“Being a housewife is just glorified prostitution,” my mother said, turning her head as she drove to make sure the back seat heard her too. While my two sisters and I were held captive in the car my mother gave us what little sex education we got. “Men want sex all of the time, and as a wife, it will be your responsibility to give it to him”, she declared with her mouth set in a straight line. The thought of my parents having sex was repulsive to me, but the vision of boys wanting sex more than I did was exciting. I was only five at the time, but I thought about sex more than anything else, even my dolls. I hadn’t quite figured out how it was done, I got the penis in the vagina bit, but I knew nothing about the in and out movement that accompanied the whole act.

As the youngest child of four, my brother preceding me in birth by six years, my eldest sister by four years and the next sister three years ahead of me, I was always seated in-between my parents in church. Mass lasted about ninety minutes and I found the whole ordeal dreadfully boring. Sitting, standing, kneeling, over and over again. When I complained to my mom about it, she explained that the catholic mass was set up to emulate the walk Jesus had on his way to be crucified, when he fell, we sat, when he stumbled, we kneeled, when he walked we stood. “I wish he would have fallen down more”, was my reply. I was slapped for that comment and I do remember the disapproving look that I received. I was tired in church. Years later I remember hearing the stories from my siblings of how when I was little I would sleep my way through a lot of it, snoring and farting during the homily. I don’t remember any of that, although a snore and a fart just about summed up my feelings on the whole matter. I do remember waking up with a kink in my neck, an imprint of my dress sleeve on the side of my face, and a line of drool running down to my neck. I was getting off easy, but I didn’t know it at the time. My siblings were never allowed to sleep in church. Later I would be expected to sing and keep up with the flow of things by reciting the same prayers and responses from memory as the rest of the congregation did.

It wasn’t long before I learned that the silent times to bow our heads in prayer were the perfect time to think about sex. I would close my eyes imagining people doing it, animals doing it, and if I was feeling brave enough, me doing it. I would become extremely excited from these thoughts as I sat on the hard pew and tried not to wiggle around. When we were finally home, after the coffee and donuts that came after church had been consumed and the idle chit chat of the average Sunday had come to a close, I would go home and wait for bedtime to come so I could rub myself between my legs. I hadn’t then mastered the ability to bring myself to orgasm, but I knew that there was something to what I was doing, so I continued on with it until I was red and raw and breathless.