Chasing the Dragon Read Online Free Page B

on the brown envelopes so that no one would find out where my letters came from.
    I worked during the holidays in Father’s factory, gave coaching lessons, or delivered letters for the Post Office at Christmas. For several years, I held the unofficial title of “our Number 1 Post-girl of the year,” and I was even elected Miss Croydon (South) 1960. My princely wage was US $.24 per hour, plus luncheon vouchers; these I exchanged at the Post Office Canteen for Woodbine cigarettes. I was a woman of the world!
    I later moved on to the Royal College of Music, where I discovered very quickly that musicians regard love as the food of music and had a hard time eluding a persistent horn player.I did have a great predilection for the brass section, however, and I spent an unfortunate amount of my time trailing them around from pub to rehearsal to concert to pub. I sat on their instrument cases in the train and did very little practice on my piano or oboe.
    From time to time, I passed the Christian Union notice board and got a twinge of conscience. But those Christians looked wet, pimply and feeble and were mostly organists, anyway. Not my scene at all. They sat in a holy huddle by themselves in the canteen and looked unattractive, like those awful people who came up to me and asked if I was “saved” or “washed in the blood.” I did not know what they were talking about and did not want to, either. They looked grim—no makeup—and wore felt hats. Although they assured me I would change once I “knew Jesus,” I certainly did not want to change into one of them.
    Instead, I went to a series of parties where the chosen forms of recreation were sordid or boring. “Well, what did you come for then?” The men flung this at me when I declined the alternatives. I always went, hoping to meet the man of my dreams, and it was a long time before I realized that he was not likely to be at such parties.
    I was sitting drably on my commuter train dragging back home from college one day when I met two old school friends. They took one look at me and invited me to a London flat for coffee with a fabulous man who talked about the Bible. So I went. He was fabulous. But so was everyone there. I could not get over it—they looked quite normal like me! The girls were made-up, and one of them was talking about bikinis. The men were discussing car racing—and yet all of them were there because they wanted to study the Bible. It was the first time in my life that my toes did not curl up when someone talked to me about Jesus. I could discuss God easily in that flat.
    I was upset to hear, though, about
heaven
and
hell
, which I had thrown out with the mass emotionalism years before. But more disturbing was hearing that no one could go to God except through Jesus. 2 The words themselves were not as much of ashock as my discovery that it was Jesus who said them. I was constrained either to accept what Jesus said about Himself or to forget about the Christian faith. Among my social set, the worst sin was to be narrow, but Jesus’ words offered no compromise. 3
    Reluctantly, I told Him I would believe what He had said—although I did not like it much. I was converted.
    My life became fuller than I had believed possible. I had not entered a narrow life after all. Shortly after, a man on my suburban line leaned across the carriage and asked if I believed in God. “No,” I replied, “I know Him; it’s different. I know peace; I know where I’m going.”
    My new life also brought difficulty. After one particular Bible study, the girls sat praying—thanking God for their certainty of going to heaven. I opened my eyes and peeped at them. They were all smiling and genuinely happy. I was appalled. For if we believed that we were going to heaven because of Jesus, surely the converse was true also—that some people would not be going. The girls sat down to eat risotto, but I dashed out, thinking,
How can you just sit there believing what you do? What