Why I'm Not A Raëlian

When the appointed registrar comes back in the room, he greets us with a pitiful shake of the head. “Oh no, you really missed all the good stuff,” he says. Ross and I look at each other. The “good stuff” is pretty famous, though we will all not refer to it directly for the next couple of days. The good stuff, according to Raëlian infidels, is not so much what you might call a “seminar” as what you might call “an orgy.” Stories abound of people getting naked in the seminars, massaging their genitals until they come, while onlookers try to pretend they aren’t onlooking. The “good stuff” allegedly means dressing up as the opposite sex (not the opposite sex from the one you were born with, which would be too banal a request, but opposite the one you go by in your everyday life, so for the trans-folks, it’s back to the identity you spent most of your life sloughing off, I suppose)—dressing up as the opposite sex and having a dance. Yes, a dance, the prom kind. Rumor has it these dances typically lead to everyone, save the minors, sleeping around. When Ross and I ask about the dances in our meetings, they all gaze at each other secretively and longingly. There were many times when I wanted to ask, “Should I leave you alone?”