The blowjob that blew up my life

I unlocked Evangelical Christianity’s lies by giving a friend a blowjob in a Mellow Mushroom parking lot.

Another week, another good writing prompt from

Amanda Montei

:

Write about the moment that you finally understood that something you’d believed your whole life wasn’t true. How did you unlock the lie? What happened when you did? Did you tell anyone else what you learned? Was the myth or falsehood based on a misunderstanding? Or had society’s definitions changed to allow for a more nuanced view?

My first thought was to write about rejecting Southern Baptist homophobia.

But, to be honest, that would be a little too self-aggrandizing. Even for me. I’d love to claim that I heroically rejected Evangelical Christianity as a useful source for moral guidance to defend my gay sister.

The truth is much closer to this: I broke up with the church, and even moreso its dogma, because I wanted to divorce my husband.

I’d been taught that marriage is for life, unless he beats or cheats on you. In which case you should still try everything possible to work it out, but if you can’t you’re at least allowed to leave.

(Funny how my Southern Baptist churches talked about gay sex constantly and domestic violence almost never, meanwhile ~⅕ of marriages are physically abusive but less than 1% are gay.)

Sadly, to my knowledge my husband never beat or cheated on me. I didn’t even dislike the man. I just married young and didn’t think I’d have the energy to drag him into the bigger, more interesting life that I discovered too late that I desperately wanted.

I remember being 24 years old, two years into being married to a man I met when I was 19, driving around Birmingham, Alabama listening to songs on the radio about partying and hooking up and thinking, “Damn I want that.” I felt embarrassed about it at the time. It feels right to me now. I have this vision of my older self speaking to my younger self at various points using the language that version of me could understand.

I did not have clarity at the time I finally threw in the towel on my marriage. Finally, sick to death of equivocating, I forced my own hand by putting my mouth on a friendly weiner after eating pizza.