Abstinence camp

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“Of course you’re obsessed with sex,” Jim* said in between rolls in the proverbial hay. “You grew up Evangelical.”

Part of growing up in the Evangelical Southern Baptist Church in Alabama, for me, was Abstinence Camp. Yes, we called it that.

It was a weekend in a cabin in the woods where we’d learn the, uh, ins and outs of “saving ourselves for marriage.”

Ritual demonstrations to show children that not being a virgin when you marry will diminish your life, your wedding, and your marriage are a normal part of Evangelical purity culture.

“In one particularly pernicious ritual, youth pastors would show Christian teenagers two pennies, one brand new and others that had been in circulation,” Conservative writer David French writes. “The brand new penny was ‘pure.’ The dirty pennies were ‘handled,’ and the more they were ‘handled,’ the dirtier they became.” Other churches use roses without petals, cups of water that have been spat in, or chewed gum.

At Abstinence Camp, Ricky* and Robby* used a piece of tape to show how the more you use it, the less sticky it becomes. The lesson: Sex is supposed to bind us to our spouses. But if we have sex before marriage sex it won’t work.

Even at the time this seemed a bit heavy-handed and shamey to me. I was interested in the part Katelyn Beaty describes as “sexual prosperity gospel.” God would reward me for my obedience. Chastity was the pathway to sexual satisfaction.

I was, to put it delicately, horny as fuck. It certainly checked out that I wasn’t missing much by turning down the teenage boys who seemed willing to have sex with me at the time. If saying no now would buy me great sex later, that seemed like a great deal.

That didn’t stop me from aggressively pursuing the hot stoner who was at Abstinence Camp with me. Or from getting off feeling his cock pulsing through my jeans. I definitely chafed that poor boy’s dick to hell to avoid going there myself.

Unfortunately, not everyone who attended Abstinence Camp was as bought into sexual Joel Osteening and the joys of a good dry-hump. My stepsister accidentally got pregnant her last year of high school. My youth pastor and his wife would later divorce.

And while I did manage to “save myself” for my marriage, it did not, in fact, guarantee sexual bliss.

All was not lost, however. I met one of my best friends at Abstinence Camp. She’s now happily partnered to a very nice woman in Maryland.

*names have been changed to protect the guilty