From Perex, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin-Gines and in this hour we'll

hear stories of camouflage and secrecy. We always ask Moth's storytowers to be open,

and these stories are open, but they're about hidden identities. Our first story comes

from Kevin Rus. He told this at a Moth main stage called Checkmate, Stories of Strategy.

Here's Kevin Rus, live at the Moth. It was the first time I was going on a Christian

date and I was freaking the hell out. I was in my dorm at Liberty University, the world's

largest evangelical Christian university and I was in the bathroom putting gel in my

hair and my friends from my dorm were all around me giving me advice for the night and

one of them told me that the three rules of Christian dating are pay, pray, and say.

You pay for the meal as the man you pray over the meal and then you lead the conversation

or because lead doesn't rhyme you say the conversation. I was freaking out because frankly I'm not

very good at going on dates, but I was also freaking out because this was the first time

that I was going to have to lie to her. We all tell lies on dates. I've told girls that

I like going out dancing that I cook on my own that I didn't watch the royal wedding.

But this was different because this time I was lying about who I was and why I was there

at Liberty University. To back up, I didn't grow up in a Christian family. I'm not an evangelical

Christian. I grew up as far away from that as possible. My parents were died in the

world liberals who worked for Ralph Nader in the 1970s and that was the conservative wing.

I had other family members who actually on game night would play class struggle which

is the socialist alternative to monopoly. The box, the box if you're curious features Nelson

Rockefeller arm wrestling Karl Marx. Great game. Then I went to Brown University which

most evangelical Christians consider Cuba with diplomas. In the middle of my time at Brown

...