thirsty thursdays

Babies grow every day, but if you’re with them every day, the growth is nearly impossible to see. One day my daughter will walk up the stairs without my assistance, will eat without splattering yogurt on the floor, but I cannot imagine it. Recently I was on the phone with another mom of small children. We were discussing this, how it’s almost inconceivable that our children will grow, how they will, one day, in mere years, look and act like different people. “One day my kids will be teenagers,” I said, almost astonished at the thought. “One day,” she said, “they’re probably going to have sex.” 

My parents never gave me the sex talk. We were evangelical Christians, and it was understood that sex was for marriage. If it’s that simple, what is there to talk about? And for years, I accepted this. For the most part, I wasn’t even curious. I very much wanted to be in love, but I wouldn’t say I was particularly eager to have sex. 

When I lost my faith in Christianity, I no longer had a god telling me that sex was for marriage, and this was one of the biggest byproducts of losing Jesus - I could have premarital sex. In most other ways, my lost faith did not change my life. I no longer went to church, but there was no other tangible difference. I still felt very moored to the teachings of Jesus. I still loved my Christian friends. It wasn’t like a rumspringa; I didn’t go from riding a buggy and wearing a bonnet to smoking pot in a bikini while driving a motorcycle. I was still me, just minus church and plus the potential for sex. 

My parents also never talked to me about alcohol. Unlike sex, which they assumed we would not have, alcohol was not off-limits. They themselves were social drinkers, responsible drinkers, and perhaps they believed that their modeling appropriate relationships with alcohol was sufficient. But my Christian parents with six kids, having some Coronas with other Christian parents, was a different world of drinking than the one I entered in my 20s. 

In my 20s, I was single, I was godless, I was eager for validation. Add in some red wine, and actually maybe it was kind of like a rumspringa. 

I don’t regret all the sexual experiences I had before my husband, but I do regret many of them. And this is the lesson I want to impart on my kids one day: please do not have sex with anyone you wouldn’t want to have sex with sober. There were men I hooked up with only to think, the morning after, I don’t even like you. And if I didn’t like them, what’s the likelihood that they liked me? In those days, drinking made me lonely and horny and desperate. It made me think that sex would make me feel better, and maybe it did for a little bit, but that never lasted into the morning after, which was usually tinged in shame. And perhaps my Christian upbringing is part of this, perhaps I had residual guilt over disobeying God’s intentions for my body. But really, I think I’d just wake up and wish I hadn’t had so many gin and tonics. It’s not my hope for my kids to only have sex with people they’re in love with (although doesn’t that sound nice?). I’m not opposed to the idea of a one-night stand. I just want them to be fully cognizant when they agree to sex. I want them to decide to have sex with X or Y or Z before they’ve started drinking, not after. 

What is wild is that what my parents wanted - me to not have sex with anyone but my future husband - may have actually happened if I had followed that piece of advice. My parents, and the Christian community in general, made it seem as if premarital sex were the ultimate danger, but in my case, alcohol was the slippery slope that landed me in bed with men whom I wouldn’t have even gone on a date with sober.

I do not know why it’s taken me so long to come to these conclusions. The very first time I was drunk was when I was 21. I went to a Christian college where drinking was strictly prohibited, and most of us actually adhered to this. However, on the last day of each semester, when we were technically no longer enrolled, some of the more law-abiding students considered this a loophole and would go out and drink. During my junior year, I was an RA and felt it my duty to still not drink on “Thirsty Thursday” (in fact, I went to a party where I was definitely the only sober person in attendance), but during winter break senior year, I went bar hopping with a friend. We went to a wine bar and I had a glass of Cabernet. We went to a dive bar and I had a White Russian (dear God, why? Had I heard about it in a movie?). We went to a third location (I think), and I had half of a gin and tonic. A different girl from our school ran into us and offered to drive us back to campus. We gratefully accepted the ride, and in the car, I went on and on to this girl about how cool and beautiful she was, and how I thought she really pulled off her pixie cut. She was one of those hip, standoffish girls that I’d always been half intimated by, half annoyed with. And there I was, in the backseat of her car, gushing her praises. And I thought to myself, Wow, alcohol really helps you say things you don’t mean. Someday I will repeat this story to my children. I will tell them that alcohol helps you do things you don’t want to do, too. I will also tell them to never have a White Russian after some wine.