Sexuality Continued...
A Serious Business
So, let’s take a moment and add up this intricate formula that was figuring its way in my head at this time in my life concerning sexuality and women specifically.
Sex is a serious business. Not only is it a means for producing children but it is also a sacred act to be shared by a man and woman who love each other so much that they commit themselves to the covenant of marriage for all eternity, or at least until death they do part. Therefore, men shouldn’t lie in bed or get too close to women until after they are married. For women are very special and should be revered by men. And Christian men especially should be of service to women and never do anything to hurt or upset them. Did I mention that sex and relationships with the opposite gender is a very serious business?
If I ever really had sexual feelings for the opposite sex, it’s as if they got hijacked or sublimated by all these other considerations that had to be taken into account. And by junior high and high school when girls were actually making more intimate requests of me at times for kissing, cuddling, or more, it’s as if there was a barrier I just couldn’t get past. I didn’t know how to let myself go. And from all I’ve shared, was pretty sure it wasn’t encouraged anyway. For to let myself go would mean to feel things that I couldn’t control. Feelings that would most certainly and quickly express themselves physically in the form of an erect penis; one seemingly unmistakable symbol and very sign of sex itself.
How could I as a young Christian gentleman go from cuddling and kissing to a full-fledged erection without offending, or even more, threatening my young admirer? Would it not reveal to her that I desired to cross some forbidden line, even as I did not? Not to mention that it felt quite vulnerable, even embarrassing, to reveal this private part of myself that I couldn’t quite control. It was all so confusing and stifling for me. Debilitating really.
It must be obvious by now that I felt like sex, specifically in regard to male and female relations, was an ominous endeavor. Look up sex and sexuality in the dictionary and we get foreboding and impersonal words like intercourse, fornication, penetration, coitus, lust, eroticism etc. But before sex gets all these “Rated R” and aloof sounding descriptions and therefore further rules and regulations, it seems to me to be at its origin just another innate and innocent cluster of human thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Whether stimulated chemically or psychologically these could manifest for me as thoughts of curiosity, feelings of excitement, sensations of warmth.
And if these are among some of the genesis characteristics of sexual feelings, then I must admit that I do remember when I first experienced them, although I denied it earlier. And these particular thoughts and emotions were able to flourish in me over time simply because they didn’t seem to be discouraged or overly regulated, that is, when had for other males. There were no lines in this regard, as far as I knew.
*Thanks for reading and/or listening. Continue to next post on the first invisible line for me Sexual Orientation. To read from the beginning please go to Why I'm Writing.
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