Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)

Joy was born in Florida and grew up in an “American Christian-culture Crock-Pot” (9). Her parents were laid-back but devout Christians, and she was an only child. She describes her home life as somewhat unstable; her parents struggled to make ends meet and they often argued. They later moved to Dallas where her father found a job as a teacher at a fancy Christian private school. However, the job didn’t last, and Joy ended up living in four different cities in Texas growing up. This made it hard for her to find stability and make friends.

However, Joy found her place in the theater. She began performing in Arlington, Texas when she was seven and got a role as a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. Her acting career advanced throughout her childhood and she auditioned for television and film roles as well.

When her paternal grandmother died, her family moved into her house in New Jersey. There, she found community in the youth group at her family’s church. She had a crush on one of the boys there, whom she refers to as “Blue Eyes.” When Joy was in high school, her parents divorced. The divorce, along with a role in a soap opera that was deemed “tawdry,” led to Joy being kicked off the “worship team”—a team of musicians that led the youth group in song—because it was thought to be “unseemly.”

Joy’s father remarried her senior year. When Joy graduated high school, her mother remarried and moved to California. Joy was left on her own at 18. She moved to Manhattan where she worked on a soap opera called Guiding Light. When Joy’s soap opera contract ended, her friend Camille encouraged her to move to Los Angeles for better acting opportunities.

When Joy moved to LA, she felt it was “weird” and “there was no sense of community” (26). Her closest friends were Camille and her roommate Mina. Mina was an actor about to turn 30, which meant there were fewer opportunities for her in Hollywood. Like Camille and Joy, Mina was a Christian. She told Joy about Harker Van Hewitt, another actor who ran a Bible study group. Mina had a crush on Harker, who was engaged to girl from Idaho and was nine years younger than her.

Joy recalls feeling devasted by the news of the terrorist attack in New York on September 11, 2001 and fell into a depression. To get her out of her funk, Mina suggested they go to Harker’s Bible study together.

Harker lived with his brother, Abe, who was in a band. Their parents, Pamela and Ed, stayed with them part-time as well. They had been Seventh-day Adventists but had left that faith and now hosted their own Bible study sessions. Joy became a regular at their Saturday-night Bible studies. At first, Joy was uncomfortable with all of the hugging they did, but eventually she grew to accept it.

One night, Joy and Mina arrived at Bible study to find a new family there: Les, Martine (or Marti), and their three boys, an older teen Joy dubs “the Quiet One” and younger teen twins “the Barbarians.” Joy felt an immediate dislike for Les, who was rubbing salt into some meat and making a strange-smelling dish in the kitchen. Les told the group that he had been a pastor in Washington until he was forced to leave because of “the enemy” (meaning “Satan”). The Van Hewitts had agreed to let them stay in their family home in Idaho.

After the meeting, Les and Joy talked. Les told Joy that he knew her old pastor in New York, which made Joy trust him more.

Les gradually took over the Bible study. The group respected that he was older and an experienced church leader. Les preached that they should be honest to others about their flaws. When Joy suggested this was “a little condescending or passive aggressive,” Les singled her out and counseled that they should do it to show their commitment to God and to be selfless. This made Joy feel embarrassed and self-conscious (47). Then, Les told her that she was hiding her true identity and not committing to her love for God. Joy was shocked he had “seen” her so clearly and broke down crying. Everyone in the group told Joy they loved her. Joy felt she had found “unconditional love” that allowed her to finally let go and cry.

Joy’s father grew concerned when he learned that Joy was considering what God wanted before doing anything, including getting dressed in the morning. He worried about the Bible study she was attending. Joy was hurt that he didn’t seem to understand her religious practice.

At Bible study that week, Joy told Mina and Les her disappointment that her parents didn’t understand her renewed commitment to her religious faith. Les comforted her. He told her that it’s hard to see loved ones “resist the movements of the Holy Spirit” (56). He told her they would pray for her father.

Joy’s father came to visit her for the weekend in LA. He told her it was because he had frequent flier miles to use up, but Joy suspected it was because he was worried about the Bible group and her new religious practice. To show him that it was okay, Joy took her father to the study group. He was “underwhelmed” and thought it was strange that Pam, Harker’s mother, didn’t speak to him. He told Joy she needed to reach out to her own mother more, so Joy decided to invite her mother and stepfather to her 21st birthday party.

At the party, Joy brought together people from various parts of her life— friends and coworkers and people from the Bible study—for the first time. Mina was upset because she heard Harker was bringing his fiancée, but Joy overheard Harker tell her stepfather that the engagement had ended. During the party, Joy’s mother and Pam got into a tense discussion. Les had told Joy that her independence was “an internal rebellion against God” so Pam’s comments to her mother about Joy’s independence represented a subtle insult (62). Joy’s mom gave Joy a scrapbook she had made. Joy felt embarrassed about the childhood bathtub pictures and diary entry about her first kiss. She felt happier with the Sleeping Beauty themed items that the Bible study crew gifted her. She felt disappointed that Blue Eyes had not called her.

A few weeks later, Mina told Joy she was engaged to Harker.

Mina and Harker got married in Idaho at the Van Hewitt house a few weeks later. Joy was hurt that she hadn’t been invited to the wedding.

Sometime later, Joy called Blue Eyes and confronted him about their ambiguous relationship. She told him that if they weren’t going to get married, she needed to let him go. He told her he wasn’t “in a place to make that decision right now” (69). Afterward, Joy fell into a depression. Pam suggested she go to the Van Hewitt house in Idaho to recover.

Joy arrived at the Van Hewitt house (dubbed the Big House) the next day. She was met at the airport by the friendly, bubbly Jasmine, who had lived at the Big House for six months after being sexually assaulted by her boyfriend. The house was a run-down replica of President George Washington’s house in Mount Vernon. When Joy arrived, she met Dontay, a former college football player, and another family: Kurt, Lucy, and their 13-year-old son Brandon. Joy immediately disliked Kurt who looked like a “skeleton.”

Joy shared a room with Jasmine and another girl, Gretchen, who had been brought to the house by Pam from LA. That evening, Joy felt she was getting sick with a bad cough. Someone gave her a spoonful of what she assumed was cough syrup and she fell asleep.

Joy woke up two days later. She was groggy but her cough felt better. She checked her phone and saw she had dozens of panicked calls and messages from her parents. She called her mom and told her that she was fine, she had just decided to leave town for a while. Her mother told her they had been worried, and Joy retorted that as an adult she didn’t have to tell her parents where she was going if she did not want to. Her mother encouraged her to call her father to reassure him she was safe. After the conversation, Joy cried and Pam comforted her. Pam told Joy it was good that she had set boundaries.

Later, in the bathroom, Joy found an enormous jar of hydrocodone prescribed to Kurt. She realized it was the “cough syrup” she had been given. When she returned it to Kurt, his wife, Lucy, seemed upset and suspicious. Joy felt confused by Lucy’s response.

Joy defines her visit to Idaho as a “turning point” in her story. She wonders if she could have avoided everything that happened afterward had she stayed in LA instead.

Joy settled into life at the Big House in Idaho. The Bible study sessions there were much more intense. During these sessions, Les preached against the “manipulation” of Hollywood and society—manipulation best resisted through “relationship” and community. He encouraged the group to trust spiritual authorities like himself, parents, and one’s husband to avoid “being self-willed” (90). Joy began to wonder if she would have won over Blue Eyes had she been more submissive. She had no problem accepting Les and Pam as spiritual authorities because they had been so kind to her.

Joy returned to LA and moved into a new apartment closer to the Van Hewitts’ apartment. She decided to have an “open door” policy to invite others into her new home. Mina told Joy she was pregnant, and Joy wondered what she would have to sacrifice to get what Mina had, a husband and a baby on the way.

One night, Camille came over. She told Joy that she had been seeing demons. Joy believed her because she had once had “an encounter with God” when she lived in NYC (97). She had been at a diner and felt a presence next to her in the booth telling her: “never doubt that I am real” (98). She had been looking for that closeness with God ever since. Camille and Joy prayed together for protection from the demons until Camille felt better. Joy began to recognize spiritual guidance as a power that “could be used to manipulate and abuse” (99).

That Christmas, Joy decided to go to the Van Hewitts’ house in Idaho instead of spending the holiday with her parents. Many of the other group members made the same choice. Their parents were unhappy and disappointed. Pam told them that outsiders would not be invited so as not to “risk the flow of the Holy Spirit being interrupted” (101).

On Christmas Eve, each of the group members prayed for what they most needed. Joy prayed for a childlike reliance on God. Les praised her for her prayer but then chided her for singing too loudly. Pam combined each of the individual prayers into a group one. It included the line, “familial patterns no longer dictate who I am” (105). Joy comments that this was a tactic to isolate the group from their birth families and trap them into this new family unit.

On Christmas morning, Les and Quiet Boy played a “prank” on Joy by wrapping her in a bean bag chair and lifting her into the air. Joy panicked and thought of other times she had felt trapped. Everyone laughed. After they let her go, Joy relaxed and realized it was a joke. She hugged Les, crying, and told him how grateful she felt to be part of a big family.

The group exchanged Secret Santa gifts. Joy got a handmade journal in a locked box with a rose on in it from Quiet Boy. She didn’t realize it was “romantic,” because she thought of him as a brother.