"It's my fault," said Joshua. "I'm used to it by now. I should have let him see it from a distance, when it was small and soft. I might have reacted the same, had that been my first sight of it."

Yeah...right. Joshua might be a nullo; he might be smaller than me; but I didn't think anything would faze him.

I heard James outside the door. I glanced toward it but didn't see him. "Is it gone?" he asked.

"Pull up your pants," Joshua told me. Once I had, he said, "You can come in. It's gone."

James came in, his face pasty white. He didn't look at me, not even at my face. Finally, he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry," he said, to Joshua, not to me, "but that was horrible."

"You've seen them on animals," Joshua said.

"Yes," James said, "but never on a boy. It's bad enough that the heretics have testicles. He put his hand over his mouth and took several long breaths, and glancing back at me, said, "How can you stand having that?"

"Where I come from, all boys have them." Well, that wasn't quite the truth: some of the Nutters back home didn't have cocks; but some of them did; they'd had their nuts cut off but not their dicks.

"It's horrible," James repeated; "it's so...wrong. Why would you want it? Why don't you have it cut off? Don't you know you have no chance at salvation, if you keep it?" He turned to Joshua. "Is it true that he masturbates?"

"Unfortunately," said Joshua. "He's a slave to his sex organs. It's even worse than I feared."

"You said you wouldn't tell anyone," I said.

"I said I wouldn't tell any of THEM, any of the heretics. You can trust James and any other of the Brotherhood, as you can me."

I wasn't sure I could trust him even. They all wanted me nullified; but, at least, I still had my nuts; I still had my dick. If I'd stayed home, I wouldn't. I wondered if Dad had been nutted.

"I don't believe in all that shit," I said. "Why would God - if there is a fucking god - want a guy to have his nuts cut off?"

"Heretic," said James, turning away, as if he couldn't bear to look at me.

"The evil of the world is rooted in sexuality," said Joshua. "It prevents communication with God. Sex is all you think about. How many times did you masturbate today?"

I shrugged; "I don't know."

"More than once, I'll wager," he said.

"Fuck," I said, "there wasn't anything else to do around here."

"How can you find God," Joshua said, "when all you think about is sex? Don't you see? That's why you need to be nullified. Castration - nullification - is the true baptism."

Chapter 2: California