Erotic Rebellion Against Christian Nationalism

"Ishtar's Angels," Chapter 1

Ishtar’s Angels: A Novel
Chapter 1: An Erotic Rebellion Against Christian Nationalism

“Mr. Quill, our evidence reveals that, through your work as a twenty-two-year-old self-proclaimed ‘escort for older women,’ you have had sexual relations with not less than twelve clients in the past year alone, many of them multiple times per month,” said Prosecutor Prighammer.

Percival Quill was sitting in a windowless deposition room in the basement of the Philip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco’s Civic Center. It was April of 2025. Percival was less than a year out of Brown University, class of ’24. The President Without a Name had just returned to office in January, starting his second, non-consecutive term.

(Members of the neo-pagan erotic rebellion, including Percival, called him the President Without a Name, or “the PeWoN” for short, to depersonalize him and “give him less reality.”)

Sitting across from Percival, asking the questions, was Prosecutor Bradley Prighammer. He was appointed by the Attorney General to lead a special task force set up by the PeWoN: The Force Against Lewd and Lascivious Subversion (FALLS).

Prighammer continued his litany: “Your clients have ranged in age between thirty-five years old and, and eighty-seven, with an average age of fifty-nine. Most of your clients are older than your mother, who is fifty-five, and a few are older than your grandmother, who is eighty-three. Are you testifying under oath, Mr. Quill, that you feel sexual attraction to each and every one of your clients, whose average age is older than your mother?”

“Yes, Mr. Prighammer, in most cases I do feel sexual attraction for my clients…”

“Aha!” burst Prighammer. “If you’re sexually attracted to your clients in most cases, then by definition that means that in some cases, you are not attracted to your  clients!”

“Well, if you had let me finish my sentence, I was about to add… in all cases, I am able to find erotic attraction for my clients,” Percival said.

“And what exactly, Mr. Quill, is the distinction between sexual and erotic attraction? Please enlighten us for the record.”

“Think of it this way. Sexual attraction is more about being turned on by a person’s body and physical appearance. Whereas erotic attraction is more about being turned on by their erotic energy,” Percival replied.

“And what, exactly, is ‘erotic energy,’ Mr. Quill?”

“You really want me to get into this for the court record?”

“Yes, I do. Please fill us in.”

As in many prostitution cases, particularly involving escorts, the case hinged on whether Percival agreed to exchange money for specified sexual acts, quid pro quo.

To create plausible deniability, many escorts in the U.S. use language on their sites or advertising saying something along the lines that payment is for “time and attention only.” Percival, in his ads, had written: “You are hiring me for companionship, and lessons in the art of erotic activation. These do not include any explicit sexual activities violating California Penal Code § 647(b)(1). Anything else that may occur behind closed doors is a matter between consenting adults and is no business of the state.”

Thus, Prighammer’s line of questioning about whether Percival was sexually attracted to his clients was relevant. If he could establish that Percival had engaged in sexual relations with at least one client, without sexual attraction on Percival’s part, it would be easier to convince a jury that his clients were paying him not just for the companionship and lessons, but also for the sex.

“OK, well, here’s the best way I can think about it. Have you ever been to Cuba?”

“No, I have not, Mr. Quill. There’s a U.S. embargo against traveling to Cuba. Have you broken that embargo?”

“I won’t comment on the legality of my trips to Cuba, but I will say this. If you go to Cuba, you will see people of all ages dancing. You will see people in their seventies and eighties, tearing up the dance floor. They may not be as agile or energetic as younger dancers, but they’ve been dancing for much longer, so their technique is often more refined and elegant than the younger dancers. You’ll see a woman in her seventies, who would never be seen as an erotic being by conventional standards in the United States, tossing off erotic energy while salsa dancing as if she were a fireworks show. She lights up the room. All eyes are on her. In the United States, women her age are rendered erotically invisible. In Cuba, she is a sexy creature and everyone knows it. I’ve seen this with my own eyes.”

“So you’re saying that all your elderly clients…”

“I call them elders, Mr. Prighammer, not ‘elderly’…”

“Some of your clients are in their eighties, by any criteria that makes them elderly.”

“Elderly is an energy, not an age.”

“I have no idea what this ‘energy’ thing you keep talking about is. I will continue to use the word elderly, in its standard way, without all your California talk about ‘energy’ this, ‘energy’ that.”

“You’re in California, Mr. Prighammer, so you might as well speak like the Californians. Would you like a referral to my energy healer? I’ll be you could use it.”

“Mr. Quill! Back to the question. You’re saying that your elderly clients in the United States have the same so-called ‘erotic energy’ as these elderly women in Cuba on the dance floor?”

“No, I’m not saying my clients all start out that way. But I teach them. My clients want to feel sensual energy pulsating through their veins. They want to feel youthful and vital again. Erotic energy is the lifeblood of that vitality. So they hire me to guide them into bringing more Eros into their lives.”

“And what, Mr. Quill, is ‘Eros’?”

“Eros is the ancient Greek god of love, sex, and desire. In a more general context, Eros is the part of our souls that is stirred by longing, desire, pleasure, and sensual aliveness.”

“So you invoke a pagan god in your sessions with your clients?”

“Mr. Prighammer, I know you are prosecuting this case as part of your president’s war against the rebellion. But this is still the United States of America. We still have freedom of religion in this country. Though you and your cronies are doing everything you can to change this, it is still legal to worship pagan gods in America. You’re busting me for alleged prostitution, not for idol worship.”

***

The Force Against Lewd and Lascivious Subversion was set up by the PeWoN to investigate and quell the neo-pagan erotic rebellion. This ribald rebellion, centered in the SF Bay Area, had risen up to resist the prudish Christian Nationalism that had gained power through the PeWon’s second election victory.

Prosecutor Prighammer’s first case as head of the task force was, believe it or not, investigating and prosecuting a twenty-two-year-old recent Brown graduate, and inveterate stoner, on a low-level prostitution bust. The young man in question was named Gabriel Bergstein. He employed the alias Percival Quill in his professional dealings with women.

Percival had chosen this first name in honor of one of his idols, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the rogueish British Romantic poet—1792-1822—who was also the literary champion of his wife Mary Shelley, the young author of Frankenstein. Percival chose the last name Quill because, well, he was an aspiring writer. (At the beginning of the case, Percival had requested of the judge that he be referred to by his professional name only during the case; the judge had granted this request as a courtesy.)

Why would a federal prosecutor, appointed by the attorney general, leading a task force set up directly by the president, take as its first case a low-level prostitution bust against a defendant barely out of his teenage years?

Prosecutor Prighammer knew that Percival was a disciple of one Daemon Demimonde, the shadowy pornographer and perverted sexual subversive. Demimonde aimed to create what he called “heaven on Earth, through sexual utopia.” He was gaining traction among young men, a demographic that had recently begun to move noticeably to the right; this demographic had played a crucial part in electing the PeWoN.

Through his manifesto, “A Young Man’s Guide to Eros With Older Women,” Daemon had developed a following of inquisitive, sincere young men who wanted to learn about the archetype of the wise elder woman, the earth mama, the witch, the crone. “Luring young men into witchcraft, idolatry, and Satanism!” the PeWoN had proclaimed on social media.

Daemon’s core teaching was encouraging young men to cultivate their capacity to be delightful to women: delightful in all kinds of ways, to all kinds of women.

This teaching contrasted with the typical advice men received from the “manosphere,” that toxic stew of misogyny that had radicalized so many young men to the right online, contributing to the PeWoN’s rise and re-election. The manosphere consisted of misogynistic online sub-communities such as “the red pill,” pickup artists (“PUAs”), male separatists, and incels. In various ways, these communities taught men that they should aim to become stereotypical “alpha males” and that once they achieved this status, they would gain sexual access to a stream of attractive, fertile young women (who were themselves seen as evidence of alpha male status).

Daemon, instead, taught that a young man’s north star should be the manner and aesthetic that older women would appreciate in a younger man. Yes, all else equal, it is better for a young man to develop confidence, a fit physique, career success, and other markers of stereotypical male attractiveness.

But, Daemon taught: far more important for appealing to a more mature demographic of females was that the young man himself should become more mature: greater presence, kindness, compassion, communication skills, and sense of humor. Daemon argued that, in the long run, young men will do better if they optimize for being attractive to this more mature demographic rather than competing for the affections of the younger women who themselves often chased after the markers of stereotypical alpha masculinity.

Daemon was teaching kind, caring, earnest young men—those young men whose minds hadn’t already been infected with the virus of the manosphere—that they could flourish erotically within a context that also supported women’s erotic flourishing alongside them.

Not only were the Christian Nationalists terrified that Daemon’s teachings might provide an alternative to the right-leaning radicalization of young men, but there were deeper reasons for their fear.

Daemon had recruited some of his followers—those men who had excelled at cultivating their delightfulness to older women—into a loose network called Ishtar’s Angels (loose in more ways than one). This crew was named after the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, sex and war Ishtar, and consisted of young men devoted to the craft of providing erotic companionship for older women.

Christian Nationalists were trying to control female sexuality. And now, women in their fifties and above—long deemed sexually invisible by patriarchy—were liberating themselves of the shackles of Christian modesty culture, which had confined them to the roles of chaste and pure wives, mothers, and grandmothers, trapped in sexless, supposedly-monogamous marriages to boring husbands.

The word “supposedly” is important here, because most of the boring husbands within these sexless Christian marriages were getting their own sexual needs met via younger female sex workers anyway. Either virtually through pornography and cam sites or in person via strippers, happy-ending massages, professional dominatrixes, and escorts. This was the open secret of supposedly monogamous Christian marriages: they were generally monogamous for the wives, but the husbands—via sex workers—were freaks outside the marriage. Playing into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, the husbands desexualized their wives as chaste angelic mothers to their children, while objectifying so-called “loose” or “slutty” women as devilish side-pieces, good for a lay but unworthy of commitment.

Now, with the help of the dashing young men of Ishtar’s Angels, it was time for the older women of America to get their due share of sexual ecstasy, just like their husbands had been doing for millennia (the “oldest profession,” and all that).

But the Christian patriarchs, who wanted to have their cake and eat it too (cheating on their wives but without themselves being cheated on), were not happy about this development. In fact, this trend threatened to upend the very pillars of Christian marriage, because if women could finally get their sexual needs met beyond their cheating husbands, they might begin to question whether they needed these cheating husbands to begin with.

One public communique in particular by Daemon had inflamed the ire of the Christian Nationalists, entitled: “Women: Why You Should Hire Younger Male Escorts.” It was essentially a call to the women of America to cheat on their husbands right back, with male escorts. For symmetry.

“Women of America, I have a message for you. If your man has any extra money at all, he is likely spending it to get his sexual rocks off with younger female sex workers.The idea that only a narrow band of abusive, predatory men see sex workers is a delusion of denial. Look through escort ad sites like Tryst. Tens of thousands of escorts, dominatrixes, tantrikas, and happy-ending masssage providers across America. Their clients are normal money with money: doctors, lawyers, engineers, businessmen—your doctor, lawyer, engineer, or businessman you are married to. Are you going to stand by and let him have all the fun? Or are you going to get your own groove back, claiming what’s yours as your erotic birthright?” The communique ended with instructions on how to find a younger man through the Ishtar’s Angels network.

It was a compelling message. Self-serving, to be sure. Encouraging women to cheat with his very own network of Ishtar’s Angels was not exactly a selfless public service announcement. But Daemon did have a point. Only those with their head in the sand could deny that all manner of normal men had been doing this for thousands of years. Now it was time for women to pull their heads out of the sand… and lay them in the laps of accommodating, compassionate younger men, there to serve their every erotic desire.

This was not a popular message with the Christian patriarchs, who wanted to keep all the fun to themselves, in secret, while lying about it. Furthermore, if Daemon and the men of Ishtar’s Angels could help create a “heaven on earth, through sexual utopia,” recruiting once-chaste older women into wild orgiastic rites invoking ancient pagan sex goddesses, this was a dangerous religious alternative to the Christian Nationalists’ sexless, celestial version of heaven promised to women who submit in chastity to their male God.

“No wonder the Christian Nationalists want to burn our merry band of smutty, slutty, and perverted subversives as witches!” Daemon had proclaimed in one of his communiques. “We’re having way more fun than they are. In a free and open market competition, who’s going to win: the religion that offers hot gods and goddesses and plenty of fucking, or the religion that offers some prudish, angry, crusty, celibate, life-long bachelor in the sky yelling at you for getting off?”

Prighammer had read this passage of Daemon’s communique aloud at the press conference announcing the formation of FALLS, spittle flying from his lips. “Disgusting! Ishtar’s Angels are a demonic force, and they must be stopped at all costs!”

Armed with this mandate from the president, Prighammer was trying to use this low-level case to get Percival to “flip” against his ringleader Daemon.¹

“Working up the food chain,” as the feds called it. Percival was a little fish, but Daemon was a big fish. And the PeWoN wanted that big fish caught and fried.

***

“Back the the questions!” barked Prosecutor Prighammer How, exactly, do you teach them about this so-called ‘Eros’?”

“It could be so many things, Mr. Prighammer. Flirtatious conversation, presence, listening, talking and caring about what’s real in their lives, deep eye contact, a gentle caress to the arms, a sweet cuddle, sexy dancing together, a stolen kiss. A puff of cannabis together never hurts either.”

“And sexual intercourse! Is that part of your ‘lessons’ in Eros too?!”

“We keep coming back to this point, don’t we? Think of it this way. I’m like a dance instructor. My clients pay me to teach them how to run erotic energy throughout their bodies, to feel sensual aliveness once again. Part of why they want to learn this is so they can become more erotically attractive as lovers, which is the same reason many people hire dance instructors. There’s nothing illegal about any of this, so long as no touching of breasts or genitals is involved.”

“But you do touch their breasts and genitals,” Prighammer snarled.

“Well, Prosecutor Prighammer, the thing is, I’m so good at teaching my clients to be erotically attractive, and they are so good at learning, that eventually, I start to feel erotically attracted to them. That’s what erotic attraction is, after all—a feeling! And what happens when I’m erotically attracted? I want to have sex with them. And they want to have sex with me. So, we have sex. That doesn’t mean they were paying me to have sex with them. It means they paid me for a lesson, and we happened to have sex during the lesson.”

“Mr. Quill! Do you expect a jury to buy this story you are peddling?!”

“Objection, argumentative,” interjected Percival’s lawyer, Solomon Friedman, a slight but fierce old man in a light grey suit, sitting beside Percival at the conference table. Solomon was one of the nation’s most respected First Amendment lawyers. He had argued and won free speech and obscenity cases in front of the Supreme Court. He had taken on Percival’s case pro bono, since Solomon’s career had been focused on defending free sexual expression against prudish and overzealous government busybodies for half a century.

Prighammer snarled at Solomon, then stared back at Percival.

Percival replied, “In the history of the world, many people have fucked their dance instructors. That doesn’t mean they were paying for sex. They were paying for a dance lesson, and they just happened to be attracted to each other and have sex. Many people have also had sex with their fitness trainers, tennis instructors, gardeners, psychotherapists, even college professors. When a housewife fucks her gardener, she’s paying for gardening, not sex. When a student fucks their college professor, the fact that they paid tuition to the college does not mean they paid to have sex with their professor. What about this concept is so difficult to understand!”

“You are nothing but a lying, conniving gigolo!” yelled Prighammer.

"Objection! Argumentative, harassing the witness, and prejudicial characterization,” said Solomon. Prighammer frowned.

“None of these professionals having sex with their clients are breaking the law,” Percival continued. “In some cases, such as therapy or college teaching, the sex violates professional ethics standards. But as long as everyone involved is an adult, it’s not illegal. Nor is it illegal for a teacher of erotic attraction such as myself to become so aroused by the erotic energy that my clients develop in our lessons, that I desire to have sex with them right then and there. It so happens, my clients want to have sex me too. And so, we have sex… two adults fucking, of their own volition, behind closed doors. What can I say? I have a soft spot for older women learning to come back to their own erotic aliveness. It’s not illegal to be weak-kneed for my clients.”

Prighammer sighed. “OK, we’re not getting anywhere with this line of questioning. Let’s move on. Please explain how you got into this type of business, Mr. Quill.”

“Well, about four years ago, my sophomore year in college, I was sitting in my dorm room, after another night of trying and failing to pick up girls at parties and bring one of them home. I googled ‘how to be more successful with girls.’ And that is when I came across it.

“Came across what?”

“The manifesto.”

“And what, for the record, is the manifesto?”

“A Young Man’s Guide to Eros With Older Women.”

“And what did this manifesto say?”

[Stay tuned for Chapter 2: “The Manifesto.”]

1. Prostitution between consenting adults, which involves no interstate travel, is not criminalized in the federal code. Rather, it is criminalized at the state level, in all fifty states (except in counties in Nevada with a population lower than 700,000, where it is legalized in brothels).

In California, prostitution between consenting adults is criminalized in California Penal Code § 647(b)(1), where it is considered a misdemeanor instance of “disorderly conduct.”

However, the federal Mann Act, codified in 18 USC Ch. 117, stipulates in §2422(a):

Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual to travel in interstate or foreign commerce. . . to engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

This section essentially turns a common aspect of high-end escorting: “enticing” a client to fly across state lines to see the escort (a state-level misdemeanor) into a federal felony.

In practice, the Mann Act (1910) had not been used in modern times to prosecute such cases of interstate sex work between consenting adults; it was used to prosecute genuine cases of interstate sex trafficking, involving “force, fraud, or coercion,” or involving minors.

However, Prighammer, eager to get Percival to turn on Daemon Demimonde, was using this aggressive interpretation of the Mann Act to prosecute Percival for having “enticed” (what else to escorts do but entice?) multiple clients to fly across state lines to hire him.