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From: Carol <cobillard@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} "How the other half lives": religious asexuality ... and sex
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Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2004 22:10:02 -0400
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
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I received the following letter some time ago from a woman in Chicago whose
husband in Iraq had sent it to her, referring to my own sexually-positive
childhood background and demanding anonymity. I've made some stylistic
corrections, and otherwise post it without comment, other than saying it
shows how the "other half" lives, and what comes of keeping kids in
submission and ignorance, sexually-speaking.

------

"I started masturbating at age 11-1/2. Actually, I'd been playing with
myself from time to time for over a year, but just to the degree of tickling
my penis underneath the crown and making it stiff. I knew that somehow the
penis was supposed to slide into a girl somewhere. But I didn't know how, or
where exactly. Our family were members of a fundamentalist sect, the Church
of the Nazarene. It wasn't only sex that was never discussed in our house:
we discussed virtually nothing that could not be dealt with in a way that
related to the life and works of Jesus Christ our Lord, or to the Bible.
There was no dancing, card playing, movies (actually, the Church eventually
came to accept movies, but our parents never did; we didn't even have
television), popular music (we had lots of Christian music) or fun. Sex was
dirty, sinful and only for the procreation of children and only in holy
matrimony. Bride and groom must be virgins; or at least presumed to be
virgins since they had probably taken a public vow of premarital chastity.
We went to a Christian school that left me equally ignorant about sex,
beyond learning that abstinence before marriage, and indeed total ignorance
before marriage, was the Christian way.

"Somehow, though, around the age I have mentioned, the obvious either
occurred to me or I overheard in a conversation of older boys: Vaseline
would solve the friction problem. Immediately I managed to buy a small jar
of Vaseline, and I had my first orgasm. Since I was still showing no signs
of puberty, there was no semen. But I felt the rush of ecstatic joy, or
whatever you call it, just the same. And from then on I masturbated at least
once, sometimes twice, a day.

"My discovery was so monumental that I couldn't keep it a secret. Yet I
couldn't talk about sex, or indeed about my penis, to anyone in my family.
And certainly not to anyone at school. Except one person. I had a special
relationship with my cousin, a couple of months older than I. She lived in
the same rural city and we were in the same class and our families were
together a lot. Somehow she had become my only confidante, and I told her.

"I had expected to be given a lecture on my religious duty of chastity, but
that's not at all what she said. She was just as ignorant as I about sex and
sexual organs, and she wanted to see me do it. Now that I am a decade older
I realize how bizarre this reaction was, compared to what might have been
expected from an ordinary, "normal" 12-year-old Christian girl. I can only
say that religious suppression of the curiosity, and perhaps the drives, of
pubescent boys and girls can have different reactions on different kids. The
fact that I was far closer to her than to my sisters, and that she was
something of a tomboy, must have had something to do with it.

"Accomplishing the exhibitionist demonstration wasn't as easy as you might
imagine since I was not allowed to have my bedroom door closed unless I was
dressing, and my older sisters were spies for my parents on my comings and
goings and doings. Within a day or two, though, we managed some privacy in
the garden shed of my cousin's house, and I pulled down my pants and fondled
my penis to make it hard enough to masturbate for her. She wondered whether
she could attain the same level of pleasure from rubbing herself, and of
course I didn't know. She pulled down her pants and her panties and began to
rub herself, and in due course she made herself feel good. Our mutual
display was totally asexual. As I said, my arousal was physical only.
Looking at my cousin's pussy, and her looking at my crotch, aroused neither
of us. We just were trying a scientific experiment, and found the result so
pleasurable that we'd be doing it again, and again. And again, for years to
come.

"We talked and wondered about the mysterious sensation of orgasm (we didn't
even know the word) over the next few days and weeks. In due course my
cousin urgently wanted to see my penis again. We masturbated alone or
together simultaneously or in sequence hundreds of times after that,
whenever we could find a safe, private place.

"Eventually the next obvious step occurred to one of us: what if we
masturbated each other. We tried it once, and it felt even better to have
the other doing the work and the recipient just concentrating on trying to
catch the train to orgasm. My cousin got quite good at handling my ("cute",
she said, although happily she never otherwise commented on its immaturity)
penis, such as it was, and I learned about her clitoris and, finally, about
her vagina. At that time, my cousin still had only the rudiments of breasts,
little bumps, but she had started to develop and was more sexually aware
than I. As far as I was concerned, masturbating was a bodily function like
any other, one that made me feel good but had no real sexual connotations.
And we were certainly not "having sex". Our relationship was the closeness
of cousins, or quasi-siblings, nothing more. I can only say, to those who
doubt or who fail to understand, that such was our logic. My cousin could
play with my penis, could masturbate me and I could rub her clitoris,
masturbate her, and this was not sex; "love" was not an issue.

"We became more intimate the day I ran out of Vaseline. I had been
lubricating my fingers with saliva instead of Vaseline for the purpose of
rubbing my cousin's clitoris; that had proved adequate and less messy. But
saliva had never been a satisfactory lubricant for my penis. My cousin tried
it, and it hurt me more than it gave pleasure. I don't know where the notion
came from because I can't remember ever having heard of such a thing, but I
blurted out, "Why don't you try your mouth?" I wasn't thinking of the
implications; I was just so desperate, now that I  had a hard on, for her to
satisfy me one way or the other. Her face was already close to my penis, and
she just opened her mouth and closed it over my little penis and started
moving her head up and down its shaft until I told her that I'd come. There
was no semen. My penis didn't soften right away; I felt the excitement of
orgasm and then her tongue and lips moving against it became more irritating
than pleasant.

"Now I had to do the same for her, and for the first time I got a very close
look at her vulva and all the secrets it held. I got to see her pubic hair
really close up, and all the pinkish things inside her pussy lips. She
reminded me where to put my tongue, and in due course she shivered and had
her orgasm.

"From then on, that's what we did to each other. But about the same time, as
my cousin noticed, I was growing up. She found a few pubic hairs, and one
day she tasted something coming out of my penis when I had my orgasm: my
first ejaculation, even if it was only a drop or two. Over the next months I
produced more and more; but the gradualness of it meant that the question of
"swallow or spit" never arose. She swallowed as a matter of course. And, in
return, I paid no heed to her menstrual blood. Even, indeed, when she called
me a "vampire" for consuming it.

"Funnily enough, it wasn't until we were 16 (give or take a few months) that
we went further. In fact, it was at that age that I saw my cousin in the
nude for the first time. She had never taken off her top before; I had only
seen her breasts obliquely, and her nipples only a couple of times. She
hadn't wanted me to touch her breasts, and it was anyway too risky for us to
be completely undressed. But on one occasion my family was away and my
cousin and I were supposed to be at the library using their computers (we
didn't have the Internet at home) and doing research for a history paper.
This time, we were going to have oral sex in my own room for the first time,
and I got completely undressed. In anticipation, I already had a hard-on
when I took off my pants. I told my cousin I would pleasure her first but
that she should get completely undressed too. She sat on the edge of my bed
and took off her top and bra and then stood up and removed her pants. I
stared at her breasts, just admiring them. She sat down and spread her legs
and told me to get to work.

"I knelt in front of her and tried to be more adventuresome than in the
past, running my tongue as far as it would go into her vagina and sucking
her labia into my mouth as well as running my tongue up and down and around
her clitoris. After five or six minutes she cried out in orgasm. I looked at
her vagina, and it was wide open and I had an immediate need to put my penis
into it. I didn't even ask her; I couldn't resist and couldn't wait. I
gently pushed her back on the bed and in a second my penis was in her vagina
and we had sex for the first time. We had never thought of ourselves as
lovers before; now we couldn't deny it. Indeed, that was the day that I fell
in love with my cousin. This would create a problem: for we couldn't admit
our love, and certainly we couldn't say or do anything that might reveal our
secret sexual relationship. On the other hand, we weren't any longer free to
flirt with others. Except as a means of evading denunciation. We wanted to
see more of each other and more of each other's bodies; at the same time we
were committed to outward observance of the stifling asexuality mandated by
our church. 

"And still we knew nothing of birth control or pregnancy, except that we now
had a problem.

"Fortunately, nothing happened after that first sex. I eventually figured
out how I could get condoms without actually having to ask another human
being for them, from a vending machine. Anyway, there were few opportunities
for vaginal sex since it meant getting fully undressed and having a private
place where we could lie down, and this was normally impossible in the house
of either of us.

"I have to say that I am very much aware that few girls are as curious and
uninhibited as my cousin was at age 12-18. This is especially true given our
common religious background. But then, as you will see, we have come to
reject the smirking George W. Bush-type religious conviction that we are
saved, you are going to hell, ha ha.

"We don't know how it happened, because we never had sex without a condom.
Perhaps a condom split. Or, more likely, when I thought there was no more
semen inside me and that my penis was clean and dry and we cuddled and my
penis got hard and went inside her again, even though I didn't have an
orgasm perhaps some sperm got to her. Or perhaps she spilled some sperm from
her mouth. Suffice to say, one day she told me she'd missed her period. We
thought little of it until she missed the next one. We hid the news from our
families. But eventually, in month 5 or 6, the fact of her pregnancy became
obvious, and we were denounced.

"Our parents not only rejected us, but tried to get us prosecuted for
fornication and incest and general depravity. The police and prosecutor (to
their everlasting credit) weren't interested. If you do a Web search on
"cousin marriage" you will find that 35 or so states allow first cousins to
marry. Our state does not. And it does prosecute or otherwise punish kids
who engage in underage sex, or at least force them into the psychiatric and
social-work establishment for counseling and treatment. (I don't know
whether the same rules apply to prosecuting for incest, but there is such a
thing as "prosecutorial discretion".) We wanted none of that, although we
didn't exactly want a baby either. But abortion was obviously out of the
question. So, as far as my cousin was concerned, was adoption. Not to
mention infanticide. But without money from our families, and given the
ultimatum to "get lost" before the baby came and before the families were
shamed, we had to find support elsewhere.

"I had an uncle (a "half-uncle" actually) who was a notorious atheist and
who for that reason was persona non grata in our family. He lived (and
indeed still lives) in Illinois and has no kids of his own. There was still
something of a problem since Illinois allows cousins to marry "only if they
are over a certain age or cannot bear children". Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio,
where he had friends and relations, were equally off limits. Eventually the
problem was resolved by having us move, at age 17, to Florida and
establishing legal residence in his winter vacation apartment. My
aunt-by-marriage spent enough time with us to satisfy the authorities we
were being looked after. Our uncle got himself named our guardian and proved
to the county judge that we were expectant parents and had been
"emancipated" -- kicked out really -- by our own religious fanatic parents.
We lost a year of high school, but only half of that was due to the
pregnancy (my cousin had to study in a program for wayward girls and I had
to take support and ethics courses): the other half was due to the fact that
our school back home was so awful we hadn't learned enough math or science.
Even in Florida, it seems, you have to know some algebra and geometry and
know how to pour chemicals into a beaker and make them bubble impressively.

"Once the baby was born and once we had diplomas, my uncle offered me work
in his contracting business. But I needed more money and so I joined the
National Guard. Big mistake: George W. Bush made me into cannon fodder and
sent me to Iraq. And, or course, left my cousin and my wife to apply for
food stamps and county support.

"Well, they're going to let me vote this year by non-secret fax ballot. Do I
vote for the despised Dear Leader, or do I vote for the uncharismatic,
idea-less, unelectable Loyal Opposition and risk retaliation for it?

"I don't know how much this fits into your category of stories on sex and
religion, Carol, but this is how our sex lives unfolded. (I don't, by the
way, think that the Church of the Nazarene is to blame for our plight. I
rather think our parents sought out that fundamentalist/Pentecostal church
because it most satisfied their apocalyptic visions and their uncompromising
stature against sin and "deviancy" of all kinds. Either way, we've soured on
organized religion of all kinds and would rather like to bring up our
daughter as a free spirit.)"

------

As I said, the story speaks for itself. No comment from me needed.

Love,
Carol

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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