Bertrand Russell once wrote that the reason he was not a Christian was because Christianity inverted morality. They make natural and perfectly normal impulses like sex, and make them evil. They punish us for the things that we can't control and praise the things we cannot attain as virtue.
This comedian that I heard once said that the church taught him that sex was dirty and abhorrent and should be saved for the person you love.
When I was thirteen, I took a vow that I would remain sexually pure until I was married. At fifteen or sixteen, I upped that pledge to a vow that my first kiss would be at my wedding.
Until I was 22, I took those vows quite seriously. I never dated, I never kissed a girl, I never even held a girl's hand. But on my twenty second birthday, my friend took me to an all nude strip club. This was the first time I had ever seen a naked woman in real life.
Which I guess means I should back up a second to talk about pornography. The actual first time I ever saw a naked woman was during an all night prayer meeting at the church where my dad was the pastor. The adults were praying in the sanctuary, calling out to God to restore this nation's morality, while their children were all in a Sunday School room passing around a torn out page of a Playboy magazine.
I hadn't yet reached puberty, so I didn't really know what the appeal was. All I know was that it was forbidden. Which made it enticing. Which made me want more.
As a Home Schooled son of a Pentecostal preacher, I never got the sex talk or any kind of sexual education. I knew that sex was bad, but I didn't know what sex was.
By the time I hit puberty, I had already discovered my brother's stash of porn. But seemingly overnight it became a lot more interesting than something than just something that I wasn't supposed to do. I would wait until I had the house to myself and then run into my brother's room and pull his magazines out from the hole in his mattress box spring. I eventually started playing with myself as well, but never for long and always immediately followed by tortured sobs of repentance. A pattern I would continue for years. There is no way to count how many tear soaked promises I have made to God. I always swore that I would stop. And always my pledge would be made void within days.
The first time that I ejaculated, I thought I was dying. Again, I had absolutely no sexual education. All I knew was that I liked the image of a naked woman and that I also liked rubbing a certain part of my body while I looked at that image. I was well into my teens before I really figured out the ins and outs of sexual reproduction.
So there I was, thirteen years old, up at 1 am on a Friday night, watching Showgirls on our television's scrambled Showtime channel. And suddenly it happened. I had all the lights out, so I couldn't really see what was happening. I thought I must be bleeding. Like I somehow broke my dick. This might have actually been my first ever panic attack.
I cried out to God. I wept and convulsed with repentance. But nothing worked. I felt anxious and condemned and dirty. The kind of dirty that can never be washed off. I ran into my parent's room and waked my mother.
She could tell that something was seriously wrong. I was sobbing and shaking. She asked me what had happened and I realized that I didn't actually know what happened. I couldn't describe this experience that was so alien to me. So I told her that I couldn't control my lust and that I thought God could never forgive me. She prayed for me and told me that God forgave me, but I could never do this again. I told her now to worry because I was too scared to ever, ever, try it again.
Three days later, I tried it again. And I would again and again, probably for the rest of my life.
I started writing this post because I find myself still trying to figure out sex. Philosophically and morally, I mean. I know how to do it, I'm just still not sure what exactly it is. And that was basically all I was going to write. But when I started exploring my sexual past, I decided to break this post up into a few different chapters and really explore my sexual history.
Maybe I can figure something out.
7:13 p.m. - 2012-06-08
Recent entries:
Awake in My Tiny Cage - 2014-11-03
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