with Rev. Moon or the church. I tried to explain some of my testimony about what I was like before, but he said Rev. Moon didn’t make me the person I was today. He said I was the same person all along, and I had simply used the church as an excuse to change my behavior. If only he knew.

More to the point, he said in Korea there was a long history about Rev. Moon, and most of it was very negative, and that made Dr. Kim and his Korean friends somewhat fearful of the church. He said Rev. Moon’s reputation in Korea was very bad. He said it was well known that Rev. Moon had sex with his women followers in Korea. I told him that wasn’t true, but he said it was, and all other Korean people at the party agreed with him.

I did my best to ease their fears, and I deeply appreciated the food they offered me, but I doubted these were the people I had come to Athens to meet. They had already formed strong negative concepts about Rev. Moon and I didn’t think I could change that in the short time I would be here.

Later I met up with Maria at the monument on the green. She said I could stay at her place tonight, but something about her made me think she only wanted to sleep with me. I would have liked to. She seemed super nice, and maybe it could have turned into a semi-permanent place to stay.

But I couldn’t go over there. Every time I tried to steer the conversation into something deep, she’d change the subject. So being alone with her in her apartment would probably go the wrong way very quickly. It would have negated whatever I came here to do, which so far was still hidden to me. Instead I chose to spend the night on the hill on the other side of the river, the same spot where I spent my first night and ended up being caught by the storm.

This time I wasn’t worried about a storm. It was too chilly. But it was better than spending the night curled up in a warm bed with Maria. That would have been the death of me.