From Purity Lessons to Personal Discovery: A Journey Through Religious Sexual Education
In the author's senior year photo, a young woman stands poised at the threshold of a life-altering realization. Courtesy of Melissa Duge Spiers, this image captures a moment before the unraveling of deeply ingrained religious teachings about sexuality.
The Shirt Stomping Lesson
"Girls, when a man goes to the store to buy a shirt, does he pick up the old one on the floor that's been tried on and wrinkled? Or does he want a shirt straight out of the package, all nice and clean?"
Mr. Walsh, the main academy religion teacher, literally foamed at the mouth when excited. He dabbed ineffectually at it with the tail of his button-down oxford before gleefully tossing it to the stage floor. "Of course, a man always wants a brand new shirt!" he squealed, trampling the unfortunate garment. "He doesn't want the dirty one that other men have worn out!"
In this Seventh-Day Adventist church school, comprehensive sex education was conspicuously absent. Instead, students endured obligatory "marriage and family" classes that meticulously charted what teachers described as the devil-influenced slide from handholding to fornication. The singular message hammered home relentlessly: Any sexual activity before and outside heterosexual marriage constituted a deadly sin.
The Purity Parables
For those who might have missed the message, periodic five-day revival-style "weeks of prayer" featured guest speakers and ultra-dramatic presentations like Mr. Walsh's shirt stomping. Students witnessed object lessons including:
- The lock that opens for any key (labeled disgusting and useless)
- The key that opens any lock (deemed valuable and admirable)
- The chewed gum, the licked cupcake, the denuded rose, the dirty dollar
- Finally, the discarded, soiled shirt "stained and stretched out by other men"
Girls—and their appearance—bore the entire weight of the faith's fanatical fear of sexuality. The message was clear: It was their fault if they strayed, and equally their fault if men strayed. This belief justified extreme monitoring and correction.
The Daily Policing of Femininity
Young women faced constant review, critique, admonishment, and shame. Hemlines were measured and adjusted, makeup was forcibly wiped off, and necklines were yanked upward. The author recalls one particular day when she arrived at Mr. Walsh's presentation still seething from an earlier encounter with school authorities.
Just that morning, she had been shamed and sent to the school office, where administrators kept a bottle of fingernail polish remover specifically for girls displaying what they called "harlot tips." Still smelling of acetone, she scanned the teachers and administrators gathered on stage behind Mr. Walsh.
They displayed what she describes as "rabid wariness"—a strange, subterranean panic mixed with desperate earnestness that permeated these demonstrations. As she watched Mr. Walsh's triumphant trampling, a realization dawned: They were utterly terrified we were going to discover something very exciting and powerful about the supposedly naughty bodies under our tightly regulated, modest fashions.
This fear centered on what they perceived as untrustworthy female forms—bodies apparently so dangerous to themselves and others that girls couldn't be trusted to police them independently. If this terrified them so profoundly, the author decided she needed to discover what they were hiding.
The Calculated Rebellion
Thus began what she calls "a sex hunt." The evangelism-soaked walls of her 300-student SDA academy clearly weren't a safe environment for this exploration, so she turned her attention outward. She began reading the newspaper sports page, scrutinizing athletes at the nearby public high school with the intensity of a college scout.
Her search didn't take long. Their small town had been improbably graced by an exchange student named Nicholas Bonetti—a dark-eyed jock with what she describes as "a body and bone structure worthy of any classical sculptor." He played both football and basketball. Having barely been kissed, the author made a decisive choice: Nick would receive her virginity.
Decision and execution proved bewilderingly different matters. According to Seventh-Day Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White, competitive sports were sinful, so the author had no firsthand experience with organized athletic events. She quickly learned—much to her disgust—that fall was for football. The chaotic, spread-out games under dim stadium lights proved impractical for long-distance seduction attempts.
Basketball season in January brought perfect conditions: infinitely more flattering indoor apparel for all participants, bright lighting, and confined quarters. The author wore her most immodest, brightest shirts and positioned herself strategically in the stands wherever Nick's team bench had a direct view. She lingered after games and loitered outside the team bus during away games, but these efforts seemed fruitless.
The Pizzeria Gambit
Then came a stroke of luck: She discovered Nick worked at the local pizza restaurant, a tiny cement structure at their one-stoplight intersection. The next day, she waltzed into the establishment sporting what she describes as "a 1940s velvet cocktail ensemble" featuring a jewel-encrusted skirt with hot-pink accordion pleats and a thigh-high slit, a plunging off-shoulder velvet top, long satin opera gloves, full Vogue-worthy makeup, classic '80s hair sprayed high and wide, plus a hat, veil, and feather.
Even she recognized she was comically overdressed for a high-noon pizzeria visit, but she gambled that she wasn't too overdressed to start a conversation and achieve her goal of losing her virginity. She wasn't wrong.
The Defrocking
Nick and the author went on several dates over a couple of weeks, but she made clear she was on what she calls "the accelerated track" with sex, as with everything else. He seemed thrown by her determination and asked repeatedly if she was sure she was ready. She recognized this wasn't so much concern for her wellbeing as fear she might "freak out" afterward.
She assured him she wasn't "that girl," and they awkwardly embarked on what she terms her "defrocking." He was kind but hesitant throughout. When he asked if it hurt, she realized she had no idea—and couldn't have cared less. She felt overwhelming excitement, though not sexual excitement (she didn't yet know what that was). Instead, she experienced the frenzied escape, the release of all that pent-up and forbidden "no" instilled in her.
I was not giving my virginity away—it was not a gift, and it was not being taken. I was giddily destroying it, tossing it aside, stomping on it. Like Mr. Walsh's shirt.
The Aftermath and Decades of Detachment
The experience ended quickly, leaving her feeling accomplished. She had done this thing portrayed as so huge, fraught, shamed, feared, and forbidden—so meticulously managed, administered, patrolled, and protected. Then she waited for the terrible guilt, the ripping away of that supposedly sacred piece of herself, the loss of self and soul that would supposedly transform her into "a foul and useless waste of humanity."
She felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. This emotional void continued through several subsequent decades of what she describes as "impersonal, detached sex." She experienced sex with a statement, sex with an agenda, sex with a vengeance, wild sex, deviant sex, stupid sex, good sex, and bad sex—but none of it felt like it belonged to her. It never had.
Sex had been utterly depersonalized with so much baggage and moral weight before she could ever understand it, much less claim it. It was never about meaning or feeling, but about the act itself—and, as always in her religious upbringing, the only value resided in performance and appearance. Just like that shirt.
The Delayed Discovery
Two marriages, two children, and several serious boyfriends later, the author realized she was still "trying on sex to fit men," striving to be that possession that covered them beautifully and made them look good. She describes folding herself neatly and putting herself on display, with unsightly parts tucked away, "suffocating in the cellophane wrapper" until she "stabbed the unsuspecting wearer with the excruciating pins" of her pose.
Then came a transformative moment watching a football game in a bar. A woman complimented her Robert Graham button-down shirt with its colorful print and contrasting cuffs. The author returned the compliment—the woman wore an identical shirt. They talked through the entire game, through dinner the next night, and through all the breakfasts, lunches, and workout dates since.
In what she calls "a radical departure," she hasn't slept with this woman yet. She's no longer on the sexual fast-track. She never imagined she might be interested in a woman—certainly this wasn't on her church's "marriage and family" chart. Now, with this and every other delicious new discovery, she's taking things as they come.
The Final Realization
And she has finally figured out what Mr. Walsh and company were so terrified of. It wasn't just sex. It was of us claiming our bodies and owning the sex and the pleasure and power that we could achieve if we did. They didn't want young women to know they could chew all the gum, eat all the cupcakes, unlock all the doors, and throw out all the keys. They didn't want them wearing the shirts themselves.
There are so many shirts in our collective human closet, she reflects, and you never know which one will fit until you try it on for size.
Note: Names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned in this essay. This piece previously appeared on HuffPost and is being shared again as part of HuffPost Personal's "Best Of" series. Melissa Duge Spiers is an award-winning screenwriter and memoirist. This essay is excerpted from her memoir "The Glory Whole," which won the Book Pipeline 2021 Unpublished Manuscript Non-Fiction award.
