|
God and sex. One, I learned about through very
intentional, formal instruction, the other, through hearsay
and secret books and brief, embarrassed sections in health
class. The connection between the two was implicit and
vague but strong enough to stop conversation if one came
up in the discussion of the other.
At least, that's how it was for me, growing up in rural
central Texas in the 1970s.
My mother told me that I went to Sunday School
before I could walk. My youngest sister (who is 16 years my
senior) took me with her. I think she taught or helped with
the preschoolers at our little country church. All I know is
that I don't recall a time when I didn't go to Sunday school.
It was a given in my life from my earliest memories.
I loved it. I recall a little girl who didn't. She
screamed as she was being made to go. She even got a
spanking because she didn't want to go. I didn't understand
her reticence because I was more likely to cry and pout if I
was told I couldn't go. I also wonder if that incident didn't
help foster my base assumption, as a child, that good
children went to Sunday school and got approval for it. Bad
children didn't want to go to Sunday school and were
punished for it.
Looking back on why I loved it, I begin to suspect that
my interest was more material than spiritual.
Let me explain something about my family. We lived
pretty darn simply, in a lot of ways, and we didn't get a lot of
toys and extra clothes and what have you. Christmas was
the time when we got new toys. On our birthdays, we
maybe got one small gift and the cake of our choice
(homemade, of course). We didn't have birthday parties
with tons of gifts, and we didn't even dream of getting much
stuff in between Christmases. The closest to regular toy
acquisitions were the prizes in cereal boxes. Of course, we
chose our cereals according to what was advertised on the
lower corner of those boxes.
Now, we didn't grow up in the Depression, so I don't
want to make is sound worse than it was, but when I see
kids these days getting some toy every other trip to Wal-
Mart, I have to wonder at what it's like.
The connection here is that we got stuff at Sunday
school. It may have been just a story leaflet, a page to
color, maybe some small craft, but it was like Christmas
every week. Acquisitive child that I was (was?), I delighted
in these things. When I was cleaning out my bedroom
closet, after my mother died, I came across a good many of
these leaflets, especially the David C. Cook "Pix," arranged
in chronological order. These were no disposable
entertainments but treasures to keep forever.
In addition to this childish greed, there was my
constant craving for approval. I had a facility for hearing a
story and remembering it. I received no little praise for
retaining my lessons. This may have put me in opposition to
my classmates, but in those days, I clearly favored the
approval of adults over peers. I was that kid that raised my
hand every time a question was asked, was disappointed if
someone else was chosen, and delighted if that person was
wrong so I had the chance to answer correctly. I was the kid
you hated and wanted to smack and I didn't care so long as
I had the praise of the adults, the authority figures.
It wasn't until I started this writing that I realized that
my motivations for loving Sunday school. Ironic, I think, that
the church originally had my allegiance by appealing to two
of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed and Vainglory. My fourth
century heroes, The Desert Fathers and Mothers, would be
appalled.
Of course, it has it's up side. It kept me in church
long enough to hear the Gospel and there are obviously
worse alternatives for young people to get praise and stuff.
I mean, I wasn't an elementary gang member or anything.
Still, it is true, to an extent, and vainglory would be a
force in my religious education for some time. I especially
enjoyed showing up other people with my mental retention
tricks. I sat in the congregation at my youngest (four years
my senior) brother's public examination as he prepared for
the rite of confirmation. I sat next to my mother whispering
answers into her ear before the examined could answer.
I spent a good portion of my confirmation classes
asking questions. Years later, Pastor Mgebroff would
reminisce with me, telling me how I stood out in his memory.
Of all the confirmands he taught in his fifty-something years
of ministry, only one other student asked as many questions.
"I could never just teach a lesson without you asking why,"
he chuckled to me. Not that I've changed much.
Back then, I was working at and pretty much
achieving the potential to become a seventh grade
Pharisee. Answers were power and for this pudgy, weak
kid, I sought power where I could and I found it, first, in
authority's approval, then in religious knowledge.
Somewhere along the line, I either missed or ignored or
wasn't taught about "judge not," because the thing I was
most interested in knowing was the boundary. What was
allowed? What was not? Where was the loophole? Ah, the
power of the righteous over those who did the unallowable!
This would explain why I remember more about the part on
the Ten Commandments than I do about the parts covering
the Creed, The Lord's Prayer, or the Sacraments.
I shouldn't paint myself as the untouchable pious kid.
I was an adolescent by this point, regardless of my piety.
There were spit-wads thrown and "smart remarks" tossed at
certain adults and even a few dirty jokes passed. And when
it came to my own public examination for confirmation, in the
place of the pious third grader with all the answers was a
seventh grader giggling incessantly throughout the evening,
even snorting into the microphone once. (My best friend
and I were more than a smidgen over the wrong side of the
silly line.) I did not go home that night with the approval of
my primary authority figures, Mama and Daddy. They didn't
do anything extreme, but they let it be known I embarrassed
them.
All those adolescent indiscretions, especially the
ones committed in the context of the confirmation class,
made me sufficiently contrite and unworthy when our day of
confirmation came: Palm Sunday, 1977. We stood in line in
our white robes and discussed how no one in our class
deserved to be confirmed. We were convinced that Pastor
Mgebroff confirmed us because he was tired of us and
wanted to get on to the next class, a group of four relatively
quiet girls.
I guess we were relatively rowdy for a group of
Giddings Lutheran youth in those days. There were 13 of us
in all, seven boys, six girls. That's a lot of raging hormones
to be controlled by one pastor in his 60s. Still, I think I can
say we all loved him and it was that love that made us so
contrite on confirmation day.
From my vantage point as an adult, I make two
observations about the confirmation experience. One:
Whoever decided that puberty was the best time to teach
our youth the fundamentals of the faith was a menace to the
church and should have been locked up for the protection of
all. Two: There is surely nothing more appropriately
Lutheran than being confirmed with feelings of
unworthiness, so I suppose it all worked out in the end.
Speaking of puberty brings up the other half of this
essay, lessons in carnal knowledge.
I want to be a smart aleck and say my carnal
knowledge began with learning to eat because eating is
certainly a fleshly concern. Of course, we all know what is
meant by the euphemism.
Carnal knowledge means sex.
Well, here's my sexual education, at least as far as
the eighth grade.
I'm amused at the sitcom scenes wherein a father
fumbles around with explaining the birds and the bees to his
son, but not because the scenes are always amusing. The
scenes are so far from my experience as to be a custom
from another planet. I have no idea where my parents
expected me to learn about sex, but it clearly wasn't from
them. This is an anomaly because my parents were usually
very practical and proactive in other areas of instruction.
The fact that they had seven children suggests they knew
something of the topic. But no, I learned about sex where
most younger siblings learn about sex: from older siblings.
I have no idea where the oldest child gets his or her
education.
I would like the record to show that being a farm boy
helped not at all. I was practically grown before I even
heard that farm boys were supposed to be more
knowledgeable about sex because they grow up watching
the farm animals "do it." Not me. The bull mounting the cow
was usually explained to me as the animals "playing piggy-
back."
That doesn't mean that I didn't learn about sex early,
just not from the cattle. The brother closest to me in age
(the one at who's public examination I answered the
questions from the congregation) had scored some
pornographic paperback novels, I'm not sure how. These
were my introduction to sex. I was in the third grade. There
were no pictures in these books, so the education they
supplied was limited, to say the least.
Here's a few things that porn did not teach me about
sex.
One is that while porn is all about sex, it doesn't have
much to say about consequences. Let's just say that I knew
about sex before I knew where babies come from. I knew
that babies came from their mothers' bodies -- I'd seen at
least one sister-in-law in that state and made that
connection -- but I didn't know what the father had to do with
it. Honestly, I believed that when God thought a couple
should have a baby, they did. (What simple faith!)
This was cleared up for me when I asked my brother -
- after pondering it a while -- if he thought Mama and Daddy
knew about this sex stuff.
Venereal disease wasn't mentioned much in these
books and if it was, it was simply embarrassing or a way to
advance whatever slight plot the book may have had.
Herpes wasn't yet an issue and AIDS was still a word that
meant "helpers."
The female anatomy was poorly described. Colorful
words were used, yes, but basically what I pictured was a
second, deeper belly button, probably just below the
waistline. When I finally saw a picture of a woman's private
parts, it made no sense to me at all.
And while these very heterosexual books didn't teach
me about homosexuality per se, they offered, in retrospect,
a clue that I might be gay. I vividly recall a scene between
two swinging couples. Following the spouse swapping, one
guy is lying back in the afterglow, eyes closed, and he feels
someone begin to fellate him. He opens his eyes to see
both women smiling at him and he realizes that it's his
buddy who's blowing him. The text made it clear that there
was something Highly Unusual about this and the buddy
explained, post-fellatio, that he was really just as normal as
could be, but every once in a while liked to experiment. My
question was, "what's the big deal?" While I had some
moral qualms about the whole sex thing in general, it
seemed to me that if you were okay with multiple partner
sex, why not same sex partners? In other words, the idea of
male to male sex didn't freak me out, even if it did so for the
characters in the book. Yes, this should have been a big
clue, especially since I have less vivid memories of the
lesbian scenes, which seem a staple of the genre. In fact, I
recall skipping past those.
It was inevitable that my sex education and spiritual
education should collide, at least given the time and place in
which I lived. It was probably inevitable, as well, that this
collision would result in my burning my brother's books, an
effort, ostensibly, to save our souls. Mostly, it served my
self-righteous attitude.
Early in all this sex education, I did engage in what I
would call innocent sex play with some other boys. It
satisfied curiosities more than any kind of sexual drive and
of the three with whom I experienced this, two are married
and apparently happily heterosexual. The third is not
married and I pass no judgment on his sexuality as I really
am in no position to say or guess. But this was all pre-
confirmation and I hadn't yet thought about the activity
morally. I really don't like to admit it or even think about it
much, but if pressed, I'd have to say that those were some
of the few really guilt-free sexual experiences in my life.
Most (although not all) sexual experiences post-collision of
educations are tainted with an obsessive self-examination of
motives.
There is so much from my adolescent lessons of spirit
and flesh that stay with me, in both positive and negative
ways. I believe that the lessons imparted to me via
confirmation and discussion of the Ten Commandments has
given me a solid framework from which to approach
sexuality and sexual activity. At the same time, so much of
what I learned was decidedly heterosexual and stunted my
sexual maturation process as a gay man. Coming out in my
early 30s was like going through a second puberty. I felt like
I had adolescent feelings in an adult man's body.
Sometimes I still do.
I've recently had discussions with different friends,
both gay and straight, about sexual ethics. I find in my circle
that sexual ethics range from whatever doesn't get one
pregnant or diseased is okay to the ideal of commitment
before any sexual activity. I'm somewhere on that
continuum, I'm sure, but I can't tell you where exactly.
I guess my sexual education and my spiritual
educations are still colliding. I confess I am a man of both
spirit and flesh but really, I still don't know how to talk about
both God and sex in the same conversation.
Some things really haven't changed that much for me
since those farm boy days in the 1970s.
|
Growing Up Gay in the South : Race, Gender, and the Journeys of the Spirit James T. Sears
Rita Reed
Other Articles In This Series By Neil Ellis Orts:
With Feeling
With Feeling Two: When I Think of Home
With Feeling Three: Learning on a Nervous Stomach
Also In This Issue:
What Does The Lord Require?
How to Transcend the Spiritual Sufferings
|