Sex Equations
The Sixties sexual revolution never made the headlines at my house. Neither did the FDA’s approval of the pill buried in the back pages of the state newspaper. But without fail, Mama’s “Sex = Pregnancy = Trouble” briefing at our kitchen table every Saturday happened right alongside the cleaning to-do list.
How-to and why-to never entered our discussions. Mama and my older sister Liz confused me with their hushed conversations until I spied a sex education book on our living room corner bookcase. Later I discovered Papa (also Reverend Clements) offered this book with his counsel and blessing to engaged couples before marriage. Curiosity about sex felt akin to sin, so I hunched in a swivel chair with my back to passersby and pored over the line drawings and dry definitions. What appeared in black and white on the pages. How one would ever get into those awkward positions, why one would, and where remained mysteries until I found my whom.
How my parents or parishioners in the pews would manage the diagramed poses distressed me. Under what circumstances would I ever get naked with the boy who smiled at me in homeroom? With my flat chest and in my Lollipop three-pair-for-a-dollar cotton panties, I undressed huddled behind my gym locker door. Nakedness made me stress sweat. Even more perplexing, where would such a complicated event take place? Not at my house. Not at his. Not in the woods with chigger bites on my bottom or poison oak in unspeakable places. Cars presented the most dangerous venue to our virtue, Mama warned. A neighbor boy picked her up on the way home from country school, pulled off on a side road, and rolled over on her until she threatened him with her three brothers. Mama often said, “Eve wasn’t the problem; Adam ate the apple.” Sex in a backseat, in a motel room, or on a slab tombstone—Mama didn’t have to worry, but she did for years.
My sister Liz left for college. She’d passed the test of Mama’s lessons by not dating until a friend’s owlish cousin took her to senior prom. In college, her espoused equation remained stark: “Avoid Boys = Avoid Trouble.” Avoidance didn’t work for me. Sex education talks resumed when I got my period at 15. Mama then focused all her “Sex = Trouble” fears on me. Her deterrents emerged from tales of girls disgraced. She pursed her lips, wiped away a tear, and bemoaned, “The poor thing drove her ducks to a bad market,” an adage echoed throughout my mother’s upbringing. “Driving my ducks” meant ruining Papa’s pastoral reputation and Mama’s and derailing my life forever. Gossip about backroad sexual escapades ran rampant in my rural high school so I shied away from situations which might raise salacious speculations and scandalize my family.
To her credit, Mama organized church-sponsored baby showers, suffered with the sullied girls, and squashed gossip. "Don’t go talking about her beyond these kitchen walls. Stand with her. She’ll need friends now more than ever.” Dear Mama didn’t believe pregnancy was catching.
With Mama’s tutelage, I internalized the shame and pain too many girls felt and became an ambassador to the fallen. My senior year, one of my best friends got pregnant. Uncharitable girls derided her with “She asked for it” nonsense. Crude boys pointed at her double-D breasts and insulted her with sucking noises.
I spat my threat with eyes ablaze, “What would your mothers and my father say if they heard your venomous talk?” The scolded snakes slithered away for the moment, but bitten and battered, my friend dropped out of school. Her boyfriend stayed and graduated. His parents resisted his pleas to let him marry her until they saw the baby with his red hair and green eyes. Two divergent formulas emerged: “Boys + Sex = Little Trouble,” but “Girls + Sex = BIG Trouble.” Thank goodness my research and experiences in college provided me an improved personal equation.
The boy who smiled at me back in junior high homeroom became my significant whom. Though we attended different universities, we plotted our weekends and futures together. My affection and passion for him persuaded me to take the pill and buy sex-appealing underwear. William’s apartment provided the privacy we desired. Mama never asked me questions when we visited home, but she noticed my quickening breath and rising blush when William brushed my leg. With one eyebrow raised, she sighed, “You’re in love.”
My birth control confidence, my dedication to my degree, and the depth of William’s and my love persuaded Mama to accept—if not celebrate—my sex life. She quit worrying only after I graduated with honors and married William, a man she’d grown to love, too. I recommend Love + Maturity +Protection + Sex = No Trouble at All. •
Published in Personal Story Publishing Project’s Fall Trouble Anthology Fall 2021