“It’s not normal not to have sex!”

In the aftermath of losing my virginity, to judge by external appearances, nothing had changed. I was still the same quiet, studious young man. I was still active in my Lutheran fellowship. My interactions with women were still chaste and respectful.

In a fundamental sense, though, everything had changed. It was as if that first moment of penetration had effected an ontological transformation. No longer a virgin, I had violated values I thought were essential to my character. My pledge to remain pure had been broken in the most dramatic way. If purity had defined my religious experience, my sin made me question the authenticity of my faith. Having succumbed to temptation, my will to resist future temptations was severely compromised. Once I had sinned, it was easier to sin again. There was no return to purity.

A couple of months after my first encounter with an escort, I called the service again and hired another one. This one was a short, busty blonde who arrived at my hotel room in a miniskirt and chunky heels and carefully examined the $50 dollar bills that made up my “donation.” She was quiet, so there wasn’t much conversation between us. She suggested that we “get comfortable” and undressed, revealing some butterfly tattoos and big, luscious of tits. We moved our naked bodies to the bed, where I caressed her body until she cried out:

“You’re dripping!”

My precum had dribbled onto her body. Embarrassed, I apologized effusively. She wrapped a condom around my member. I got on top of her and, after she guided me inside her, vigorously thrust until I came.

As she dressed, she told me, “You’re a very nice man.”

Six weeks later I hired another call girl from the agency. This time I selected an older lady, a fortysomething brunette. She asked me why I had hired an escort, so I proceeded to tell her that I was curious about sex, which, upon entering the ministry, would be reserved for a future wife.

“It’s not normal not to have sex!” she admonished me as she pulled a condom out of her bra.

I felt myself blushing. She was gentle with me. Having confessed that I was only a few weeks removed from losing my virginity, she confessed to being a little nervous. “So that’s why you wanted an older woman!” she exclaimed, saying it reminded her of a scene out of a romance novel. She kissed me softly as she slowly pulled off my clothes. She put my right hand on her waist, and my left hand on her breast. From there my lust took over. I passionately kissed her back, letting a moan escape from my lips as I pressed my erection against her. She got on top, rocking her hips and grinding into me, screwing me slowly in the hotel room’s dim light.

Upon departing, she kissed me on the cheek and wished me well.

Paying for Sex

“Stephanie” leaned up against the wall, clad only in french maid lingerie she had recently purchased at Victoria’s Secret. I had just discretely placed an envelope on the table containing my “donation.” She is a self-described “professional companion” with a playful smile and a soft touch. A tantra chair sat in the living room. Madonna’s “Justify My Love” played in the background.

“Religion says sex is so bad,” she protested with a mischievous smile as she unbuckled my belt.

“But perhaps it is true,” I said, quoting Martin Buber. (I think that may have been the first time Buber was quoted during foreplay.)

Stephanie was one of my favorite escorts. Smart and sweet and naughty, she worked in real estate in addition to entertaining as a call girl. Experimenting with her sexuality, she worked as an exotic dancer before she tried escorting. When we first met, having learned of my background, she asked, “Isn’t this very Mary Magdalene?” (I explained to her that the tradition of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute has no textual basis in the New Testament.) She was raised Catholic but called herself an agnostic. She couldn’t reconcile the Church’s sexual ethics with her sexual appetite. “I love sex,” she said forthrightly, adding that there is no better form of therapy than getting sweaty in the sheets. She admitted to me that she couldn’t be monogamous, and she was promiscuous even before she became an escort. In a addition to her partner, she had “secondary” boyfriends. She also confessed to being turned on by having sex with strangers. An avid reader of erotica, she found 50 Shades of Grey rather tame. Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy is much more risque, she said. She confessed that she was scared of death and afraid that, if there is a God, she’d be condemned to perdition for her lust. (I tried to assure her of God’s mercy.)

“You’re not going to feel guilty over this, are you?” she teased.

“It may be a perverted taste, but I love prostitution, and for itself, too, quite apart from its carnal aspects. My heart begins to pound every time I see one of those women in low-cut dresses walking under the lamplight in the rain, just as monks in their corded robes have always excited some deep, ascetic corner of my soul.”

– Gustave Flaubert

The majority of my sexual encounters have been with prostitutes. I’ve admittedly come to see sex as a commodity. Convenience explains much of it. One call to an escort service or an independent provider can arrange a sexual liaison in minutes. Many of the call girls I’ve seen were extremely attractive. “Professionals” tend to be, to put it delicately, skilled. I’ve met a remarkable number of charming, intelligent women who work as escorts. There’s a certain honesty in prostitution. Like any commercial transaction, the prostitute will provide a service in exchange for payment. No games, no manipulation, no hurt feelings, no false professions of love. Moreover, the very act of paying a woman for sex is erotic. Discretely handing over an envelope with three crisp $100 bills in expectation of sexual gratification brings a frisson of excitement. (It can work both ways. One lady confessed to me, “It’s really hot being paid for sex.”) But there’s more.

Now Stephanie was on her knees, pleasuring my cock with her soft mouth. I gently caressed her hair as she serviced me. After putting a condom on me with her mouth (quite a skill, I must say), she bent over the bed. She hadn’t been wearing any panties under her lingerie. I accepted her invitation and positioned myself behind her. I entered her, clutched her feminine hips and started to pump. Stephanie’s girlish moans heightened my arousal. I grabbed a fistful of her long blonde hair and quickened my pace. Slapping my pelvis against her ass, I thrust madly, losing myself in the euphoria.

The First Time

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
Voltaire, Notebooks

During my senior year of college, the thought first entered my mind of visiting a call girl. At first I brushed it aside, thinking that I could never go through with it. But the urge to do so kept reappearing. One Saturday night I was by myself in my apartment, depressed and lonely. And really horny. I decided to go through with it. I checked into a hotel room and called an escort service.

The lady on the phone recommended a strawberry blonde “with porcelain skin” in her 20’s. While I waited for her to arrive, simultaneously excited and petrified, I opened the nightstand drawer and reached for the Gideon’s Bible. Seriously. I was skimming through the Bible as I prepared to lose my virginity to a prostitute. After what felt like an eternity, I heard a knock on the door. I opened it and saw an attractive young woman. She had a very pretty smile. As I greeted her, I remember thinking in my mind, I’m going to have sex with her in a few minutes. After some pleasantries, we sat down next to each other on a couch. She was dressed nicely and professionally, as if she was on her way to a job in a bank. She must have sensed I was terrified, so she started a conversation that put me a little more at ease. (Needless to say, she did most of the talking.) She told me about her life. I still, years later, remember and appreciate her friendliness and kindness.

After about 10 or 15 minutes, she leaned in close to me and asked what I wanted to do. I stammered and mumbled some evasive reply. She said, ‘You can ask me anything.’ I leaned over to whisper in her ear and blurted out, “I want to have sex with you.” I leaned in to kiss her, but she slid back and gently told me, “I don’t kiss.” She sensed my dismay and, smiling, reassured me, “I’m a very sexual person. We’ll have fun.”

Soon I was fumblingly attempting to undress her. At some point I confessed, “I’ve never really done this before.” After we undressed and got on the bed, she started caressing me and nibbling on my ear. “You’re a cute thing,” she said. As I was lying on my back, she placed her body on top of mine and…

I ejaculated on her leg.

I was mortified. She told me, “It’s okay,” and went to the bathroom to clean herself. Once she returned to the bed, we talked for a while. It didn’t take me long to get aroused again, and I started to explore her body. I spent time rubbing and kissing her breasts. She laid me on my back, moved her head over my crotch and started to give me a blowjob. I watched with fascination as her mouth slid up-and-down the shaft of my penis. After going down on me for a few minutes, she asked, “What do you want to do now?”

“Let’s fuck.”

She put a condom on me, lay on her back, and guided me inside her. I don’t remember much about the physical act itself, only the thought in my head, I’m finally inside a woman.

I climaxed and she cleaned me up with a washcloth. We then both sat on the edge of the bed. Instead of being relieved at losing my virginity, I started to feel very depressed. She noticed me looking forlorn and tried to cheer me up. “Don’t look so sad.” She smiled at me, gave me a kiss on my cheek and said, “You’re a really nice guy.” She dressed and I accompanied her toward the door. As she exited, she smiled again and wished me good night.

I spent the next couple of days in bed, paralyzed by guilt. Despite the positive qualities of the escort I hired, the encounter left me feeling empty and sad. I had violated my moral beliefs. For a few days, I felt ashamed to face my female friends and classmates.

But it wasn’t enough to stop me from doing it again.

True Lust Doesn’t Wait

“Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.”
Remy du Gourmont

“So how old were you when you lost your virginity?” she asked.

I admitted that I was 22.

I grew up in the “purity culture.” The purity culture suffuses much of conservative Christianity, placing a premium on sexual abstinence before marriage. True Love Waits®, we were told. “Sexual purity means saying no to sexual intercourse, oral sex, and even sexual touching. It means saying no to a physical relationship that causes you to be ‘turned on’ sexually. It means no looking at pornography or pictures that feed sexual thoughts,” explains one ministry. Even sexual desire seemed to be forbidden before marriage. Our sex “education” consisted of abstinence-only messages. Young women were admonished to dress modestly and avoid flirting lest they lead men into temptation. (Some girls wore only long dresses and skirts, believing that a girl whose skirt ended above the knee would be a “stumbling block.”) Girls who had succumbed to lust, I came to believe, were somehow soiled, “damaged goods” so to speak. (I heard one speaker compare a girl who has lost her virginity to chewed-up bubble gum.) Pregnancy was grounds for dismissal from my private Christian high school. Young men memorized “fighter verses” from the Bible to recite when inclined to sin. I was taught that if a pretty girl arouses sexual thoughts, I must immediately those thoughts captive (cf. 2 Cor 10:5). I taught myself to look away when I saw something arousing, whether it was a provocative billboard or a woman’s cleavage. Several girls I knew wore purity rings, placeholders for wedding bands, as they waited to save themselves for their future husbands, striving to become the woman exalted in Proverbs 31. I signed a card pledging that I would remain chaste for my future bride. Through it all sex was spoken of in hushed tones, shrouded in secrecy, and the message I received was, “Sex is dirty and you should save it for someone you love.”

I strove for purity during adolescence. It was central to my identity as a young believer. Although I was amazingly naive about sex, the intersection of my intense desire to remain pure and my active imagination produced angst. To compensate for the shame I felt, I tried extra hard to be “righteous” and keep the commandments. I suppressed my sexual impulses for a long time. I experienced the same flood of hormones any teenager does, yet I was extremely anxious around girls. I didn’t date. My lack of personal experience didn’t inhibit me from having a vivid fantasy life, although I had no detailed understanding of female anatomy. When I slipped, I was riddled with guilt and prayed for forgiveness. I attended a small Christian college, and my shyness and social awkwardness continued to inhibit me. Dating was hard. I did have a girlfriend in college for 6 months—she was the first girl I kissed—but we remained chaste. (She strongly believed that True Love Waits®). I believed in the sinfulness of premarital sex. To my surprise I discovered that even at my small evangelical college, many of my peers were having clandestine sex. My resolve was buckling under the pressure. What exactly was I waiting for? True love may wait, but lust doesn’t. I could not escape from the gravitational pull of sex, which is, in A.S. Neill’s words, “the most fascinating and mysterious thing in the world. To make fruit forbidden is to make it delectable and enticing.”

Shalom Auslander provides an interesting exegesis of the Fall in Genesis:

Having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve suddenly knew of good and of evil, of morality and of immorality, of sin and of virtue, and they were ashamed.

Genesis 3:11 – God busts them.

Genesis 3:14 – God curses them.

Genesis 3:24 – God chases them from Eden and bars the Gates of Paradise so that they may never return.

And what’s the first thing they do? What is the very first thing that they do?

Genesis 4:1 – And Adam knew Eve.

They fucked. The very next chapter. The very first verse.

And Adam knew Eve.

The very. First. Verse….

The moment they knew sin, they fucked.

(Shalom Auslander, “Where’s the Sin? An Anti-Sermon”)

The moment I knew sin, I fucked.

In the Vestry

We didn’t have much time. Choir practice started in less than an hour. So we sneaked into the vestry. Once there we started making out, my hands unbuttoning her blouse. Then I slowly bent her over a table and unfastened her long blue deaconess skirt, letting it fall to the floor. I gave her ass a playful slap before I yanked down her panties. I grabbed her waist and positioned myself behind her. She gasped when I penetrated her holy of holies and started to thrust. Her hymns of ecstasy soon filled the vestry.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! OH, GOD!”

“But I am carnal.” — Romans 7:14