Growing Up a Sexpot Christian

Lately I've been fondly reminiscing about my time served as a Christian. Not really. Actually, I've had sour memories dredged up from interacting with insensitive dickheads with their heads up their asses, who remind me of people from my past who were insensitive dickheads with their heads up their asses.

When I was a Christian, I dove head-first into it---I was a "spirit filled" Christian, a Jesus Creepy. A lot of people who didn't know me then are usually shocked to hear that, but hey, I was young, and more importantly, outnumbered. In that environment, you're very insulated from the scary real world: I went to a Christian school which was also my church, and we went to church 2 times a week. Thus I was in the same building, around the same people, who all believed the same things, pretty much every single day.

I believed with my whole heart that the crazy things I was told were true: that god was real, that Jesus died for our sins, that they were really the same person and he/they were going to come back and all this crazy fucked up shit would happen, and if I wasn't aligned with his/their plan and what he/they wanted me to do with my life, then...shit would be bad. I did everything I could to be a "godly young woman." I "studied" the bible and meditated on it. Physically, I quickly figured out that there was a standard: be exceptionally hot, in manner and in dress, but don't actually act on any of the flirty sexual insinuations.

I always had a problem with that apparently. I thought I did covert sexiness pretty well, but no. I also couldn't help it that supposedly this same god that my mom petitioned to protect my chastity also gave me a pretty smoking body, at the very inappropriate age of 12.  I didn't understand why if I looked like the ladies in the pictures, I couldn't wear the outfits. My exasperated mother would just wring her hands.The thing is, I've always been a very sexual person, even as a child (people never like to hear that). I just am; and not just very sexual, I'm freaky too. I know, it's not going to be provocative or interesting at all when I'm a wrinkly old woman. Which is why I work that shit while I've got it.

So I certainly had a lot of complex issues going on, but I also genuinely loved god and wanted to be a good woman. But when you're a Christian, being pretty is an awful big part of being a good woman. I could write pages and pages about this, and in fact I may in the future. Still, I've always cared about my brain too, and though that was the most ignored muscle in my body throughout my entire religious experience, I did want to be smart, or at least Christian smart, i.e. knowledgeable about the bible and god's mysterious ways and such.

But I always felt that my true colors, my natural instincts, who I really am, was constantly stifled in that setting. Not just stifled, suffocated: I think people picked up on my inherently sexual and deviant nature, and were freaked out by it. I think that's why I was always just outside the circle of being accepted.
 
I tried to do the only thing I could think to remedy the situation: find a godly, hot Christian dude that I loved, and get married, and then it would be ok for me to be the voracious sexpot that I already felt I was.

But the Christian dudes weren't having it. I could never understand what I was doing wrong. I devoted myself to Jesus, I took care of my appearance and tried to be pleasing, and one after another the dudes I was interested in would pair off with some other girl.

Looking back, it's a great thing I wasn't successful---in fact it's funny to say that I wasn't successful in describing not marrying a moron. I came out on top here, but it took me a long time to see that. For years I thought that there was something about me that men intensely disliked, and I couldn't figure it out to save my life.

I came to the slow realization that it was because I had a brain, and opinions, and a strong sense of sex,  and apparently that was really scary to contemporary conservative Christian men. Fuck that, fuck them, and fuck the idea that I have to deny the feelings that I have and keep myself chaste.

It's nice now to not be judged for the basic pieces of personality that make me who I am. That's why it irritates me so much when people insist that I should just try to be a Christian, and I'd love it. Been there, done that---didn't work, god ignored me, and most of the people were assholes. And, they insisted on beating out of me every shred of individuality that I had. My teenage years are filled with memories of adults giving me grim disapproving faces and sharply correcting me, not for being rude or causing trouble, but for asking serious questions, giving my opinion, or expressing creativity. It's indescribable how good it feels to not to be in such an oppressive environment anymore.